Category: Uncategorized

It’s hard for a Butte person to read about the Kenoffel brothers’ cafes without wondering which one was known as “Awful.” That one was actually a Knofel.  

The story goes…

Back in 1956, Bob Knievel was in jail on either a reckless driving or burglary charge. His youthful offense paled in comparison to that of his jail mate, William Clarence Knofel, already nicknamed “Awful.” A witty jailer observed the duo and exclaimed something like, “how do you like this place? We have both Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel.” Bob, with a nose for self-promotion, adopted the name, changing it to ‘Evel.’ And ‘Awful?’ 

Well, William or Clarence ‘Awful’ Knofel was the real deal. In 1974, the 52 year old unemployed ex-con claimed that Evel’s constant retelling of the naming story had rendered his life unbearable. 

But he shied from the discredit he earned over a long lifetime of poor decisions. 

The early years

In small cities and towns out West, people occasionally drift in, drift around, and drift off again. William Knofel was such a transient resident, never much comfortable around people or regular work. Born in 1922, his early life seems unremarkable. It’s difficult to find any notable mention of him, although the Knofel family lived in Butte since at least the 1890s. In 1942, Knofel served a month in a California jail on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He also faced a rape allegation, but dodged that by pleading guilty to the former charge.

A year later, his luck ran out in San Francisco. In December, 1943 Knofel was convicted of first degree robbery and sentenced to eight years in San Quentin. He earned parole after serving three years. Not a good start for a young man of twenty-five.

Soon after release, he made his first appearance in Montana papers. Knofel was in Billings, serving four months in the county jail following conviction on charges of taking an auto without consent of the owner. With four other prisoners conspiring to break out of the calaboose, Knofel kicked and severely beat a jailer. When arraigned, he pleaded guilty. 

 While serving a new two year term for second degree assault, Knofel’s good behavior led to his becoming a trustee. Taking advantage of the reduced supervision, he escaped in May of 1947 from the Montana State Penitentiary in Deer Lodge. Listed as Clarence Knofel, he bolted with another trustee. The bulletin described him as a former miner, 5 feet 11 inches in height, weighing 152 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. 

When they came down from the hills to the small town of Drummond for food, police promptly captured both men.

In and out, of jail and love

Back in prison, Knofel was once again, by all accounts, a model prisoner. He earned a parole after serving out most of his two year sentence. 

One of the conditions of his release was that he stay away from Butte. Just a few days later, police arrested him there and returned him to Deer Lodge as a parole violator. Knofel then served the remainder of his original two year sentence.

Upon entering into his relationship with the Montana penal system, Knofel’s first wife Bernice filed for divorce. It’s unclear how Knofel found time to develop romances, what with his moving around and other nocturnal business. He did apparently remain single for the next seven or so years.

Knofel then met and married a girlfriend named Charlotte in 1953. She was twenty, he was thirty-two years of age. Charlotte filed for divorce late that year, citing extreme cruelty, but they apparently reconciled. 

Crime gets serious

In Butte on May 2,1954, assailants brutally beat and killed an eighty year old wealthy and well-known Chinese laundry owner named Quong On. Someone dumped his body in a lot near Rocker, Montana. The rumor was that Quong hid his fortune in his house, and police found it ransacked. They arrested Knofel and held him in Butte’s Silver Bow County jail. There he spent the next eleven months, in lieu of a $10,000 bond, awaiting trial for the murder. The court dismissed charges against him that November, when the state was unable to locate its key witness.

Three months later, on February 15, 1956, William Knofel, now calling himself Clarence, was in the Butte city jail, held on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. During questioning in connection with theft of a shotgun during a robbery of Sears, police found a switchblade knife on him. 

Knofel was now thirty-three years old and found himself sharing a cell with one John Bruno, of the same age, impounded on a conviction of drunk driving. Bruno held the dubious record of having had a blood alcohol content of 3.6, the highest ever recorded, to that time, in Butte police court. He was serving a twenty day term. 

 Knofel and Bruno sawed their way through the bars of their Butte jail cell. A woman prisoner screamed and thrashed from an apparent case of delirium tremens. This effectively diverted attention, allowing the two men to slip quietly out of the building. They drove a Dodge, easily traced to Bruno, toward Kellogg, Idaho. Officers pinched both men less than a day later, when they “brazenly walked into the county courthouse in nearby Wallace, to buy a 1956 auto license for Bruno’s car.” 

The jail hacker

Extradited back to Butte, Knofel landed back to jail. On March 9, returning from a court appearance on the grand larceny charge, he broke away from a sheriff’s deputy and was recaptured two blocks away. 

The following evening, he managed to spring himself once again. The deputy bringing Knofel’s breakfast found an inch thick hinge bolt on the cell door sawed through. The door opened enough to allow the slim Knofel to free himself. He then exited through a window in the basement garage. Five hacksaw blades and a pile of cigarette butts testified to Knofel’s patient work on the bolt. His earlier escape actually worked to his advantage. As a result, he drew solitary confinement in an old basement cell with rusty iron bolts.

Authorities caught up with him in Helena on March 12, after two days of liberty.. They pinched William and his wife at their hotel. When searched, officers discovered four hacksaw blades sewn into the waistband of Knofel’s trousers. He was issued Helena jail clothes and left manacled to a Silver Bow sheriff’s deputy.

Knofel caused no trouble during the ride back to Butte. Indeed, he apologized to the officers for having “caused the sheriff so much trouble.” Once more, Knofel found himself in the Silver Bow County jail, which now required repairs to two of its cells. 

Having failed to post a $2,500 bond on the grand larceny charge against him, Knofel cooled his heels in the county jail. In December, 1956 the district court judge ordered him to Warm Springs for psychiatric evaluation, following a half-hearted suicide attempt, an abortive hunger strike, and suspicion of tampering with jail locks. Knofel found himself convicted and sentenced to a one year term in the state penitentiary on a charge of receiving stolen property. He served this without incident. 

A little togetherness

Back in June of that year, his wife Charlotte filed for divorce, on grounds that Clarence was a convicted felon. The two had been married for three years.

One week after release from prison, William Knofel, 34, and (somehow) his wife Charlotte, 22, drew the attention of a Great Falls police detective. He found them in possession of two pairs of slacks, a jacket and an electric iron, all taken from a local department store. Pleading guilty, they received fines and suspended sentences. Unable to pay those fines, both became guests of the county, in its ‘crowbar hotel.’

Knofel told officers he stole things to resell because he was hungry. He protested that his wife had never been in trouble before. She proved to be a quick learner.

Early in 1959, after several months in jail, Knofel somehow managed to furnish bond on the larceny charge. During this interval he migrated to California, where he wound up in a mental institution. The system soon pronounced William cured and discharged him.

In July 1960, back in district court on the earlier larceny charge, Knofel’s lawyer asserted that if the court suspended his client’s five year sentence, that he would return to and remain in California. The county attorney didn’t contest this, and the judge suspended Knofel’s sentence. In closing the case, the judge added, “I hope you can get from here to the bus station without breaking any laws.” The bus station was a little over a block from the courthouse. 

Charlotte apparently stayed busy in Butte as the 1950s wore on. She was fined for disturbing the peace in 1957. In August 1959, she forfeited two $50 bonds by failing to appear in court on another charge of causing a disturbance and resisting a police officer. 

In February, 1963, the pair, together again, were charged with petty larceny in Butte. More shoplifting of slacks, this time from Penneys. Police had Charlotte accommodated in the county jail, and issued a warrant for William. The Knofels were able to post bond after a short time. 

A gamble in Reno

Career criminals, like bad pennies, keep turning up. In July of 1963, police in Reno, Nevada held one of five men sought by Secret Service agents as part of a counterfeiting ring run from a college press in California. Over $4 million in currency had been printed and much of it distributed.

The Montana Standard reported that one of the men arrested was Clarence Junior Richards, 41, of Butte. This was an alias for William Knofel, collared by casino guards after a dealer examined the bill. William then threw two phony twenties and another fifty under the table. He later told police he got the money from a man and woman he could neither name nor describe. Knofel was likely attempting to launder the money for a larger racket. Authorities sought four others in Reno, and already had another four in the San Francisco area in custody. 

It’s unlikely that Knofel was able to stay clear of trouble or out of prison in California, although mentions of him fall off in the late 60s. He appeared in a January 1966 Nevada State Journal article as Clarence Richards Jr. He struck another man with a gun during an altercation, sending him to the hospital. The two were once friends but a quarrel had been brewing for some time when they began to fight at Joe Chicago’s Bar.

The rumpus continued across the street at the Elbow Room, and from there out onto the streets of Sparks, Nevada. Police arrested Knofel for failure to register as an ex-felon and possession of a firearm. 

No place like home

Jail room must have been at a premium in Nevada, as Knofel inexplicably returned to Butte by August, 1966. Cited for vagrancy, he ultimately donated his $100 bond to the city by failing to appear in police court. A ‘C’ note is a lot of money to forego when one is already homeless, so it appears he had either forgotten the date, or grown so distasteful of courtrooms that he just couldn’t stomach another appearance in one.  

Charlotte was back in the news in the summer of 1965. She drew a suspended three month sentence, pending her good behavior, for attempting to obtain money under false pretenses. The original complaint was that she had forged another person’s name to a refund slip for a suit from Penneys.

Playing out of his league

As mentioned earlier, William Knofel resurfaced during the summer of 1974 in Twin Falls, Idaho. This appearance was related to Evel Knievel’s planned rocket cycle jump of the Snake River canyon. This was an event that garnered national notoriety and promised a huge payoff for Knieval. Hangers-on, looking to pluck some low-hanging fruit, were there as well. Failing to get a conversation, let alone any financial satisfaction from Knievel, “Awful” Knofel resumed drifting east, landing again in Butte. By this time a full generation had passed, and Knofel was able to assume a low profile existence on the fringe of legality there.

In 1976, police court found the 54 year old ‘Clarence’ Knofel guilty of two counts of shoplifting. He had taken three shirts in one instance, and five pairs of pants in the other.  Knofel paid his fine, effectively wiping out his finances. Of course, there’s a penalty for being broke too.

A year later, Knofel pleaded guilty to a charge reduced from felony car theft. The highway patrol arrested him in a car taken earlier that day from a Volkswagen dealer, That this happened a block from Knofel’s address might indicate that passing by it every day proved an irresistible lure. The next 30 days in jail probably seemed routine by now, and the vagrant had both bed and breakfast, courtesy of Silver Bow County.

A steady baseline of petty crime in later life

Times were hard, and this man who never seemed able to evade the law for long actually notified police in 1979 to the theft of $65 in food stamps from his unlocked apartment. During 1981, he served 15 days in jail for driving with a fictitious temporary tag, a number of parking violations, and escape from the courtroom of Judge Bill Geagan.  

Knofel pleaded guilty to shoplifting six pairs of gloves from a Butte Safeway store in 1982. Justice of the Peace Georgia Moran heard the case after Police Court Judge Bill Geagan was disqualified as biased. This was no doubt based on his history with Knofel. William served a ten day jail term. Amazingly, he found himself back in Geagen’s court five months later, this time for shoplifting two cartons of cigarettes from the same Safeway store. 

By 1983, William, or Clarence Knofel was 63 years old, but had learned little for all his legal experience. In March he returned once more to the Silver Bow County jail for five days, on a charge of disorderly conduct. This time he pleaded guilty to having used profane language against his mother. 

Awful, indeed. 

Epilogue

William and Charlotte Knofel just sort of disappeared after that. There is no sensational geriatric criminal activity to report. As with a number of local residents, perhaps they just gave up and quietly went with the flow, never more to seek easy money without having to mine for it. A simple line in the paper noted that Clarence Knofel died in Butte on October 21, 1985, at age 63.

These two were no Bonnie and Clyde. Like subsistence farmers, they were like subsistence criminals, just trying to keep fed in a lifestyle that must have felt like bad luck at a casino. They were hauled in so often that they must have become numb to incarceration. At least they were fed in jail. It wouldn’t explain all of Awful’s escapes, but drifters seldom like to be where they are for too long.

And Evel Knievel? Well, a lot of the hype was built on sand. The $6 million he reportedly contracted for with Bob Arum was actually only $200,000. He lost his endorsement deals after he severely beat a journalist with a baseball bat. By the late 80’s this man, permanently damaged, was reduced to selling art produced by a friend, but attributed to Evel, from the semi trailer that once held his motorcycle daredevil traveling circus. Banged up and buried in debt, he was, like Knofel, now a little too old to keep running. He did his best to live off his persona, which was more than Awful Knofel could have hoped for. 

Knievel jumped a motorcycle over things for a living, racking up dozens of broken bones in the process. He outlived Knofel, who never jumped much more than his bail, by twenty-two years.

Resources

The Montana Standard of Butte, Montana was essential for researching this essay. I tapped editions from September 12, 1946, May 15 and 16, 1947, February 16, March 11 and 13, and December 2, 1956, March 5, 1957, August 28, 1959, July 22, 1960, November 28, 1962, February 21, March 9, July 9 and 10, 1963, August 5, 1966, September 1, 1974, April 8, 1976, June 9, 1977, September 9, 1979, October 9, 1981, April 2 and September 24, 1982, and March 17,1983.

Knofel’s adventures in Billings partly came from the October 11, 1946 Butte Daily Post. Notice of Knofel’s first wife, Bernice, filing for divorce came from the May 16, 1947 edition.

The arrest of William and Charlotte Knofel on a shoplifting charge in Great Falls was related by the Great Falls Leader of March 9, 1957. That was also the source for his earliest run-ins with the law.

Charlotte’s arrest for shoplifting at Penneys came from The Missoulian of June 27, 1965.

News of Knofel’s movable bar fight in Reno was from the Nevada State Journal of January 9, 1966. His innocent verdict on the counterfeiting charge was from the same paper of November 14, 1963.

Robert ‘Evel’ Knievel lived a fast and colorful life. He put Butte, Montana on the map at a time, in the mid-1970s, when almost nothing else was going right for the city. Lionized in much press, at least two movies, and a line of Ideal toys, he took on a certain heroic aura. More on the climactic Snake River Canyon jump is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycycle_X-2

The surname Knofel is not to be confused with Kenoffel. Different folks and different stories. This one is inspired by the earlier one at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=3969

Historically speaking, a block was a term used in Butte for a large building, typically of multiple stories. There were many, including the Silver Bow, Copper, Lizzie, Thornton, Beaver, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix blocks. 

Introducing William Owsley

William Owsley was a nineteen year old Missourian who migrated, first to Bannock in the gold rush of 1863, then on to Butte the following year. This made him a true pioneer in the Summit Valley mining district. A rough gold camp was newly formed around ten gulches that extended from the Butte hill toward Silver Bow Creek.

He came as a member of a foursome, sent to help work the Black Quartz gold claim. They joined a small group living in makeshift cabins at the mouth of Dublin Gulch. By the next summer, Owsley was successfully ‘upstreaming.’ That is, he realized it might be easier to make money selling shovels as opposed to digging with one. He opened a saloon – never a bad idea in a working man’s town, and used his profits to acquire property around the camp.

Owsley then built a reservoir to store water from a ditch that channeled Silver Bow Creek water to the placer (see note #1) gulches. The site developed and the value of his land holdings grew. As placer gold played out, most left. The population of 400 dropped by half in two years. But Bill Owsley stayed on.

Maybe just plumb lucky

A couple of fortuitous things happened that validated his judgment.

In 1875, William Farlin struck silver in his Asteroid (later Travona) mine. The same year, Billy Parks ran across a five foot wide vein of chalcocite (copper sulfide) ore in his Parrot mine. Silver brought the crowds, and the far richer copper deposits hinted at a longer life for the once-dying settlement.

The other fortunate break occurred when mining engineer Marcus Daly came to Butte in 1876. Daly arrived on behalf of Utah investors who were impressed by the quality of ore arriving in Salt Lake City. The hard rock mining efforts on the Butte hill proved rough going. With the metals bound up in granite, ore had to travel by wagon 400 miles to Corrine, Utah, the nearest rail head, for processing. It would take a while to bring refining capacity to the Butte hill, but Daly was a man with a nose for copper and the money to develop it. He was as committed to staying as Owsley was. Marcus Daly became the original Copper King.

As shrewd real estate transactions go, William Owsley’s was perhaps the best in Butte. His land became the heart of the city at Park and Main streets.  He first ran a large log livery stable there from 1874 to 1890. It was well-established by the time he ran this ad in 1876: 

Horse trading among big partners

By 1880, he partnered with Lee Mantle in an expanded livery that sold and boarded horses, in addition to the sale of carriages and wagons. Mantle was already a powerful presence in Butte, one of its first city aldermen, and founder of the Butte Intermountain newspaper. He grew wealthy from his insurance, real estate and mining investments. Eventually, he became a territorial representative, the fourth mayor of Butte, and US Senator. 

Partners in business, Mantle and Owsley also leveraged their equestrian holdings by partnering in the West Side Racing Association. There they rubbed shoulders with other luminary directors like Patrick Largey and J. Ross Clark (see note #2). The track they built featured equine and bicycle races from 1881 through 1897.  

The Owsley Livery complex at Park and Main was formidable. By 1884, Owsley expanded his holdings there to include a two-story log lodging, a grocery, cigar store and hay lofts. He controlled McGovern’s saloon and card room next door as well. A section to the northeast had a carriage house, and dressing rooms for drivers. Just north lay Owsley Hall, which in 1884 housed the Variety Theater, telephone and telegraph company, hardware store and a tin shop.

Lee Mantle was off to political pursuits when Owsley later teamed with T. M. Carr in the livery. Perhaps a reflection of the frequent mortality involved in hard rock mining, they expanded into hearse rental service. Owsley also partnered with H.G. “Hank” Valiton in the same line of work. (see note 3) 

Bill Owsley goes big

An 1888 testimonial appeared in the friendly Mantle-owned Intermountain. It stated:

““Bill Owsley may have his faults, but we go on record by declaring that there is not within the territory of Montana, a manlier, more popular or more open-hearted man. He is as generous as he is brave, and as brave as he is big. Known by almost everybody as plain, honest everyday Bill Owsley, he plays faro and drinks whiskey occasionally, but there is not a man in this community who will be longer remembered as a pioneer and character than William Owsley. Long may he wave, politics or no politics.”

An article in the November 20, 1889 Montana Standard noted that William Owsley was offered $60,000 for his holdings at Park and Main, including the saloon. Perhaps inspired by the value of this bid, within two years, he razed the livery and a new six story Owsley Block was under construction. 

The 45,000 square foot Owsley Block was a distinctive five story brick beauty with a four story rounded corner cupola and intricate cornices. . From completion in 1891, and over the course of its nearly eighty year tenure on the corner, it housed Ley the Jeweler, then on the ground floor corner, and a pharmacy next door on Main. There were also, over the years, physicians and dentists, attorneys, an employment agency, cigar store, tailors, dry goods merchants, architects and, on the fifth floor, the Butte Business College. 

Another sign of the times developed in the basement of the Owsley Block. With partners, Bill Owsley formed the Phoenix Electric Light and Steam Heating Company. They brought in three dynamos (capable of powering 1,000 electric lights) an engine, two boilers, a water pump and a number of arc lamps, all going beneath the grand building on a forty year lease. They received their first contract early in 1895, providing heat to the new post office for five years at $500.00 per year. The firm lasted until 1910, gradually merging into Montana Power, and ultimately Northwestern Energy.

The school on the hill

Butte’s two institutes of higher learning were both founded in 1890. Montana School of Mines (or Montana Tech) held the high ground at the head of West Park Street. Closer to the hub of the city, the Butte Business College began in 1890, and continued through 1975.

A diversified economy developed within Butte in the 1890s, requiring many skills beyond those of hard rock mining. During its 85 years, the college taught over 35,000 students proficiency in typewriting, shorthand, penmanship, mathematics and bookkeeping. One of them was William Owsley himself.

The college occupied the fifth floor of the Owsley Block from 1892 through 1953, when it relocated to the Butte High School annex. That annex, larger than the available space at the Owsley Block, had been the site of Army recruiting and induction during World War II. No longer needed in the post-war era, it provided a suitable and larger home for the college.

Owsley ‘goes west’

He was most likely well aware and proud of the role he played in the sudden rise and wealth of a city. That was apparent years earlier.  In 1894, Owsley formed the Free Silver Club, to which he gave rooms in the Owsley Block. He noted that the social places where “old-timers used to hang out” had disappeared. “They want a place to loaf, and would scorn at being seen around the gambling houses.”

The club was a second home to anyone, rich or poor, who was a miner or prospector in the early diggings. He fitted out the rooms with chairs, card tables, reading materials and a well-stocked sideboard. Plenty of cuspidors were on hand as well. Fifty-three charter members each paid $1.00 initiation and agreed to $1.00 per month dues. There, they could drink and spit and endlessly relive their tales of boom and bust together. 

An obituary tribute to William Owsley in the Butte Miner ended by predicting that “his memory ever will be cherished in the annals of this city.” That is generally true of locally powerful figures, until a couple of generations pass. In 1950, Paul Holenstein bought the Owsley Block for $125,000. He then announced plans for renovation and a renaming of it to the Butte Medical Arts Building. 

The Holenstein era at Park and Main

Holenstein grew up in Butte, son of parents who owned the Pine Tree dairy. He served in the Army Air Force during World War II. Afterwards, he took classes at the Butte Business College and sold for Newbro Drug Company. This experience led Holenstein to form the Purity Drug Company, combining Main Drug at Park and Main (site of former Lizzie Block) with Purity Drug store of East Park Street. His 1950 plans for the Owsley Block included a new front entrance, with “electric eye doors to replace the revolving ones.” He added trendy Venetian blinds to all office windows. In a philanthropic move, Holenstein offered free office space to a dental clinic in order to serve underprivileged children of Butte. 

He promoted himself as an investment advisor and began a string of novel ideas that just needed funding to succeed. The below ad typifies the approach. A come-0n for baby ducks from his Main Drug store catches the eye, and leads it to an investment opportunity below, in which he pitches a pumice building block scheme. Investors might find their dividends taking the form of building materials…like pumice blocks.

Big dreams of parked cars

In 1957, Holenstein set up Prudential Diversified Services and bought several uptown office buildings, including the Hirbour and Lewisohn, with the intention of renting them. A couple of years later, he conceived his grandest plan for uptown. On the empty lot created by a spectacular 1954 fire that took the Butte Hotel on East Broadway, he proposed a modern steel and glass Prudential Arcade  Building. A combination retail mall and five level enclosed parking garage, it would contain fourteen new businesses, revitalize the uptown and solve the city’s parking issue.

This new construction would require 1.5 million dollars, and constitute a real stimulus to the community. in late 1960, he promised to begin as soon as clear title to a couple of parcels was in hand. Plans featured a fireproof structure with five floors of parking for 211 cars, various businesses, a sky top restaurant and cocktail lounge and a 24 lane bowling alley. 

While still scouting for investors, tenants, and contractors, Holenstein ran into trouble with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. It placed his properties into receivership and Holenstein filed for bankruptcy in 1963. For a time he ran a hotel in Helena, eventually returning to Butte in 1966. He then established Diversified Reality, taking up business in the ground floor corner of his Medical Arts building.

Another dynamo in the Owsley Block

Holenstein also started a business called Downtown Thrift Stamps, and published a paper, the Magicland Citizen, which promoted the Butte area for its business potential and quality of life. As the Montana Standard summarized:

“He devoted much time to tourism for this region. He spoke times without number before clubs and on radio and television to sell what he called ‘a message from Montana to the nation.’” 

Holenstein presented a ten point platform that notably included no tax increases, proposing instead to shrink government to fit the population. (see note #4). This was the crux of his campaign, with an adamant refusal to annex outlying areas to boost taxpayer numbers. He also wanted to tear down the “fire-trap” city hall, moving all city offices to the courthouse. The existing city hall dated to 1882, built during the mayoral term of his real estate predecessor William Owsley.

Another idea was to buy the Butte Water Company from the Anaconda Company. He felt that the fate of the city rested upon assured access to water. There was a proposal to bring back the anti-expectoration law of 1901 and enforce littering laws. He wanted more parking, which was odd, given how quickly uptown fires were creating open space for it. As mayor, he would begin a weekly 15 minute television program where city government reported directly to the citizens of Butte. Holenstein wanted to leverage the Berkeley Pit, World Museum of Mining, birthplace of Evel Knievel, and Butte’s reputation for being the “coldest spot in the country” as tourist draws. 

After the vote

He still lost the election, to popular Democrat Mike Micone, who served as mayor from 1969 through 1977. Micone became the last mayor of Butte, and first chief executive of Butte-Silver Bow County when the two merged in 1977. Boosting population was considered the only reasonable way to raise enough taxes to maintain essential services. That same year, the Anaconda Company sold itself to Atlantic Richfield, and the mines began a slowdown that led to total closure in 1983. Spitting on the sidewalks, in retrospect, was far from Butte’s most pressing concern. 

It didn’t keep Holenstein from issuing a public statement in his paper, that alleged voting irregularities and suggested creation of a taxpayer’s union. This would be seen as subversive or even mad in most cities, but Butte was “the Gibraltar of unionism.” Everyone was immersed in the union culture. At labor’s high point in 1917, there were locals representing 44 different unions in Butte. It took until 1985 for Butte to get its first McDonalds. Perhaps it was Butte- plausible that taxpayers would have a right to collective bargaining. He never got the chance to try it.

Trials by fire

In the early evening of July 28,1973 a fire broke out in the interconnected buildings of the Owsley Block and burned nearly uncontrolled for hours. Every fire department in the Butte area joined in the attempt to contain it. Records were  hurriedly removed from city hall, just up the alley. Police shot out windows of the burning structure with 12 gauge shotguns.  The fire department hosed down every nearby roof, as the Medical Arts showered sparks from above. The Butte Water Company reported that the city’s main reservoir level fell by a foot and a half in the attempt to douse everything at the intersection of Park and Main.

It was a weird summer Saturday night in Butte, Montana. A crowd of more than 10,000 stood nearby, watching the blaze and the responders. Nearly as many rubbernecked from parked cars in the area. Mike Babcock of the Montana Standard called it “an atmosphere of freaky holiday.” Police had their hands full controlling the crowd, and some looting occured as nearby businesses evacuated what they could to the street.  

Around 10 pm a section of the corner tower fell into the street below, followed shortly by the wall above the men’s shop on Park Street. An hour later, the Hoffman Block next door on Park caved in.

The morning after

Wrecking crews began work to bring the rest down as soon as it was cool enough to do so. The remaining five stories of fire-compromised brick were fragile enough that the Anaconda Company suspended blasting at the Berkeley Pit for two days. 

The inferno wrecked several of the Medical Arts building’s neighbors in the Park and Main area. Up went J.C. Penney Shoe Store, Maggie Ann’s Fashions, GAC Finance, Wein’s Mens Store, and Big Sky Optical. 4 North Main and former mayor Jimmie Shea’s insurance office suffered damage beyond repair. Holenstein’s Diversified Realty, which occupied the ground floor corner, was a loss, as were the medical records of doctors and dentists, attorney’s papers and the Montana Power Company land records.  

Loss estimates reached $2 million, but Holenstein said the building’s insurance would cover only about one-third of that value. The complete enterprise and records loss of medical professionals and lawyers couldn’t be objectively valued. Three days after the blaze, a mammoth wrecking ball was at work on the remaining walls. Investigators never settled upon a cause.  

Flat space with no takers

Holenstein said he expected to rebuild and didn’t want another situation like what occurred after the huge J.C. Penney fire on Park Street a year earlier. Authorities then suspected arson, although two grand juries returned no indictments. The New York financier who owned the building settled for it becoming a city-managed parking lot, with a split from the meter revenue.

A massive inferno on Main Street in 1969 took out the Board of Trade, Donut Shop, Hunter’s Gifts, a jewelry store, Al’s Photo Shop and the Heidelberg Bar. Holenstein and a partner cleared the extensive rubble and put in a metered parking lot, operated on a split revenue basis with the city.

Despite his intentions, the large tract where the Medical Arts Building, or Owsley Block once stood became yet another in a series of fire-inspired parking lots. There didn’t appear to be any demand for new construction on what would be prime lots in any healthy city.

Holenstein quickly took over the old Metals Bank Building, kitty corner from the Medical Arts lot, and moved Diversified Realty there. He thus became a unique part of the Park and Main story by simultaneously owning three of its four corners; a burnt ruin at the northeast, along with Main Rexall Drug on the northwest, and the Metals Bank building on the southwest.

The one unforeseen hitch in Holenstein’s plans was his own death. He fell to cancer at age 57, eight months after the fire that took out his anchor at Park and Main.

A town goes to blazes

In November of the same year as the Medical Arts disaster, the city’s prized recreational area, the Columbia Gardens, somehow caught fire. Most of its structures burned to the ground. The Anaconda Company, which had long financed the amusement park as a civic philanthropy, promptly excavated the site in an expansion of its open pit mine east of the city.

A little over a year later, another fire claimed multiple businesses on West Park very near where the Medical Arts building was: Gamer’s Shoes, Diana Shops and Gene’s Furs, in addition to a Chevrolet shop on adjacent Galena Street. 

Ten months after that, on August 20, 1975, the residential Pennsylvania Block at 44 West Park burned.  And three years later, the twin architectural treasures of Silver Bow Block and Inter Mountain building. 

Parking lots abounded in the 1970s. Sites which were formerly Penney’s, Medical Arts Building, and Pennsylvania Block were all cleared. The Park and Main area came to resemble an old hockey player’s smile. There was irony in the sudden availability of parking uptown, as Holenstein had once championed the mother of all parking lots, the Arcade Mall, before fire became a clear trend uptown. 

A light goes on at Park and Main

In 2015, NorthWestern Energy, successor to Montana Power as Butte’s electric utility, heralded a rebirth of the old Owsley corner. It built a solid and good looking five story headquarters on the site. This was the first major business construction uptown in over fifty years. Before the Prudential Federal Savings (now D.A. Davidson) was built in 1965, the most recent commercial structure of major size was the Finlen Hotel, a full forty years earlier. Butte had slid a lot since the lofty days of limitless expansion during World War I.  It felt good for the community to reverse that tide, if only for this single bright instance at Park and Main. 

It was also a case of completing a historical electric circuit. William Owsley started the Phoenix Electric Light and Steam Heating Company in the basement of the Owsley Block. That company merged into the Butte Power Company, then Montana Power, and in time, Northwestern Energy, It built on the ground where the Owsley Block stood, literally growing from where it was first planted.

Notes

Note 1 – Placer mining was that done on a very small scale with water and a pan, or larger, with a sluice and rocker box to separate gold from dirt and sand. Either way, it required water, and Butte did not have much. Controlling access to it was valuable in itself. ‘Placer’ is contrasted with hard rock mining, as was done in the following silver and copper booms. It demanded digging, blasting stamping and roasting granite to extract its metal content. The capital-intensive nature of this kind of mining required deep pockets, which brought in the big players who eventually exploited the potential wealth of the Butte hill.

  Note 2 – Mayors of Butte stuck together in the early days. That, or members of a group of business associates took turns being mayor. W.R. Kenyon of the Kenyon-Connell store was mayor in 1887 and 1889. As indicated, Owsley ran the city in 1882 and 1884. Owsley’s livery partner H.G. Valiton served as Butte’s second mayor in 1880; elected once again in 1890. Lee Mantle even got his turn in 1892.

Note 3 – Patrick Largey was president of the State Savings Bank, kitty-corner from the Owsley Block at Park and Main. More about him appears in the essay regarding the southeast corner of this intersection. J. Ross Clark was brother of, and partner to W.A. Clark in banking, railroading and sugar production. He bought the Kenyon-Connell hardware holdings from the Largey estate in 1897. This was a year before a man injured in an 1894 explosion at the Kenyon-Connell warehouse burst into Largey’s office at Park and Main and shot him dead.  

One more note

Note 4 – Butte had 22,000 residents in 1973. Population figures for the city were difficult to determine. Early miners were transient and boarding house operators tended to be vague as to occupant numbers. Sometimes three men would take a room and sleep as they worked- in shifts. The city’s peak population was probably in 1917, at not less than 80,000, although some estimates reached 100,000. City employee numbers were disproportionately large for a city that had shrunk nearly 75% by 1973.

Resources

A good biography of Lee Mantle exists at Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Mantle

Description of Owsley Block, circa 1885, from Dick Gibson for the Verdigris Project at https://www.verdigrisproject.org/butte-americas-story-blog/butte-americas-story-episode-71-the-owsley-block

Formation of new electric light company from Butte Daily Post; February 26, 1894; Incorporation of new company in Butte Miner; June 30, 1895; Contract to heat the new post office, from same paper; October 4, 1895. 

Obituaries from the Labor Bulletin of April 19., 1919 and Butte Miner of the same date shine a light on the life and accomplishments of William Owsley. 

A timeline of early Butte mayors appeared in the Montana Standard of May 25, 1941.

Sophronius Marchesseau was another of Butte’s original mining settlers. He lived a long time and told many tales for posterity. Some of them appear in the Butte Evening News of December 18, 1905, and inform some of the background for earliest beginnings of Park and Main streets. 

Further resources

Paul Holenstein and the birth of the Medical Arts idea was from the Montana Standard of February 5, 1950.

Some detail on the proposed Prudential Arcade building from the Montana Standard of November 6, 1960. 

Holenstein’s SEC difficulties from the Montana Standard of March 1, 1963.  

Dependably accurate historian Dick Gibson wrote a brief history of the Owsley Block for the Montana Standard of May 20, 2016. 

An excellent revisit of the 1973 fire was provided by Tracy Thornton for the Montana Standard of July 26, 2020. Closer to the source was reporting by Rick Foote of the same newspaper in its July 30, 1973 edition.

Paul Holenstein’s platform for Butte mayor is in his own paper, the Magicland Citizen of February 1, 1973. His open letter recommending creation of a taxpayers union, among other beefs, was from the same paper on June 3, 1973

The side by side photos (before and after) of the Medical Arts Building fire are thanks to (left) Montana Standard and (right) Butte Silver Bow Archives. They appeared in the Montana Standard of July 26, 2020.

Paul Holenstein’s death notice appeared in the Montana Standard of March 29, 1974. 

Photo of the new Northwestern Energy headquarters at Park and Main from Mosaic Architecture of Helena, MT.  Website at https://www.mosaicarch.com/projects/work/northwestern-energy-montana-general-office/

A related essay concerns the two businesses adjacent to the Owsley Block, and north of it – Spillum’s and 4 North Main. https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4286

Of the four corners that make up Park and Main, the last to modernize was the southeast. It remained a collection of ramshackle frame buildings up until 1917, after the other three corners upgraded to large multi-story masonry structures. Perhaps this was because it formed the northern boundary for a district of single miner residences, gambling halls, saloons and brothels. As such, it was almost a transitional corner leading to better refined uptown Butte. No-one seemed eager to improve it until the early 20th century. 

The Sanborn fire insurance map of 1891 shows that this corner resisted serious business development into the turn of the 20th century. Of the thirty buildings shown facing Main (left edge) and Park (upper edge), half are saloons (Sal.) There are also five loan offices, three stores, two restaurants, a barber and a cigar store. The lower edge (Female Boarding) fronts onto Galena Street – at that time part of Butte’s red light district.

