AndyM108

Me, too. And I look forward to seeing them discuss the issues on the evening of August 6th.

Just