The southeast corner of Park and Main had some serious catching up to do if it was going to match the respectability of the rest of the intersection.

In 1906, the five story Owsley Block took up the northeast corner, the Lizzie Block held the northwest corner, and the southwest was anchored by the eight story State Savings Bank. Directly across Main from the bank, as if to mock it for pretentiousness, stood the original Board of Trade saloon. 

The rowdy corner of Park and Main

The corner originally sold for $20.00. John Berkin, a Butte pioneer who lived to see a full century, built a small miner’s cabin there. Tom Hoops ran some sort of saloon at the corner in 1879, giving way to Pat Conlen’s saloon. William Fritz first opened Board of Trade, another saloon, in June of 1885. It then changed hands multiple times until Charles Schmidt bought it in 1900, running it until the Rialto theater was built in 1916. 

Board of Trade was a two story frame building overlaid with brick veneer. The ground floor served as the bar while second floor ‘club rooms’ hosted gambling and card games. The location of Board of Trade ensured a diverse clientele, not all of whom were the cream of society. There are many stories like that of Tom Buckley, a serial lawbreaker who, in 1902 made a break from jail while being frisked. He eluded capture until two weeks later. Drunken and belligerent in the Board of Trade, he loudly cursed the two officers sent to arrest him, “until the air turned blue.” 

Raids or ‘pulls’ on Board of Trade’s gambling games were periodic from the 1890s on. They generally coincided with civic movements for moral improvement within Butte. An anti-gambling law was on the books as early as 1901, when deputy sheriffs raided a poker game at Board of Trade and rounded up nine violators. The Butte Miner related a raid in 1905, in which two officers who broke up a card game in the back were overpowered by the gamblers and thrown out into the street. One of the police later said he believed a man should be allowed to gamble if he wanted to. He then added, “to tell the truth, I think I got just about what was coming to me when they threw me out.”

Catch and release in Butte

Another story from 1907 featured a former bouncer at the California beer hall. Bill Sharkey was “a high, bulky buck with a neck like a bull.” Working at the California, Butte’s largest saloon, Sharkey was most likely well-practiced at bouncing  “Having upon him a large cargo of drink,” he set out one Sunday morning for the Board of Trade in search of excitement. Sharkey told the judge that “five guys blowed in and started to hand me a bunch. I come back hard and then somebody breaks in me teeth. “Yes, added the officer, and when I grabbed him he kicked another man in the stomach.”

Somehow, Sharkey was released on $10 bond. He then obtained a revolver from a bartender at the Copper King saloon, and headed back to Board of Trade. Two officers approached him as he exclaimed “I kin lick de whole police force, de whole bunch can’t take me up.” One of the policemen drew a gun and others kept Sharkey from pulling his. A fight ensued as the two officers slowly dragged him to jail. The next morning he looked badly battered in police court where he was fined $5.00 and jailed for carrying a gun. 

One might wonder how pure the spirits were back in that day. In 1910, another big man offered to buy everyone at the Board of Trade a drink, livening up the place. A police officer arrived, but only served to make the generous drinker angry. He lit into the cop, beating him while others attempted to pull him away. “I can lick the whole Butte police force,” he thundered. Considerably sobered in police court Monday, he explained, “I was soused. I didn’t know what I was doing, and am awfully sorry.” He was fined $25.00 for disturbing the peace. 

A taming of the last feral corner

Calls for condemning Board of Trade, and improving the corner with a modern building appeared in the paper as early as 1906.  Along with the Eagle loan office and the Mug saloon to the south and Spillum’s cigar store, a restaurant and a barbershop to the east, the Board of Trade met the wrecking ball in 1916 to make space for the new Rialto Theater. The Butte Daily Post mourned the passing of this corner, calling it a “Butte landmark,” and touted its history.

Board of Trade hosted a sort of Irish wake for its own demolition on August 15, 1916. “Step up and have a drink. You’ll have bourbon? Here’s a bottle; take it away. No, no charge; this is free, free as the air.” The Butte Miner marveled at the few arrests that resulted from this alcoholic largesse. 

Charles Schmidt retired from the saloon business and, in ill health, took his own life in 1918. He lived a full life, coming from Germany direct to the Nevada silver mines. Schmidt then worked in the sheep and cattle business in Idaho, and as a butcher in Helena in 1876. With a partner he first acquired the California brewery at 42 North Main, and then Board of Trade.

A still lively fixture at its location, Board of Trade simply relocated a door east of the Rialto, to 16-18 East Park.

Like many bars and saloons, Board of Trade coped with Prohibition by creating the somewhat false front of a soda fountain and cigar store. Though hidden, most contraband remained available. Ernesto ‘Juno’ Bruno operated the place from 1932 through 1965. He later owned part of the Sportsmen of Butte until 1972.

Today’s rather undistinguished corner of Park and Main Streets doesn’t do justice to its backstory. Today, it’s a U.S. Bank office, with a four lane drive through at the far end of the Park Street lot.

A second act for Board of Trade

In its new location, the Board of Trade underwent a major renovation in 1938. This notice was from December 14 of that year:

It was here that famed photographer Arthur Rothstein of the Farm Security Administration, a Depression era federal agency took a candid 1939 photo of the Board of Trade: 

The rather noirish image of a ‘newsie’ out front hawking papers and men curbside in their suits and fedoras evokes an era of bootleggers and gangsters. Rothstein took this shot during the short period between the end of Prohibition in 1933 and the start of America’s involvement in World War II. Unemployment in Butte ran about 25%, higher than the national average. There was a lot of time for hanging around.

And gambling. This was both an illegal and widespread activity in Butte. In 1942, there was a ruckus at a stud poker game in the Board of Trade. Mateo Rita lost an eye after being hit with a beer bottle. It was thrown by George Jursnick, another player who caught Rita “passing a cinch.” Rita had made a flush, then ‘checked’ to Jursnick who promptly bet his pile on a pair of aces. When Rita called the bet and raised – wham. Hard to know when one is violating some unwritten code. 

Rise of the Rialto

Once the southeast corner of Park and Main was cleared in 1916, The Greater Theater Company of Seattle and Portland built Butte’s largest theater, the 1,600 seat Rialto. They designed it to be one of the most opulent movie palaces in the northwest, with an investment of $260,000. The foyer was marble and the carpeting of angora wool. All lighting was indirect, and theater air exchanged every 90 seconds. That air circulated over ice in the summer and heating coils in the winter. 

Custom painted panels featured nymphs, fountains,  peacocks and tropical foliage. There were telephones, writing desks and settees in the ladies’ rooms. Dressing tables with triple mirrors offered easy access to combs, brushes and powder puffs. The men’s room sported easy chairs and provided for all of a smoker’s needs.  Films from this time were silent, so the great theaters required state of the art organs. The Rialto spent $45,000 on an American Master version. 

Opening night on Park and Main

A steady patronage of moviegoers thronged to the new theater. From 1919 on, S&S Jewelers occupied the coveted corner of Park and Main beneath the Rialto. Next to S&S on East Park was the Aero Club, famed for its Italian dinners since 1937.

Rise and fall of a Rialto way of life

The Rialto sat across Main Street from the Metals Bank building (see note #1). Times had profoundly changed over the years since the Metals was built. Banks once projected a solid federal look as a symbol of financial strength. Car culture didn’t require that; it demanded convenience. As drive-ins replaced cafes, so drive throughs made a memory of standing before a teller at the bank. To keep its edge, Metals Bank planned a $1.5 million relocation across the street, to where the Rialto stood.

Theaters experienced cultural and technological disruptions as well. Despite the adoption of color, cinemascope, double features and even drive-ins, they ultimately yielded to the convenience of television. Butte’s grand movie palaces: the Rialto, Fox, Broadway (later Montana,) Peoples (later Park), Ansonia and American gradually went extinct (see Note #2). The Rialto screened movies until August of 1965, and then closed its sale to Metals.

The law of diminishing returns

The grand theater was unceremoniously razed, while the paper extolled the benefit of contracts let to local demolition and construction companies. Such jobs were scarce as the local economy idled. It had been two years since a building of any size was erected uptown.

Along with the theater, the new bank replaced S&S Jewelers, Day and Nite Market, a waiting room for the Butte Bus Lines, City Taxi, George Donut Shop, the Rumpus Room, Rialto Barber Shop and Tripp Gun and Key. Next door, the Board of Trade, Jeffers Block, Treasure State Sporting Goods, Majestic Tavern and Stockman’s Bar all fell. The vacant Meyer Building further down Park once housed the Peoples Theater. Subsequently home to The Park Hat Shop, Pony Chili Parlor and Montana Barber Shop, it was also demolished . 

The point of listing these is that there was much disruption to the normal flow of uptown Butte. All the stores, barber shops, bars and cafes people walked to were replaced by a facility designed to accommodate people who never left their cars. Four lanes and a lobby took the place of two commercially dense and dynamic city blocks. A single structure with a dozen employees replaced twelve businesses. The transition helped obviate any need for a bus stop or cab stand at Park and Main. The commercial ecosystem that made uptown Butte once so vibrant was collapsing. In the case of the Rialto, a quarter million dollar investment in 1916 yielded a buyout of $65,000 fifty years later. 

 U.S. Bank eventually absorbed Metals Bank, and the drive-through bank remains on the southeast corner of Park and Main. The times have disrupted banking right along with the whole south side of this intersection. The dawn of internet banking, direct deposit, ATMs, Venmo… who really needs a physical bank on a regular basis? With the single story drug store that replaced the Lizzie Block on the opposite corner, three corners of Park and Main had taken on the look of a central business district with diminished ambitions.

A brief afterlife for Board of Trade

Board of Trade moved to 12 East Broadway in 1965. This address had a tale of its own to tell, dating from the late 1880s.  The main entrance was at 42 North Main, where Al’s Photo Shop later operated. The California brewery and beer hall ran from there behind the corner on Broadway to an alley in back of the city jail. The California Club, a posher place, occupied the second floor.

Copper King F. Augustus Heinze often held court from the club. During an election campaign he invited all of Butte miners to drink on the house at the California. The resulting crush collapsed a wooden sidewalk built over a gulch on Broadway. It was also where Teddy Traparish, owner of Meaderville’s famous Rocky Mountain Cafe started his career as a humble swamper in 1903. This was during the same period that Heinze commanded the club. Traparish referred to the California as a “jumping joint.” 

On June 24 1969, this final iteration of Board of Trade complex burned, sharing a fate common in uptown Butte. Business fires were frequent in this town of labor booms and busts. As the uptown was close enough to share walls, a localized fire could easily spread to its neighbors. Butte lost several irreplaceable blocks in this way during the 1970s. 

Some referred to these as ‘friction fires,’ those caused by the rubbing together of a building’s mortgage and insurance documents. Others think Anaconda Company was systematically torching the uptown to reduce its value in a buyout, in order to extend the open pit mine. In any event, as with so many other businesses, fire put a final end to the Board of Trade. 

Resources

Note #1 – More history of the Metals Bank building in my earlier essay, here: https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4044

Note #2 – Well within range of Park and Main, The American Theater (capacity 1,000) was at 25 W. Park, built in 1903 and taken by a fire in 1950. It had a front of Mexican onyx and a matron on duty to tend babies while parents attended the show. The nearby Park (capacity 780) at 32 E. Park burned in 1949. The Broadway (capacity 2,175) was built in 1901 and demolished in the late 1980s. The Ansonia (capacity 1,100) was wrecked to expand parking for the Miners Bank in 1966. Only the Fox (capacity 1,200) survives, as the beautifully restored Motherlode Theater.

An outstanding resource of classic American movie houses is Cinema Treasures at https://cinematreasures.org

Sanborn fire insurance maps provide great insight into the make up of a city, building by building. Some can be found online at the Library of Congress; https://www.loc.gov/

First opening of BoT from the Daily Town Talk of June 29, 1885.

The story of Tom Buckley form the Butte Daily Post of November 15, 1902. 

Failed police raid on BoT from Butte Miner of November 5, 1905

A representative call for condemnation of the Board of Trade building appears in the Butte Daily Post of August 9 1906. 

Sharkey takes all comers from the Butte Evening News of April 15, 1907

Trial of second brawler from Butte Evening News of March 7, 1910

Closing party at the Board of Trade from the Butte Miner of August 15, 1916. 

Pre-razing history of the Board of Trade and neighboring properties from Butte Daily Post; August 3, 1916. 

Obituary of Charles Schmidt in the Butte Miner of May 28, 1918. 

Further resources

Some information on Arthur Rothstein in Butte from Aaron Parrett for Big Sky Journal magazine; 2016. 

Story of a poker game gone awry from the Montana Standard of January 21, 1944. 

Gambling trial in Butte from The Montana Standard of March 13 and 14, 1947, and Butte Daily Post of March 13, 1937.

Gambling man ejected by police from Board of Trade. Takes bar to court. Montana Standard; November 9, 1963.

All I know about the old Rialto Theater I learned from The Puget Sound Pipeline, a blog of the Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society. Well worth a visit: https://www.pstos.org/instruments/mt/butte/rialto.htm

Oliver G. Wallace is little known today, but known by the widely popular movie music he composed. I recommend a look at his work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wallace

History of the California beer hall and club from The Montana Standard of June 25, 1969. Articles like this look much like obituaries, and often evoked the same emotions from local readers. 

Pedestrian traffic study by WPA for Butte Police from Montana Standard of December 10, 1939

The sale of the Rialto Theater; in the Montana Standard of May 7, August 8 and August 22, 1965. 

George Everett reference from Champagne In A Tin Cup; Outback Ventures; 1995

Data on American Theater from Motography magazine of July 12, 1913. Thanks to Charmaine Zoe.

The first recorded mention of Lot 8, Block 29 in Butte Townsite was filed in April of 1876. It declared that the block lay within the boundary of the famed Smokehouse Quartz Lode Mining claim. This was the northwest corner of Park and Main Streets, and would eventually become the Lizzie Block. The word “Block” here refers to a large multi-use building, rather than a city block.

Northwest corner Park and Main today

Where the Lizzie block once stood, across from the Metals Bank building at Park and Main now sits an undistinguished single story bar called the Party Palace. A poor ornament for the city’s key corner, it’s a low slung brick and glass joint, deeply inset under a green structural steel roof festooned with shamrocks. It thunders with bass-heavy country music and patrons shouting into the wee hours on the street every Saturday night. This is not in keeping with the normal quiet of that corner, although it was not always so peaceful. 

The shamrocks were an attempt to catch a free St. Patrick’s Day ride along with the M&M bar next door on Main. M&M was always nothing but that; from 1890 the most interesting bar in Butte. It was an authentic relic of the uptown’s early joyride. The M&M held a bar along one wall and a grill along the other, a cigar counter and a gaming room in the back. The place had no locks on its doors, operated 24/7, and poured gallons of Old Bushmills in mid-March of each year. With a historical majority and mass cultural adoption, the Irish and near-Irish alike turned the bar into a dense mosh pit, while the diner side of the place served up loads of corned beef and cabbage. From midnight to midnight on St. Pat’s Day.  (See note #1)

Birth of the Lizzie Block

On October 28,1876, Daniel Dellinger, proprietor of Butte’s first hardware store, purchased the two lots at the northwest corner of Park and Main for $20.00. He sold the property three years later to Joseph Hyde for $15,000. Hyde associated with the W.A. Clark banks in Deer Lodge and Butte, and was a member of the territorial legislature that made Butte a city in 1879. Hyde and Dellinger did business together as an eponymously named hardware store in the 100 block of North Main. 

A frame structure soon went up on the lot. It was initially occupied by a pair of early Butte realtors, a police magistrate, and several others. 

Fire ravished much of this area of Main street in 1879. Stone and brick construction typical of a maturing city replaced the wood frame structures of the pioneer boom town. In 1884, Hyde cleared his corner for a new three story Lizzie Block, named for his daughter. It was a three story affair, with 21 rooms on the second and third floors and store frontage off the sidewalk level. It also had a basement, about which more follows.

A victim of its environment?

It almost immediately secured a dubious reputation. The Butte Miner of January 29, 1886 cited city ordinance #44 of two years earlier. It prohibited prostitution, except in “Blocks Nos 27 1n 28, and east of Main street of said city, (as well as) Blocks Nos 37, 42, 43, 52 and 53, known as Chinatown.” 

The paper went on to accuse the Lizzie Block, “one of the best-known of these houses in the heart of the business portion of the city. While it has been open but a short time, it has made a reputation for itself which will take a long time to remove.” The woman who leased it claimed to be unaware of the character of the tenants rooming there, but had “a number of roomers prominent as beer-jerkers and others known to be public prostitutes.” The Miner called for the cleaning out of “such a class of clientele” from this “new and handsome property.” (see note #2)

The problem wasn’t so much the existence of prostitution as confining it to what the ordinance called “the restricted zone.” Butte was a mining town full of hard working men with full pockets on payday. It was the job of others to contrive of ways to empty those pockets. Booze, gambling and prostitution thrived, while city government tried to accommodate everyone as best it could.

Downstairs, stressing the respectable

The Tivoli beer hall, not associated with the Butte’s Tivoli brewery or concert hall, opened in December of 1885, and occupied the entire basement of the Lizzie Block. Owner Alexander Grant furnished it with a 25 foot mahogany bar backed by a 13 x 7’ French plate mirror. The hall held 40 cherry tables and 200 chairs imported from Austria. It also featured female beer jerkers, a stage, piano and amateur vocalists. A series of “neat wine rooms” took up a corner near the stage. 

As so many restaurants and bars do, the Tivoli folded within the year, and the basement passed into the hands of its creditors. It reopened as a bowling alley/shooting gallery in the summer of 1886. 

Upstairs, Smiling Albert’s

Upstairs from the Tivoli, another beer hall occupied the same corner at street level. Originally known as Smiling Albert’s, it touted a 24 hour lunch, specializing in Boston baked beans, brown bread and clam chowder. 

W.P. Schussler bought and renovated the place, renaming it the Arcade. It had both front and rear entrances and upper rooms for card or club parties, which reads like code for wine rooms as well.

A point of interest was the bar’s mineral cabinet, with mining specimens, along with “curios, fancy pictures, and genuine silverware.”

The Sump, lived down to its name

Back downstairs, by 1893 Adolph Reichle and Arthur Schimpf transitioned the Tivoli into the Sump. The basement of the Lizzie Block established itself as a place where a man could go for a cheap beer, a hand of cards and a fight. One night that year a “drunken row” broke out among several “foreigners,” drawing the dauntless Butte policeman Jere Murphy’s attention. He attempted to quell the ruckus, but several of the group set upon him. The Montana Standard reported that “Jere gave a fine account of himself, and arrested and jailed three whose names are unpronounceable.” 

A good indicator of the Sump’s status was its role as evening caretaker of the indigent. In April of 1894, the Combination saloon a couple of doors from the Sump kept its floors and sidewalks wet to discourage overnighters. Prior to that, from 15 to 30 men a night slept there. They migrated to the friendlier confines of the Sump, now handling at least 180 men every night (see note 3).  So it was a most appropriate venue for a staging of ‘Coxey’s Army’ the following year. Unemployment was high in Butte then, a bust cycle resulting from the Panic of 1893. The “army” was a nationwide assortment of the unemployed, who proposed to march en masse to Washington DC and demand work. 

Coxey’s Army assembles.

As a ‘sump’ is the lowest spot in a basement (or mine shaft) where idle water collects, it seemed a fitting choice for idled men to gather. The Butte Miner observed that “there would be no need of Coxey’s army if there were no men in the Sump.”

The Miner advocated for the formation of a Butte regiment, pledging for the man “who has sought in vain for employment and has no means of livelihood” that “his regiment will be properly cared for on the road, join the unterrified and terrorizing army of commonweal’s and march bravely toward the rising sun.” 

As it happened, on the night of April 7th, 1894, an estimated two to three thousand men attended an outdoor meeting of Coxey’s industrial army. They formed up in front of the Sump, its headquarters and marched to the square of the court house on Granite street. The movement’s leader, William Hogan demanded the issuance of bonds to improve country roads and adoption of free coinage of silver. This was always a winning stance in mining country. A Major Camp spoke and compared the freeing of white slaves to the emancipation of black ones. He then addressed the men who “by force of circumstances were compelled to sleep on a hard floor in the Sump.” “I used to be a farmer, and I wouldn’t let my hogs sleep as these poor men have to.” 

“You men are not going to Washington with arms, but are going with empty stomachs and in rags, which will appeal to legislators more eloquently than could a Clay or a Webster. Camp on their trail. Corner the senators and tell them they must do something for you. We must march, singing, ‘We are coming Grover Cleveland, 300,000 strong.’” 

Having picked up unemployed rail workers in Tacoma, Portland and Spokane, the addition of many idled miners made for a considerable mass of manpower under Hogan. Two weeks after the Butte meeting, on April 21, 1894, Hogan and 500 of the ‘army’ took over a Union Pacific train. They enjoyed local support as they headed east, evading capture until reaching Forsyth, Montana. Federal troops apprehended and dispersed the group there. This deployment of federal forces presaged their use later in the year in breaking up the Pullman strike. 

Business as usual down in the Sump

After the “army’s” unsuccessful march, life returned to normal. In April of 1895, policeman Murphy was investigating the passing of a bad check at the First National Bank. He arrested the culprit, who stated he received the check from a man at the Sump. Upon going there, the originator of the check was found “drunk and down in one corner of the room.” 

Unfortunately, the Sump somehow survived into the next century. As late as 1905, it remained a magnet for “brake beam tourists,” one of many sobriquets for hobos. 

On the fourth of July that year, one of their number got up on a keg and began orating about hoisting old Glory, draping the bunting and honoring our founders. He said; “our ancestors gave us free speech and a free press, and then made the mistake of their lives by not giving us free beer.” 

He then assailed the wealthy, naming several who were then in the penitentiary. They were “so penurious that they would rob a cheese of its smell.” 

“I have only assimilated sixteen beers, two whisky sours and three cocktails, all of which I’ve managed to keep down with that excellent free lunch at the other end of the bar. I now feel as if I could talk all day. “

“In old revolutionary times Benedict Arnold tried to barter off the whole country to its enemies. Yet he was no more guilty of treason than the modern man who endeavors to steal a huge slice of the nation. and its industries.” 

He eventually yielded the floor to his companion, ‘Buttons’ who proceeded to sing the national anthem “in any key he feels like, while I proceed to the bar and discuss the exhilarating qualities of your excellent beer.”

Sump and Atlantic bars in contrast

The Sump owners, Reichle and Schimpf did alright for themselves. They built what became the Atlantic Bar at 56 West Park in 1897. It carried imported German beers and boasted of the longest bar (unproven claim of 250 feet) in the world. Renowned for its free lunch, it operated until 1927. A new Atlantic opened at 46 West Park in 1940, and ran until 1969. Fire destroyed both locations, one in 1969, the other in 1974. 

Enforcement of Prohibition began in 1920. Locally, law enforcement largely ignored all but the most overt scofflaws in Butte. The Butte Evening News noted; “a man must almost fight to get a foothold on the rail,” as a score of bartenders at the Atlantic served 3,000 to 4,000 thirsty patrons per day. It further observed that “liquor cannot be legally procured in Montana for love or money. Meantime, (owning) a saloon in Butte is as good as a copper mine.”

The Arcade; but first, the other arcade

The name ‘Arcade’ (see note 4) is a bit confusing. There was a penny arcade at 39 North Main, that opened in February of 1909. An Edison production with picture and music machines., it proved popular from its opening day. Short coin operated picture shows were of history, travel, art, drama, sports and humor. The music shows featured band, orchestra and vocals of all sorts. These programs were all changed out every few days. 

As these things tend to run their course, the penny arcade needed a new gimmick. It exhibited what they called an Aztec mummy – “the first of its kind exhibited in Butte.” It was said to be the remains of Princess Wa-Me-Ta, found in Arizona by explorers of the cliff dwellings. Scientists said Wa-Me-Ta was 1000-2000 years old. The arcade extended an invitation to Butte physicians to inspect the mummy for themselves. 

An epilogue to this tale happened in May of 1928, when employees at the Jones Storage warehouse investigated a large box, left there nine years earlier. Upon opening it, they were horrified to find the body of a mummified Indian. Police and coroner broke off their investigation when they determined that the mummy had died “approximately 40 centuries ago.” 

Three months later the penny arcade brought in what was reputed to be a petrified man. It was advertised as found by a trapper on a sand bar in the Missouri river, half buried in the wet sand. The trapper notified authorities, and ‘doctors and scientists went out to examine it.” He then took it on the road for exhibit. The hands were bound by a petrified rawhide thong and there was a bullet hole in the forehead of the man. Why foul play wasn’t investigated was left unaddressed. 

Murphy stays busy

In 1918, police chief Jere Murphy arrested an employee of the penny arcade, on a charge of running a gaming operation. A man testified that he was induced to throw balls at a target to win a turkey. He won, but received no turkey. Chief Murphy vowed to visit the place frequently to personally enforce the laws pertaining to lotteries and gambling. 

Just a year later, police arrested the proprietor of the penny arcade and charged her with bootlegging. As Prohibition began that year, officers hauled in a drunken 16 year old girl and her boyfriend. Both implicated the arcade. Its owner denied having liquor on the premises, but a search turned up two quarts of port wine and a case of Centennial beer. 

A wider view of the Lizzie Block

Joseph Hyde, who had bought the Lizzie Block for $15,000 sold it to a Butte business syndicate in 1906 for $120,000. For forty feet of frontage on Park and 100 feet on Main, each linear foot went for an average of $2,500, which was big money at the time. As the uptown boomed, some of this premium was due to a new eight story State Savings bank building (see note #5) going up across the street. Current residents at the Lizzie included the Northern Pacific ticket office, Pritchard and Harrison, Carl Engel sporting goods, Itkin’s jewelry store, and the Butte Street Car company. The upper floors held offices and apartments.  

Louis Dreibelbis owned the building in 1930, and planned to raze the Lizzie Block to create a new eight story building on the site. The Great Depression derailed those plans, and the Lizzie Block stuck around unchanged for another quarter century. In various times, the ground floor hosted the Arcade bar, Jacobs boot hat and valise store, a Northern Pacific ticket office, Carl Engle’s sporting goods store and the home of Butte’s civil air patrol. 

The real Arcade

The Arcade bar held the ground level at the northwest corner of Park and Main Streets, across from the Metals Bank building during the late 1930s. It had entrances facing both streets.

Depression era photographer Arthur Rothstein travelled the country for the Farm Security Administration, as did Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Walker Evans. Along the way, he captured some iconic photos of America in flux. Perhaps his most memorable shot was one of a farmer and his son in Cimarron County Oklahoma, seeking shelter as a dust storm approaches. 

Taken three years later, Rothstein’s work in Butte similarly captures its time. With the economy stuck in neutral, men were idled from the mines. They gathered on corners to seek work or just hang out. He caught a couple of scenes at the Arcade which nearly speak for themselves. 

And maybe everyone did hang out at the Arcade. it was at the heart of the mining city, where a man might be closest to hearing any hopeful news. The Arcade knew how to leverage its popularity during a lean time. It adopted the motto: “If he’s not at the Arcade, he isn’t in town.” 

The Arcade featured Blatz beer, a Milwaukee product brewed from 1851 through 1959. That was a nice run for the brewer, though not one notable for fine brewing. One could also get some interesting mixed drinks at the Arcade, like champagne cocktails and ginsicles. These were drinks that could lend themselves to dilution as required, and variable pricing. In New Orleans, a female dancer would ask a bar patron to buy her a drink. She would then order a champagne cocktail, and the bar would charge whatever it wanted for the 7Up she was served. Caveat emptor. 

Trading down at Park and Main

By 1954, the upper two floors of the Lizzie block had been vacant for some years. The whole building was demolished for construction of a single story business. The Montana Standard heralded the proposed building as “ultra-modern.” Its construction anticipated future expansion by allowing for additional stories to be added later. 

The enthusiasm for this corner died down with the building of a generic looking Rexall drug store there. It did business as the Main Drug until 1970. It was then purchased by Diversified Realty for $60,000 on a zero interest note. That firm looked to sell to another buyer as soon as possible. It took two years, and sold for the same price Diversified paid. Supply and demand had long since leveled out in uptown Butte. 

Up to now-ish.

The Party Palace got going on this corner in 2001, following nine years of vacancy. It has remained popular, loud and a frequent contributor to the local police blotter for the past two decades. Still a big step up from the sump. 

Perhaps the Party Palace is right where it belongs, after all.

Notes

Note 1: In an uptown that could ill afford the loss, the M&M burned to the ground in 2021. This was an all too familiar end to many of the best old things in uptown Butte. 

The M&M Bar and Grill reopened right next door to the ruins of its century-0ld self. For more into, check out https://www.mandmbarandcafe.com/history

Note 2: The Butte Miner was bought by W.A. Clark in 1881, championing Clark’s interests and Democrat party causes. It was also a booster of civilization in fast-developing and free wheeling Butte. In its January 30, 1886 edition, the Miner applauded raids on the “vile dives on Galena Street and other sections of the city.” It then added a short position statement:

Note 3: Micky Malia of the Montana Standard recalled that during an 1893 visit to the Sump, Avalon, M&M and Combination, he and a friend counted 167 men asleep on the floors. “They didn’t seem to mind the poor devils sleeping on the floor. Some of the gamblers gave them newspapers to lie on.” (February 9, 1936)

Note 4: There was also an Arcade Saloon on Utah Avenue; at least in 1905. It was a rough place, and not to be confused with the Arcade at Park and Main.

Note 5: This is today’s Metals Bank Building, represented in an earlier essay at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4044

Resources

An editorial about prostitution in Butte, as well as the 1884 ordinance regulating it appears in the Butte Miner of January 29, 1886. 

Background on Reichle and Schimpf from Dick Gibson in the Montana Standard of December 23, 2019. 

Information on the Atlantic Bar and quotes from Butte Evening News extracted from Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men blog, by Jack Sullivan; February 8, 2005. 

A fight at the Sump from the Montana Standard of May, 1893.

Sleeping arrangements at the Combination and Sump from the Butte Miner of April 19,1894.

Meeting of Coxey’s Army at the Sump from the Butte Miner; April 5, 1894 and April 8, 1894.

A good summary of the Coxey movement, and interesting trivia like its influence on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz resides in Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey’s_Army

Sale of Lizzie Block in 1906 from Butte Evening News of December 29, 1906 and Butte Miner of December 30, 1906

Hobo’s July 4th speech at the Sump from Butte Tribune Review of July 8, 1905. 

A great discussion of women and winerooms of the Victorian era appears, by Richard F Selcer; 01/24/2019; at Historynet at https://www.historynet.com/wine-women-andwhats-wrong/

Further resources

Chief Murphy visits penny arcade from Butte Miner of November 23, 1918. 

Holiday shopping in Butte from the Montana Standard of December 20, 1928.

The discovery of the Indian mummy was from the Montana Standard of May 19,1928

A good resource and album of Arthur Rothstein’s work appears in the Big Sky Journal of 2016; by Aaron Parrett. https://bigskyjournal.com/images-of-the-west-arthur-rothstein-in-butte/ This is also the source for photos of both Arcade and Cimarron County, OK. 

History of the earliest acquisition of the lots for, and building of the Lizzie Block by Daniel Dellinger and Joseph Hyde from the Butte Miner of August 15, 1925. 

Coverage of the demolition of the Lizzie Block from the Montana Standard of April 25, 1954.

The sale of Main Drug is covered by the Montana Standard of November 26, 1970 and January 25, 1972

Ever enlightening Dick Gibson gave a quick history of the Lizzie Block in a Montana Standard article from May 16, 2016. It provides background on Arthur Rothstein, and a story about former US senator Burton K. Wheeler.  

O’Keefe was a serviceable lead in noirs of the late 40s. He had a knack for the throwaway one-liner in films like T-Men, Raw Deal, Walk A Crooked Mile, and Dishonored Lady. Here, he’s Mark, a newspaper reporter who overhears a woman named Paula complaining to the police about her missing sister, Apparently lonely, he moves in on her, but soon realizes she’s being followed by the sinister private detective Kerric (Burr.) Turns out her sister had a baby and was killed by a baby adoption gang. The police claim to be of no help in this, leaving the pair to figure the whole situation out. Along the way, we learn that Burr works for the evil Mrs Donner, who works for mob boss DeCola. It takes time to resolve, during which they find Dottie, another woman with a new baby, who they use as bait in a sting. Mark and Paula visit Mrs Donner, posing as prospective clients. Kerric spots this and rats them out to Donner. He then kidnaps the baby, and offers it as Paula’s sisters baby, back to Paula for a ransom. He’s found by DeCola, and killed during a grilling as to the baby’s whereabouts. Everyone rushes around, leading to shooting in which the baddies are gunned down, and Paula and the baby are rescued from a gas-filled car. The happy couple marry and adopt the baby. Raymond Burr was a heavy heavy in several notable noirs: always compelling. The intro and outro close shots are of L.A. City Hall. It is, beyond doubt, the most featured building in noir.  C.  

Here’s a darkly twisted story of unbridled ambition and its moral costs. Douglas is a fast-talking and rather unscrupulous reporter on the road, looking for employment far from anyone familiar with his reputation. He works the plight of a man trapped in a cave into his own vanity project, and the townsfolk, like sheep, flock to the circus atmosphere that develops around the rescue site. The storyline demands a long unwinding, so the reporter essentially begins to direct the proceedings to tantalize his newspaper’s readers while stoking his own victorious return to relevance as an “ace” reporter. Then it all goes wrong. Billy Wilder directed. Strong morality play aspects to the film, and Douglas acts with the strength of several men. Good. This film flopped at the box office, even when re-released as The Big Carnival, but there’s a lot to like.

Lorraine (Sterling): “I’ve met some hard-boiled eggs in my time but you, you’re twenty minutes.”  B. 

Like The Best Years Of Our Lives, a psychosocial look at post-war trauma and adjustment. Heflin, as Frank Enley, has made a successful return to civilian life, married to young Edith (Leigh) and admired for his construction successes in a small California town. He hides a terrible secret past, however. Henley was a prison camp Nazi collaborator, responsible for the deaths of his bomber crew during their escape attempt. Joe Parkson (Ryan) was the only survivor, and learns of Frank’s whereabouts. He travels cross-country to hunt him down and kill him. The way Joe drags an obviously injured leg behind him serves as an allegory for the burden of memory he carries. Portrayed as morally weak, Frank lives down to this expectation in a noir spiraling of cowardice and deceit. Edith stands by Frank the whole while, as does Joe’s girlfriend for him. There is no good, no bad, just the inexorable march toward a moment of truth. When it comes, it brings justice and the promise of a new start for Joe, a high-priced redemption for Frank, and a bad end for the guy who attempts to play expensive bodyguard to Frank. Magnificent lighting and camerawork, with a lot of on-scene work in LA and at a mountain lake. Soundtrack by Bronislaw Kaper is compelling. Robert Louis Stevenson observed that a man’s character is his destiny. Here is an object lesson in that.. B,

This film was a pleasant surprise. Seeing Mitchum and Preminger listed on the film description raised our curiosity,  though we had never heard of the movie. It’s a strange and complicated narrative of a pathologically needy woman who latches on to a poor schmo. The back story is that Preminger only had 18 days to get this done before Simmons contract with RKO expired, and, in return, demanded full artistic control, including with the screenplay. Howard Hughes okayed that. Under what must have been intense pressure, the acting appears crisp, the scenes economical, and the camerawork and staging are first rate. There are two scenes in the film that made us sit up and gasp – we’ll leave them for you to discover. Mitchum is laconic as always; Simmons is a believable revelation. Enjoyed it. I read recently that it was on Jean-Luc Godard’s list of 10 favorite English language pictures. A. 

Sixty-seven minutes of tight production with little waste. Not really a police procedural, it’s more like two stories told in parallel, from the perspective of reptilian criminal Pervis (Talman), who plans the perfect heist, and Cordell (McGraw) who pursues him. The botched crime leads to bloodshed and crooks on the lam. The complication is Yvonne LeDoux (Jergens), a high class stripper who has no particular allegiances, and serves as a focus for rivalry between gang members. This film sports some gritty dialogue. When his partner is shot and killed by Pervis, the best Cordell can come up with meeting his widow is “Tough luck, Marsha.” Good L.A. area scenery, and a group of backing actors that knew their roles and the milieu. C+

Dix Handley: “Why don’t you quit crying and get me some bourbon”?

Dix (Hayden) is a petty “hooligan,” or muscle for hire. He is enlisted by Doc Reidenschneider (Jaffe), who has just been released from prison, but longs to spring one last job to enable his dream of retirement in South America. Every man in the gang he assembles has his own dream, mostly as an antidote to the various regrets each lives with. The movie plays out as a crime procedural, but from the criminal’s point of view, with minute planning to hit a jeweler’s safe. They get the goods, but in trying to fence the gems, run into lawyer Emmerich (Calhern), who turns out to be unscrupulous. He is cheating on his bedridden wife, while putting his girl Angela (Monroe) up in a swanky apartment. He is also in dire financial straits, so will double cross anyone. Too bad Doc and crew go to him for their “laundry” services. Great staging, cinematography, and tempo. Dix seems the disaffected everyman, home from the war with nothing going for him but his memories of a better past. The city (LA) is a wreck, and there is a definite sense of malaise and ruin in this post-war depiction. B. 

Lana Turner is 31 in this movie, but seems older, even as she’s cast in a part meant originally for someone about 20 (in flashbacks). This is a conceptual film, in which you don’t really see the “Bad” (Douglas, as Jonathan Shields), except in flashbacks through the eyes of three former associates; director Sullivan, actress Turner and writer Powell, in order. Each of them were, on the surface of things, screwed over by ruthlessly ambitious movie producer Shields. In retrospect, the brutal treatment by Shields caused a turnaround and a new sense of self-reliance in each of the others, which served each associate well. So; good and bad, bad and beautiful. Solid acting – and a great effort by Grahame, who is kind of buried in the credits.  Douglas is over the top, but was nominated for a best actor Oscar. This movie holds the record with 5 Oscar wins for a movie not nominated for best picture. Won best supporting actress (Grahame), black and white art direction, cinematography, and costume design, as well as best screenplay. B 

Haas was a self-financed movie maker who hit on a simple enough formula; give people a beautiful fallen blonde woman, a couple of lusty, greedy men, and a remote location. The rest works itself out over a straight forward 80 or so minutes. He apparently made a dozen of these and never lost a penny on one. So here are two men struggling over a gold mine, and a beautiful fallen blond woman. Everyone gets what they more or less deserve. C

Cinematography by John Alton, music by David Raskin. Right there, you know it’ll be good to watch and listen to. From the Director of Gun Crazy, and financed on the usual shoestring by the King Brothers. Wilde is police detective Diamone, getting nowhere in a multiyear investigation of “combination” boss, Mr. Brown (Conte). He is now targeting his girlfriend, who he can’t help becoming infatuated with. Meanwhile, the Captain is telling him to forget the whole thing, as no evidence sticks to Brown. Brown is a cocky villain who abuses everyone around him, and doesn’t make it easy for Diamond.

Brown: Diamond, the only trouble with you is, you’d like to be me. You’d like to have my organization, my influence, my fix. You can’t. It’s impossible. you think it’s money, it’s not. It’s personality. You haven’t got it. Lieutenant, you’re a cop. Slow, steady, intelligent, with a bad temper, and a gun under your arm. And with a big yen for a girl you can’t have. First is first, and second is nobody. 

There may be a lot of risqué for the time stuff in here, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. Lewis wraps up in a fog bank that rivals the one at the conclusion of Gun Crazy. Brown looks very much like a cockroach scurrying around in a relentless light. Good stuff all around. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman as Brown’s possibly gay flunkies are outstanding. B+

An early, and expertly laid out version of what became a 70’s movie staple – the cop who goes rogue in search of justice because the department proves itself as corrupt as the crooks. I was surprised that the times (HUAC, Hays Code) would allow this portrayal, but it resolves with the cop back at his desk in a miraculously cleaned up department, so the corruption would be viewed more as aberration than trend. This eats just a little into the films noir credibility, but in the main, it holds together well. Grahame is terrific as a mob bimbo, Marvin is a truly sadistic hood, and Ford becomes the everyman whose world goes suddenly askew and must deal with it alone. B+

Ok, agreed; the plot is convoluted to the point of near aimlessness. Just roll with it, as it is a true stylistic romp through the world of upbeat and beaten up noir. From a story by Raymond Chandler, and adapted for the screen by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, this thing sizzles and dances all around the Hays Code. It took advantage of the affair the two stars were having, and capitalized on the obvious chemistry the duo shared during To Have And Have Not. Everyone in the cast delivers in this production, and the dialogue sparkles:

Philip Marlowe: I know he was a good man at whatever he did. No one was more pleased than I when I heard you had taken him on as your… whatever he was.

 I could go on for three hours about the two hours of script here. Scintillating. 

Plus, you get for no extra charge, Bacall’s rendition of the Stan Kenton tune, “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine,” thusly:

Plot? Overrated. A-

From a book of the same name by the prolific Cornell Woolrich. I’m hoping the title was more relevant to the book than it was to the movie. In this excursion, a blackmailing woman is killed, and her jilted lover is framed for the murder. While the jilted lover awaits execution, his wife (Vincent) is brought into the orbit of the blackmailing woman’s ex-husband, alcoholic piano man Martin Blair (Duryea). The two suspect a nightclub owner (Lorre) of hiding a brooch that would be evidence to overturn the husband’s conviction. The cops, led by Crawford, bumble around, a full beat off the pace. So the wife and the alcoholic get a job playing the nightclub, scheming to crack the office safe. They get caught, Duryea gets drunk and comes to a startling realization, proving that even the hero can go from anti hero to bum, given a full 80 minutes for the transformation. Weird, breathy performance from Crawford, who seems to be channeling Lorre. How Lorre can hold a cigarette so loosely in his lips while talking was the most amazing aspect of the film. Couple of undistinguished songs, and a lot of loose ends.  C. 

If it’s from UI, you know it’s done on a tight budget. This one cost $20,000 to make, on equipment Baron smuggled from Cuba after working as photographer on a late Errol Flynn movie during the Castro takeover. Baron here directs and stars as Frankie Bono, a Cleveland hitman sent to NYC (at Christmastime even) to liquidate a mobster. It’s all shot on location, with an unusual second person narration. A lot of wandering around, while we the viewers ponder Bono’s state of mind. He isn’t viable in normal society, and proves it to the only woman who gives him the time of day. He gets a gun from Big Ralph (Tucker), who raises pet rats in a seedy apartment. The whole stake out/rub out is tawdry, and the final scene ends up as bleak as the rest of the production, reminiscent of the final shot in Touch of Evil. Most definitely existential. Criterion released it back in 2008, showing their true art-house chops. 77 minutes – worth a spin for all the great finned cars, cool jazz and pre-Cuban missile crisis despair. B. 

Deardon was a pioneer of social realism in British movies, filming rough folks in rough places. This film makes good use of many outdoor venues in London and some oddball characters, while incorporating some noir cinematography along the way. Essentially a police procedural, it deals with the rebellious outlaw youth element of the post-war period. Bogarde, as Riley, is a cocky and restless young man, who shoots an old-school ‘copper’ attempting to disarm him. He and his pal Spud take it on the lam, with and without Riley’s flame, Diana (Peggy Evans.) She does little beside screaming and weeping, but the rest of the action is top-notch. A well-done scene at the dog track and a car chase eventually follow. Moral – crime doesn’t pay. The Naked City came out the year before, and established a template for procedurals. It’s safe to say there’s a nod to that film here. The Blue Lamp was extremely popular in England, and easy to see why; it honors the bobbies and law enforcement in general, while casting a nearly sympathetic light on the criminals as victims of postwar conditions. B. 

Maybe a little late in its day for a classic film-noir, but interestingly positioned in the space between an American gangster flick, and a French new wave film. I could see shades of  Oceans Eleven, which was directly influenced by this movie, as well as Breathless, which wouldn’t roll around for another four years.  Everyone is smooth and (as observed by Roger Ebert) more representational than expressive. Early use of hand-held cameras, and a super-tight budget kept this movie both loose in style and concise in execution. Bob is a middle-aged and renowned former thief in the Monmartre section of Paris. He did time in prison and then went straight, earning respect from even the gendarmerie. His habitual gambling, on poker, on roulette, on horses, on the flip of a coin land him in financial straits, and he plans the ultimate heist, of 800 Million francs at the Deauville casino. He puts together an interesting crew, including a safecracker working with an oscilloscope, and a croupier at the casino. In the mix, he keeps encountering a teenage woman (Corey) who has a single-minded mission of trying to sleep her way up the economic ladder. This is an unfocused effort on her part, and Bob tries to save her from her own impulses, as the honorable hood. The climax is dual-sided, as the same evening of the robbery he masterminds presents him with the best casino gambling of his life. He wins effortlessly but loses track of time. And so, the best laid plans go awry. He himself rides off with the police, as they feed him ideas on how to beat the rap. Very much in the spirit of the close of  Casablanca. Innovative, as Melville stages the heist practice on a soccer field, laid out like the casino, and then explains it like a forward-running flashback. There is narration at times, which is probably unnecessary, but not distracting. Good stuff. B. 

Hmm…parallels to All About Eve, released the same year. Donna (Leslie) works for a publisher, and agrees to host his niece, Christabel (Fontaine) while attending school. She’s an ambitious schemer, and sets to take over Donna’s wealthy fiancee, Curtis (Scott). In the meantime, she also begins an affair with struggling author Nick (Ryan). We waited for the noir to begin, but alas, it never rose beyond a pretty solid melodrama. If you like All About Eve, this film will most likely appeal. Even the good guys are a little rotten; emblematic, I suppose, of the rottenness in all of us. Nicholas Ray might have felt himself qualified to comment on all this. C. 

Robert Wise had a good sense of directorial pacing, which probably helped him make West Side Story and Sound Of Music such successes. Born To Kill, not a musical, was an early work of his, in the heyday of noir. It’s all about detestable people doing reprehensible things to each other. There’s an incredibly naive and rich foster sister in the middle, but she and her equally wide-eyed fiancee are just props. The action is all in the back rooms of the mansion. Helen (Trevor) is coming home from a divorce to live with the rich sister, and meets Sam Wild (Tierney) en route. They are immediately inebriated by each other, the result of some cocktail of hormones and a shared history of bad behavior. Sam is on the lam, having just murdered his girlfriend and another guy she was carrying on with. No remorse, and no restraint from Sam, although he then manages to ingratiate himself into the sister’s household, marry into the clan, and start scheming on how to grab power at the family newspaper. While this goes on, the alcoholic old landlady of the murdered woman puts a private detective to work bringing the killer to justice. Somehow, Helen invites Sam’s patsy Marty (Cook) to come live with them, which brings the circle to seven or so participants in a sordid game of solidifying their own positions while undermining the positions of others. Even Helen, who genuinely seems to love Sam, can’t help kicking the skids out from under him several times during the film. Neither crime nor love pays off in good noir, and the film satisfies on that score. 

Marty: “You can’t just go round killing people whenever the notion strikes you. It’s not feasible.”

Lawrence Tierney’s life seems to have imitated his art. Claire Trevor seemed more likable than her behavior would have indicated. Trapped in the script, I guess, though I do remember several young ladies who gravitated inexplicably toward the bad boys. B. 

Much in common with T Men, but the milieu is far removed from the inner city. Here in Calexico, men are smuggled across the border under cover of darkness. The darkness sets off this noir in fine style, as the lighting largely come from the moon, and the characters are studies of each man’s “nothing to lose” flight from poverty.  Of course it’s difficult for illiterate and desperate aliens to discern who are saviors and who are predators. There are men who would kill and jettison the Mexican corpses in the desert quicksand (!) as soon as deliver them to freedom or work. And a successful crossing could often become a form of captivity, as undocumented low-wage slaves in the food farms of the Imperial Valley.

This seems a man’s movie, about hard decisions with no clear benefits, and the consequences of risk, much like Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Two federal agents, one American (Murphy, as Bearnes) and one Mexican (Montalban as Rodriguez) are asked to go undercover to break into the human trafficking racket and catch some crooks. It is tough sledding for both, and, much like T Men, it follows each federale on a separate but parallel path. As in T Men, it doesn’t work out well for one. McGraw is an inspired bad guy, driven and unscrupulous in his service to the boss. A good morality tale, filled with simple people, great cinematography (John Alton), and tight dialogue. B.

I saw a term used in reference to this movie: “daylight noir”. I think that’s appropriate; it moves far from the B movie cinematography of darkness hiding a lack of set design and detail. No staircases, no venetian blinds, no cigarette smoke white against pools of black shadow. This is more like To Have and Have Not, and is, in fact, based on the same Hemingway story. I like both treatments. Here, more than in the Bogart film, you get the true noir sense of a good man making poor choices for good reason, doomed into a vortex of bad consequences. His long-suffering wife (Thaxter) is an object for pity, especially when she bleaches her hair to try emulating the woman she suspects Harry (Garfield) of seeing on the side. For her part, Leona (Neal) is a vamp who seems to want Harry as conquest rather than to be her man. As Harry flirts with bankruptcy, with creditors dogging him, Duncan (Ford) becomes the devil on Harry’s shoulder, providing him the way out…with strings. Nice taut little film, and Neal is very good, especially how her big smile lights up her face and the screen, rather surprisingly, like Stanwyck could do. A lot of the action takes place in the ocean around San Diego, involves Mexican smuggling of Chinese refugees, results in the sad death of his African American shipmate (Juano Hernandez), and changes the lives of everyone but the Coast Guard, who go on to the next personal disaster for someone. In the last scene, the stage on the dock is completely cleared, leaving the young son of the shipmate standing alone. Interesting non-statement from Warners on that. Eddie Muller called it the saddest last shot in cinema. B.

The real brains behind this “women in prison” classic is the writer, Virginia Kellogg. She went around the country, embedding herself within the female prisoner population at several penitentiaries. Her experiences definitely inform both the plot structure and the interplay among the women, and between population and administration. One of her observations was that matrons and guards were often spinster relations of politicians. Hope Emerson is as good (or bad) as one could hope for in this capacity. She was 6’2” and 230 lbs, with attitude to spare. She is the highlight of this movie in a “sadistic only because I’m bored and under appreciated” way. Eleanor Parker, as Marie Allen, is taken on a Warner Brothers social awareness tour from wide-eyed, pregnant, and guilty only through association newbie, to a hardened and jaded future prison rat. The movie moves stepwise through the evolution of her mindset as she loses her friends, her baby, her dignity, and finally comes around to figuring her best chances lie outside the system that raised her. Pretty stark work, even in the days of the Code. I enjoyed it as only a free white man could. B

Caught this on the big screen in a sparkling print. Something about James Stewart makes him highly relatable in a wide range of roles. He can be young and conflicted, then seem old, crotchety and cynical the next. Smart movies, like “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “The Shop Around The Corner” mine this dichotomy to good advantage. Hathaway similarly casts Stewart both ways, having him morph from a jaded beat reporter to an empathetic crusader for justice in the course of murder case under review. This is Stewart’s movie, well-played with good support. A classic for both semi-documentary (based on an actual case) and police procedural (early demonstration of a polygraph by Leonarde Keeler, who invented it.) Also a fascinating quick look at panopticon jail design, long since obsoleted. When McNeil makes a second visit to the home of the imprisoned man’s mother, the full-house theater was still enough to have heard a pin drop. Dropped a grade due to lack of noir elements, but a strong B.

Intrigued, as this was early direction by Ripley, who oversaw Thunder Road about 12 years later. It’s also from a story by Cornell Woolrich, and has both dependably rotten Cochran and Lorre in it. The downside is that we may never see the movie Bob Cummings did justice to. He really can’t play beyond the earnest but dim-witted schmo who falls for schemes. Here, he’s an unconvincing broke ex-sailor who returns a gangster’s wallet. The brutal gangster and his even crueler flunky hire Bob to be their chauffeur. Meanwhile, the gangster’s moll is plotting her escape, and needs Bob to take her to Havana. They somehow fall in love along the way. Being Bob, though, he left a breadcrumb trail back in his hotel room. Flunky reports back to gangster – chase is on. The whole affair gets to the point where about all that can be done is to write it off as a dream – then take another run at it. Both versions about equally preposterous. Or perhaps we’re meant to sympathize for what may well be a case of PTSD in Bob. Some nice touches, like a car accelerator in the back seat, a beat-the- devil scene against a locomotive, and a dreamlike quality reminiscent of Moonrise, or Night Of The Hunter. Otherwise, hard to get enthused about this one. I suggest going straight for Thunder Road. C. 

Mae (Stanwyck) returns home after a decade of wandering, a marriage which culminated in the death of her spouse, and sundry misadventures. She soon attracts the attention of two friends, Jerry (Douglas) and Earl (Ryan). Jerry is, as the Netflix intro offered, “an affable dullard”, and Earl is a lonely lothario. They collectively knock back a lot of drinks, and Mae and Earl share a habit of taking a single drag from their cigarettes, then throwing them away. Jerry is captain of a sardine trawler in Monterey (good scenes of the cannery and the fleet as they looked in 1952), and while he’s away, Earl, who is a movie projectionist, moves in for his close-up with Mae. She, by this time, has wedded Jerry and they’ve had a baby; No problema for Earl. Mae veers back and forth between Earl and Jerry in her moral dilemma, while Monterey swelters like New Orleans in A Streetcar Named Desire. The rest of the cast, and the Clifford Odets plot line seemed Shakespearean to me, in that they provide other subplots and opinions to add heft to a simple narrative. When Odets is writing, one can count on snappy noir dialogue, and this film doesn’t disappoint.

Mae: “What do you want, Joe, my life’s history? Here it is in four words: big ideas, small results.” 

Stanwyck, as usual, is outstanding, and Fritz Lang’s direction is as expert as one would expect of a director who invented the genre. Marilyn Monroe? Sure, she’s in there too, in a fairly energetic, if lightweight early performance.  B

Kathryn Mason: “It’s funny how virtuous a man can be when he’s helpless”

From what I’ve read, this was Bogart’s first post-Casablanca film. It was actually filmed in 1943, but sat on a shelf while being litigated for a couple years. It also led to the studio figuring it might never be released, and featuring much the same cast in a remake, The Two Mrs Carrolls. This is a tight film, with Greenstreet cast against type as a good guy, and Bogie as the classic gaslighted guilty party. He kills (?) his wife to clear a path toward wooing and marrying her sister. Evidence keeps popping up that she might still be around, while his best friend, a psychologist (Greenstreet) helps explain the evolving situation. There is a single shot, of Bogie sitting in a car, prior to going back to examine the car his wife might have died in. In the dark, he lights a cigarette, which illuminates his face in a fiery light. Cool, classic Bogart. The song that forms the leitmotif for the film is called Tango Of  Love. B

A muddle of a film, exposing the fact that various writers worked the piece, revising its political and sociological intentions. What we end up with is a nazi hunter (Powell) trying to find the murderer of his three-week bride just after World War II. He chases a mostly unknown man from France to Argentina, where the corpulent Walter Slezak takes over the movie. He is at his best when disheveled and unscrupulous (Lifeboat 1944, Born To Kill 1947), and shines in this role. As for Powell – he is mostly a stoic centerpiece, occasionally taking or giving a punch. Hard to figure why he thought this was the way forward in his career. The movie is almost funny in its propensity for having people babble out their secrets to him as he stares stone faced into the distance. Also, no one entering his or hotel or apartment room finds it empty. Where was the security in those days? C-

Barbara Stanwyck is Kathy, a hard-driving newspaper columnist, whose ambition gets rerouted into pushing her new husband Bill, an LA cop, to the top of the food chain. A study in moral ambiguity and selfishness. Kathy sleeps with the commissioner (Burr) to help leapfrog Bill over the Captain he works for (Dano). In addition, she spins a complex series of feints and jabs at her perceived rivals and any threats to Bills ascendency. Pretty manipulative, and there’s no sign that she questions the motives or morality of her actions. Just is what she is, which I think Ayn Rand would have appreciated, and probably endorsed. Well, short of murder. Stanwyck is terrific as usual; Hayden a lovable and completely (until the denouement) oblivious husband/lead investigator. Burr has the intensity that was easy to appreciate in Rear Window, and puts it to good use here. Funny how quickly the movie runs trough a 30-second courtship toward a marriage of Bill and Kathy. It’s left as an open question whether they knew anything at all about each other, or why they would have married when their inclinations were so out of alignment. Love, as usual, is blind. Cameo of Stuart Whitman as a laboratory technician. It’s great to see an early application of a complex thing like forensic ballistics in a movie of that time. The alignment of scoring on the bullets seems magical and the results seem obvious at the same time. Of course life isn’t like that, but it’s tough to fit life neatly into 84 minutes. B 

Good stuff. Doc Penny and his gang rob a gas station, and one of the gang is shot in the process. He staggers to Steve Lacey’s (Nelson) house for refuge. Lacey has recently been released from the slammer, and his pretty wife begs him to stay straight. He tries, but has the weight of his past all over him. He calls a crooked doctor ( DiCorsia), who informs a tough police detective (Hayden) of things at Lacey’s house. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang have converged on Lacey’s house, where they eat the food and menace his wife. They leverage Steve into driving the getaway car on their planned bank holdup. Hayden sort of follows it, and goes from a nearly sadistic and jaded crime fighter to a guy with a heart of gold. It all ends badly, but he lets Steve and wife off the hook. Excellent acting by Hayden, a solid early role by Charles (Bronson) Buchinsky, and a brisk pace by DeToth. It was shot on a small budget in 13 days after DeToth refused to shoot it as an A list movie with Bogie and Ava Gardner. He took to B movies as a preference. Nice job of night photography outdoors, which was rare at the time. A lot of looks at 1952 LA as well. All told, a good use of 71 minutes. B+

This movie is almost an homage to 1949 L.A, It has all the ingredients; in fact, it’s something of a reprise of Lancaster’s role as the Greek in The Killers. He’s just a guy, swallowed whole by a woman at the controls of his heart and mind. There is some critique about the female lead not being Ava Gardner, or Lana Turner, but DeCarlo is completely believable as she gives a definitive femme fatale manifesto at the end of the movie. Very like Bacall. Nice pacing, good camerawork, and Dan Duryea is always worth the price of admission as a noir baddie. I especially appreciated the Rhumba interlude in the nightclub with the Esy Morales Orchestra. There is real tension when Lancaster has his arm immobilized in a wicked hospital contraption, while threats loom around him. An armed car robbery unfolds so quickly it conveys the all the chaos of an intricate plan gone awry. 80 tight minutes of indoor and outdoor adventure. Recommended as a noir archetype. A  

Good film made on a tight 20 day timeline, and the first for RKO produced by Dore Shary, who would migrate to MGM the next year. Dmytryk wanted to put his budget toward acting, rather than set design. Roy Hood brilliantly acquitted himself with lots of cheap sets and low key lighting giving a study of shadow and light. In fact, the opening scene is of a man being beaten to death, as shadows on a wall. A movie early in addressing the postwar lack of someone to hate, with the suggestion that Jews might serve as that for a military psychopath (Ryan) in a pinch. Five Oscar nominations, for picture, director, and supporting actor (Ryan) and actress (Grahame). In the execution of it, the movie kind of confirms what one may suspect from the opening scene, but the ride is enjoyable in itself. Mitchum typically underacts, and Robert Young, who my wife thought would not be believable due to later typecasting, proved a pleasant, jaded yet dogged investigator. Good stuff, if a bit slow to unfurl. B

That youthful Inger Stevens would be hitched up to dour old James Mason is, amazingly, not the least plausible aspect of this story. It’s a great thriller, in terms of the trendy 50s household hostage drama, and it has certain stylish touches, like scenes in a subway tunnel and an elevator shaft. The tension is palpable between Stevens and psycho rapist Neville Brand, and a scene of driving against the clock to meet a deadline is well executed. It’s interesting to watch the classical movie acting of Mason get disrupted by the scene eating methodist Steiger, a genius pulling off the would-be perfect crime. Inger Stevens, only 23 at the time, is outstanding in her first big role. Enjoyed it, but will warn that the police procedural parts of the film require more than the usual suspension of disbelief. A pet peeve is watching children used as mere props in movies, and this one suffers from that. Much closer to a late Hitchcock than a true noir. B-

A tightly directed 75 minute film that could have been a stage play, given that it unfolds almost entirely within a barroom. An unemotional but deranged escapee (Thompson) from an institution a sextet of people with sad backstories. He holds them hostage for 45 minutes, while the police try to devise tactics for a rescue. In the corner of the bar is a large television that almost certainly didn’t exist at the time. The culprit and hostages are thus able to witness police efforts toward freeing them. The movie itself seems ambivalent about who might make it out alive. Meanwhile, almost in disaster genre style, like Airport and Poseidon Adventure, the relationships among the hostages plays out, exposing various aspects of the human condition.No one in the movie is given anything good to say about television. Was this sour grapes from MGM? This new device threatened the primacy of its product.

Chuckles: “Cost $1,400 and it’s more trouble than it’s worth.” 

MGM didn’t do a lot of noir – in fact, 30 such films in 30 years, but also produced The Asphalt Jungle in 1950, so it was on a short roll here. This was the directorial debut for the son of Louis B. Mayer. Good, if cliched, story lines, and excellent noir cinematography from Paul C. Vogel. Only 75 minutes – would have been an excellent offering from television’s Playhouse 90 about six years later. B. 

In the public domain; its picture quality can be uneven. Here is a story of a man whose sin seems to be going out on one last fling before marrying. He blows off a last customer contact before leaving for San Francisco, and this comes back to haunt him. Poisoned in a wharf-side jazz bar, the doctors give him a day or two to live. This sets Frank Bigelow (O’Brien) off on a search for his murderer. In the course of this pursuit, he turns from a simple accountant to a hard-boiled detective. The change strains one’s credulity, but the pacing of the movie is brisk and urgent. Well, not urgent enough, as it turns out, but that’s the nature of noir punishments. Always fun to watch Neville Brand be the baddie thug. After a second watch, we appreciated Eddie Muller’s observation that O’Brien’s hyperkinetic activity was from the Chuck Jones school of acting (specifically, Daffy Duck.) Once you get this thought in your head, it’s hard to watch all this beat-the-clock misery without a chuckle. C 

Strong casting in a fairly average noir.  Bradley Galt, a PI with a checkered past, finds that his past is in pursuit of him. His secretary, (Ball) apparently has nothing to do but dote on Galt, and shadow him around. Meanwhile #1 suspect, Jardine (Kurt Krueger) is loving it up with Hardy Cathcart’s (Webb) wife. Suffice to say, as I’m fond of pointing out, one can never kill his way out of trouble in a noir film. However, Galt gets out of a bum rap, gets the girl, and they both walk off into the….not sunset, certainly. Off into the darkened and misty urban horizon. We had subtitles somehow for the last half hour, and it was fun to read the wacky patter of this era.

Galt: I’m clean as a peeled egg. No debts, no angry husbands, no payoffs… nothin’.

Galt: I can be framed easier than “Whistler’s Mother”. 

Galt: One thing led to another, and he led with his right. C

For a guy who escapes San Quentin and a bum rap for the murder of his wife, Vincent Parry (Bogie) has a knack for leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. He’s also irresistible to wealthy Irene (Bacall) whose daddy complex beats them all. The few characters circle each other enough to make you think the universe is a very small place and coincidence is commonplace. This film also uses the same POV trick that Robert Montgomery employed in The Lady in the Lake that same year. Bogart, who was the highest paid star in Hollywood, isn’t even seen until an hour into the movie, but to less annoying effect than Montgomery’s effort. As a result, the viewer can focus on Bacall, who is always relaxed and understated. A great co-star is San Francisco, much like Don Siegel used the city in The Lineup. Fun to see the old town. Uneven pacing, but Agnes Moorehead as the spurned woman (and maybe more) livens things up considerably. Bogart seems uncharacteristically reserved.  C

This movie has some great Bogart lines, ala Chandler or even Spillane, though it was written by a team of five contributors. The story is performed as an extended flashback, so there are opportunities for wise-guy narration in addition to rat-a-tat dialogue featuring Bogey. It’s a plot, pre-dating that of  Too Late For Tears (done two years later), in which Lizabeth Scott works her wily and duplicitous feminine charms on the guy who simply and perilously falls in love. She gets Bogart like she got Dan Duryea in Too Late For Tears. Men seem to be falling all over the place for Dusty (Scott), as she was running with the war hero who shot another man who might have been married to her. And then, if that wasn’t enough, she may also have been married to a nightclub owner who gave her a job singing (one song, pretty dusky stuff), and then on to Bogey. Whew, she was working a crowd. In the sorting out of these affairs, on behalf of a friend who was shot and burned in the process, Bogey gets beaten, knocked cold, shot, and nearly killed, but all in a night’s work, and he takes it in stride. Pretty good, if formulaic noir – Bogart certainly upheld his part and earned his paycheck in the deal.  B-

The cinematography by James Wong Howe gives this story a noir look, and that alone might account for its #6 position among 842 noir films on the IMDB website. 1956 was late in the day for noir, and the settings are modern, but the plot is time-tested. Clementi Sabourin was the perfect vehicle for the bored but self-assured and always scheming Sanders. The film begins like Sunset Boulevard, with Sabourin dead, then proceeds a little more like an Agatha Christie film, as everyone who associated with him had a good reason to kill him. Sabourin is a con man who even coldly sells out his own brother. Immediately overbearing in his relationships with women, he towers over them and then leans in like a tree about to fall. His flirty patter with Bridget Kelly (De Carlo) is something to observe. It all sounds like sex, but is all about money. He scams his way to the top, then takes it too far with a fake stock called Sabouranium. Then its a quick trip down. In a 180 degree different way, he takes manipulation to fatal ends in a way that gives Lawrence Tierney a run for his money. This one is smooth, that one was rough. A good study, but is it noir? Heck, I don’t know, but it’s a guilty pleasure. B

This is cited as an example of a low budget “poverty row” film, but succeeds despite its tight purse, in cinematography and execution. Designed to be a break out film for Jean Gillie, who was the director.’s wife. She gets to act all over the place, and is as heartless and homicidal a femme fatale as Hollywood created.  Margot works with a seedy lawyer to spring her equally seedy incarcerated husband. She ensnares an unsuspecting doctor (Norris) into a scheme to bring her husband back from the dead, post-gas chamber. The secret ingredient in this revival is methylene blue, which makes no scientific sense, but it would take a chemist to know that, and perhaps the budget necessitated something as mythical as a magic potion. As often happens in film noir, just about everyone in this film ends up dead – except for Leonard, who went on to play Nick in  It’s a Wonderful Life later that year, and hundreds of acting and producing roles through 1997. Plot not too tight, but interesting premise, and the actors all seemed game. C

We’ve seen this somewhere before; an honest, hard working truck driver (Brodie) trying to make a future for his pregnant wife (Long) gets coerced into running stolen stuff for a pitiless gang leader (Burr). When a cop is killed, Burr decides Brodie will take the rap, forcing Brodie and Long to take it on the lam, pursued by both good and bad guys. Brodie makes a compelling everyman, seldom overplaying a scene. His every move seems justifiable, but gets him into hotter water. It resolves to everyone’s satisfaction, but not without leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. Mann’s direction is solid, and the cinematography by George Diskant is first-rate. I marveled at a scene where an overhead light swings slowly past Burr, accentuating the instability and menace in his character.  B

Well, I liked the performance by Steve Gibson and his Redcaps in the lounge. This film is a low budget tangle of unlikable people doing unspeakable things to each other. A hitman posing as a telegraph courier shoots a man at his door. His daughter, home from college, sees only the man’s ass as he hops the short fence after the hit. She identifies him in a lineup (featuring the men turning their backs for a posterior check), but keeps it to herself, then warms up to him in order to climb the criminal ladder to the gang boss who ordered the hit. She then (apparently) sleeps her way to the top, with bodies piling up as she goes. Who is Armitage becomes a sort of by- product of the plot line, as if it mattered in the end. The police chief claims to be  doing his job, but with scant evidence, until ending up in a slugfest with Armitage at the end. I had trouble figuring the scheme, but that might have been my problem all along, as Pat watched it for sheer escape, and enjoyed it quite a bit. C. 

A long hike from Wyler’s The Best Years Of Our Lives. Here, with 31 characters in and out of a cramped city police squad room, a number of stories play in parallel. Its spartan set design is as familiar as that of Barney Miller 25 years later. This must have been a tutorial for many PD television shows to come, hitting like a straight shot before all the dilution to come. Douglas is a by-the-book cop, prone to bursts of anger and violence. His behavior concerns his co-workers, some of whom attempt to reason with him. When it turns up that a nasty abortionist he particularly loathes came in contact with his wife years earlier, it creates a tension that turns this from an ensemble set piece into a noir psychodrama. Terrific work by a cast allowed to stretch into their roles. Kudos to Grant, as an everywoman snagged in a minor theft, and Joseph Wiseman, as a crazy “four time loser.” Although neither of us had heard of the film, we learned that it was nominated for four Academy awards. Powerful and fearless film, presaging everything from Playhouse 90 through The Wire. A. 

Roberts: That’s life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks a foot out to trip you. 

B Movie noir bliss. A textbook distillation of the form into a movie with a $20,000 budget, a four day shooting schedule, and a 65 minute run time. Ulmer did set design earlier for both Fritz Lang and F.W. Murneau, and the experience shows. It plumbs the depths a simple man can hit through a succession of poor choices. Al Roberts (Neal) is a humble piano virtuoso playing small dives in New York, Sue, his chanteuse fiancee, equally likable but less patient, spurns Tom’s overtures of marriage and heads for L.A. to take a shot at stardom. Sue ends up slinging hash, and Al, triumphant in her failure, hitchhikes west to close the deal. En route, he is picked up by a guy named Haskell who has been badly scratched in a fight with a woman he picked up earlier. He dies of a heart attack while Al drives through the night and a heavy rain. He stops and opens Haskells door. A limp Haskell tumbles out and smacks his head on a large rock. Al, convinced the police will figure it for murder, drags Haskell through the mud to a hiding spot, takes his wallet, his clothes and car, and assumes his identity. As fate would have it, he picks up Vera, the very woman Haskell had the earlier set-to with. Vera is an unrelenting and venomous shrew, who berates and belittles Al while threatening to turn him in. Weak and pouty, Al somehow goes along with all of this, getting involved in Vera’s scheme to pose as Haskell to score the millions from the coincidental death of Haskell’s father, as announced in the local paper. As Al and Vera smoke and drink and bicker and pout in a seedy motel, their plans smolder, till Vera, in a drunken rage takes the phone to turn Al in. She locks her door behind her, and passes out, the phone cord somehow around her neck, while Al tries his best to pull the phone out through the crack at the bottom of the door. So now he ends up on the hook for two accidental deaths. He escapes the “perfume Arizona hands out free to murderers” when Haskell is sought for the murder of Vera, but gives up on Sue, and wanders, a broken and penniless man. The End. This is a movie worth seeing just for the thrill of hanging out with someone as nasty as Vera. She is the real deal. Too bad about Roberts, but he was a mope anyway. A

There is a small but interesting type of noir that features children under duress. The Window is a prime example, and Night Of The Hunter certainly qualifies. This is a movie about the downside of leaving the kids with a babysitter. Monroe is self-destructive Nell, newly sprung from a mental institution. She’s hired to mind a girl in a hotel room while her parents attend a banquet. Nell lures Jed (Widmark), a hot-headed commercial pilot, to the room and flirts with him. She simultaneously tries to hide her identity, the child she’s in charge of, and her well-intentioned but hapless uncle (Cook), who is an elevator attendant in the hotel. Mayhem ensues, and there are good moments of tension leading to a surprise or two. At least four songs feature Bancroft, a singer in the hotel’s Round Up Room. The little girl Bunny (Corcoran) has a rough night of it, but the net result is that everyone hits the reset button but Nell. Too bad, but that’s noir. B. 

Neff: “Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money – and a woman. And I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?” 

Well, if one looks for what makes a film a film noir, or for archetypes from which those now-typical murder mystery plot devices and camera angles originate, this could be an appropriate template. We’ve seen it often, and it moves like a Buick 8, smooth and powerful from start to finish, rounding the curves with ease. Phyllis Diedrickson (Stanwyck), in a cheesy platinum wig seduces Walter Neff (MacMurray), who makes the classic male mistake of thinking with the wrong organ. He considers himself suave and a step ahead, but he’s a naïve tool for the femme fatale. We had just watched The Postman Always Rings Twice which is, like Double Indemnity, based on a book by James M Cain, and both play true to form, almost two movies of a piece. It is said that Raymond Chandler, who collaborated on the screenplay, refused to work further with the nit-picking Wilder after this movie. It does seem obsessive in it’s attention to cinematic detail: the shadows carving up the scenery through venetian blinds, the cars on wet streets. And imagery: the gun in the chair cushions, the Dictaphone, the drinks and cigarettes and Phyllis’ sweater and ankle bracelet. Edward G is just terrific as Walter’s best (only?) friend, a father figure whose job it is to suss Walter out for the crime. This is as good as it gets, genre-wise, and the Miklos Rozsa soundtrack is appropriate (listen for Tangerine). Costumes by Edith Head. This film features top-drawer teamwork all around. A

A transitional role for Rooney. He was 35; trying to extend the Andy Hardy thing was futile, although he remained short and rather juvenile looking. His friends Quine and Blake Edwards schemed up this movie to try to help him jump genres like Robert Montgomery and Dick Powell had earlier done. It’s a testament to Rooney’s acting prowess that he so convincingly plays a sad sack mechanic/race car driver in this film. He’s a simple righteous guy, seduced by a woman (Foster) who is in cahoots with bank robbers who need a top-drawer getaway driver. They all play him like a fiddle, while the plot seems to be feeling around for Eddie’s breaking point. He’s frustrated by his normal red-blooded co-workers, his would be girlfriend, his manipulative partners, and his general lot in life. He’s the kind of guy who lies on the bed with his shoes on, staring at the ceiling, wondering what’s wrong with him. And might for the rest of his life, but for this one stab at the brass ring that could bring him money, opportunity and the woman of his dreams. A satisfying late stage noir.  B

Stylish to a fault, and part of the great French cinema movement of the 50s (Cocteau, Truffaut, Godard). The mood of alienation and crushed dreams is perfectly captured by an ad-hoc Miles Davis Five, who recorded the soundtrack in something like 6 hours. Julien Tavernier is a high-level flunky for an extremely influential business tycoon (Carala). The plot moves swiftly through Julien’s carefully calculated murder of Carala, and his subsequent misadventures in an elevator during the getaway. Julien’s car is meanwhile being stolen by two young lovers, the guy of which (Louis – Poulouly) is a youthful aspiring anarchist/nihilist. While Julien struggles back in the city, these two leave a wake of further havoc, traceable to Julien’s car, behind them. Meanwhile, Carala’s widow, Florence (Moreau), who was in cahoots with Julien, can’t figure why he never rendezvoused after the murder, and wanders the streets of Paris in the rain, with Miles Davis’ trumpet softly crying in the background. Pacing, lighting, suspense, flaky characters – all check. This was Louis Malle’s first feature-length movie, and points toward a brilliant career.   B+

First time direction by screenplay writer Ford. Plaza was impressed enough by the script that she agreed to both produce and star in the film. This is our first neo-noir review, a measure of the strength of its noir bloodline. Emily is stuck between high student debt and a felony conviction. She is slowly going broke while making low wages as an independent contractor. A work friend suggests gig work for a quick $200. It involves credit card fraud. She bites. This sets off the familiar cascade of bad decisions leading her down the noir vortex. There is a roadmap-like clarity to the critical choices she has to make, and the circumstances that appear to force those choices. The real kicker is at the end, reminiscent of nothing so much as the final moments of another creditable neo-noir, Body Heat (1981). Nothing underplayed here, and the momentum is sustained both forward and downward throughout. A.  

The general association is with neo-slapstick, like The Great Race, and The Pink Panther, but Blake Edwards was also the creator of the TV series Mr. Lucky and Peter Gunn. When Gunn petered out in 1961, Edwards turned his eye to the big screen, and a noir treatment, in glorious black and white, of a wheezing asthmatic who terrorizes bank tellers into becoming robbery accomplices. The film starts fast out of the gate, with Dina Merrill terrified but cool-headed while being accosted in her own garage. She’s warned to play along, and the leverage is her sister, played by a young Stefanie Powers. The filming was on location in San Francisco, and involves a lot of odd locations, like a mannequin workshop, a judo dojo, and Candlestick Park in the midst of a Giants – Dodgers game, featuring closeups of Don Drysdale and John Roseboro. Ross Martin steals the show as a convincing bad guy who the viewer is made to realize is also a potential sexual predator. By comparison to Merrill and Martin, Glenn Ford is his usual earnest uninspired lump around which the plot revolves. It is almost funny watching the amount of resources the FBI puts into tracking down a phoned in report of a murder threat. By the end of the movie the law is everywhere, while a police helicopter circles the bag being drawn in on Martin.Not a bad film, but would have been a memorably lively and eventful one hour TV show. To stretch it to two hours on the big screen required a lot of padding, like the insipid relationship between Ford and “Joey”, the six-year old crippled Chinese son of Martin’s love interest (perhaps Martin wasn’t such a bad guy; just misunderstood by the writers…) C

We looked forward to this movie, which was released a year after Laura, and featured the same director and primary male lead. Disappointed in the product. Eric (Andrews) is a drifter who is so broke he gets thrown off a bus between LA and San Francisco. He hangs out at a diner where he develops an instant infatuation with Stella the waitress (Darnell). In true noir fashion, this is lust with a thin overlay of indifference and hostility. To afford to marry Stella, who is entertaining other offers, Eric takes up with June, an attractive spinster living with a shrewish but devoted sister Clara (Anne Revere). This, for no other reason than to grab Clara’s fortune, which she has promised to June upon her marriage. So no troubles there, Eric marries June after two dates (one of which finds June passing out from drinking scotch on the beach). As he hustles toward the money, we lose Stella, and the law comes in hard. 

The photography and direction are good, the acting, though, is wooden and dialog seems delivered into the air around the characters. All three of the primary stars were capable of better. There is just an exhausted kind of mood settled over the performances. Also a direct progression, so the viewer kind of waits for the inevitable. We did find it interesting how Eric throws matches, spent cigarettes and money as if he’s angry, and grabs at women repeatedly. Perhaps he was frustrated by the confines of the box he had to act from within.  C

Looking at the actors, and noting Nicholas Musuraca on camera, we figured this for a sleeper with upside potential. Trendy for 1943 – a soldier of fortune returns from the Spanish Civil War with PTSD from torture during confinement. He seeks to avenge the murder of the friend who got him out of Spain. All good, but the plot takes the viewer here and there and damn near everywhere, leading up to the most logical culprit meeting a well-deserved end. Garfield is great, toggling between meeting various upscale civilians and dealing with the devils in his head. It is, however, hard to understand why the dames almost instinctively love him and the men just get out of his way. How a mystique gets created, I guess. With Garfield front and center, the other characters recede almost into irrelevance.  C-

George Barnes, as seen in Force Of Evil below, was a terrific cinematographer with extensive credits. He shines here, with a noir treatment of a murder/courtroom drama. Stanwyck, as Thelma, is her understated and slightly majestic self. Corey, as Cleve Marshall does his job as the common man caught in the vortex of events he doesn’t fully understand, pulling him toward life’s drain. Thelma is a no-good dressed up as a society woman. Her boyfriend Tony Laredo convinces her to rip off her rich aunt, which she does, killing her in the process. She slyly seduces Cleve, which was part of her cover for the initial crime. He is assistant D.A. and protects her to the extent of blowing his prosecution of her for the crime. As the summary on TCM states, nothing good happens after that. Another man led astray, and easy to see how Thelma could do it to a guy with weak moral underpinnings. This was foreshadowed by his problems with the bottle, and ennui from his staid marriage and fatherhood. He’s looking for excitement, and gets all he bargained for. An intricate plot, rather like Body Heat in Cleve’s relationship with Miles reminiscent of Hurt with Danson. Also an interesting photo of Thelma pops up of her earlier life with Tony. She has what looks like the same wig she wore in Double Indemnity, which was six years earlier. Corey grows on you as an actor. Interesting spoiler note: Richard Rober, who played Tony Laredo, died two years later in an accident eerily reminiscent of his end in this film. B

One slim hour of a tight police procedural with little waste. Lt Harry Grant (Lundigan) is a vanilla police detective who does his best to be a hard-boiled Spillane type, but falls well short of that mark. He’s shadowed by an ambitious reporter (Patrick) who craves a story, but doesn’t seem too interested in interviewing or writing. The plot has to do with a serial killer that does his despicable deeds by strangling victims when it rains. Despite seven bodies and crime scenes, the police are clueless, so build a faceless dummy to use in lineups. The use of this plot device is so implausible, it undermines whatever else the picture was trying to accomplish. One thing we’ve learned from countless movie climaxes – when you’re running away from the law in an industrial setting, don’t climb up stuff. You’ll only get shot and fall to your death. C

This was pretty good noir. I read that this is one of Scorcese’s favorites, and it makes sense, as it is well shot with light in sharp angles against lots of shade. Like so much noir, it’s a morality play; this one along the lines of Cain and Abel, with Leo as the good bad brother, running a “bank” in a numbers (“policy”) racket, and Joe as the bad good brother, whose attempts to save Leo from a takeover by the “combination” are misinterpreted as strong-arming. In the midst of this, Doris (Pearson) is a beautiful but easily steered woman, who loves Joe for no apparent reason. It is a well-structured film, with thoughtful dialogue, and villains galore, including a morally ambiguous NYC police force. Garfield died of a heart attack at 39, which is too bad, as the fella could act. After watching an earlier film, Body And Soul, with director Polonsky, I learned that Garfield was an early member of the Group, with Strasberg, Adler, Crawford, and Clurman. Maybe the earliest method leading man in movies (or maybe alongside Cagney), he influenced the later acting of Brando, Dean, and Montgomery. Marie Windsor is a good actress, but just window dressing in this film. I thought the ending played weak, as Joe apparently changes stripes at the end. B

This is the first film directed by Lang in America. It’s fairly easy to find parallels with his classic, M. Mob justice, this time in the form of an attempted lynching, is the theme, and Joseph L Mankiewicz (in his first producer role with MGM) wrote a screenplay heavy in moralizing and the observation of societal failure, like some the grittier films other studios were exploring at the time (i.e., I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, White Heat). Here, Joe (Tracy) is wrongly accused of a kidnapping, and the town gets whipped up by gossip into a murderous frenzy. They storm the jail, and set fire to it, putatively ending Joe. Ah, but he survives, and coordinates a courtroom revenge against 22 townspeople. Sylvia Sidney is there to emote, in huge close ups. Rainbow the dog is played by Terry, the Cairn Terrier that played Toto in The Wizard Of Oz. The ending feels like a cop-out, and may have been tacked on to placate the censors. Certainly that’s the case as Joe wistfully dreams in front of a bedroom layout in the front window of a furniture store. The sign says “Honeymoon Suite”, but features 2 twin beds with a bed table and lamp between them. Walter Abel, as the district attorney, and Edward Ellis as the old and mostly ineffective sheriff are pretty good in supporting roles. Mob scenes are electric; a lot of the static interactions drag by comparison. C+

Certainly a fine film for cameos by various bit actors, and fun for that. Sullivan is Shubunka, a small time crime boss running either numbers or prostitutes (not specified) in Neptune Beach, which resembles Coney Island. His portrayal is wooden, emotionless to a fault, and very simply, this film is about the perils of going soft in a hard world. He falls for a nightclub singer, Nancy Starr (Belita), who double crosses him to a rival gang with more resources and resolve. The problem is that it’s difficult to just edge out of this business, and Shubunka meets his untimely demise. A side story featuring Shorty (Morgan) is incongruous, and eats film for no apparent reason. He is a low-rent soda jerk lothario chasing older wealthy women, but with not a lot of success. C-

Tempted to start a game called Noir progression. It would involve linkages between random noirs. We see this a lot. I hadn’t seen Richard Boone since Have Gun Will Travel, when I was about seven, until Vicki (see). Then, as fate would have it, here he was again in the next film. He plays another baddie named Ravige here, strong arming for the women’s apparel sweatshop owner Mitchell (Cobb), who is resisting unionization. Mitchell’s son (Mathews) returns from Korea wanting a place in the business, but is sympathetic to the workers. The idealist pushing selflessly for organizing is Tulio (Loggia, in a good bit of work), who is married to the lovely and ethnic Theresa. Tulio is killed by Ravige’s goons, and eventually they climb the ladder until they’ve nearly taken over the business. Ick; what’s worse – communism or the mob? This played like a Warner Brothers social awareness film. It resembled The Phenix City Story or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence in its caricature of good and evil. Very 1957. Lee J. Cobb can chew scenery with the best of them, and I have to think Rod Steiger was watching. C. 

IMDB encapsulates this film as “archetypal film noir”, perhaps mostly due to its strong sense of moral ambiguity, but it’s hard to relate it to something like The Maltese Falcon for noirness. What I will enthusiastically give it is Rita Hayworth in her dizzying prime, and a very witty set of dialogue:

Gilda: I always say there’s something about Latin men. For one thing, they can dance. For another thing – what’s your telephone number?

Ballin Mundson: You play for the full stake or you pass the shoe. You can’t rule the world by passing the shoe, Johnny.

Gilda: They said that being married to Johnny Farrell was very like driving a car with no brakes.

Gilda: If I’d been a ranch, they would’ve named me the ‘Bar Nothing’. 

The cinematography, by Rudolph Mate’ is terrific, and the staging is almost entirely in a casino, varying from the gaming floor to the bathroom, Mundson’s office, and the lounge. From what I can gather, the script was delivered almost daily during shooting,  and the story narrative has a distinct slapped-together quality. There’s a world of unexplained hatred between these two Americans in Buenos Aires. The anti-heroine’s husband is a collector of beauty, but has no passion for Gilda beyond simple ownership. Gilda is an amoral but insecure woman with no reason to be in Argentina outside of being owned by Mundson (MacReady). Johnny (Ford) is in town to what?…drink her off his mind, I suppose. They’re convened in Mundson’s casino, where spies and toadies and rivals lurk. They love because they hate, and the hate is so consuming that it must be love, blah, blah. The end of the film completely undercuts this in a “let’s wrap it up because we’re already at 110 minutes” way. I was left unsatisfied and cheated, especially after all that flirting by Gilda. What WAS it all about? Mundson is creepy in a mirthless Germanic way, and the menage a trois is completely dysfunctional as each is dependent on the other two, despising it as they all roll along. Was Glenn Ford the right guy for this role? Doubtful, but no male lead was going to counter balance the electricity Gilda (Hayworth) brought to this movie. Not terrible by a long stretch, but film noir in the way that Casablanca was. In fact, there’s a lot of the love-hate triangle in that movie as well, but it takes more than a lot of whisky, smoke and moral ambiguity to make a great noir. C+

From a novel by Dashiell Hammett, and some of the lines could only be written by a master of the form:

Rusty: My wife was a second cook at a third rate joint on Fourth Street. 

Madvig: I just met the swellest dame…she smacked me in the kisser. 

The plot is highly convoluted, and involves various allegiances and sell-outs within both local politics and a gang. Alan Ladd is cool as a cucumber, and shows nearly no emotion. When he smiles, it’s like his teeth are overlaid on his regular lack of expression. William Bendix steals the show as a sadistic thug. A lot of people get slugged, several are shot, one is thrown through a window. Donlevy is nearly as heartless as Bendix, but Ladd has a nearly unshakable bond with him. A good thing as Donlevy is one loose cannon. Funny how Ladd walks into a scene and takes over with no apparent effort. In one that astounded us, he walks into a room full of people we assume would prefer him dead, and takes the owners place on the sofa, next to his wife, helps himself to a drink, and then, inexplicably, all the men leave the room. Ladd takes this as his cue to start making out with the homeowner’s wife. Meanwhile, the homeowner goes back to his lonely bedroom and shoots himself. This movie would probably reward a second look, with all the twists. C+

Harrowing story of a Hungarian stowaway (Gassman) on the lam in New York City. The character grew up in various German POW camps, and when he was finally released, joined the Resistance, helping an American GI escape. The GI owes him, but the two trying to get in contact with each other in the melee of Times Square is a near-impossible feat. Complicating things, in Gassman’s escape from the refugee ship, he falls hard, probably breaking ribs in the doing. He’s taken in by a woman who has nothing (Grahame) besides a tenuous room to offer. Still, it’s like a paradise to Gassman, who knows his nothing is much less than hers. They hide and run and try to eat or sleep, while the law closes in. It’s a tense one with a highly kinetic direction. Robin Raymond adds an outstanding performance as a stripper who tries to aid the fugitive. It’s got real resonance today, as the oppressed attempt to flee to freedom, only to encounter bureaucracy. The xenophobic mindset of 1953 is seen in the full page headline with photo of Gassman, “Hungarian DP Escapes Deportation Ship!” We seem to confuse foreign with dangerous, when the realest threats are usually from within. B

British noir with a mix of English and American actors. This is some hard-boiled stuff, as four different plot lines converge into one grand scheme to rob a post office delivery van. Along the way, we’re treated to treatments of the boxing life (Baker and Ray), a pretentious neer-do-well and an older woman he’s fleecing (Harvey and Leighton), an American military officer and his uncommitted and flirtatious wife (Ireland and Grahame), and an engineer who can’t seem to get his wife to return to America from tending to her neurotic mother (Basehart and Collins). Each story stands well on its own, and when they come together, it immediately becomes apparent that as bad as each man’s reality was going into the caper, it would only go downhill from there. Terrific ensemble acting, and classically photographed, as if the sun never shines in London. Basehart is consistently good in his everyman performances (He Walked By Night, La Strada, Il Bidone, Tension). B+

With a screenplay based on and written by Mac Kinley Kantor, with assistance from Dalton Trumbo (posing as Millard Kaufman to avoid HUAC blacklist). This is a film that moves briskly through several stages in the life of Bart Tare (Dahl). He grows as a sharpshooting wunderkind with an overpowering love of guns. He also develops an aversion toward shooting anything living after killing a chick with his BB gun. We meet his pals, who try to goad him into shooting a mountain lion, but nothing doing. Later, he burglarizes a gun shop, gets caught immediately, and spends a couple years in reform school, followed by a stint in the army. He comes out a surprisingly naive hayseed with a dead eye. With his buddies, Bart enjoys a carnival sideshow featuring a shooting exposition put on by Annie Laurie Starr (Cummings). Bart gets up on stage and bests her in a contest, and they somehow find love in their shared passion for shooting. The problem with Annie is that she gets her kicks being scared enough to kill people. This is plainly portrayed as an odd sexual surrogate, and Bart, though he honestly loves Annie, is annoyed by her propensity to gun folks down. There is a sparkling and seemingly ad hoc sequence shot from the back of their car, where they discuss the details of a bank robbery while beginning it. This is nearly documentarian in its acting and cinematography, making it very effective. 

Bart and Annie escalate the nature of their crimes, with Bart protesting meekly, but always knuckling under to the alpha dog Annie. She says she wants money and a grand lifestyle, but this sounds a little disingenuous. She really needs a stronger dose of the adrenaline she finds in crime. They plan and execute a robbery of the Armour packing plant they both work for, and it becomes their big score. It’s an odd scene, watching them running through rooms hung with animal carcasses. They make their getaway, and hide out with Bart’s family until discovered again. This time, they drive up into the mountains where they somehow take a nights sleep in a swamp. They are discovered by Bart’s pals, one of which is now the sheriff. As Annie rises to shoot them, Bart shoots Annie, and the pals shoot Bart. Life fast, die young, leave beautiful corpses. Remarkable how much was tapped from this movie in the making of Bonnie And Clyde over 25 years later. A classic B movie, shot on a shoestring in a mere six days. The resulting immediacy and simplicity give the viewer an uncanny sense of being along for the ride. A-

An odd condition of murderous amnesia occasionally overtakes music composer George Bone (Cregar.) This is shorthand for alcoholic blacking out, but it’s handled like a medical anomaly brought on by hearing certain noises. This is confided to a psychologist named Middleton (Sanders,) who cooly assesses him. Bone splits his time between two women, because he’s somehow that irresistible, and it is in the air as to which he might murder first. Netta (Darnell) milks him for money and support. He almost strangles the other, Barbara (Faye Marlowe) to death. Bone eventually does kill Netta, burning her body on a Guy Fawkes Day bonfire. Of course, he remembers none of this, but Middleton suspects and confronts him. Locked in a room, Middleton manages to alert others who free him and he gets police to interrupt Bone’s piano concert. Police attempt to question Bone, but he attacks them, and in the melee a gas lamp is knocked over, setting fire to the place. George returns to the piano while everyone flees. As the building goes up in flames, George plays his swan song. The last line in the film is Middleton saying, “It’s better this way.” So much for psychological help. Cregar didn’t live long enough to see the movie’s release. Cregar was desperate to lose weight and play more leading man roles. Complications from stomach reduction surgery did him in. Life imitated noir, in a way. The similarly cast Raymond Burr went with the flow and acted for another 49 years. C. 

1957 – really late in the day for noir, but the folks who put this together were veterans of that circuit, and put together a fairly compelling B movie story with some great devices. For starters, the first 7 or 8 minutes turn out to be a demo movie, in which a complex drug heist from a ship moored off shore is carried out without a hitch. The rest of the movie  revolves around this ads creator (Russell) attempting to reenact it in the real world. Ah, there are so many unforeseen variables to reality. June Blair is worth a look. She was a 1957 Playboy Playmate who, in 1962, married David Nelson, and rode along with Ozzie and Harriet until the series ended in 1966. She then retired entirely. Here, she is given one of those roles seen so often in noir, where she’s a hard as nails vixen at the beginning, and by the end is a puddle of mush. Stuart Whitman, as the unwitting accomplice, is the instrument of this conversion. They seem to make it through this film in good shape.This doesn’t apply to “Mr. Natas,” a not subtle inversion of name. Russell is highly convincing in his badness, and it’s nearly a relief when a ton of electromagnetized junk crashes down on him. A scene involving three stacked layers of wrecked LA streetcars forms an indelible memory, to separate this film from so many other “perfect crime” films. Not bad at all.   B

The last movie Garfield made before his death at 39, it demonstrated the power of integrating film noir and method acting, as realized by a later film like On The Waterfront. This was also a demonstration of the power of noir that was lost with the HUAC days, as director Berry and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo were also blacklisted. Berry’s direction is tight as a drum, and the whole production is lean and linear through an economical 78 minutes. Add cinematography by James Wong Howe and music by an energetic Franz Waxman – you’ve got a real deal here. Plot line involves a guy who never had a chance, hiding out in the home of a young woman who is so lonely that she can’t see through his otherwise obvious misanthropic intent. Strong performances all the way around, and character aspects you might find yourself pondering long after the movie ends. A.

Roy Martin (Basehart) is a guy who steals high-tech gear, and then poses as the inventor, pawning his stuff off on a business owner who knows nothing of where the marvels come from. Martin seemed somehow reminiscent of Schwartzenegger doing The Terminator, as he carried on rather emotionlessly, even when performing surgery on himself. Lee Whitey (Jack Webb) gets to be the face of police technology in action, as he does a (flawed) ballistics analysis, and sketches a facial rendering from composite witness descriptions. This movie has the voice over intro common to Dragnet, and indeed led directly to the creation of the Dragnet radio program later that year. Movie ends abruptly with a hail of gunfire and Martin dead face down in the sewers of LA. I guess the moral of the story is that the LAPD gets their man. Dragnet would ride that one for decades. C

This film is set up by a prologue featuring short forgettable speeches by the real governors of North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. They all seem equally ill at ease before the camera, a stark difference between then and now.  A bloodless psychopath leads his mirthless men on a spree of robberies. This earns them the sobriquet “Tri-State Gang.” They carry along a group of women with them, mostly to create the plot lines of jealousy, lust, errors and betrayal. Actually wouldn’t be much of a movie without the gals, one of which is French-Canadian, unfamiliar with good old American gangsterism, another who pretends to be a newspaper reporter infiltrating a hospital to get even with another of the group’s moll. Cochran, as George Legenza, is so unredeemable that the viewer winds up cheering for his comeuppance. And he gets it plenty. Strange that the premise is a wide-wandering ti-state gang, when almost all the filming was done on the Warner’s lot. There are several references to “congenital” criminality. In fact, the last line in the film is:

Detective Truscott: You cannot be kind to congenital criminals like these. They would show you no mercy. Let them feel the full impact of the law.

Congenital, meaning “present from birth.” Poor chump like Legenza never had a chance. B-

Definitely a Howard Hughes vehicle for showcasing Jane Russell, who goes through a  huge closet of costume changes and three songs during the film. Hughes reportedly meddled extensively with this movie, and it shows. Raymond Burr, as Ferraro, was the third choice for that role, which involved reshooting scenes involving Ferraro at least twice. So it’s got elements of a musical, and a costume drama, along with a noir backbone. The basic story is that Dan Milner (Mitchum) is offered $50,000 to go to a swanky Mexican resort and await further instruction. On his way down, he encounters  Lenore Brent (Russell), and the two hit it off. She hangs out with him at the resort, even though she is there to meet her other paramour, Mark Cardigan (Price), a famous movie star. It seems Ferrero has paid Milner to wait till he can get there with a plastic surgeon, who will steal Milner’s face to replace Ferraro’s; the better to enable Ferraro to reenter the US and resume his mob business. The menace from Ferraro is real, and there is some convincing brutality dished out to Milner along the way. But Hughes somehow got captivated by Price’s hamming, and had rewrites done to pad out his role. What results is nearly a parallel madcap movie with Cardigan and a Mexican version of the Keystone Kops in hot pursuit of Ferraro. The Backus character is gratuitous, and Charles McGraw bumbles along as a witless tool for Ferraro. The end is a happy days disappointment as well. This could have been good, but had the ideas of several unrelated movies mashed up. The cinematography is excellent, Mitchum in his sleepy style is rather wasted, and Russell? Well, she gets locked in a closet before the climax of the film, so as not to distract from Price’s star turn. Heck, Hughes even threw in a daring aviator sequence, where the hero flies through a hurricane to land at Morro’s Lodge. It had no bearing on the story, and like with much of His Kind Of Woman, you’ll need a compass to find your way back out. C

Ah, yes; a B leaning toward C. Some auteurs just wandered well-trod paths, putting images on film and sometimes making a living along the way. This film, like others of the ilk, was produced, written, directed and starred Hugo Haas. Hugo seems like a nice enough guy, kind of like Walter Slezak, or a B league Peter Ustinov. He isn’t a movie star, but had the moxie, or simple thrift, to insert himself into his films. This is a bald-faced remake of  The Postman Always Rings Twice, but throws an interesting body-double twist into the plot. You’d do best not to ask too many questions about how that all happens, which is key to enjoying B movies from the film factory. as with sausage. Cleo Moore is right there with the platinum blonde craze, if better executed by many others. A fun romp on a tight budget. Vince Edwards was a compelling, if underutilized late noir type, put to much better service a year later in Murder By Contract,  C 

Lupino brought in some pretty heavy guns to help with this B movie. Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People) was cinematographer and Daniel Manwairing (Out Of The Past) helped with the screenplay. It’s a simple concept, and starts immediately out of the gate. Two pals, Collins and Bowen, are headed fishing, or carousing, if you prefer, down around the Mexican border. They stop to pick up a hitchhiker who quickly puts a gun on them and bullies them sadistically for the next couple days. In the meantime, the police get busy and start to close a net on the three. Nice level of tension, and a great job by Talman as Emmet Myers. He seems genuinely unhinged. There is a lot to consider in the two victims behavior, both in terms of post-war emasculation and powerlessness, and a certain hysteria in O’Brien (as Collins) that Lupino seems to have chosen for a surrogate female lead. Interesting stuff. I think that if Warner Brothers had gotten hold of this, it might even have tilted Myers toward a more sympathetic character, which one can see the potential for. Mostly, he seems to represent all the random and sudden threats that might descend on us while we are either being kind, or at ease. A parable for the 50’s, often repeated in other films.  B

Paul Henreid produced this movie, and it is a vehicle for him in a pair of starring roles. As Muller, a gangster, he did his time, got paroled, rolled an underworld casino, and now has the mob on his tail. Fortuitously, he becomes aware of an exact body double, who is a psychologist (Bartok). The thought of escaping his doom by mimicking someone else is too tempting, and causes Muller to kill Bartok. He has to replicate a sizable facial scar to do so, and does so. Best plans drifting astray, he learns he has scarred the wrong side of his face. He still manages to fool the woman (Bennett) who loves them both, or either, or something. One thing to watch for is the constant stream of cigarettes Henreid smokes. The cigarette becomes a sort of centerpiece in the movie, by virtue of him holding it close to his face, or it smoldering on the edge of a desk. Pretty good, ironic twist at the end, and the movie in the meantime makes it fairly worth the wait. I was reminded of the Vonnegut line, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”. Cinematography by the incomparable John Alton.  C+

A couple interesting things about this film, which is not well preserved on Netflix. The pairing of Pidgeon and Bennett seems a foreshadowing of their 1941 work on Manhunt, which is also listed here. Of course, that movie had Fritz Lang directing, so more noir than this. Here, you get Archie Mayo, directing B films since 1917. This plays much more like a classic gangster film, except that racketeer Steve (Raft), is overcome by a helpless infatuation with chanteuse Brenda (Bennett). Even after three years of marriage, he’s all moony around her. This doesn’t come across right, as Raft has an inexpressive face with pretty dead eyes. When he smiles, only his lips move. Otherwise, of course, he’s George Raft, mostly bossing and shoving people around. The temperament miscasting reminded me of how Raoul Walsh later put him into the nice guy role in They Drive By Night, with Bogey and Ida Lupino. So I guess at least one guy found something of value in his acting here. 

Also, there are some fairly cool (for 1940) scenes of Tim (Pidgeon) and Brenda in his plane. These were shot by Alfred Hitchcock, apparently as a favor to Wanger, following their collaboration earlier that year on Foreign Correspondent. The whole atmosphere of the filming noticeably perks up here, but is soon back to slogging along around a set resembling San Francisco Bay. 

In brief summary, Steve feels he owes his millions in crooked dealings to Brenda because she brings him luck. Unluckily, however, his right-hand man, Slant (Nolan) is  also in love with Brenda. In order to save his life from the mob, Brenda and Slant conspire to land Steve in Alcatraz on a tax charge for a year. He gets ten. Slant was only getting rid of Steve to move in on the Mrs. He takes control of Steve’s fortune, withholding it from Brenda until she wises up and snuggles with him. Meanwhile, Tim just bumbles in, but is also immediately smitten by Brenda. Steve molders in the big house, living only for Brenda’s visits, while she innocently hangs out with Tim. This makes Slant crazy, and he rats Brenda out, which causes Steve to escape (in an amazingly effortless manner) from the Rock, to seek his revenge. Not strictly noir, but a cousin, maybe. Bennett changes costume every hundred frames or so. C

Where to begin? It’s noir, alright, in the way that Night Of The Hunter or The Window is noir. It’s also a morality play wrapped in a nearly surreal atmosphere. The film plays out between a classroom, where the protagonist is a piano teacher, and in his house of many doors, rooms and a featured staircase. In fact, each room nearly plays a character, or at least exhibits a sub-theme; from kitchen to music room to bedroom. It’s a pull-no-punches story of seduction by a young femme fatale and its disastrous effects on a man and his family. Just seven years after the Korean War, there’s representation of an old Korea uncomfortably transitioning into new South Korea. Schemer girl vs traditional wife makes this metamorphosis in style both painful and inescapable for the piano teacher. He gets his. In fact, they all get theirs. Not a happy film, but the ending acts like a surprisingly welcome chaser to this potent downer. Shades of both Parasite and Fatal Attraction. A kicker is that if one has seen enough American noirs, he becomes accustomed to its peculiar causes and effects. Not knowing how a Korean writer/director might handle a particular situation adds to the tension. Ki-young doesn’t disappoint – jaws drop. B+ 

A mini-epic, spanning at least 10 years; this film deals with a generational counterpoint between the self-motivated success of Gino Monetti (Robinson) as the father, and the fortune grabbing opportunism of his sons. Max, the one son with a life (lawyer) independent of the father, and therefore the only one respected by him, sides with dad when the other brothers make their move to consolidate against him. This leads to an array of family troubles, of course. There is another plot here; that of  Irene Bennett (Hayward), who seemingly comes out of nowhere as a woman obsessed with Max. This drives a wedge between Max and his sweetheart Maria (Paget, in a stoic woman done wrong role). Max gets sent to the big house for 7 years while trying to illegally bail his dad out of his failing bank. Dad dies of a broken heart and Max serves his sentence. Max is released into a world where everyone else in the meantime seems to have done nothing; Irene waited for him though, and he finds his brothers  arranged like 3 roaches in a dark corner of their office. Max comes around to their point of view that dad was a bum, but not until he’s nearly been killed, and then nearly killed his brothers. Robinson is terrific, and the plot is complex without being ludicrous. The Hayward role is tough to take at face value, as she represents a prop more than a character. She had much better chops than this film provided her.  Pretty good music. Searching IMDB, I find that Daniele Amfitheatrof scored 116 movies from 1939, leading up to this one a decade later. Ubiquitous in his day and easy to see why. B

An American remake of La Bete Humaine (see), which starred Jean Gabin. Wikipedia claims Lang badly wanted Peter Lorre to play the lead role. It would have been badly miscast. Neither was it particularly well-cast with Glenn Ford and his aw shucks prairie demeanor. As Jeff Warren, he returns from Korea and takes up his former job as railroad conductor. His partner Alec (Buchanan) takes Jeff home to room with the family, where Alec’s eager doe-eyed, sweater girl daughter immediately stakes a claim on him. Meanwhile another co-worker, burly and unsophisticated Carl Buckley (Crawford), is losing his grip on ambitious wife Vicki (Grahame). She plies her romantic options on Carl’s co-workers, of course, and when she is found out by Carl, he traps her and her suitor in their railcar suite, murdering the latter. Vicki is displeased by this, gets slapped around, and then wanders into Jeff, who innocently caught this train as a deadhead return home from work. Jeff and Vicki are co-attracted immediately, and she beguiles him into the attempted murder of Carl. Trains work very well for film noir. They roll through the night, presenting narrow closed spaces within wider open ones. The light sifts through shifting beams and flashes. Lang plays this stuff like a virtuoso. Soundtrack is smoky and totally apropos. There are some good lines of dialogue too, like this:

A poor man working at a bar prevents a robbery and gets recognized as someone who escaped mid-trial a dozen years earlier. Now it’s up to public defender Bennett and his one-armed ex-cop father to find seven witnesses again. That seven have been through life’s ups and downs in the meantime. Eventually there a new trial and a surprising culprit is revealed. Pretty tight 68 minute production from a director I’d never run across. Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca as good as ever, panning the camera around L.A. Reminded us of police TV of the 50s -60s, where a number of situations and conversations come together in the courtroom – looking at you Joe Friday, Perry Mason and Lieutenant Colombo (Frank, if you must know.) B

It’s difficult to figure why Humberstone ended up directing this film, with his undistinguished background conducting Charlie Chan, Tarzan, and Sonja Henie movies for Fox. Then again, 1941 was the same year the proto-noir Maltese Falcon burst on the mise en scene, so maybe no one involved knew it was noir. It has a couple obvious inconsistencies within the grim game, like an orchestral ‘Over The Rainbow,’ which pops up repeatedly in inappropriate and nearly annoying ways. Wiser choice would have been the movie’s theme song, Street Scene, a minor piece by Alfred Newman that nails the feel (Try the Oscar Peterson version). The film is interesting in that Betty Grable is pretty steady in the first and last dramatic role she may ever have had. Laird Cregar is a revelation, huge and genuinely menacing as a voyeur detective. Mostly forgettable except that the photography by Edward Cronjager is astounding. The low-key lighting, broken up by bars and mesh, staircases alleys and angles, is phenomenally advanced for a film that was genre-unaware. It alone is a reason to check this film out, but all-in-all, not a bad caper. Mature is framed for the murder of a waitress (Landis) he led to stardom, only to be ditched. He takes up with the dead woman’s sister (Grable) to sort out the several suspects, while the police can do little more than shine a hot light in everyone’s eyes. In fact, the original title of the film was Hot Spot. Not hot, but what the seven time Oscar nominee Cronjager does with the light, oh boy! C. 

This is an example of stark realism in cinema precipitating real social change. The film is based on a true story of a man convicted of a small crime (“looking at a hamburger”, as he puts it), and sent to a deep southern chain gang to break rocks for 10 years. The conditions are, of course, appalling, and the movie pulls no punches in the portrayal of the food, the work, the hours, the facilities and the punishments for non-conformity. There’s a thread of costs for failure to conform throughout this movie, from the opening scenes of James Allen coming home from the war and opting out of the job that was waiting for him – to the harsh consequences of trying to forge one’s own path forward. This develops him as underdog to the system, and a very sympathetic character. He escapes the prison, heads north, and makes a remarkable comeback under an assumed alias (his name backwards). This goes on for years, while the state continues to search for him. He gets entangled in a relationship with a woman who cuckolds and blackmails him into marriage. Eventually, he makes a deal to return to the chain gang to serve a 90-day formality, but the state reneges on their deal, throwing him back in the gang. More work gang melodrama leads to another hair-raising escape scene. This time, Allen on the run has no delusions about the fairness of society, and resigns himself to a petty criminal life in the shadows. The state of Georgia sued Warner Brothers over the depiction of its justice system, but five years later, Georgia had ended chain gangs altogether. 

An effective indictment of the system, and a true reflection of the times, with so many former veterans unemployed during the Depression, feeling disenfranchised. This movie gave Warners the reputation as the studio with a social conscience. 

Great quality movie, well-shot, with an extensive and competent cast. If you enjoy prison films, this is most likely the one you’d start with, chronologically. I kept seeing shades of Cool Hand Luke, which seems like an homage, after viewing this.  A

Released separately from two other films meant to complete a triad of Argentine noir (See Never Open That Door). An excellent job of retrieval and restoration by the Film Noir Foundation, this, like its mates is an Argentine adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich short story. If the other two bring to mind Wait Until Dark and Twilight Zone, this one might suggest The Window. An apt comparison, as the undeniable star is young Nestor Zavarce, His expressive face serves where dialogue would fall short, and it is a remarkable portrayal of an underachieving boy seeking his busy father’s approval and being forced into battling a system that ignores the concerns of its children. Genuinely terrifying at times, it speaks to concerns that wouldn’t hit American celluloid for another decade. Christensen’s pacing is consistently strong and linear in all three of these films. Note: The bad guy remains shadowy and undefined; We never get a clean look, which makes the scenario all the more plausible. B+

A trio of penny-ante scam artists works to defraud families of the recently deceased by posing as traveling clergy. This line of business nets them only small rewards, but it’s what they do. One chases women and lives in the moment, one yearns to be an artist and better support his wife and daughter. The third is an aging grifter who really has nothing better to do with his life. Three men in different stages of life and degrees of introspection – together and lonely; headed nowhere good. All along, Fellini maintains his absurdist appeal, balancing comedy and tragedy while capturing the remarkable aspects of everyday life. Soundtrack by Nino Rota is exceptional. B+

Walter (Donlevy) starts out as a hard-boiled businessman, brusquely overruling his board of directors at meetings, but that gives way quickly to a milquetoast persona around his alpha wife Irene (Walker). She is having a clandestine affair – planning to use her new suitor to bump off Walter  – and it plays out as Walter gives a lift to this guy, now posing Irene’s cousin, in need of a long ride to Denver. The ingrate hits him with a lug wrench and makes about a 1000 ft getaway in Walter’s car, right into an oncoming fuel truck. Kaboom. Burned beyond recognition, everyone figures the charred victim was Walter. Walter meanwhile survived the hit and a long roll down an embankment. He ends up wandering around a small town in Idaho, and takes up with Marsha (Raines), who is trying to run a garage, attempting to repair a car by banging on the engine block with a hammer. 90 days later, and with Walter still apparently referring to her (the boss, you know) as Mrs Peters, he and she head to Walter’s home in SF, and attempt to set things straight. Instead, it becomes a he-said, she-said court drama, mitigated by the enigmatic Su Lin (Anna Mae Chong), who used to be their maid, and is on the run from Marsha, who now is like Lois Lane, frantically trying to sort out the facts. Well, it all ends up ok for everyone but Irene, and the dictionary reprises the name of the movie, discussing the impact of people on each other. There is a weirdly incongruous scene where the Larkspur, Idaho volunteer fire department is mobilizing, like a lift from a Preston Sturges comedy, down to the last madcap volunteer running to catch the fire engine. This movie lacks continuity and focus. It wanders among genres, and the music just pours on the strings. Was it a noir? A melodrama? A slightly unintentional comedy? A travelogue of San Francisco? Yes, all these, while sticking to none of them. It doesn’t help that Donlevy was 19 years older than Raines, and was 48 at the time of the movie, yet gets called “son”, and is referred to as 25 years old in another scene. C

Dixon Steele (Bogart) is a Hollywood screenwriter with a hot head and a cold hand. His frustrations boil over whenever he thinks someone is getting the better of him. A pure plot-device murder sets up the real story of Laurel (Grahame) falling for a man she is also afraid might be a psychopath. The joy of this movie is in the noir staging. Ray does a terrific job of the early 50’s L.A. milieu, with the hacienda architecture and angles of light and dark everywhere.  Grahame is terrific, and projects a Bacall-like quality, which of course fits pretty well with Bogie. For his part, he looks haggard and old compared to the smooth lines of Grahame, but gives it a great effort, almost reminiscent of his acting in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, or The Caine Mutiny. – a haunted, almost besieged psyche in action. The incongruity in this story lies with how charismatic he seems to the people he abuses, including the detective/best friend (Lovejoy), who can’t decide whether to pat him on the back or clap him in irons. Good, true noir ending. Eddie Mueller, known as “The Czar Of Noir,” refers to this as his favorite movie ever. B 

Johnny Eager is an amoral scoundrel, so maybe the role was Taylor made for its star. Taylor and Turner (“TNT” said the promo), fell in with each other during the making of the film. Taylor intended to divorce Barbara Stanwyck. Turner refused to break up the famous marriage, and so went that early chapter in the Lana Turner saga. She is lovely – a more down to earth Monroe. This film concerns a guy who, to validate his parole, drives a cab by day and runs his gang and greyhound track by night. He has stooges, but only one friend, moldering poetic alcoholic Van Heflin, in an Oscar winning turn. Johnny kills without remorse, eyes on the prize and all that. He sets up a starry eyed sociology student (Turner) to control her DA father (Arnold). Johnny proves that if you’re building everything on icy greed, love will only muck it up and bring you down. And so it does. It’s interesting to watch the mix of MGM big budget costumes and high society music and settings decorate what is essentially a noir storyline. B- 

Director Karlsen and Actor Payne teamed up again the following year in 99 River Street, probably a superior job for both. The strength of this film looks to be the triumvirate of baddies drawn by luck of the draw from Foster’s (yes, Foster) recruitment for the ultimate million dollar armed car heist. In the film noir era, some films became known as police procedurals, but the Hays Code inveighed against crime procedurals. So I suppose it was daring stuff to show the plotting of the perfect crime. In reality, it essentially puts all the conspirators behind masks, so no one knows any of the others.They hit the mark, flee, and head in separate trips to Mexico, where they will split the loot. Joe (Payne), an ex-con trying to go straight, gets set up as the patsy driving a lookalike to the getaway car. He attempts to track down the gang in order to set things straight. They all rendezvous at Foster’s fishing hotel, where Foster’s daughter Helen (an uninspired Grey) falls for Joe and assists him in getting even. Elam, Van Cleef and Brand were a great choice, but turn out pretty ineffective against one good man getting even. C

This fairly late noir runs a fast 73 minutes, with tight direction and superb camerawork by Lucien Ballard. The plot begins with a bank robbery, and Leon “Foggy” Poole (Corey) is an unlikely conspirator on the inside. During the investigation, police detectives, led by Sam Wagner (Cotten) break down Poole’s door and accidentally shoot his wife. Poole goes to prison and is a model prisoner, so earns a parole. He then sets out to avenge the killing of his wife by going after Sam’s wife. The rest would be fairly standard stuff, and the roles Cotten and Rhonda Fleming are given don’t rise above standard plot line stuff. The fun is watching Foggy Poole as a nerdy psychopath. John Larch plays the role of Otto, Poole’s old commanding officer, who made Foggy the butt of every joke. He finally overplays his hand in dramatic fashion. In the denouement of their weird relationship, the rest of the movie is by the numbers. C

From a short story by Ernest Hemingway, screenplay by Richard Brooks and John Huston. 

The 27 year old Kubrick produced, wrote, directed, shot, and edited this economical (67 minute, $50,000) noir of uncommon maturity. Davey Gordon (Smith) is a tomato can boxer near the end of his career. He lives in a New York City room, with a direct line of sight into the living room of Gloria (Kane), similarly dead-ended in a taxi-dancing gig. Her boss Rapello (Silvera) is smitten with her, determined to make her his own, by hook or crook. Davey interrupts an amorous assault on Gloria by Rapello. The rest unfolds with murder, kidnapping, pursuit, and a final confrontation. Along the way, we’re treated to a ballet interlude, featuring Kubrick’s wife, a gladiator type fight in a warehouse of mannikins, Penn Station in the daylight, Times Square at night and a long chase over interconnecting rooftops. This film succeeded in convincing United Artists to finance Kubrick’s next effort, The Killing, during the following year. The career of a multifaceted auteur director was off and running. B 

Davey Gordon: “I didn’t know it then, but I was already in over my head, and I couldn’t have cared less.”  

A dandy late noir, set largely on a college campus in the Southwest, in technicolor, with an orchestral sound track and an antagonist that Eddie Muller accurately termed an “homme fatale.” That would be Robert Wagner, in an early role. He is more engaged in this material than in much of his later work, seemingly weary, nearly bored by the movie being shot around him. Here, he is a sociopath of the first order, trying to marry into the family of an Arizona copper baron. Outside of the introduction of a second man, eerily reminiscent of Clark Kent, who serves no purpose besides being good to Bud Corliss’ evil, the casting, plot, and pacing are tight and crisp. C+ 

If movies do reflect their times, 1955 was a really dystopian year. Hammer (Meeker) is an insensitive, unresponsive and violent private detective. He shows up where and whenever he likes; commanding the place, whether it’s a bar, a coroner’s office, a woman’s apartment, or the police station. Funny to watch everyone try to engage with him, while he says little or nothing in return. If someone isn’t quick and eager to share information, Hammer roughs him or her up a little, and then they sing. Women fawn all over him, but he’s busy, see? He has a nifty tape recorder answering machine, and a girl Friday (actually “Friday”, played by Marian Carr) that just wants Mike to love her, but he’s busy, see? No one is a match for him, and lots of people end up dead on the way to discovering Pandora’s box in a locker in Hollywood. This movie has everything but a soul, and serves as a time capsule of state-of –the-art machismo. It foreshadowed the attitude of James Bond, not to mention so many subsequent “Hammer-lite” TV detective shows. C

One of my wife’s favorite noirs. This was Richard Widmark’s feature debut, and he steals this film with his portrayal of sleazy psychopath Tommy Udo. Victor Mature, who looks rather sleepy and seems generally resigned to his fate, is Nick, a man who can’t catch a break or land a job after his misspent youth of crime. He resorts to a hold up so he can bring his family Christmas. It goes errant, and Nick is off to prison in Ossining. His ‘family’ lawyer, Taylor Holmes (in a nice turn by Earl Houser), reminds him of the omerta rule, and advises Nick to suck it up, taking the fall for his cronies, while Holmes works toward his parole. Back at home, the Mrs ends her part in the production by sticking her head in the gas oven and their two small girls are farmed out to an orphanage run by NUNS! And it only gets scarier back in the slammer, when Nick meets Tommy, the nutcake hood, who hates stoolies and snitches. Tommy gets released, and recruits and runs a new gang, while Nick makes friends and is a model prisoner in the big house. He eventually gets swayed by the manipulative DA (Donlevy) to rat out his old gang.  Nick proves so likable that he even scores a replacement for his wife in Colleen Gray, ex-babysitter, who is just mad, or dizzy for Nick. He gets released, married, employed, gets the two girls back, rents a home and sets up Tommy, testifying against him as well. Well, that goes badly too, and the system fails Nick as Tommy beats the rap. As these things go, Tommy’s first order of business should be to set about looking for Nick, but Nick turns that on it’s head and goes hunting for Tommy, like he understood it was his only chance to make it out of this film alive. Lots of activity and a cop-out of sorts at the end, but well paced with solid acting all around. Widmark is worth the price of admission. A short jazz interlude in a club features Jo Jones on drums. B

Post war PTSD victim Bill (Lancaster) is in England with some violent anger issues. When he kills a man in a pub, he gets blackmailed by a sleazy witness. In fleeing the crime, he crawls through Jane’s (Fontaine) window. A day at the zoo and the racetrack somehow convince her of his lovability. But the blackmailing fly in the ointment (Newton) presents himself again. Bill beats up a card sharp and Jane cuts out. Bill then beats up a police man and gets flogged and sent to jail for six months. Harry the blackmailer is there to greet him when he’s released. Bill visits Jane, who scores him a job delivering medical supplies. Harry demands an inside job to steal penicillin and sell it on the black market. Jane gets caught up in the swindle and Bill attempts to call it off. He then beats up Harry. Bill later figures he’d better get to Harry before the vice versa, but Harry is at Jane’s apartment. He assaults Jane, but she stabs him with scissors and heads for Bill’s place. Meanwhile, Bill finds Harry still alive in Jane’s place, and drags him to his own place. Harry dies, and Bill sets up a plan to high tail it to America on a black market ship.  He convinces Jane that Harry is still alive, but she finds the scissors in his pocket and they come around to facing the music as their only chance to stop running. This was the first production from Lancaster-Hecht as Norma Productions. He even did pre-showing trapeze routines in select cities to support the film. Tight film with two strong leads, and Newton as Harry is memorably smarmy. B+

Polanski’s directorial debut, and a good one, nominated for the best foreign movie Oscar in 1962. It is a product of its time, with French New Wave influences to spare. The cool thing about that style is its unhurried, almost lethargic sense of people seeking something just to break up the unrelenting boredom. Case in point – a married couple who have grown tired of their relationship, going through the motions on their way to a day on their boat. They pick up a younger male hitchhiker, and the tensions among the three play out through a day cruise gone wrong. Age, sex, dominance, and that sense of desire to do something significant with another dull day infuse the next hour and a half. The camera becomes a voyeuristic eye, exposing everything, and missing little. Great direction on that account. It seemed like a harmless little Eurofilm, but has stuck in my mind for several days now. B 

Harry Cohn facetiously offered $1,000.00 to anyone who could satisfactorily explain the plot of this movie, which he financed, to him. And it is a challenge, as it presents aspects of a musical, a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and even a travelogue. Short version is that a crotchety and crippled old lawyer (Sloane), who has the means to attract and marry a gold digger (Hayworth), signs on a profoundly disinterested and unconvincingly faux Irish sailor/writer (Welles) to man his yacht on a trip up the Mexican coast to San Francisco. A partner of the lawyer (Anders, as the slimy Grisby) stirs the pot of the ensuing marital infidelity going on around him. This develops into a plot by Grisby to fake his own murder, to claim a large portion of the old lawyers estate. He enlists Mike O’Hara (Welles) in this, encouraged by Hayworth, who needs the grubstake Grisby offers, ostensibly to enable her sailing off with O’Hara. When Grisby really does turn up dead, it falls on the lovers to save O’Hara from the chair, while Bannister (Sloane) gloats. It ends up in a carnival funhouse with a hail of bullets in a hall of mirrors serving to further confuse who is who and what’s what in this interesting, if somewhat muddled film. C+

Terrific story/whodunit that won’t meet all the criteria of film noir, but has the sullen gumshoe (Andrews), the too-good woman (Tierney), the lighting and the rain, the scotch and cigarettes, the gunplay and corpse as central character, and flashback narrative. Each of the central characters pops in and out through the movie, giving it a lively kinetic effect. Laura is dead at the beginning of the movie, mourned by her mentor (Webb) and investigated by a no-nonsense detective. Most of the movie searches for a prime suspect and a motive. Shelby Carpenter (Price) provides a too-easy scapegoat, so it must be more complicated than that. It is. Also good work by Judith Anderson as Carpenters spurned older paramour. There is a meeting in a restaurant between Andrews and Webb, featuring a long flashback. As the camera rejoins them in the restaurant every so often, the candle on the table grows shorter. Nice touch. B+

Fascinating, from a stylistic standpoint, to see the hot blooded latin version of noir. In both Los Tallos Amargos (see) and this film, also known as The Beast Must Die, the emotions of the characters are amped up from those of American actors. The good are suckers and the bad are truly terrible. The story is of a crime fiction writer whose son is run over and killed by a remorseless bully. He plots revenge while it’s revealed that everyone in the bully’s orbit also have compelling reasons to kill him. It plays like “who gets him first?” Interesting progression, too, as it starts toward the end of the story, moves to the start, and plays through; rather like Sunset Boulevard does. Cinematography is first rate. In Spanish with subtitles. B+. 

Fritz Lang remade this movie as Human Desire in 1953 (see above). Gabin, as Jacques Lantier is a locomotive engineer so in tune with his partner (Carette) that they seem like functional pieces of the engine as it hurtles toward LaHavre. The TCM film appreciation class “Summer of Darkness” used the opening five minutes as a study in setting a tone and pace for a noir film. 

Film Noir often deals with the destruction of a person through a process of a good man making an escalating series of bad choices. This story, an adaptation of a novel by Emile Zola, concerns a fairly innocent seeming femme fatale, Severine (Simon) who is unhappily married to the rail inspector, while having an affair with her own godfather. 

The husband finds out and schemes to kill the godfather, involving Severine in the crime to ensure their complicity and his power over her future. Lantier is a witness to some of this, but keeps quiet, as he’s also attracted to Severine. They also initiate an affair, and his job performance suffers. In a common noir device, Severine and Lantier  set out to murder her husband, which brings them no happiness at all. Everyone ends up worse for wear.

Gabin is an interesting actor in a Robert Mitchum sort of way. He rarely breaks a sweat and seems largely impassive, yet there is a smoldering presence to the guy, like the tension of watching a keg of dynamite without knowing how long the fuse might burn. Renoir makes good use of this by giving Lantier an unpredictable and uncontrollable homicidal streak, giving him the potential to strangle his paramour at any moment. 

Some of Lang’s camera angles (birds-eye, flash frame between two parties, of a man from under his desk) are wild and creative. This is fun film to study for the scenes and near constant activity.  There is a lot to enjoy in almost any noir staged around trains. B

A rare color entry here, and certainly latter-day, but no less stark and methodical than most classic film-noir. Delon is as stylish as ever, falling in with a murderer and an alcoholic former police sharpshooter to plan a jewel heist in mid-town Paris. Of course, nothing good comes of this for anyone involved. Great jazz soundtrack. Interesting to see Melville choose a Plymouth Fury III as the getaway car. 

Chief of Police: “All men are guilty. They’re born innocent, but it doesn’t last.” 

Very good, in an all-male cast. The heist is one of those extended shots that builds the tension expertly. Melville has a very compelling style, and his films are propelled by the pacing he sets. He melds points of view and scenes, both interior and exterior, brilliantly.   B

Lino Ventura was an exceptionally popular movie star in France, though he never crossed over to America. Here, he stars as Gu, a con who has just broken out of prison, and needs the money from one more heist to retire in style. His sister, Manouche (Fabrega) works like Gu’s angel in the background. The theme of the film is one of honor among thieves and the value of a man’s honor with or without the thieves. The intrepid French detective, Blot (Meurisse) is on Gu’s heels as bodies pile up and the big heist gets set up, then carried through. Enjoyable real time staging of an armored car robbery and escape. Every one of any evil consequence dies in the end, but…honor among the honorable, Blot lets Manouche slide out at the end. A late black and white film; well shot. Melville has a real American sensibility to his direction, which is interesting within what is a French New Wave way of natural but minimal pacing, acting and dialoging. Gu and Blot are nearly archetypes of stoicism. Melville’s affinity for American cars is a tell that you’re watching a Melville film.  B 

Davis looks terrific, and is wonderfully detestable in this classic by Wyler. The opening scene, of a sultry night under a full moon on a rubber plantation in Singapore is note perfect. Latex drips lazily from rubber trees, workers loll in their hammocks, Indonesian music plays hypnotically. Then gunshots and the camera closes in on the lady of the manor, Leslie (Davis), emptying her pistol into the staggering back of her paramour, Geoffrey (uncredited). Seems he had married a local dragon lady on the side, ruining the affair Leslie had come to depend on, and in a violent rage, she shot him with extreme prejudice. The rest of the movie turns on her defense strategy for court, and the men (Marshall, as her cuckolded hubby, and Stephenson as her lawyer) who try to save her. The presence of an incriminating letter brings the dragon lady to prominence, and it’s only a matter of time before Leslie’s theatrics and bad decisions do her in. Excellent cinematography by Tony Gaudio, who has 143 movies to his credit, between 1903 and 1949, a year before High Sierra and two years after Adventures Of Robin Hood. 

My only real gripe is the stylized formalism of the performances – everyone is genteel and continental, moving slowly and delivering lines as if it was a Singaporean version of Wuthering Heights. Asian-gothic?  C+

The only soundtrack heard during the movie is a penny whistle one of the survivors of a shipwreck played. The story was developed by Hitchcock, and written for the screen by John Steinbeck. A bold, yet ambiguous film for 1944, in the days of maximum war effort and ubiquitous propaganda. Eight Americans and a German are confined to a lifeboat in the trackless Atlantic. As it plays, there are issues among them with all of the seven deadly sins. Envy may be the one that gets them in the most trouble, as captaincy of the boat eventually falls to Willi, the German (Slezak). Is he trying to save, or simply enslave the rest of them? Hard choices involving life and death line the quick run time of the film. Pat saw a similarity to 12 Angry Men, which is appropriate. In fact, Hitchcock had envisioned the story originally with all men. The film was a failure as critics of the day savaged the portrayal of a German as superior to the rest of the crew. The movie seems to have aged very well, and indeed seems timeless, given the primitive set and universal themes. Tallulah, as Connie, steals the show in her sarcastic and witty way: 

Connie Porter: [Referring to using her jeweled bracelet as fish bait] I can recommend the bait. I know….I bit on it myself. 

It’s delightful following Hitchcock’s career arc. This was filmed only four years after Rebecca, and yet the movies seem from different eras of cinema. Same with the change from here to, say, Rope, four years later, also dealing with life in a somewhat restricted, though Technicolor setting. The opening credits with a long single panicked note from a steam whistle overlapping the music score is noteworthy in creating tension from the outset. Kudos to William Bendix for sympathetic work as Gus. A

Kind of a refreshing female lead, with Roman as actress Shelley Carne off for a dude ranch vacation. Little does she know of the local intrigue there. Trevelyan (Todd) may have murdered his wife, but someone from a nearby ranch (McCambridge) refused to convict, letting him off the hook. Trevelyan does his best to act like a guilty sociopath. A scene where a romantic tryst occurs on a dangerous mountain path is unreal. I guess if a guy doesn’t toss you off the mountain, and helps you along, he’s just got to be the man of your dreams. Shelley tries to get to the bottom of Trevelyan’s mood, and this gets complicated by his friend Harvey (Scott), who kidnaps her and brings her to Trevelyan. That’s somehow enough for Shelly to quickly fall in love with and marry him. Then there’s the indecision of will he or won’t he kill her too. In the end, she exposes McCambridge as the first wife’s killer, and Trevelyan swoops in to save Shelley. McCambridge and brother take it on the lam, but you know how those sharp curves on mountain roads are when you’re all keyed up. McCambridge can hand roll a cigarette with the best of them!  B- 

Trivia – the quote, “When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty,” may have been taken by Bob Dylan for the line, “to live outside the law you must be honest,” in Absolutely Sweet Marie. This film starts out with a bang, and dekes the viewer into the slow pacing of a police procedural through truly terrific scenes of 1957 San Francisco. Concerns international travelers acting as unwitting mules for Asian heroin, and the crooks who intercept them and get the goods to “The Man.” 

Superlative chase scene, presaging Bullett and unusual brutality for the late 50s, anticipating what Siegel would do with Dirty Harry later on. Eli Wallach, as Dancer, was said to hate the cruel role he was given, but being only his second movie, makes hay with it. 

The most unusual thing to us was the pacing. When you first see the Sutro Baths, about two-thirds in, Siegel punches the movie into overdrive, and it’s a thrill ride on out.  B

Not a true noir, but deserves a look as an early supporting appearance by Mitchum amid the firelight cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. With nearly all interior scenes, this verges on the look of a gothic drama, but is rescued by a lively production and flashbacks nested like the layers of a matryoshka doll. Laraine Day, as Nancy, is a semi-kleptomaniac who dates a sensitive artist (Mitchum), marries a psychiatrist (Aherne) and then becomes engaged to a man from a wealthy family (Gene Raymond). Along the way are parties, childhood heartbreak, the London blitz, and a bit of psychoanalysis. An entertaining run, and Day’s ingenuous style captivates the men she gets tangled with. Downgraded for a couple of incredibly unlikely coincidences. C 

Interesting match of leads here, with gender caricatures Mature (as Rocky Balboa) and Dors (as Sugar Kane) wrapped in a nice late noir British fantasy of American values and corruption. An army trucker takes a job as a long haul trucker in Britain to humor his milquetoast wife who refuses to go to America. He gets unfairly blacklisted from the only trade he knows, then unwittingly involved in organized crime in the trucking industry. The head of his outfit, (named Joe Easy) sets him up with a doll to cement his services, and Mature falls into the noir funnel. Dors shows no particular acting skills, but certainly livens up the scenery and seems soft and pillowy – hard to resist. She’s a dime a dance girl from the Conga Club, desperate to hit it rich before she ages out, so why she would be desperate to cling to a long haul trucker remains inexplicable. Mature is bigger than life, made even larger by a strange collection of huge coats with giant shoulders. Was this part of a Brit post-war John Wayne fantasy of American stature? The British interpretation of American film tropes is fascinating. The best is last, when the film moves from aping Thieves Highway to copping a Wages Of Fear treatment. In typical superhero style, the truck falling on Mature’s arm only slows him down for a moment. Resilient for sure. Nothing comes out of this thing in good shape, with the possible exception of the Conga Club. B 

A reworking of a French movie from 1939 (starring Jean Gabin), this is a mostly sluggish affair, though full of noir darkness and fatalism. Joe (Fonda) is back from the war, employed as a sandblaster in anytown, Ohio. He meets JoAnn (BelGeddis, in her first lead role), and is smitten. We discussed the role PTSD from combat may have had on poor Joe; there is something making him extra-weak on the commitment end, and suspicious in the extreme. Enter Maximillian (Price), as the usual fey and pernicious character he assumed in Laura. There is the normal flashback common to noir, and even a first – a flashback within the flashback – an effect which serves to almost sever the connection between plot and viewer. In real time, Joe is holed up in a seedy apartment, waiting for the police to come and get him. The half-hearted attempts to bring him in are baffling indeed. All in all, pretty forgettable, though it did lead RKO to sign BelGeddis to a seven year contract. Full of fun cameos by all your B movie favorites. Ann Dvorak as the incredibly good sporting Charlene has possibly the best role in this melodramatic affair. The movie lost $1MM at the box office. What were they thinking? At least the cinematography, a type-specific monochrome palette by Sol Polito (Now Voyager, Sergeant York, I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang) is terrific.  C-

An unexpected gem. This is a movie from Argentina, shot in 1956, and well regarded in its time. It was somehow lost until popping up in a private collection in 2014. The film was restored by UCLA and the Film Noir Foundation, then rereleased. The Museum of Modern Art calls it “one of the finest noir-drenched crime films of the 1950s (and maybe ever)” A washed up reporter (Cores) who suffers from an inferiority complex starts a scam journalism correspondence school with a scheming Hungarian (Lambrinos). It leads to one man’s version of the perfect crime, with predictably imperfect results. Wicked that the culprit is brought down by an inability to cope with his own mind. The narrative switches from objective to subjective point of view, with a couple of Hitchcock-like dream sequences, and the first half is in flashback. The cinematography and musical score are both sublime. Highly recommended, even in Spanish. A. 

Archetypal German noir. Lang was an accomplished director (i.e., Metropolis) by 1931, and with his wife writing the screenplay, assembled this film that served as a model for future development of the genre. So much going on in here that it can be a challenge to tease it apart. Hans Beckert (Lorre) is a serially child killing psychopath, but a miserable slave to his compulsion. This makes him both a loathsome and somewhat sympathetic character. The town is on edge with tension, and anyone can become a suspect. Is this a depiction of the mindstate of the German people a year from when the Nazis officially ruled the country? The police methods are intricate but ineffective, and focused on the usual suspects. With the cops pinching their business, the underworld decides to catch the killer themselves, with better results. They hold a trial for Beckert, and the cases made are eloquent statements on behavior and justice. 

The cinematography is terrific with a kinetic camera (scene cutting through the storage lockers, one of which hides the fugitive, another where Beckert tries to fight his way out of a basement, is thrown down the stairs, and faces a dead quiet assembly of all the towns rough customers, staring back at him). Only negative observation is that the minute dissection of police procedures goes well beyond making the point that this is a vital case. Maybe this is only because subsequent noir developed a better shorthand for the tedious work of tracking a killer. The image that remains are of Peter Lorre, frog-like in a dichotomy of harmlessness and repulsion, his eyes bulging and fists clenching.  A-

Great pacing with never a dull moment. Huston stuck close to the Dashiell Hammett novel, and the streetwise dialog sparkles:

Wilmer Cook: Keep on riding me and they’re gonna be picking iron out of your liver.

Sam Spade: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter. 

Sam Spade: I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you. 

A workable answer for ‘what is film noir?’, I’ve always considered this about perfect with the glaring exception of Astor as Brigid. She seems uncommitted to the role, walking her way through. I did a bit of research and learned that this was, in fact, her 97th film role, and her experience predated talkies by a far stretch. She was 35 at the time of this movie. I had assumed that being an Astor got her into the works, but turns out to be just a stage name, as her mom was a Vasconcellos, and her father a Langhanke. So much for that. Still don’t care for the acting, nor her characters constant vacillating between lying and truthiness in the role. Otherwise, a terrific film. John Huston’s directorial debut, following screenwriting triumphs in Jezebel, Sergeant York, and High Sierra. A-

Lorre is very good, as Leydon, a mystery writer who becomes caught up in a compelling crime story about Dimitrios, a hood of uncertain nationality, who washes up dead one day in Istanbul. Intrigued, Leydon investigates his life of crime, and washes up on Sidney Greenstreet, who has plans for the two of them. The screen chemistry between these two, who made nine movies together, is inarguable. They both seem to be having a lot of fun with the roles. Zachary Scott as Dimitrios is good to very good, and Faye Emerson just kind of dresses things up a little. There are flashbacks galore in various backlot locales, but it pays to hang in there, as the plot definitely does thicken. Very well shot, and it certainly seems to qualify as noir, given at least the year, the greed, and the cinematography.  B

Crawford, as D’Amico, goes undercover, as Tim Flynn, to expose a killer at the top of the longshoremen.  Excellent wise-guy dialogue, like:

Crawford seems born to this part, a “sardonic miserablist” as one reviewer put it. Good camera work really captures an early nighttime rainstorm. The plot moves linear while juking around with lots of misdirection. Leonard Maltin called it one an unsung classic. It’s interesting how, in trying to get back in the department’s good graces, Crawford seems so resigned to his likely fatal role as bait. B. 

Cited by Martin Scorsese as his earliest movie influence, this late noir B-film is a dandy of directorial and cinematographic economy. Released the same year as the more hyped Touch Of Evil, this displays a modern, almost French New Wave (Melville’s Le Samourai, or Godard’s Breathless) sense of space and light, contrasted with Welles’s dark murky border drama. The sense of existentialist detachment in Claude’s (Edwards) hitman craftsmanship even brings Sartre and Camus to mind. Claude realizes the only way to afford a house he covets is to leave his job and become a contract hitman. He lives an ascetic lifestyle, samurai-like in dedication to routine, never breaking the rules. He never speeds or carries a gun – to the point that his hits are performed with blades or a necktie. This is well and good, but it does happen that he is a sociopath, and probably has some serious psychosexual issues to boot. With his initial successes, he bags a big $5,000 contract to erase the star witness against a crime lord – that man’s ex-girl friend. She is holed up at a heavily guarded house in the hills outside LA, and he makes several unsuccessful attempts, before concluding that the effort is jinxed. He tries to get out of the contract, while still fulfilling it, and everything begins to collapse around him. After expressing his distaste for women, he can’t bring himself to kill one as a target, and he pays with his life. There’s a lesson in there, but it’s difficult to identify with. Lucien Ballard, who also worked on Laura, The Killing, and The Killer Is Loose handled the cinematography well, using natural light effectively. Perry Botkin’s single guitar soundtrack is reminiscent of the zither in The Third Man, and sounds Italian. That’s part of the charm of this film – it mixes a number of European influences into a noir plot line. Kathie Brown is good as a call girl who can’t figure Claude, but convinces him that the jinx is up. Pines and Bernardi are good foils, two henchmen whose job it is to see that Claude delivers, spending the movie trying to fathom his inscrutable methods.  B+

Definitely a sleeper; and reminiscent of Night Of The Hunter in its depiction of a swampy milieu in the deep South. Danny (Clark) is a boy whose father is hanged for murder. The shadow of this event haunts Danny’s life, as he’s tormented by his peers, led by Jerry (Bridges). Danny and Jerry finally have it out when in their early 20’s, over Gilly (Russell), and Jerry ends up dead. Danny hides in plain sight while also moving in, rather inelegantly on Gilly. For some reason, Gilly cannot resist. They have trysts in an abandoned but still furnished mansion near his friend Mose, out on the swamp. Mose is an old black man right out of Uncle Remus, wise and kindly. The sheriff of town similarly befriends Danny, as does the jive-talking soda jerk and deaf-mute Billy Scripture (Morgan). With all these folks finding Danny somewhat irresistible, he thinks himself alienated, misunderstood, and haunted. Being a fugitive just doesn’t motivate much from him but to tone things down for a short while with Gilly. Eventually the whole thing unfolds and his guilt is established. The ending is a sell-out, but justifies everyone’s unfounded faith in this guy who can’t control his temper. 

Stylish and well-shot, with that carnival reference that often pops up in noir. Ethyl Barrymore gets to do her long-suffering mother routine, we get to see coon hounds track Danny through a swamp, there is a “swell” musical rendition of the song Moonrise, a jarring fall from a ferris wheel that seems to carry no consequences, a scene from the back of a car careening madly through a rainstorm, and fun cameos by assorted character actors like Harry Carey Jr and Charles Lane. 

Clark and Russell are convincing in their roles, and it’s interesting to speculate on where this film might have gone with earlier proposed leads like Burt Lancaster, Jimmy Stewart or John Garfield. C

Fun note: if Henry Shanway seems familiar to you, try him in the lead role of the television series Daktari. He doesn’t enjoy such good standing in the urban jungle of 1950 Boston. Shanway gets drunk as his wife is hospitalized while miscarrying their first child. He gets picked up and victimized by a cold dame (Sterling). She takes his car and leaves him drunk in the night, on a road in Cape Cod. 

He’s a clueless sap caught in the vortex here.

Henry Shanway: That’s the story of my life. I’m always where I shouldn’t be. I’m also not where I ought to be. Ever since Adam, Man’s been crying, ‘Where am I?’

She brings the car to her lover for what she thinks is his use in some other caper, but gets shot and killed instead. He wanted nothing to do with her pregnancy by him. 

When her skeleton is found on the beach six months later, Lieutenant Morales (Montalban) is given the case, and allies himself with an eminent forensics scientist from Harvard (Bennett.) They do the police procedural thing while a tangled drama unwinds at the other end. It turns out that the cold dame’s boyfriend was one of many, and the gun he used is still in his office drawer. Enter the delightful Elsa Manchester, as the dame’s scheming landlady. She finds his phone number in the house she runs, and sets out to blackmail him. She opportunistically grabs his gun while he’s called out during their first meeting, and hides it well. Meanwhile, all the suspicion points to Shanway, whose marriage heads for the rocks over this, and he is seen as guilty in the eyes of both police and press. 

Sydney Boehm (The Big Heat) and Richard Brooks (lots…Elmer Gantry, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Key Largo, In Cold Blood, Crossfire, Blackboard Jungle) collaborated on the first-rate writing, and the incredible John Alton presided behind the camera. John Sturges directed. What an ensemble! 

This is one crisp 93 minute production with enough twists to keep it from becoming a linear procedural. Recommended. A.

Al Willis (Barry) is a bakery owner who is prone to violence when drunk, but a model citizen when sober. He is arrested while on a spree, and wreaks havoc on the detectives questioning him at the police station. Soundly beaten, he swears revenge. Upon his release, the detectives start dying violent deaths. Chief Conroy (Hayden) obsesses over catching Barry, even after being fired, even across the Mexican border. Somewhere in this storyline, Conroy hears Marianna (Grahame) sing a Cole Porter tune in a nightclub, and soon discovers that she and Al are an item, despite Al being married with a baby. In fact, Al doesn’t much seem to like, so much as need to control Marianna, and Conroy isn’t crazy about her either. She does, however, love or need them both, and takes Conroy in after he is hurt in an encounter with Al and his cronies. After this, she moves from running around in flimsy tight fitting cocktail dresses to conventional knee length skirt with sweater, to a jacket, then a scarf over her head. This serves as metaphorical conversion from a sinful life to some kind of moral redemption, thanks to her meeting up with Conroy. Conroy attempts to smuggle Al back across the border. Trouble ensues, some are killed – a satisfactory noir ending, as these go. Barry is surprisingly good as a violently bipolar baker. Hayden barks and looms, in his distinctive style. Interesting that they went to 6’6” Chuck Connors to back him up on the police force. They make a tall front line. Grahame seems ever reliable, and holds down her role, perhaps with a bit of sleepwalking here. Unremarkable in-studio production. B-

Narrator: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them”

Mark Hellinger was once a hard-boiled journalist in New York City, and both the intoxicating street life and rhythms of the city come through pretty unfiltered in this double Oscar winner.(cinematography, film editing). It’s a highly kinetic piece of work, with hundreds of camera cuts, catching as much of the scene around the actors as the actors themselves. It starts different, as Hellinger narrates the opening credits into the setup. The written credits at the end, though usual today, were an oddity in 1948. It’s a classic police procedural, but with a cast of thousands, and all the shots were in New York City itself, as opposed to on a Hollywood set. It was, indeed, Hellinger’s valentine to the city. Fitzgerald is terrific, and the actors support the scenes and action without calling attention to any star power. Makes for a nice ensemble work. Recommended. B+

A quick observation about the noir films in the middle of the pack. The titles of these movies seldom carry any indication of, or reference to, whats in the film. The Naked Street? Sure. Why? No idea. Quinn (Phil Regal) is a racketeer thug, and Granger (Nicky Bradna) is a small time punk, who gets Regal’s sister pregnant, and then kills a liquor store owner while trying to raise dough for a poker stake. Regal hates him, but gets him off the hook, and out of “the death house”, Sing-Sing. Of course, the sister and her mother are like the sister and mother of Judah Ben Hur, in terms of their goodness and naïveté. All well and good till a newspaper reporter (Graves) starts asking a bunch of questions, incidentally falling in love with the sister himself. Violence and retribution follow – no rat can be trusted – crime doesn’t pay, and Regal takes the final fall. The End. Quinn shines; everyone else is basically a set piece in this rather stiff and predictable drama. C

Brown: What kind of dish was she? The sixty cent special; cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy.

This fine noir had many aspects of a Hitchcock film, with misdirections, oddball characters for comic relief, and a raising of tension levels at various points. Oh, yes, and a train. The mobsters wife has to be escorted from Chicago to LA, where she’s expected to testify. Detective Sergeant Brown, (McGraw, or is it McGruff) is supposed to protect her, and the gang has to get to her before they all reach LA. It features a squawking little kid, like Kevin Corcoran, a fat man clogging the narrow hallways, prop-like railroad personnel, a great moll in Windsor, and then the obligate “good” gal who gloms onto the hero, so he can explain his motivations while looking distracted most of the time. Excellent cinematography in close quarters, and plenty of shadow play. A

Consists of ⅔ of a cinematic trypich by the director, based upon short stories by Cornell Woolrich. The first film, short by comparison, is Somebody On The Phone, a foreshadowing of a Twilight Zone story if ever there was one. The feature presentation is a study in sustained tension, as a murderous trio on the lam hides out in the home of the leader’s blind mother. A terrific performance by Pirovano as Mother Rosa has the viewer experiencing both the sensory deprivation, and the compensation for it. Exquisite cinematography and lighting by Pablo Tabernero. Both films could have been stage plays; magic lies in the conjuring of psychological situations and whether escape is even possible. See the other film, cut from identical cloth; If I Die Before I Wake. We liked that Angel, as the bloodless neer-do-well mobster chain smokes and throws live matches and butts around the house. Gave things a certain American noir flair. B+

A near-faultless job of casting, although Gene Tierney is as lost within the film as she was in Laura six years earlier. The remaining cast is so interactive and involved that it’s difficult to prioritize the leads, with the exception of Widmark, as Harry Fabian. The direction is tight and the scenes convey a wide range of enclosures, from a phone booth to a wrestling ring, to a dimly lit office, houseboat, and stairwell. It gave me a sense of people ringed in and limited by the choices they make. Harry’s choices were consistently impulsive, and wrong. He is a simple grifter in search of a big score; the chance to have his name mean something. There is a scene where he unwraps a desk ornament with “Harry Fabian Managing Director” on it. Harry seems enraptured, as if he’s finally made it, letting us know it wasn’t simply a money grab that motivated him. Harry manages to alienate just about everyone around him, as they tire of his constant scheming and unreliability. He finally seizes a chance to horn in on a London crook’s wrestling monopoly by enlisting the crook’s father. It doesn’t end well for Harry. It’s fun to watch Widmark, like in Kiss of Death (1947), with his intuitive pinball performance careening against the guardrails. He seems genuinely unhinged at times. A propulsive and satisfying soundtrack by Franz Waxman drives the acton along. There’s a scene where Fabian is on the run that sounds like a single person banging on a pan. Dassin, until his blacklisting just after this movie, was on a real film noir roll, having directed Brute Force, The Naked City, and Thieves Highway leading up to this. Tight story, well-directed. A

The whole movie takes shape as a cautionary tale from an old detective to others in the break room. An otherwise respectable detective is cheating on his wife with a woman who is cheating on her husband. Parked on Lovers Lane, they witness a murder, but neither can report it as it would out them both. The detective is tasked with solving the crime, getting no help from his paramour, who tends to play no favorites. Urgency is added when an innocent man is charged with the crime, as the detective knows better. A snappy 65 minute production, the best part belongs to Carter as Jill the icy socialite. She is not only remorseless, but perversely so.  C 

Witty dialogue sparkles all through this late period noir. Sterling Silliphant, who wrote the screenplay for From Here To Eternity was in good form here. Similarly, Jacques Tourneur brought some of his magic from Out Of The Past to this film, in the form of flashbacks and a man’s pilgrimage over time and countryside to resolve a problem. 

Ray is good as Jim Vanner, a man who, with his friend Doc, ends up in the wrong place in the wrong time. That would be the Tetons in winter. A getaway car crashes near them, and they rush to aid the victims. Turns out they’ve just stolen $350K, promptly shoot Doc, and rush off in the assumption that they’ve also killed Jim. They grab the wrong bag, and Jim staggers off into the valley with the dough, losing it in a blizzard. 

Several years later, living under an assumed name, Jim is discovered by John (Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond – having a wonderful time being a sadistic killer). Jim meets Marie (Bancroft) in a bar, and she gets tangled up in the ensuing confrontation and pursuit. Jim and Marie fall in love and return to Wyoming to find the loot, accompanied by an insurance investigator who had also been tracking Jim. It all ends up ok and Jim and Marie ride off together. 

The gleeful crooks Red and John bring to mind Tarantino. The offhanded violence seems more shocking for how little effect it has on the perpetrators. Everything is pretty tight and plausible in this 73 minute gem, with the possible exception of Marie. If Anne Bancroft wasn’t such a delightful actress, it might have been a tougher sell. A scene in this movie where she runs right off the runway of a fashion show in a tight full length dress to escape Red and John is a real Hitchcockian moment. Good street scenes of LA in 1957 as well, and a shout out to Butte, Montana, which is more real than “Moose, Wyoming”. A  

Based on a novel from the year before, this was not only a radical departure in casting for Tyrone Power, but one he lobbied hard for. It is also perhaps the most unrelentingly dark film of a genre defined by darkness. Nightmare Alley was a flop upon release, but has aged magnificently. It forms a morality play cautioning that one should be careful what one asks for. As a carny observes at the end, “He fell so low because he reached so high.” The acting all around is terrific, the cinematography is consistently low-key, and the production value is top-notch, as Fox allowed a big budget for the film, even building a 12 acre carnival midway on its backlot. Power is The Great Stanton, a guy who rises as a mentalist performer by taking advantage of others at every turn. You get the feeling as things progress that he’s due for a terrible comeuppance, and he gets it in the form of filling out a tragic career cycle he once watched happen to another man. Shame that Zanuck dictated that the end be softened to provide some hope at the end, as the original ending had the star hitting bottom as the curtain falls. I take half a mark for that, but this was otherwise strong and steady noir. A-

I read a review by Michael Atkinson which held this movie to be a mirror of its times, with men home from war now insecurely scratching at dead end jobs just to pay the bills, and their women skittish and ready to bolt. Ernie Driscoll (Payne) is a washed up prizefighter who now finds himself driving a cab in New York. His wife sees no future fun in this, and takes up with a gangster who frequents the shop she works in. Driscoll catches them in an embrace, and leaves to mope at a soda fountain with his pal/boss Stan (Faylen) and a narcissistic stage actress Linda (Keyes). Linda later is in a panic, and talks him into going to the theater with her, where she claims to have killed the director auditioning her. A mini-drama ensues, culminating in the “dead” man getting up and telling Linda she’s won the role. Ernie, used again, cleans up the joint with his fists, and a warrant goes out for his arrest. Meanwhile, his wife’s gangster pal brings her along to fence some stolen gems. The fence won’t work with a woman, so the gangster kills her and dumps the body in Ernie’s cab. Now Ernie is in the pull of noir gravity, fighting for redemption. The boxing analogies are about all Ernie thinks of – just winning something, anything, to atone for that last loss. Kinda sad, but everyone gets out ok in the end. It’s a soft close for a tough movie. C

Noir soaked in the woman forward narrative that trended with Mildred Pierce, All About Eve, and Leave Her To Heaven. The way Hollywood played this was to add a liberal dash of melodrama to the otherwise hard boiled realities. Stanwyck sells this, like almost everything, in a way that drags the viewer in like a passive partner. She shows up, destitute and desperate, at the door of the man who impregnated her. He coldly turns her away with a train ticket. A case of mistaken identity lands her and her newborn with a caring loving family. Then the father of the infant turns up to attempt enriching himself by exposing her ruse. It’s a tight plot from a story by Cornell Woolrich, well executed at every turn. A tight 90 minute gem. B+

This was supposed to be a comeback vehicle for Ann Sheridan, but was lost in the 1947 shuffle and forgotten. Rereleased as a restoration project by UCLA, it’s satisfying, if not particularly memorable. Dr Richard Talbot (Smith) is a hard-working breadwinner for his all-American postwar family. He and his wife are on separate suburban tracks, barely interacting, yet seemingly content in their roles. Into his life comes Nora (Sheridan), a nightclub singer who has been studying the doctor from afar. She is lightly struck by a car, and he appears on the scene, taking her to the office for treatment. She flirts with him, and starts blowing on the small spark of potential excitement within him. Through a couple subsequent meetings their relationship captivates him, and he shares plans to divorce his wife with Nora. 

Life intervenes, and his wife and family’s dependence on him cause Talbot to renege on the divorce. A patient with a bad heart stumbles into his office and dies. Noting the height, weight and age similarity between them, Talbot gets a new idea about how to have it all. What follows is relocation, role reversal, despondency, alcoholism, violence, plastic surgery, and a car chase. Many things that make noir great follow in a rush during the last forty minutes. You know Talbot has fallen into an inescapable vortex created by his own bad decisions. You can only feel glad it wasn’t you. Sheridan is somewhere between Rita Hayworth and Eve Arden; not a bad place to be. Cinematography here by the great James Wong Howe. We liked how the appearance of the sign for San Francisco’s Cliff House implies something about to go off a cliff. C+

A pretty progressive film for the time, or maybe a timely film for today.  An old cop turned bad (Begley) recruits two men who are down on their luck, Johnny(Belafonte) and Earl (Ryan), to assist in a scheme. There is a lot of back story development with the men’s failing relationships with their women, and Earl is given several opportunities to demonstrate his strong anti-racial bias. So they are given one “roll of the dice” opportunity to prove themselves winners, by robbing a bank in upstate New York. After all the drama setting this up, it is a palpable relief when, with about 15 minutes left in the movie, the crime finally plays out. That part is good, and Begley’s role is great. Belafonte has a chance to sing a good song in a nightclub, and to interrupt another by over-singing a young chanteuse. Somewhat overwrought with the relationships, especially Johnny’s with his young daughter, and Shelley Winters constant pawing at Ryan, for no apparent reason, though he hints that when he’s “old” he won’t have anything at all worth sharing with her. Features Earl driving 110 mph, and a finale reminiscent of White Heat.  C

He’s a bitter unattached and misanthropic detective; she’s a blind (but self-sufficient) young woman with a fugitive brother. He’s from the Big City; she lives in the snowy foothills of somewhere north of the Big City. Ward Bond plays the bull in a china shop, making Ryan look more genteel and composed than he appeared in the early part of the film. There is a upshifting of gears then, from the first 30 minutes of set up in the Big City, to a manhunt out in the freezing back country. But the progress of this film sputters through long lapses in action as we watch Ida Lupino stare sightlessly into space, while wondering why Ryan is developing a puppy dog-like attachment to her. It has an odd Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, with everything from blaring horns to sappy strings. Weirdly symphonic, or maybe operatic (like the film works in service to the score) and in effect, occasionally detracting one’s attention from the movie itself. Herrmann certainly had better moments than this in his great work with Hitchcock. C

Holy cow! What an unremittingly intense movie this is. Great character acting by a sizable ensemble of early Method actors. Terry Malloy (Brando) is a washed-up boxer who gets by on the shirttails of his brother Charlie (Steiger), who is second in command of the mob running the NYC longshoremen. Terry is turned into a flunky for Johnnie Friendly (Cobb) who, despite his name, is ruthless. Malden is a priest crusading for workers rights, Sainte is a madonna figure bringing Brando to some greater sense of awareness/righteousness, and the rest of the cast mostly mills about like fixtures in a depressing plumbing store. The device about Malloy raising pigeons on his roof seemed predictive of Mike Tyson doing the same thing. Terrific decision to film on location in Hoboken New Jersey. Not strictly a film noir, but outstanding in its use of black and white, shadow and light, with that plot element of desperate men making tough choices. A

The limited studio set reminded me of Dead End (1937), and the heartless villain tangled up with a bored young woman was reminiscent of The Petrified Forest (1936). It all comes around; Bogart, who starred in both those movies wanted the role that went to Garfield in this film. Based on a play, with a very different screenplay written by Robert Rossen and Jerry Wald. Adding the camera work of James Wong Howe, it’s a strong offering. The story of Jonah and Olaf, old friends who share a small boat for fishing on Sheepshead Bay. They get roped in by a young and swaggering con man (Garfield, as Goff) who extorts protection money from them. He also moves in on Jonah’s lovely daughter Stella (Lupino), who needs more excitement than she gets from solid but staid George (Albert). It almost all goes badly for Jonah, but the Hays Code wins in the end. It wouldn’t have several years later. There are enough moments in this movie to recommend as solid proto-noir. It stands at the intersection of the ‘old country’ generation, and the ‘gotta get it’ generation to come. No need to worry about Bogart’s feelings; he just slid over into the role of Sam Spade in Maltese Falcon that same year. Noir was off to the races. B 

Yes, I think I do love the unscrupulous women of Noir. Greer is terrific as Kathie Moffat, a woman on the run from Whit Sterling (Douglas), who she had earlier shot in anger. She heads to Mexico, and Sterling hires Jeff Bailey (Mitchum), a down and out gumshoe, to bring her back.  Many sorts of twists follow. Some great scenery of San Francisco, Tahoe, New York, Mexico. Some ponderable lines too:

Leonard Eels: All women are wonders, because they reduce all men to the obvious.

This film was Douglas’ second, after The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers. He seems a little lost in here, his presence larger than his role. He doesn’t come across as much more than a smirking threat with little to back it up, and it doesn’t help his credibility as he gives Bailey repeated chances to redeem himself after failing to execute his mission. Out Of The Past caused me to consider the word commit, and the implications of it. When Kathie says something like “You do believe me, don’t you, Jeff?”, he replies “Baby, I don’t care”. He has just committed himself to her over his obligation to Whit; also, he may have committed him from a plan to a fate, throwing that to the wind in his passion for Kathie. He may also be committing a sin, or a crime either now, or in the course of events. Baby, he don’t care. Of course, she is not worth this, or any subsequent trust. This is a great combination of screenplay, cinematography and acting.  A 

Japanese New Wave Noir. This film brings the same samurai ethic of the hitman that one sees in Melville’s LeSamurai, or Lerner’s Murder By Contract, but in its native environment. A yakuza hitman, just released from prison, drifts into the influence of a new boss and underground gambling sessions of the Flower Game. The rules are never explained, but the action is compelling, visually and aurally. In fact, the slap of tiles, tap dancing, discordant orchestral notes, rain, breathing – are all used as a non-musical but rhythmically fascinating soundtrack. A key feature is the stoicism of both hitman (Ikebe) and thrill seeking woman (Kaga). They observe but barely participate in the world around them, as their fortunes shift. One is left to wonder who of the pair was more jaded by life. Lots of rainy streets and narrow alleyways. Stylistic and existential to a fault, this is an interesting find. B

This was the first semi-starring role Bogie had. As told, it was the result of so much lobbying by Leslie Howard that Bogart and Bacall named their second child Leslie in gratitude. Gabrielle (Davis) desperately wants out of a place in the desert where nothing happens toward some grander French dream. Alan Squier, a literate but broken man hitchhiking West (Howard) happens upon the small hotel/restaurant Gabrielle works in. 

Alan Squier: “I’ve never kidded anybody, outside of myself.”

Duke Mantee (based on John Dillinger, whose mannerisms Bogart studied for the movie) barges in with the gang and hostages and takes over. He is one cold killer, and his remorselessness proves key in the unwinding of the plot. Charley Grapewin as Gramp is believable as an old man half mad from isolation and his own memories. 

A lot of human drama transpires in this tight 80 minute film version of an earlier Broadway play.  B. 

My bet is that you’ll never forget the freudian drumming routine by Elisha Cook, Jr. In a year, I’ll bet it’s the only association I can still make to this movie. Shame, as the cinematography (by Woody Bredell) and staging are atmospheric and evocative. Shame, as the book was by Cornell Woolrich and the production by Joan Harrison. It’s not a bad film, and has entertaining moments, but the plot is flimsy and the conclusion rather meh. Ella Raines capably carries the film, and provides a nice template for female sleuths to follow. The one sense that pervades the movie is of innocent people victimized by fate, convicted on circumstantial evidence, coming home to occupied rooms, being asked questions in incriminating ways, and either jumping or being pushed.  C. 

Distributed by Warner Brothers, it has the social activism of WB all over it. The basic line is that “Sin City” has been taken over by criminals, and has become Gomorrah. So gambling, alcohol and prostitution are rife, with lots of muscle and intimidation to protect the business. Albert Patterson (McIntyre) is a lawyer for the mob, kindly but resigned to the facts of life in Phenix City. His idealistic son John (Kiley) returns from Korea, and is somehow appalled at his home town being what it has always been. His young wife (Kathryn Grant) and son are in tow. John makes it his mission to reform the town, and an epic struggle follows. This was based on a true story in Alabama, and there are strong messages of civil rights vs civil liberties. The head of the mob, Tanner (Edward Andrews) sums up their point of view, and that of many entrenched Southern interests, when he says, “Half the trouble with the people in the world today is they just don’t want to let things stay the way they are”. It’s a fast film, and surprisingly graphic in it’s depictions of violence. John Patterson sets a standard others would certainly follow in the “one man against a rotten system” movies of the 70’s. Let’s see; any Charles Bronson movie, Walking Tall, Billy Jack, High Plains Drifter, Bad Day at Black Rock for starters. 

Screenplay ably done by Daniel Manwaring, who also wrote Out Of The Past. Pretty cool backstory if you care to look it up. Kathryn Grant is annoying as the ever-protesting wife of John Patterson, but the rest of the characterizations are well done. You might not want to get too attached to anybody in the story, as the body count builds. On our DVD version, a documentary style prologue was added. It was lame, and disorienting, as folks begin discussing their role in events the viewer is unaware of. Would have been far more valuable as a clickable “extra” on the DVD. B

A concise film with little dialog, but a very clear lens in the squalor of late-50s Paris. A convict named Michel (LaSalle) finds he can’t reform, and have come to view picking pockets as his primary means of self-expression. He falls in with an expert who mentors him and refines his bad habits, while Jeanne cares for his sickly and otherwise neglected mother. A real feel for the down and out life, the lure of inevitability, and the moral ambiguity of French existentialism. Matt saw a lot of Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment) in this film, which became a very influential movie in later French cinema verite . B-

The Postman Always Rings Twice  on a shoestring budget. Hugo was a Czech emigre who saved enough from playing emigre types to bankroll a film of his own. He pulled from a Czech novel of 1929, although the plot is nearly self-explanatory. Trashy dame weds simple man, meets a hunk, and the two scheme to do him in. Neat plot twist with hearing loss, but it unwinds about as one would suspect. For an $86,000 film produced, written directed and starring Haas, it’s not half bad. Also a model of story telling efficiency at a mere 81 minutes. Beverly Michaels was one statuesque floozy. More about Haas in our review of 1957’s Hit And Run.  B

A superior job from an uneven auteur director, Fuller also wrote the screenplay. There are good contributions from a number of smaller roles in this movie, and the presence of Ritter was inspired, as she adds a lot of humanity to the film. Speaking of film, this is a transitional noir, with the juxtaposition of Skip McCoy (Widmark) living in a depression era shack on an urban river while holding onto priceless stolen microfilm the “Reds” want. Candy (Peters) is a mule for every errand, and takes some serious abuse for the trouble while remaining a good sport. Kissing McCoy after he nearly breaks her jaw with a punch seems accommodating indeed. The pickpocketing McCoy excels at seems technically adept enough that it made me wonder if Robert Bresson adapted the idea to the full French movie Pickpocket, six years later. Hard Fuller dialog, like this:

What puzzled us during some recent Widmark watching is why he so throttled down the hyperkinesis that made him a truly singular figure on screen, after the early success of Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947) and Harry Fabian in Night and the City (1950). Later in 1950, in Panic in the Streets, he appears content to cede that role to Jack Palance. By 1952, in Don’t Bother To Knock, he’s even willing to let Marilyn Monroe be the crazy. Eventually, with meal ticked punched, he sleep walked through various war and western movies This one showed some of the last sparks of what made him jump from the screen – it was a real gift. B+

Lizabeth Scott – there’s something odd about this woman being a movie star. We’ve seen her work before, in Too Late For Tears, Dead Reckoning, and The Strange Loves Of Martha Ivers. She has a sharp, angular face, with eyebrows mismatched to her hair, and a deep smoky voice. She seems to act at sleepy speed, like a female Mitchum. Those two in a film noir would have been languid indeed. This might have been her best work, says Eddie Mueller, who is not a big Scott fan. We enjoyed it too, and feel it’s also the best noir we’ve seen from Dick Powell, who had a hand in the production. There’s the firm sense of post-war malaise, where a man wonders what’s become of his life. Powell as John Forbes served during WWII in Denver where he won a good conduct medal, married his high school sweetheart, took a job as an insurance adjustor, and moved to suburbia. His routine is routine; as he puts it “I feel like a wheel, within a wheel, within a wheel”.  He and his wife (Wyatt) have a red headed all-American boy who idolizes his dad, not realizing how disaffected dad is by his lot in life. A random shake up in his grind presents itself when he goes to recover some items resulting from an embezzlement. The culprit, now in prison, had lavished gifts on his girl friend, Mona Stevens (Scott). When John and Mona meet, they realize that each represents what the other craves. He is solid, established and respectable; she is glamorous, new and apparently available. The fly in the ointment is McDonald (Burr) who manages to torment John and Mona independently, even needling Mona’s guy in prison. John has his moment of weakness, and enters the familiar noir vortex dragging him to his doom. Or maybe not. It’s an interesting trip and a noir well worth watching. De Toth’s direction is crisp; the movie clips along at a good pace, with little waste. B +. 

Something about Jean Gabin seems utterly unselfconscious on the screen. He appears impassive, yet deep, a brooder who can erupt with little provocation. He’s always interesting to watch, and even seems to have had marketable hair. It actually appears to be featured in this movie, as I was aware of it in profile, straight on, or shot from the top down, and always perfectly coiffed. Odd thing to focus on, but there you go. It’s sometimes difficult to watch a western European picture from this time period without also speculating on how the times; the economic doldrums and storm clouds of impending war may have colored the story and portrayals. For this film, Jean (Gabin) is an army deserter (ex-Indochina), washed up in LeHavre. He gets lucky and stumbles onto the clothing and money of a (suicide?) victim, a meal, a roadhouse home, and the improbable arms of Nelly (Morgan), a teenager in search of something meaningful. He does this while consistently running into the wrong guys. She’s pursued by Lucien, a poor excuse for a gangster, the artist/suicide victim who the plot deemed easily disposable, if incredibly providential for Jean; and Zabel, the Shylock in this Shakespearean festival of French noir, who is both her caretaker and wannabe boyfriend. Jean has to deal with Lucien and Zabel both, to clear the way to his own relationship with Nelly. But the relationship is, of course, doomed, as it must be in this kind of film, and provides for a satisfying noir end. Gabin made this movie after Pepe LeMoko and La Bete Humaine, so his star was definitely on the rise when this was made. Hard to dislike a guy who takes up with stray dogs, too.  B

It took us a long time to get around to this classic noir, perhaps because the later version of this film (1981) with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange seemed so overwrought and mean-spirited. By contrast, the original rendition seems like a pretty delightful romp. Sure, Frank and Cora are confused and somewhat attracted to each other. The primary thesis seems to be that sexual frustration can be deadly. At least it proved to be to Cora’s cheerfully doddering and often drunken old husband Nick. He is unbelievably naïve and more concerned with keeping down the electricity in his diner than that between his wife and his drifter-employee. Beyond that, there is swimming in the ocean, Nick drinking himself goofy and singing, voracious legal eagles (Cronyn, Ames), and a fat man of shifting importance, who botches a blackmail attempt. Some twists in this movie make it seem like about 3 related but separate episodes to the movie: the meeting and murder attempt, the courtroom drama, the marriage and denouement. Music good and appropriate for the time and situation. It also had an ironically prophetic line in it – something like “all Southern California seems like everyone trying to sell someone a hamburger”. B

Ida Lupino sings! Well, sort of. This multi-talented actress also co-wrote, with her second husband (Collier Young) the screenplay for this movie that stars her third husband (Duff.) It involves the moral dilemma of two cops with dreams of a better life, finding a large amount of crooked money. A morality play ensues. Along the way, some footage of Hollywood Park racetrack, very Don Siegelesque chase scene, and a couple of women basically waiting for their men to do the right thing. One does. The police trap at the end proves mostly worthy of the long setup. B

There was very limited release of this film. Odd, as it offers two established stars, a terrific director, and a Dalton Trumbo screenplay. It required restoration by the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA to even bring it back to public consciousness. A cop turns sexual predator while falling for a married woman. He takes her on a stroll down the well-trod noir pathway to desperation and doom. Ends with Heflin demonstrating one of our ten rules – that you can never physically climb your way out of trouble in a noir film. There is a feeling of creepy dread that infiltrates this movie nearly from the start;  it never really eases up. Kept rooting for Keyes to shake herself out of it, but she’s helpless in the vortex that drags her down. He wants wealth, she wants a baby, and the only overlap is that she’s wealthy and he’s fertile. Very tight production. A.

There are reviews that compare this movie unfavorably against Double Indemnity. Indeed, Novak is no Stanwyck and Quine is no Wilder, but although derivative, this movie manages to stand well on its own feet. The pacing is efficient, deliberate and irresistible. What I liked best was watching the ineluctable result of all the foreshadowing – the pathological need for money or security drawing the characters toward the climax. This is where MacMurray shines. He’s cardboard for the most part, but shines when the heat is on and he feels trapped within his confining web of deceits. It’s as if each complication progressively limits his field of play, until he’s trapped in a corner facing the inevitable. This plays on his face and in the quiet desperation his body language shows. He exhibited this trait in The Caine Mutiny too. Kim Novak is a revelation. I never understood the ‘’sex symbol” characterization of her, but this is a classic femme fatale role. At the end, the viewer isn’t sure what her actual motives were. Perhaps it was greed, or real love, or just having nothing but the next cigarette to look forward to. She doesn’t let on, but her last look lends a priceless ambiguity. Carey and Malone serve as the strait-shooting, clean-living antitheses of the leads, providing plenty of ironic contrast to show that it didn’t necessarily have to play the way MacMurray and Novak chose to play it. The Arthur Morton score serves the film well, and better than most. B+

Cinematography by George E. Diskant (see The Narrow Margin, On Dangerous Ground). Good cinematography, it is – a lot of outdoor looks at great major appliance- like cars of the early 50’s, speeding around L.A., a nightclub with a crooning Lizabeth, the usual booking room at the station, and post-war tract suburbs. The shooting holds the movie together, as the plot careens around a large number of bit actors and momentary scenarios. This was an example of Howard Hughes over-tinkering with his productions. The film had at least 5 directors, including an uncredited Nicholas Ray. The core story is that of an incorruptible cop (Mitchum) up against an incorrigible racketeer (Ryan) who controls several key members of the law establishment, including the judge and D.A. Mitchum and Ryan hulk and tower over the supporting cast, Mitchum in a sleepy state, Ryan as crazy and volatile as you could ever hope to see. The women in the film are both too good to be true. Lizabeth seems tough for about the first 30 minutes, then starts adopting strays. Tallman plays against type (see The Hitchhiker) as the good striving cop with the adoring widow-to-be. William Conrad is an interesting presence, hanging out in various scenes, seemingly uncommitted to right or wrong, waiting for which combatant wins before choosing a side. Not bad, but hardly memorable. Postscript – Pat and I saw this movie again; neither remembered having seen it before. Proof positive. C.

Canonical, as film noir goes. Burr springs O’Keefe from jail, with the getaway car driven by girlfriend Trevor. Burr owes O’Keefe $50K for taking the fall, and O’Keefe is heading to collect a bill Burr has no intention of making good on. Meanwhile, O’Keefe’s caseworker, Hunt, is so smitten with him that she winds up on the run as well. She starts down the noir vortex, which makes O’Keefe a sort of homme fatale, and unlikely focus of two women’s affections. He is, in no way, loveable, but ain’t that just like a woman? Very hard hitting, with Burr especially soulless. In fact, Eddie Muller points out that producer Edward Small hired the son of censor Joseph Green specifically to get around his dad’s red pencil. We liked NYT critic Bosley Crowther’s 1948 comment; “The only thing proved by this picture is that you shouldn’t switch sweethearts in mid-lam. Seems to have worked. Meticulous cinematography, such as an actual sparkle, in the eye or earrings, by John Alton. B+ 

Feminist noir? Here, an extortionist undergoes a mid-movie conversion, switching places with the person headed down the noir road to doom. In this case, Bennett’s husband is off on business, leaving her to deal with the fact that a middle aged broke neer-do-well has seduced his 17 year old daughter. When said bum is killed, Bennett flies into all the wrong responses, creating an opportunity for other schemers to blackmail her. One of the schemers (Mason, as Martin) then performs an amazing reverse Stockholm Syndrome move, and suffers the consequences. Along the way, Orphuls keeps things interesting with many bit players and off-hand remarks. Some concise philosophy is offered up along the way, too.

Martin: “Hell is other people.” 

Martin: “You have your family; I have my Nagel.”

Bea: “When you’re seventeen today, you know what the score is.”

Stong, stoic work by Mason. Believably impulsive and decisive performance by Bennett. Interesting how her chain smoking affects the course of events. Hard to figure the role that they determined eyeglasses should have, as they’re on early, and gone late. Super tracking shots in several scenes. Solid B. 

Looking past George Raft’s obvious shortcomings as an actor, this is a pretty decent noir, with outstanding set design. Many standard noir tropes are present here, and it’s good that Burr as Nick, Harry/Henry as Nick’s jailbird accomplice and Gene Lockhart as Warni Hazard, Raft’s business partner, are along to carry the weight of the film. 

Warni Hazard: “My old man always said liquor doesn’t drown your troubles – just teaches ‘em to swim.”

Raft is his impervious wooden self and Mayo is just along as window dressing, with nothing much to do besides whine to Raft about how he just can’t continue doing what he’s doing. What he’s doing is trying to figure who killed his priest/brother by tracking down a bible said to contain a clue. He throws himself into this search while somehow ignoring the obvious suspects. Can’t say enough about the value of Raymond Burr to American noir. He has a slow malevolence about him that plays real. A nice counterpoint of evil to all the religious devotion on display here. C+

It’s A Wonderful Life, as translated into film noir. A woman shoots her husband at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and finds herself reliving the entire preceding year. Messing with the space-time continuum doesn’t work, even in the movies. The dead live only to die again, but maybe some of the details change. Barney Page (Hayward) richly deserves the bullet he gets, to the point that it’s kind of nice to see him catch it twice. Richard Basehart plays a character who is almost certainly gay, but has to skirt the production code, so becomes a mad poet instead. An interesting excursion, with good acting all round. B. 

Nicholas Musuraca’s superb cinematography is enough to recommend this film, but there’s much more. McGraw, as insurance detective Joe Peters is a straight shooter who goes bad in pursuit of the wrong woman. She is the moll of a high-profile mobster who scams money from schemes like robbing the contents from buildings he leases. Joe is smitten by her, and they end up together through some small twists of fate. She likes him, but not as guy scraping by on $350 a month. He turns to the dark side at almost the exact moment she decides to go straight, and the complicated path to riches he’s planned for them begins to go awry. McGraw shows some emotional depth in his gruff way, and it’s a foregone conclusion that he’ll be unable to pay the bill due at the end. Maybe the first movie to feature a chase down through the Los Angeles River – an exciting climax for a taut little noir. Side note: Howard Hughes, who owned both RKO and TWA, shows no shame in featuring his airline here. Those were the days for air travel.  B. 

Jefty (Widmark) owns a road house/bowling alley, which he runs with longtime friend Pete (Wilde). Susie (Holm) is the cashier, hopelessly attracted to Pete. When Jefty brings Lily, a new singer (Lupino) in from Chicago, it doesn’t take long for both men to fall for her. Jefty doesn’t take this well at all, and evolves over the course of the film into the homocidal maniac that marked his early successes. (See Kiss Of Death or No Way Out.) The first half of the movie is a showcase for Lily, as she sings, plays piano, bowls, and firms up her position with Pete. The second half pretty much belongs to Jefty. I’m not sure what kind of respectable roadhouse would combine a torch singer entertaining bowlers in between frames, but I’ve seen flimsier premises. Celeste Holm seemed to be typecast into the good sport, also-ran romantic roles (see High Society.) An entertaining 90 minutes. B.

Mark Chapman (Crawford) is the take-no-prisoners editor of a trashy New York paper. Steve McCleary (Derek) is his journalist protégée. They have a pattern of beating the police to crime scenes, getting the story and spinning it as sensationally as possible. Donna Reed would be a poor choice for a femme fatale, so she plays the long suffering reporter pal of McCleary, trying to figure out what he’s up to and if she’s any part of his longer term plans. Chapman gets an unwelcome visitor from his past, who threatens to undo his meteoric rise in paper land, and he begins falling into the vortex. Rule: You can’t murder your way out of trouble in noir. Outside of Reed, there is no real goodness here. A lot of the film takes place in New York’s Bowery section, where an alcoholic former star journalist tries to right his boat. Casting found some genuine looking down and outers for its habitués. This is a tightly directed production with a sense of the inevitable; still capable of springing a couple of good tricks. It’s a dark one, and Crawford is at his malevolent best.  B. 

With “More Stars Than There Are In Heaven,” MGM could throw a lot of talent into this film, so you get familiar faces like Leon Ames and Norman Lloyd for no extra charge. The Tiffany Studio sat out the early years of noir, favoring the light comedies and big musicals Mayer preferred. When Dore Schary returned from RKO in 1948, he put his dark sensibility into the mix, and this was the result.  The female casting is curious, with DeHaven and Dahl seemingly working each other’s natural role, but it’s not jarringly off. A police procedural involving a detective investigating the murder of a former partner. All the twists of night in the underworld result. Good scenes in the club where DeHaven is a singer and sort of stripper. Van Johnson’s range extends from A to B, kind of like Sterling Hayden. Macho enough for a couple raucous fights and a lot of terse asides. 

P.J. Pontiac: “I’m no Humphrey Bogart. He gets slugged and he’s ready for action; I get slugged and I’m ready for pickling.” 

P.J. Pontiac: “Lili, a sizzler at the Club Fol De Rol. A figure like champagne and a heart like the cork.”

The film has both good cinematography and interesting music by Andre Previn. All things considered, it keeps moving and reaches the conclusion that crime doesn’t pay, even though the collateral damage is considerable. No idea what ever happened to Lili (DeHaven), and I guess we weren’t supposed to care. Dames….B

72 minutes shot as if in real time. There are watches and clocks placed here and there in the film to help track the passage of time, an interesting device several years before it was done in High Noon. Robert Ryan, as 35 year old washed up second tier fighter Stoker Thompson, brought his real world boxing chops to this performance. He is to take a dive in a fixed fight, but his handlers, sure that he’ll lose anyway, don’t bother to tell him.

This puts him ultimately in a situation where he crosses Little Boy, a small time crime boss. The climax would be heart-rending if not for the fact that his wife, Julie (Totter) is so relieved, and Stoker finally realizes he can now go on to some other pursuit. This is one tight piece of work, a masterpiece in the long history of boxing movies. Some nearly Fellini-type freaks sitting ringside add some surrealism.  A

Hard to figure Edmond O’Brien. He features in some strong examples of dark cinema, like DOA, The Hitchhiker, The Killers, Shield For Murder and The Web. Whether protagonist or antagonist, all attempts to lend him any charisma are futile. The guy is just a schlub, which can make him seem miscast as he dons a new suitcoat, then jams both hands into its pockets. Watching him try to dance with the lovely Joanne Dru in this is almost painful. That she keeps claiming she doesn’t care about the beating she takes as long as he’s ok simply rings crazy. Anyway, this is an otherwise decent story of a telephone repairman who becomes LA’s king of bookies, while drawing the wrath of a bigger network of hoods. Mal (O’Brien) introduces technological disruption as a device to dominate a niche, and that is certainly how things do play. Along the way, he loses all sense of decency, and devolves toward irredeemable trouble. Great finale at Hoover Dam makes up for some slow set-ups along the way. C

Prof. Sam Bastion: “Slob’s got an eight cylinder body and a two cylinder mind”. 

An interesting film streamed from YouTube. It’s a proxy for a lot of Fifties fears. The “shack” is an isolated diner on the Pacific Coast Highway, run by George (Wynn), who employs a wisenheimer troublemaker cook, Slob (Marvin) and a “tomata”, Kotty (Moore). Everyone hits on Kotty, and George actually loves her, but as an unstated thing. There’s immediate tension as to whether Slob will rape her at the very start of the movie. Some of that tension runs through the film, though Kotty doesn’t take it too seriously, and bashes Slob around a bit herself. She goes for a customer, Professor Bastion (Lovejoy) instead, although he only hangs around her because he’s either a traitor selling atomic secrets to two men posing as chicken truck drivers, or a patriot trying to break up a similar ring. Who knows? There is some absurdity, or comic relief with some weight lifting, and preparation for a scuba diving excursion. This is to prove to each other that none of these men have lost their machismo. They’re anxious to generate some excitement in the mid-fifties to rival what they felt on D-Day. The shadowy red menace lurks, and microfilm, and a silly punching contest between Slob and another delivery person, or possibly a Commie agent. No one is above suspicion but Kotty, and why she hangs around this place is way beyond me. A low-budget production that could have been a play, as well over 90% is staged in the diner. Not expressive cinematography, either, but Lee Marvin gives the film a certain psychotic energy that is fun to watch unfold. C

Hitchcock’s favorite of his own films, although a lesser known part of his canon. “A” quality production, sharply and crisply acted, directed and shot. Hitchcock enlisted Thornton Wilder to write the screenplay with a distinctly small town American feel. His collaborator was Hitchcock’s wife, Alma, and this was not unusual. 

Uncle Charlie (Cotten) comes to town and stays with his adoring sister, her daughter (also named Charlie), and a couple of boarders at the house. He seems guilty of something, and younger Charlie sets about trying to figure what it is. There is a creepy scene where Uncle Charlie gives a chilling monologue about old rich widows, and the movie pivots toward his undoing. He’s no good, and we’ll spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out what he’s done and what will come of it. Through this, there are twists, accidents, and escalating tension, leading to a climax on the train out of Santa Rosa. Really good stuff. Worthy soundtrack by Dmitri Tiompkin as well.  A

A bit of Too Late For Tears from a year earlier, in that it involves what to do with money that comes in easy but hot. Also reminiscent of  1948’s The Naked City, with its police narrator describing the action as it occurs. Like Naked City, there’s a strong sense of New York City, with a lot of real street footage and meticulous stage construction. This is what is meant by mise-en-scene, an otherwise hard to define film term. It refers to the overall look of a movie through its set design, lighting, cinematography, wardrobe and arrangement of actors. It’s the intangible thing film noir expresses so consistently, yet remains difficult to describe. Farley Granger fits in quite well, a well-intentioned but hapless young man caught in the gears of an existential crisis. Kathy O’Donnell is wasted in her role – barely appearing outside of her hospital bed. Jean Hagen takes the lead in her first notable role. She’s a convincingly hard-nosed femme, headed nowhere and taking her men down with her. B.  

Richard (Ameche) finds himself malingering with a rich wife Alison (Colbert), and would prefer her gone, so he could hitch up with his lady in waiting (Hazel Brooks, forgettable as Daphne). He has thus cooked up a plan with Daphne’s wicked partner Dr. Reinhardt, to drug and hypnotize his wife into committing suicide. Otherwise, pretty straight stuff. This unfolded like a mundane plot shined up with window dressing to be some star-quality vehicle. Interestingly, Bob Cummings, as Bruce, plays almost the exact character he reprises 6 years later in Dial “M” For Murder; straight-laced, eager and ingratiating. I suspect that Hitchcock saw what he wanted from that actor in this movie. It suits Cummings, who is harmless, almost asexual, yet smitten and curious all at the same time. The movie also brings in the lure of the exotic with Bruce’s Chinese friend, who has a digressive but atmospheric wedding. We get a crazy fiend in Dr. Reinhardt, a slutty shrewish hybrid in Daphne, and the Williamsburg Bridge featured from the bedroom window. Kind of a slog, with moments. C

An interesting film in many ways. Produced by Stanley Kramer, and part of Dmytryk’s post-HUAC imprisonment rehabilitation, this looked more like a social evils piece from Warner Brothers than a Columbia release. Franz, as killer Eddie Miller, is a revelation. Dmytryk cast a regular guy, rather than a despicable one as the focal point. This character schemes and begs for help in dealing with his peculiar problem of shooting women. There is a printed explanation before the film. It proposes that the audience keep an open mind toward something that had few antecedents in cinema, the sexual serial killer (although M comes to mind). Filmed with gritty realism, and extremely sharp camera work on the streets of San Francisco. It prefigures Dirty Harry in both location and theme. The police investigation is not developed nearly as much as the psychological profiling of Eddie, and the grim progression of his impulse toward a bad end. Marie Windsor, as night club singer Jean Darr, is terrific. One can easily sense the mix of allure and intimidation she presents to Eddie. Her death is probably as violent as a director could get away with in 1952. Similarly, an odd scene where a man working on a high chimney at a distance is targeted by Eddie is almost Hitchcockian in the way he dies, descending like a spider on its thread. Lots of cameos by faces you’ve seen in movies and TV from the 60s. It’s not a fun movie, but taut and well-told. B

Adapted from a radio show, which became a novel, this stylish noir attempts to cover a lot of ground, making heavy use of flashbacks. Sometimes the present becomes nearly forgotten as the flashbacks unfold, but the current aspect is significant because Leona Stevenson (Stanwyck) is slowly coming to the realization that the crime she’s overheard on the phone portends her own murder at 11:15pm. It’s a relaxed supporting cast, with the exception of Burt Lancaster, as her husband Henry – an ambitious man trapped by the money and position that came with marrying a spoiled hypochondriac. He is jumpy and kinetic. Good use of dark shades, and no wimpy ending. Stanwyck, as usual, is great, if somewhat overwrought (she said her hair turned prematurely grey during filming), confined to bed and conducting her investigation nearly by accident over the phone. She fails to do the obvious thing by calling the police to save her. She writes them off after a single effort ends with a policeman, distracted by a crying baby, telling her he’s busy. Perhaps Stanwyck had been through enough noir to know the cops would be too late.  B

Also released as The Amazing Mr. X. Recommended for its sparkling cinematography by John Alton. He does amazing things with moonlight on water, the individually shining facets of earrings, or shadows inside a small closet. Here, we have a pair of sisters living alone in an inherited mansion high above the rolling ocean. The older sister (Bari) is two years widowed from a man she appears haunted by. The younger sister (O’Donnell) attempts to deal with this by setting her up with a mystic (Bey), who is working an elaborate scheme to swindle her. It gets weirder and weirder yet. There is a private investigator who does corny magic on the side, another suitor (Carlson) who is unable to gain any traction with Bari, and a faux Swedish maid who may somehow be implicated in the swindle. It’s a dark and almost gothic piece, livened up considerably by O’Donnell who brings it more currency when needed. Suspend your disbelief, and you’ll find it an enjoyable diversion. C+.

Movie curtain call for the costars, who were also cast 9 years earlier in Shadow Of A Doubt (see). Movie gets right to work, as Jim Osborne (Cotton), as an assistant manager of a bank, undergoes an “uncontrollable urge” to rob his own employer. He times it so that a cool million is in the safe at the close of business Friday, and gameplans the heist on the fact that Brazil has no extradition treaty with the US. His whole caper is well thought out, but relies on extremely tight timelines. As such, his falling off schedule even by minutes constitutes much of the tension in this unjustifiably obscure film. A key problem is that he truly loves his wife, and brings her along without cluing her in. She knows something is amiss, as he seems always on the edge of coming unglued, blaming it on the importance of the business deal they’re off to do in Brazil. Of course, none of this works out well for anyone involved. When she walks away, he attempts to return the stolen money, and all the tension returns in reverse, like a backwards roller coaster. This film struck me as more nightmarish than most, as it incorporates such a common dream theme as running behind the clock. Unsure if it’s really a noir, with its ending and the lack of narration and flashbacks, police procedurals and dark streets. The scenes of New Orleans are great. B

Considering the box office appeal of top-billed Stanwyck, it was a calculated risk to delay her first appearance here until after the film’s first half-hour. It works in a reassuring way, like seeing the captain of a ship standing confidently on deck as land disappears. What she (as Martha) missed was a long set up from her pampered childhood, where she took a fireplace poker to her fussy old aunt (Judith Anderson) as an ambitious boy her age looked on. Pledged to secrecy, those two eventually end up married, with him (now Douglas) the D.A. of Iversville. Another boy, now Heflin, either witnessed the killing or didn’t, and shows up years later at the Ivers house when his car breaks down. Thus begins a tangled tale of three, with an unfortunate law-breaker (Scott) thrown in, wondering what all the hubbub is about. She just wants her man, and to get out of town, in that order. Say, how many old movies resort to fireplace pokers as weapons of destruction? This was Kirk Douglas’s screen debut, and he is terrific as an insecure and wildly alcoholic public official. Heflin is much more self-assured, and Stanwyck is, of course, drawn to that as she has carried a torch for this guy since childhood. In the end, Heflin and Scott go off together, heedless of the self-destruction lying in their wake. We were up on deck with the captain, from where we saw the whole affair. Kudos to Miklos Rozsa for a great soundtrack. B. 

Early noir, for sure. The cinematography, dark and angular, is from Nicholas Musuraca. Wish the direction was as sure as the camera work. The actors seem lost in a dream state, with the exception of Cook, Jr, who always livens a film. He is a man falsely accused of murder. He is sentenced to die, while a newspaperman (McGuire) credited with breaking the case, dreams of his own guilt in killing a snoring man in the next apartment. His girlfriend (Tallichet) takes up for Cook, and the whole affair shrugs and gives up at the end. Perhaps RKO didn’t know what they were creating here, or how to properly resolve it. Interesting from a genre development point of view. C

A tour-de-force for Robinson, as Wilson, a Nazi hunter who has tracked Welles (as Rankin) to a small town in Connecticut. I maintain that one of the signal features of a film noir is one incredibly naive party for the movie to orbit. That role went here to Loretta Young as Mary. She inexplicably marries Rankin, though he’s obviously creepy, and given to lecturing family members at the dinner table over the virtues and problems of greater Germany. The audience knows Rankin is rotten about 90 minutes before it dawns on his wife. And so it goes in noir. Robinson neatly anticipates the role Peter Falk would later work as a formula in Columbo. The end in the old church clock is Hitchcockian. Dark almost murky cinematography at times. C+

Young Detective Murakami (Mifune) has just passed the academy, and is headed home on a bus when a pickpocket pilfers his gun. Guns in post-war Japan were banned, and precious on the black market where they might be rented, used and returned within that poor and desperate back alley economy. Murakami is distraught by the theft, and tries to resign, but is told to go try to find the gun. What follows is a long sequence where he walks for miles in the moccasins of those slum habitués, to get a sense of the market for a specific small Colt pistol. During this 10-minute stretch, the viewer also gets an extended look at teeming squalid urban Tokyo during the late 40’s. Murakami is working within the local police HQ jurisdiction, and meets Detective Sato (Shimura), who becomes the wise and kindly old mentor, while Murakami stews and sweats. Part of this is due to the obvious heatwave at the time. Everyone glistens with perspiration, and one hand is usually working a fan. The torrential rains only add more humidity.

Sato and Murakami attempt to trap a suspect at a Nomura Giants game, and the shots of a full (50,000 people, says Sato) stadium and actual play provide a compelling set within the movie (you’re safe, you’re out). People are killed during a string of crimes involving Murakami’s gun, which causes the young detective to become even more agitated and guilty. He shadows suspects, and visits nightclubs, homes, and slums in his search for the pistol. During this, he learns that the differences between the criminal and himself are nearly arbitrary and very much the net effect of chance. A shooting too many, a chase on foot which wears both pursuer and prey down completely, and a denouement in the hospital all make for a richly satisfying affair. Terrific and diverse soundtrack as well. I knew the harmonica song in the middle, but couldn’t name it. Kurosawa shows a lot of early empathy for his characters, and fleshes them all out nicely. The motivations of most everyone in this film are clearly defined and true to form. B+ 

Straight forward stuff, with some cool train travel and scenery around San Francisco. Lester Blaine (Palance), an unctuously nice guy who otherwise might seem better cast as a prizefighter, ingratiates himself to Myra Hudson (Crawford) an aging but famous playwright. She falls in love with and marries him. He then schemes with his paramour (Grahame) to kill Myra for her fortune. An inconvenient murder is in the works, but technology plays an important spoiler role. In on the secret, Grahame decides to kill them before they can kill her, with various noir hijinx ensuing. Well, the best laid plans often go awry, and it’s amazing that two women would dress so similarly with so much on the line. True to form nobody gets what they want though they probably all get what they deserve, and the credits roll fairly abruptly, like “they’re all dead, folks, now go on home”. Palance is good, if unctuous – his gift of physicality is kept as a mere suggestion. Grahame is, as was almost always the case, right at home here. Crawford gets lots of closeups to showcase her kabuki facial skills at love, shock, horror, and amusement. She got a best actress nomination for the trouble. Although nearly forgotten, this film was up for four Oscars in 1953. Pretty good dialogue, even with all the literary quotes coming from Lester straining the credulity of it all. Ah, love. 

Extra credit point. Usually, the name of a noir film has no discernible connection to the movie itself. This makes the titles difficult to remember. Sudden Fear featured about four instances of something jolting occurring on screen, like Myra hiding in a stairway as Lester searches for her. She steps on a cat’s tail, and you get a quick flash of close-up cat, and a loud cat screech.  Like Hitchcock on the cheap. Pat liked this movie better than the grade I give it. C+

Ah, Billy Wilder. He directed and co-wrote some terrific movies, including Witness For The Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, Stalag 17, Ace In The Hole (see) and of course, Double Indemnity (see). This is an interesting combination of Hollywood insider entertainment/parable, and film noir. It has to be – the opening scene is from the bottom of a swimming pool, looking up at a drowned man. The opening lines:

Joe Gillis: Yes, this is Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, California. It’s about 5 o’clock in the morning. That’s the homicide squad, complete with detectives and newspaper men. 

First person narratives told through flashbacks are a staple of the genre, but this is the first I’ve seen where the narrator is the deceased. 

No one ends up well in this film, although the ensemble acting is great. Everyone is on the make, chasing their own interests, or trying to make it big. Norma Desmond (Swanson) had it big, but is in an extended exile from film, missing the transformation from silents to talkies, and lacking any respect for the changes while she’d been out:

This film has all the dark busy desperation one would want from mid-town Manhattan in the mid-Fifties. Lancaster, as JJ Hunsecker is a society and entertainment columnist with a lot of “make or break a star” power. Curtis, as Sidney Falco is a press agent dependent on placements in Hunsecker’s column for a living. He is an irrepressible toady trying to climb the “golden ladder” Hunsecker represents. In the meantime, he lives a tenuous hustling existence. The plot concerns the need each has for the other, and the way innocent folks get trampled by unscrupulous porch climbers. 

Hunsecker: “My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years”.

An appearance by the Chico Hamilton Quintet feeds the jazzy soundtrack. Screenplay by Clifford Odets, in a cleanup role after Ben Hecht had worked on it. A lot of ambitious thrashing in this movie, and a terrific portrait of the big city. I told my wife I want to live in Manhattan, but only if it’s 1957. Settings include the Brill Building, the Flatiron Building, Toots Shor, and the 21 Club. As Milton Morris once stated his position during a mayoral bid in Kansas City – “ I want a swinging city, not a livable one”.  It all rings true in this film, though I take half a mark for the wimpy undeveloped, but key role of Susan, JJ’s little sister and psychopathological obsession.  A-

We went into this one with low expectations, which were pleasantly exceeded. Well-paced and tightly directed, with good camera work and terrific acting all around. Warren Quimby (Basehart) is a milquetoast pharmacist, married to bored, self-absorbed, and likely nymphomaniac Clare (Trotter). Warren is foolishly besotted with this woman who openly despises him. Warren’s main employee even goads him to stand up to Clare, or at least realize which way the wind blows. When Clare finally leaves and takes up with the beast-like Barney Deager (Lloyd Gough), Warren resolves to devise a new identity for himself, as someone who will kill Deager and then disappear. Unfortunately, he immediately falls in something like love (hard to tell with Quimby, who seems somewhat immune to everyone but Clare) with Mary, played by Charisse. It all goes askew in the execution, of course, and the law (Sullivan and Joseph Conrad) plays hell trying to untangle the threads. In fact, even Lt. Bonnibel (Sullivan) falls for Clare, proposing Acapulco as a suitable getaway. It’s uncertain whether this is a psychological ploy (raising the ‘tension’ on the suspect), or actual infatuation. Anyway, they all get their comeuppance in the end, and Charisse, who would make Tammy Wynette proud, stands by her man until they both walk off into the sunset. On the accompanying commentary, it’s explained that a lot of the femme fatale thing came from men, upon returning home from war, projecting their fears and uncertainties of where their gals had been and what they might have become. John Berry was ruined by HUAC, but showed real directorial chops in this, and He Ran All The Way. B

We almost mistook this movie for Thieves Highway when it opened with the two men (brothers) hauling apples in their truck down a California highway at night.  Nope; a different story entirely. Leonard Maltin aptly described this as a soap opera grafted onto a film noir. The character development for both sexes is strong. The Fabrini brothers are tired of being broke and working the road, with the threat of white-line fever always lurking. They encounter a friendly crowd of peers at the truck stops, adding some comedic touches. Check out Roscoe Karnes as ‘Irish’ – I swear he’s familiar, but IMDB showed me 142 of his films from 1919 on, and I’d only seen It Happened One Night and My Girl Friday. The brothers manage to stay just a step ahead of the spectral trench-coated repo man. In the meantime, Paul (Raft) falls for a waitress (Sheridan) and she is won over by his general goodness (no smoking, no drinking, no groping). She’s been around the block, and her unimpressed responses are well-timed. 

Raft was apparently trying to avoid some of the type casting which associated him with the same elements he really represented, and not too convincingly in this film. He takes on kind of a nice guy makes good and no one can resist him even though he doesn’t really do anything particularly impressive type role. Hard to buy into that, plot-wise. On the other hand, Joe (Bogart) is precisely who he seems to be, imperfect and unapologetic. He is married to a swell, if homely and only partly developed character. She just wants him off the road so they can have babies. Then, like oil into water, here comes Ed (Alan Hale) and Lana (Lupino) Carlsen. Ed wants nothing so much as for people to laugh with him; that, and to help Paul succeed because Paul is so darned likable.  Lana plainly wants into Paul’s trousers, and is terribly frustrated by his goody two-shoes darned likability. She then sets off to ruin everyones life, and murder, courtroom drama, and madness result. Not bad stuff, and when Lana jumps the rails into a full-blown hysterical fit at the end, it might cause the viewer to nearly forgive the final ending, which is too darned likable to be apropos of  film noir. Aspects of this film are nearly Capra-esque, which is not hard to understand, but difficult to reconcile to the genre. By the way, Ann Sheridan is like a budget version of Rita Hayworth, though the critics seemed more interested in pointing out a similar relationship between Lupino and Bette Davis. Bogart was tired of dying early in films and wanted much more. Here too, he is mostly gone from the film by about halfway in, but they tell me he later turned out to be a star, well into his middle age. Rather early American noir – an art form in its early development here.  C+

Robert Young is a friendly parasite, attaching himself to women in a needy way. Why so attractive is beyond me, as he doesn’t bring much to the table, outside of occasionally paying some attention to his current love interest. He’s a number of bad things, but perhaps not a murderer. The film plays as a speech he delivers as defendant, to a jury, so quickly goes into flashback. He sponges off his excessively wealthy wife, both monetarily and professionally. She is only too happy to concede what he wants, in order to have a strange loveless marriage continue. Meanwhile, he canoodles with Greer, until he meets Hayward, and this triangle eventually goes flying apart. The producer, Joan Harrison, was Alfred Hitchcock’s right hand during many of his films, and brings some of his head-snapping tricks to the film. It’s a tidy 80 minutes, moving along at a brisk pace. Cool to see Jane Greer at her peak, about 6 months from the release of Out Of The Past. No femmes, just an homme fatale in Young, who really is not the man to call his paramour ‘Baby’ as often as he does. Mediocre film with a wild ending.C

Holly Martens (Cotten) is offered a job in postwar Vienna, courtesy of old friend Harry Lime (Welles). He learns that Harry is dead, and tries his best to befriend Harry’s girlfriend Anna (Valli). In the meantime, his pulp mystery background might be feeding his suspicions that someone may have murdered Harry. Turns out Harry was a complex character indeed. He would throw away what Holly would nearly die for. This is beautifully shot in the actual ruins of  postwar Vienna. The music is just a single zither at work, and it can sound as eerie as a theremin at times. Ending feels right. An interesting mix of depths as well, as some take place on a ferris wheel, in a multistory apartment building, on the street, and even in the Viennese sewers. The British provide what comic relief exists, as they try to maintain a balance between professionalism and the allure of celebrity. This movie is from a work of the same title by the peripatetic Graham Greene, and owns his somewhat cynical struggle to sort out the chaos in another culture. If it doesn’t contain all the tropes that define a noir, it serves as a kind of art gallery of noirish scenes, breathtakingly staged.  B.

Loosely based on the eponymous book/fever dream by Graham Greene, it has a tangled plot line where Raven (Ladd, in his debut role) is hired to rub out a guy and his doll. He does so, and is paid in counterfeit bills, by a crooked industrialist (Nitro Chemicals) who then reports him to the police as a counterfeiter. In the meantime, the police detective (Preston) assigned to catch Raven, has his magician/nightclub singer girlfriend vanish. It turns out that she works in the club owned by the industrialist’s chief stooge. She learns that the stooge and industrialist are tied up in selling a poison gas formula to the Japanese. The government enlists her to catch them, in a top-secret mission. She goes with the stooge to his house, where he ties her up, so he can kill her later. But Raven busts in and saves her, so he can kill her later. She ends up saving his life, they go on the run together, while tracked down by Preston, Various chase, shoot out and death scenes ensue. Veronica Lake is great, and has terrific hair, even after sleeping overnight in a train seat with Alan Ladd for a pillow. Lake and Ladd have pretty good chemistry, and went on to make 6 more films together. Robert Preston is as annoyingly upbeat as only he (and maybe Bob Cummings) can be. Alan Ladd really does the “my mother never loved me” bit well, and presages a lot of the rebellious young man stuff the 50s expanded on. Nice direction by an unfamiliar director, and solid noir cinematography. C+

This was the first starring role for Charles McGraw, who, as Eddie Muller explains in Dark City, looks like an armored car in a pin-stripe suit. We refer to him as McGruff, as he has just the right disposition to suit the name. In this short but action packed film, McGraw, as Red Kluger, escapes Folsom Prison and takes as hostage, the nightclub singer who sold him out, the cop who arrested him and the DA that convicted him. He and his two lackeys kidnap a truck driver and the whole merry party heads out to the desert to wait for a guy named Tony to fly in and whisk them away. There’s also a mysterious $100,000 in there somewhere, which keeps the henchmen motivated. Why Red, who is effectively emotionless except for violent dislike didn’t just kill the four he ran off with was odd. He plainly doesn’t trust anybody, but that doesn’t stop him from assembling a crowd of potential thwarters. It catches up with him. Without much of a supporting cast, but some echos from The Petrified Forest of 1936. I’d also like to know how all the radios seemed to be tuned into the police band. Was that even possible? If so, why would central command let the captured officer’s wife get on that frequency to spill the beans to Red, also monitoring the line? C.

With a windy introduction by E.L. Irey, a former investigator involved in both the Lindbergh kidnapping, and Capone cases, it seems to be setting up as a “docu-drama” by some governmental agency. I settled in half-expecting some old bromide like the 60’s school films about hygiene or driving safety. It was a pleasant surprise to get a tight, well shot and acted film which followed most noir conventions.  O’Brien (O’Keefe) and Genaro (Ryder) are two T Men chosen to infiltrate an LA counterfeiting gang via the gang’s Detroit connections. They immerse themselves into new roles as ex-members of the busted “River Gang,”  and manage to get accepted. They get a lead on a shadowy figure who circulates around the gang, known as The Schemer (Ford). 

He plays the cowardly rat, kind of like Peter Lorre in Casablanca.  The plot involves O’Keefe having great fake plates for $10 bills, but crappy paper, and the LA gang having great Asian paper, and no plates. A match made in gangster heaven. Of course, greed, suspicion, and violence come out the other end. Terrific cinematography from John Alton, who uses a variety of angles, focal lengths, and lighting; from the floor of a bathroom, to the steam baths of LA, the Club Trinidad, and streets, hallways, the LA public market, etc. I liked the move of never meeting the top dog of the gang – his role was played by the proxy of a business-like gal “The nature of my business is business”.  Good stuff. B

Labor of love for Mitchum, who wrote the story, produced and starred in the film, and wrote two of its songs. He plays Lucas Doolin, a roadrunner, delivering alcohol from his father’s still in North Carolina to points around the South. This involves souped up cars and nighttime runs. His mechanic is a kid brother (played by Mitchum’s son) who Lucas strives to keep from following his career path. A nice girl, Roxy, chases Lucas in hopes of convincing him to settle down. Complete Mitchum-like disinterest there. He instead is smitten with nightclub chanteuse Francie (Smith), who represents a more experienced choice. Francie also gets 2 or 3 songs in along the way. Well, the mob is trying to take over the territory held by the rural bootleggers, and the feds are trying to stop the mob. It’s very much of a piece with the young rebel films of that period, and informs development of the entire road chase genre since. B. 

Bill (and later Mike), played by Cochran, is released from prison after spending 18 of his 31 years there. A wide eyed adult innocent in an eerily Elvis kind of way, he falls for a dime-a-dance dame, Cathy. Escorting her to her apartment, he runs into her police detective boyfriend, who hits her, precipitating a brawl. The cop is shot and leaves. The couple, who don’t really know each other, take it on the lam. Hitchhiking and train jumping their way across the country, they end up in Salinas, where they fall in with lettuce pickers, and set up some sort of blissful, literally shacked up life together. It goes from Damon Runyon to John Steinbeck at that point. A subplot involves the family who befriends them, only to rat them out. A dead man managed to get them both off the hook. Warner Brothers has historically leaned toward social consciousness in many of its films. This tendency is on display, and compromises what could have been a nice tight noir. Ruth Roman is good in the dance hall scenes, hard and brassy as a platinum blonde. By the end of the first hour she’s become Keechie in They Live By Night, only wanting to make others happy. Cochran is good, although it would have been interesting to see John Garfield, the original choice for male lead. Great pacing and it definitely keeps ones attention, but the emotional tenor and character arcs are inconsistent. The ending is a cop out, and it lingers as an inexplicable flaw, outside of the folks at Warners striving for the hap, hap happy ending. B-

Alan and Jane Palmer are arguing while driving to a party in their convertible. A satchel comes flying from a passing car, and in plops $60,000 in cash. Alan (Kennedy) is convinced the dough is lousy and wants to contact the authorities. Jane (Scott) is immediately of the opposite opinion, and you can see that she’s headed nowhere virtuous over the next hour and twenty minutes. This is pretty good stuff, as she meets up with Danny Fuller (Duryea), the guy out to get his money back. It’s almost a contest between them as to who is less scrupulous. Not quite, because she eventually wears him down – in fact, leaves him in shambles. Not so Don Blake (DeFore), who has both the goodness and fortitude to take them both on. But not before the film leads you to wonder if he might be as rotten as the rest of them. The police stay fairly clear of the action, which is nice, and everyone gets theirs. Again, you just can’t kill your way out of trouble in film noir.  This movie is available on YouTube and the Internet Library too, of awful quality. In 2016 the Film Noir Foundation restored it and that’s the only version you should aim to see.  B

The last picture Welles directed in Hollywood, prefigured by Tanya (Dietrich) telling him:

The film was complex, controversial and dark, covering themes like alcoholism, drug abuse, gang rape, racism, police corruption, and various perversities one might find in a Mexican border town in the late 50’s. It’s a failing place, with trash in the streets, paint and posters peeling off buildings, and people hanging around menacingly because there’s nothing to do, and no money to make except for the ill-gotten gain. Into this setting drives a carefree couple in a convertible with a bomb in the trunk, tracked in a 3 minute single shot that is fairly famous. Nearby, in a parallel universe, Miguel “Mike” Vargas (Heston) and his new bride Susie are driving in for their honeymoon. Vargas is a Mexican cop, and begins to investigate the ensuing explosion, leaving Susie to fend (somewhat poorly) for herself. The huge disheveled ruin that is Hank Quinlan (Welles), a US detective arrives on the scene with his devoted assistant Menzies (Calleia) arrives on the scene. Vargas and Quinlan investigate separately, and at cross purposes, as the drama unfolds. Eventually, it’s shown that Quinlan has made a career of framing Mexican suspects to ensure convictions, the retribution for losing his wife to an unapprehended murderer. But that is a crime, and crime never pays, which finds Hank with a tab to pick up, and he does. A trail of dead bodies leads up to Hank dying, shot by his only friend, and thrashing in a pool of putrid water like a beached whale. 

There are some great lines in here, like Vargas observing, “A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state”. At times the dialog is so rapid and overlaid that it approaches the “catch ‘em if you can” lines that Robert Altman employed in Nashville. Dennis Weaver plays a skittish hotel clerk, way over the top, and it may be that Hitchcock referenced this with Anthony Perkins in Psycho. There are oil derricks in motion,  meaningful signage, and irony in abundance. Universal didn’t get it – they cut and edited the original movie to pieces and released it as a B movie. Hollywood didn’t get it – they snubbed it entirely at Oscars time. Gigi ended up with nine wins that year. Sheesh. Maybe it’s true that a prophet is never without honor except in his own country. That all said, it does take some concentration to hang on to the turns and twists Welles takes. And Charleton Heston doesn’t look Hispanic, even with the heavy makeup. B

The ever popular tortured artist effect. This one has a cacophony of cathedral bells, mad paintings of spectral wives, and murderous intent in the otherwise innocent glass of milk. This film is an almost gothic noir, a strange vehicle for the first pairing of Bogart (Geoffrey) and Stanwyck (Sally.) They were the two most bankable stars of their day, but they’re burdened by some sludgy material. Bogart is miscast as a struggling artist who may have disposed of his first Mrs. Carroll in order to marry his second. Sally (the second) is brought aboard rather magically, and Geoffrey’s young daughter joins them in small town England. They’re all tended by a maid that has both a sour disposition and the best lines of dialogue. There’s a blackmailer, out to capitalize on his knowledge of the first murder while Geoffrey plots his second, and Alexis Smith as the prospective third Mrs. Carroll. Hard to watch Bogart crash through a manor window in a nighttime rain storm, looking more like Dracula than Sam Spade. Hard to watch the usually plucky Stanwyck reduced to a bedridden victim of a slow poisoning. The plot held together only in the 1940s world that was producing films like Gaslight, Suspicion and Monsieur Verdoux. C. 

A remake of Fox’s 1941 noir I Wake Up Screaming. Vicki (Peters) is a waitress discovered by three friends (an actor, a society columnist and a publicist) who set out to make her the new It Girl. When she is murdered, a detective (Boone) belligerently lobbies for the case, and tries to stick the blame on Reed, regardless of whether he’s actually guilty. Vicki’s sister (Crain) is caught in a world where everyone might be trying to help, or might be the killer. Interesting introduction to Aaron Spelling, looking even creepier than Elisha Cook Jr in Screaming. Humble beginning – he went on to own a 123 room house in Beverly Hills and produce 215 movies and tv series. A lot of heavy-handed police work here – no-one comes away completely clean.  B-

This is a terrific movie, off the beaten track, in that it’s not really a classic film noir, yet abundantly satisfies most of the criteria for one. In addition, it is almost more caricature than picture, but I think some of that stems from this being a template for more popular films after 1953 by folks like Kubrick, Hill, Leone, and even Tarantino. It also has some heavy handed and generally pessimistic moralizing in it, that occasionally threatens to undermine the story line. The referral I most often see in relation to this movie is Hitchcock, and I wouldn’t disagree in the tension-raising aspect. The second half of this movie is edge of seat material. Special effects are top-drawer. Acting is superb. 

Like in the earlier Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, which would be a Mexican cousin to this, the film starts by defining the “nothing to lose” existences of its characters. A polyglot of post-war layabouts from France, Italy, Germany and America, they find themselves financially marooned in South America. There, they try to catch on with a ruthless and opportunistic American oil firm, while resenting its presence. Due to a well fire, nitroglycerine is needed at a site 300 miles away, over primitive dirt roads. Only the already hopeless need apply. This brings our 4 protagonists into view, and the first half of the movie establishes their stories. There are tensions, including a possibly homoerotic one, among the group. They must man 2 trucks – one with a German and an Italian, the other with two Frenchmen. 

There is a woman in the film – actually the directors wife – but her part is strange. She acts like a dog in the role of a slave or housekeeper for a bar owner, but she always looks beautiful, impeccable and spotless. She is fixated on Mario (Montand, in an early role), but he pushes her away, even into the mud, or just tells her to go. He seems more interested in maintaining his existing relationship with Luigi (Lulli), or his budding bubdyship with Jo (Vanel). 

The nitroglycerine shipment; jerry cans of the stuff on giant trucks, is the catalyst for the second half of the film. The trucks have to negotiate a gantlet of obstacles, including a 40 mile washboard section of road, a harrowingly cliff hanging wooden turnaround, a rock of many tons blocking their progress, and finally a deep pool of oil in the middle of the road. 

As in all great film noir, there is no friendly way forward, and few live, let alone happily ever after. This seems to be in keeping with the director. As Ebert noted, Cluzot always demonstrated “a uniquely ironic disappointment in man’s inability to fulfill his own potential”.  Fin. Great stuff. A

This was the final RKO film associated with Dore Schary. Its ending was fiddled with by David O Selznick, not at all to its benefit. What is left is approximately 75 minutes of tight, taut suspense, and 6 minutes of compromise and resignation. Unfortunate. Joseph Cotten is wonderfully restrained, and Valli performs very well in a physically confined space. Cotten is a gambler on the lam from the mob after making off with $100K of their money. Stewart was in cahoots with him on the caper, and his popping back up blows a very well constructed hideaway for Cotten. He lies, but more often tells the uncomfortable truth about himself; he gambles, but is smart enough to know that letting others win creates a smoother path. He could have dropped in, whole cloth, from his role in Shadow Of A Doubt five years earlier. Charming enough to insert himself into proper society, while trying to give his past the always dubious slip. The moral ambiguity within his character keeps the viewer off-balance. It’s hard to excuse that ending, but worth a look, if only for what it could have been. B. 

Great cinematography, shot by Nicholas Musuraca (Out Of The Past). Hospitals, seedy motels, cars, mansions, Mexican border – a lot of locales for a pair on the run. It all starts in a totally disarming way, with Jeff (Mitchum) as a pediatrician telling a bedtime story to a little girl in an iron lung. He gets pulled in on a suicide attempt case, and it takes him almost no time to ignore his regular girl/nurse (Maureen O’ Sullivan in a small role as the utterly good woman) in favor of the erratic and troubled Margo (Domergue). She complains to him of her wealthy and domineering father, Charles (Rains) wanting her to go away with him on extended trips. Drunk one night, Jeff rouses the courage to confront Margo’s father, to affirm his love and intent to marry Margo. Turns out Charles is actually Margo’s husband. Oops. Well, confusion turns to recklessness, and as Jeff is leaving, he hears Margo scream. He runs back to see that her earring has been torn from her ear. He pushes Charles, who rises with a fireplace poker and starts beating Jeff on the head. Jeff gets in a single punch, which floors Charles. Jeff is woozy. Margo convinces him that he’s just killed Charles and they’ll have to take it on the lam. A long vortex downward follows, as the pair try to make it to the Mexican border where she’s squirreled away money. They get fleeced at every turn, and the tension seems to be whether Jeff will run out of life, or the two will run out of money first. Suffice to say that Margo is a classic femme fatale, attempting to run out on Jeff as his limbs begin to paralyze from his concussion. Jeff becomes something of a zombie, following her exit from town. She dies, he lives. A pretty unsatisfying conclusion to a harrowing film. B

Ben Hecht, who had a great ear for street patter, did the screenplay for this police noir. Here’s a sample:

Insp. Nicholas Foley: (to a beaten-up Dixon) “Look at ya! You’re all bunged up like a barrelhouse vag.”

Preminger, Andrews and Tierney team up six years after the success of Laura, with a well-staged and acted encore. Andrews, as Mark Dixon, is a detective who hates crooks, and enforces justice as much as he solves crimes, as psychological payback for growing up with a crook father. His fists and short temper put him a short step from suspension. Meanwhile, a mobster named Scalisi (Merrill) runs a high stakes craps game, and uses one of his henchmen’s girlfriends (Tierney, as Morgan) to keep a sucker in the game long enough to get fleeced. She gets slapped around, the mark ends up dead, and Dixon is put on the case. Morgan falls in love too easily, of course, and soon falls for Dixon. For his part, he keeps screwing up, first killing a suspect, then inadvertently setting up Morgan’s dad to take the fall. Dixon, now suspended for roughing up Scalisi and his boys, has to pursue the case on a lonely extracurricular basis, trailed by his guilt. Terrific acting from Andrews. Tierney is little more than window dressing; Malden is always a pleasure to watch. B

They really loaded this one up for name recognition. Three men competing for editorial leadership of a news company vie to see who can break the case of an at-large serial killer. There are three sets – one is the pressroom of the Sentinel, one is a bar apparently under the Sentinel building, and one is a boarding house where two of the principals coincidentally reside. Mobely (Andrews) pretty much drunkenly idles through the film, until the final chase. Ida Lupino is spot-on as an unscrupulous but lovable columnist. Sanders, Price and Fleming all play close to type. The only real acting going on here is from John Drew Barrymore as the psycho. He’s convincing, all right, in a way that would have pleased his famous forebears. Solid cinematography from Ernest Laszlo, an underrated noir name who also shot D.O.A., Stalag 17 and Kiss Me Deadly. Nominated for eight Academy Awards and winner for Ship of Fools (1965) B- (an underachievement, given cast and director.)

Dane Clark might be the poor man’s Richard Conte. No taller than Alexis Smith, he wears his hair in a high pompadour; a little fey for a prize fighter. Alexis Smith also has hair. She and Clark emerge from a moonlight swim in the ocean with not a strand wet or out of place. This is by no means the least plausible aspect of this film. Clark is also a painter, who objects to Smith’s purchase of a particular canvas. He tracks her to her house (to give her money back), and ends up rooting around through her stuff until she comes in and catches him. He asks her out and she accepts. Over a total six hours, they seem to fall in love. What Clark doesn’t know is that she’s married to the evil Zachary Scott, a paraplegic former boxer turned mobster/fight promoter. He controls both Alexis and her alcoholic physician brother. Somehow, Eve Arden, as Eve Arden does, shows up as Clark’s wisecracking girl next door. She lusts after him with no chance of success. Clark takes a beating, but never loses heart, and ultimately triumphs in a badly choreographed final fight. Scott meets an abrupt and well deserved end. The physician brother gets it too, but wasn’t headed anywhere good, so it’s ok. Eve Arden, I guess, runs off with a pliable rancher from Texas, and Clark and Smith retire to the beach to paint and model. Oh, yes; Smith sings, after a fashion, in Scott’s nightclub too. It’s a muddle with a well-deserved 40% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. The public service aspect of this review suggests another use of your 91 valuable minutes.  D. 

Another collaboration among Ben Hecht (see Where The Sidewalk Ends), Gene Tierney and Otto Preminger. It echoes Laura in a stylish form of parlor noir, but to less effect, and with less fun along the way.

Ann (Tierney) is married to Dr. Bill (Conte), a renowned psychiatrist. As he is gone a lot, she somehow resorts to kleptomania (actually the theft of one item). She is caught, but talked out of trouble by Korvo (Ferrer), an astrologer and hypnotist. He talks her into further meetings in a quasi love hustle or blackmail? Hard to say for sure, as it all runs rather oblique, conversationally. Ann loves Bill, but apparently seldom sees him, as he remains unaware of the fact that she’s a kook, and spending time on the side with Korvo. Turns out Korvo wanted to frame Ann for the murder of Korvo’s former girlfriend, who he had earlier fleeced and killed. He does this through planting evidence at the crime scene and hypnotizing Ann into unwitting complicity. Bickford, as Lt. Colton is tasked with sorting this all out, which he plods along with. Dr. Bill shows up again as his wife is charged with murder, and joins Colton in the investigation. 

There is a lot of nice stylish noir camerawork by Arthur Miller, and a reprise of a Laura device, as Korvo is shot and killed under a large painting of his former girlfriend. Crime doesn’t pay. It also doesn’t pay to watch the unctuous and one-dimensional Ferrer play a role that would demand some depth. By that I mean a man who hypnotizes himself to feel no pain after running around planting false evidence, post-gall bladder surgery (what an alibi!) might show at least some involvement in the proceedings. Instead, we get a zombie on the prowl. Neither does it pay to observe Richard Conte so obviously miscast, the smallest man on the set, staring blankly like he lost his lines. A beautiful reference on the blog “Self Styled Siren” put it well:

“ When the crusty detective (Charles Bickford, who else?) tells the great shrink his wife’s motive for murder was infidelity, Conte’s expression is that of a man who’s been told the kitchen ran out of manicotti.”

Tierney is a set piece, and a lot of film goes by, locked in at close range as she opens her eyes wide, or goes into a trance, or wonders where the magic of Laura had gotten off to. C 

Really a tight and terrific plot, about the boy who called wolf, written by Cornell Woolrich. The plot was later adapted for the Hitchcock film Rear Window. It does a masterful job of putting the viewer into the mind of a child, much like Night Of The Hunter does. Here, Tommy is a boy who makes up ludicrous tales until he loses credibility and begins to create tension in the house. His hard working (at some ambiguous job) blue collar dad and beleaguered housewife mom try disciplining him into the truth. One night he sneaks out of their tenement and tries to sleep in the 90 degree heat on the fire escape for the floor above. There, he witnesses a murder, and doggedly attempts to get anyone to believe him. It leaks to the couple above, who scheme to make Tommy disappear. The cat and mouse game that ensues is realistic,  and the low lighting adds both a malevolence and isolation to the boy’s situation. Funny how in urban noir films like this, the streets that teem with characters at the beginning, become dark and empty toward the end. These are real settings, too; interesting, gritty and real. A game of chutes and ladders as characters climb and slide. It’s a sleeper. B 

From her window, Cheryl Draper observes a murder in the apartment across the street from hers. She tries to report the crime, but the perp is so calculating that no trace of the crime can be found and his alibi is believed. He is a pompous ass, played to perfection by ace pompous actor George Sanders. He begins to gaslight Cheryl, and she becomes frustrated as the dimwit police keep discounting her story, although Lt. Mathews wouldn’t mind getting on the hook romantically. It’s a little unnerving watching him tsk, tsk her while wheedling his way into a dinner date with her. She ends up so unbelieved that she’s institutionalized. Finally, Sanders overplays his hand, figuring what the heck, let’s help Cheryl commit suicide. Then it turns out he’s a barely closeted Nazi fanatic too, and by this time the viewer wonders how Hollywood will exact its justice on this guy so richly deserving of it. It won’t disappoint. The old rule, never run up things to escape is clearly violated here. Always, but always worthwhile watching Stanwyck make a living. Also, this is the only film she made that employed the camera work of John Alton. Both are dazzling in an otherwise unremarkable film. Rear Window came out three months later, and effectively snuffed any buzz this movie may have received. Underrated. B-

As I understand it, a key difference between film noir and melodrama is that noir was intended toward male and melodrama toward female audiences. Also, noir tends to address a personal crisis, while melodrama deals with interpersonal problems. Ida Lupino might have looked like Minnie Mouse, but was tough, smart and ambitious. She wanted to be directing 1953’s noir The Hitchhiker, but took on this melodrama as a potboiler. She excels in it despite her lack of enthusiasm, mirroring the fact that she also didn’t like Howard Duff, but managed later to marry him and stay together for thirty years. Some high implausibility exists in this treatment of a gold digging husband trying to kill his bride on their wedding day, in order to take over the mill her father owned (before being killed by the same gold digger.) She escapes, barely, but catches a bus out of town in an attempt to co-opt another woman into corroborating a complaint against the husband. He searches while the woman hides, and Howard Duff enters the scene as a paramour confused among feelings of attraction to her, desire for a reward, and concern for her mental health. Wraps up with another object lesson in avoiding high places. All in all, not bad at all, with some nice touches like the bacchanal of a sales convention, confrontation on a train, and runaway car on a mountain road. B. 

Something like Laura, but with the painting acting as a come-on for a high-rent prostitute (Bennett), who plies Professor Wanley (Robinson) when his wife and kids are out of town. He almost immediately gets tangled up in a killing, and goes into cahoots with the lady to dispose of the evidence. This is ok, except that 1) Wanley’s best friend and drinking buddy is the D.A. and 2) she had been tailed by a snaky character (Duryea), who now sets out to blackmail her. The rest is delicious detail, as Wanley isn’t smart enough to avoid dropping hints everywhere, and the lady, though game, isn’t cut out for playing in the league in which she finds herself. Robinson is eminently believable as an everyman, and Duryea is delightfully sleazy, as always. Some argument is justified over the ending, which cops a bit, but there were rules in those days. I just pretend the last 3 minutes don’t happen. Ha; the director was forced to pretend that the preceding 80 or so minutes never happened.  B.  

Bradley Collins (Ryan) is a successful shipping manager, skilled at labor mediation, with an early life exposure to the virus that is communism. Vanning (Gomez) is head of the current communist cell, just making mischief between labor and management to undermine the capitalist system. He uses Christine (Carter) to work her wiles on the newly married Collins, while his wife (Day) frets and lives in the dark. Her brother then takes up with Christine, as she works an end-around to influence Collins on Vanning’s behalf. Meanwhile, Talman acts the heartless henchman for Vanning, exacting revenge on anyone who fails to go along. Camera work by Nicholas Musuraca is outstanding, with a couple of scenes shot with light and dark in shreds. The title means nothing – there is no discernible Pier 13, nor woman on a pier at all. Its original title was much more instructive – I Married A Communist. C

More melodrama than noir. The concept is that a coast guard horseman (?), who is engaged to be married, falls for a mysterious woman who hangs around an old shipwreck. Her husband is a blind artist with strong opinions. The two men attempt a friendship, but come close to drowning or being led off a cliff. All in fun, I guess. There really isn’t much going on among the characters here, and the maguffin seems to be a set of valuable paintings, which we suppose holds the couple together. Nah, Bickford and Bennett were just meant to wander through a sandy oceanfront life together. Certainly a far stretch from either Bennett’s Woman In The Window or Renoir’s La Bete Humaine. Hard to explain the lack of chemistry; the film never hits it square. C-  

Having bought out her contract with Warner Brothers, this was to be Ann Sheridan’s comeback movie; one chosen on her own terms. A curious choice, as she remains pretty stoic throughout. A more interesting role is that of Dennis O’Keefe, as a newspaper reporter trying to get the story of why her husband witnessed a murder and then took it on the lam. Sheridan is a rather uninterested wife searching half-heartedly for her runaway mate, while being stalked. Norman Foster was an acolyte of Orson Welles, and the influence is clear in the climax, reminiscent of Lady From Shanghai. There is also a lot of great location shooting around San Francisco. B. 

Kings of the hill

The development of copper and zinc mining in Butte runs parallel with the stories of several men known as the ‘copper kings’. They were Western versions of gilded age business monarchs like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gould and Ford. The goal for each of these business titans was the monopolistic dominance of some fast growing segment of the American economy. With an insatiable need for copper to interconnect grids for both electricity and telecommunications, the mountain of copper that formed Butte powered several vast personal fortunes. 

There were three copper kings; William A. Clark, Marcus Daly, and F. Augustus Heinze. An unofficial fourth was banker and real estate developer Patrick Largey. The paths of all four men crossed at one time or another at the very center of Butte’s uptown district – the corner of Park and Main Streets. The earliest platted portion of the city, it formed the center of Butte’s business and society from the late 1870s on (see note #1.) 

In the early 1890s, Patrick Largey’s State Savings Bank held that corner. In 1895, Largey was shot and killed in his office there, by a man who had lost a leg in a lethal and destructive warehouse explosion at Kenyon Connell, a hardware firm Largey co-owned (see note #2.)   

The State Savings Bank became the Metals Bank and Trust in 1920. When Metals acquired the assets of W.A. Clark’s bank in 1928, it became the best capitalized bank between Seattle and Minneapolis. The heavy use of copper on the building’s exterior pays tribute to the source of the bank’s wealth. 

Faced with the demand for drive-up banking, and unable to provide it from that corner, Metals Bank in 1968 acquired the corner across Main, where the Rialto Theater stood. It knocked down the venerable old movie house and moved there to a smaller bank with 4 lanes for banking by car.

This corner of Park and Main had seen better times. Within two years, a large insurance company and eighteen of the thirty-eight offices in the Metals building moved on. In September of 1970, Silver Bow County took possession of the structure. In March of the following year, it offered the building at auction, with bids starting at $60,000. The remaining tenants of the building purchased it within four days of listing.

The Metals Bank building was converted to condominiums, and it remains that way today, a long way from its roots in the company of copper kings. It was saved by regular individuals with a great bargain and the will to restore an old beauty.

So much for prologue. A couple of dozen feet straight down from this one time financial heart of the city sat a humble hole-in-the-wall diner. The tiny Chili King was tucked into the sloping foundation of the Metals Bank building. 

The Chili King of my youth

As a kid in the 1960s, I often caught the Englewood bus from my home on the flats to uptown Butte. The city library there contained a world of possibility and offered a brief escape from the everyday. If I had the fare, I waited for a homebound bus at the corner of Park and Main Streets. The Metals Bank building stood there, built over a row of descending smaller storefronts along Main. The hillside was steep enough that the buildings beneath the bank appeared wedge shaped from the outside. The first building, at the tip of the wedge was the office for Owl Cab. The second was the Chili King. 

Chili King’s windows were opaque from decades of airborne grease, blown out toward the street via a continuously running exhaust fan. A pungent aroma surrounded folks waiting at the corner. It was unpleasant to breathe it, but that’s where the bus stopped.  I wasn’t a particularly refined kid, but vowed to myself that I’d never end up so down and out as to eat in there. 

Much later I learned that it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, if I’d have driven an Owl cab at some point, it might have been a joy to tuck into a beefy beany bowl of chili between fares. 

The corner of Park and Main Streets was the primary intersection in uptown Butte. It was the heart of the commercial district, in the earliest settled part of the city. There used to be a healthy amount of foot traffic.

Chili scenes of old San Antonio

Chili con carne. I once came across an apocryphal story about how jailhouses on the Texas-Mexico border were ill-provisioned. Forced to improvise, the government fed inmates spoiled beef that was heavily spiced to disguise its poor quality. Since beans were cheap and could be dried and stored in giant bags, they were thrown in to provide some starch. Although this fits my own cowpoke ideas of life on the frontier, I can find no validation for the tale.

It’s now generally accepted that Tex-Mex chili originated in San Antonio back in the 1860s. ‘Chili queens’ boiled up pots of spicy stew, and sold it to passers-by in the town’s plazas. The peppers used most likely came from the Canary Islands. In 1731 Spain sent sixteen families from there to San Antonio, to plant a flag in the colonial ground and frustrate French ambitions in Texas. These immigrants brought a spicy sauce called red mojo, used to season meat. It was possibly the birth of chili (and of the word ‘mojo,’ for all its spicy connotations.) The first printed reference to ‘chili con carne’ appeared in the 1882 Gould’s directory of San Antonio. 

However it began, it migrated quickly as a cheap, easy to prepare and fairly nutritious dish. The Butte Bystander of October 9, 1897 featured a profile of chili queens in San Antonio, hawking what the writer called “the fiercely burning chili con carne (which) agonizes the tourist.” 

Chili moves north

Local chili appeared in the mining city of Butte, Montana as early as 1899. It was a canned product and, like related tamales, available from the Montana Cash Grocery.

Note that the dish was novel enough to have caused confusion between the chili pepper and the country of Chile. And there were other vendors, clustered in the center of town, around Park and Main Streets. Lee Chili Parlor from 1910:

And the Pony Chili Parlor, as in this ad from the Butte High School yearbook of 1918:

By 1927 Chili King was ensconced in its location under the Metals Bank. It already referred to itself, along with its hobo (or mulligan) stew as “famous.” 

This is not fancy fare; it was intended for people of limited means, willing to perch on a stool for ten minutes while dunking a donut (aka ‘sinker’) in their coffee. Note that Chili King also prepared miners’ lunch buckets for the next shift. 

Mid-century in Butte

The nation headed toward a financial crash that year; one which would fester for the next decade, affecting almost all aspects of American society. Hobos, the kings of the road, became ubiquitous. They even adopted a charter and attempted to form a nationwide union. In May of 1929, The Montana Free Press published a whimsical recipe for hobo stew.

From 1933 through 1968 the Chili King was owned and operated by Joe and Frances Merrick,  natives of Yugoslavia. That’s a long way from San Antonio, but speaks to the cultural mulligan stew that formed Butte. Italians and tamales, Yugoslavs and chili; it all worked out. 

World War II provided an economic boon for the mining city. Labor was in high demand as manpower siphoned off into the military. Metals were critical to the production of armaments and communications wire. Butte finally recovered from the Great Depression and life was relatively good again. 

Butte created fortunes for those who could exploit its riches, but the average resident lived simply. The local cuisine featured inexpensive meals like spaghetti and ravioli, Cornish pasties, tamales and chili, chop suey and pork chop sandwiches. These refined over time and have continued to thrive there. It also helped that with Butte’s strict union adherence, fast food restaurants were non-existent well into the 1970s.

Two quick tales from the Chili King

One scene repeated itself every so often on the steep streets of uptown Butte.  In 1947, a driverless car parked outside the Chili King “broke loose” from its parking place and coasted two blocks down South Main Street. It took out a couple of parking meters and a display window of the office building that stopped it. . 

An old customer entered the Chili King in May, 1954. He wanted to pay a bill for meals he enjoyed “on the cuff.” That is to say, by way of running a tab. Merrick had no record of the man’s bills there, but the former customer said he did, and returned the next day with bills totaling $25.95. He then added $4.05 for the trouble of carrying him over time. It turned out that the bills were from twelve years earlier. This is an illustration of good human nature on the part of both men, and there are many examples of this in Butte stories. While under the ownership of Carl Rowan, Gamer’s cafe on Park Street had no one tending the cash register. Diners cashed themselves out and made their own change.

End of the Chili King

When Jack White took over in 1972, the Chili King went from round the clock service to a still considerable 7am to midnight operation. He installed a small gallery of works by local artists, and specifically welcomed “employees of our number one taxpayer and employer.” That would be the Anaconda Company, which eventually consolidated all the mining operations of Butte.

Jack worked hard to make a decent restaurant out of an inarguable greasy spoon. The exhaust fan disappeared and new large windows were installed. He expanded offerings to include lasagna and spaghetti dinners, tacos, and steaks. All meals included salad, soup, garlic bread, a vegetable and dessert. Jack went as far as to make his sauces and dressings in house. 

Unfortunately, the tide of time worked against all the small businesses around Park and Main. It’s ironic that the country of Chile had both more copper than Butte and low labor costs. Chile nationalized the Anaconda Mining Company holdings in 1971, and dumped copper on the world market. As the price for copper dropped precipitously in the early 1970s, the mines shut down and uptown stagnated. This situation became dire enough for a spate of insurance inspired arson to consume entire blocks in the area of Park and Main Streets. With a sharply diminished clientele, the Chili King finally closed after an impressive fifty year run. Thus, it’s just possible that Chile did in the Chili King.

Owl Cab eventually moved farther up Main Street (see note #2), and the three businesses beneath the bank building merged into the (quite good) Park And Main Cafe, open for breakfast and lunch. The Metals Bank moved directly across Park street, to a single story structure that would better accommodate motor banking. The eight story symbol of wealth and strength went condo, with a sports bar and grill on the first floor. The huge safe became available for private events.  

Epilogue

Metal mining is dependent upon global demand and production. The ebb and flow of economics creates a maddening lack of predictability in a town reliant on mining for its survival. A restaurant is somewhat steadier, as people have to eat. Getting it right as to what folks want and can reliably afford is the tricky part. The coming and going of Butte’s restaurants mirror both the dining trends and financial health of the town. 

Chili King is long gone, but you can still get a Truzzolino tamale from the frozen foods case in local markets: 

Notes:

A bar/lunchroom/variety show called Arion Hall occupied the basement level. It provided a bit of competition to the Theater Comique, a popular vaudeville house two doors south. In 1885 at Arion Hall, one could get lunch specialties including pickled tripe, pickled tongue, salami wurst, limburger cheese, sardines and Russian caviar for 12 1/2 cents each. Only the pickled pig’s feet and Holland herring went for as much as two bits. Oysters, the fad of that era, and served in every style, arrived daily from New York.

Arion Hall was the creation of Frederic Ritchie. In 1888, he and his partner John Gordon created the first version of Columbia Gardens. It was in the Horse Canyon section of East Butte, and catered to company picnics, reunions, and other adult events. Only the lack of trolley service prevented it from being successful. When W.A. Clark bought the operation in 1899, he relocated it further east, at the foot of the mountains, designing it to cater to families.

Arion Hall fell victim, like many others, to the depressed economy resulting from the Panic of 1893. It closed for good in November of that year.

Note 2: Patrick Largey had a hand in much of early Butte’s development. He owned the Speculator mine and many other properties, established Butte’s first electric utility, telegraph lines, the Intermountain newspaper, and the hardware company. He was also president of the State Savings (later Metals) Bank. If there was a fourth ‘copper king,’ it was Largey.

The circumstances surrounding the spectacular 1895 explosion of the Kenyon-Connell hardware outfit is well-considered in a PBS documentary; Hidden Fire: The Great Butte Explosion. https://www.pbs.org/video/montanapbs-presents-hidden-fire-the-great-butte-explosion/?fbclid=IwAR1AryeiswWIlFWixRna3ZQ0KbQt7FxClpKoJcr81mung_UNdhWeO8YFSwI

Further thoughts

There was a lot of struggle in the attempt to bring uptown Butte into line with expectations of a great city to match its great wealth. Fact was that in 1884, the “business district” was still very much an unrefined cluster of saloons, gambling halls, whorehouses and noodle parlors.

The Butte Miner that year pointed out that in the single block of Main Street, from Park to Broadway, there were eleven saloons. The intersection of Park and Main had the unregulated and poorly understood Chinatown district immediately to its south, and the red light district adjacent to the east.

When the Butte Daily Post discussed Patrick Largey purchasing the Hamilton and Pfouts property in 1891, it hoped, “the placing of a bank building there would have a tendency to eventually rid the neighborhood of saloons, pawnshops and gambling houses.” It was a long road to coexistence in Butte.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 severely limited immigration and citizenship until 1the 1940s. It encouraged anti-Chinese sentiment in general, and pinched off the development of Butte’s Chinatown.

Prohibition and the temperance movement stemmed a lot of public drinking from 1919 – 1933, but also encouraged moonshining, bootlegging, and surreptitious drinking. It didn’t so much fix problem drinking as move it around. This was probably a net benefit to Park and Main, as the obvious saloons toned down, went out of business or sought sites with lower profiles.

Prostitution moved around as well, as the city attempted to improve appearances. From its frontage on Galena Street, the ‘restricted zone’ moved to the alleys behind Galena, then further south to Mercury Street. Vestiges of the old trade persisted until 1982.

Eventually, a respectable and architecturally proud uptown district materialized. Park and Main was in full bloom around 1917; its four corners boasting large conventional buildings – the Owsley Block, Rialto Theater, Metals Bank, and Lizzie Block.

Note #2: It’s mentioned that Owl Cab relocated its taxi stand to the front of Spillums on North Main. Here are a couple of dime store cowboys leaning on a cab there in the early 1960s.

Resources

Background on the Metals Bank building from The Vertigris Project – by Richard Gibson and Butte Silver Bow Archives. https://www.verdigrisproject.org/butte-americas-story-blog/butte-americas-story-episode-260-metals-bank-building

Cass Gilbert Society – https://cassgilbertsociety.org/works/butte-mt-bank/

The photo of the Metals Bank building is by Tom Ferris for the Montana Historical Society; 2021.

Background on Truzzolino Tamale Shop from NBC at https://nbcmontana.com/news/montana-moment/truzzolino-tamales-a-family-dynasty-for-125-years

A fascinating history, much more than you probably would ever need or even want to know about the history of chili con carne is available in Texas Monthly, here: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/bloody-san-antonio-origins-chili-con-carne/

Much more about miners lunch buckets at my related essay about the Spokane cafe, three doors down from Chili King, at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=3969

The story of the truant diner settling up at Chili King came from the Montana Standard of May 6, 1954. 

Hamilton and Pfouts strike silver from Butte Weekly Miner; June 14 1884

Arion Hall folds; from Butte Miner of November 8, 1893

An excellent series of views of the Columbia Gardens is on a site devoted to the history of Portland, Oregon (really.) http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/columbia_gardens.html

Butte Daily Post discussing purchase of Hamilton and Pfouts building; August 4,1891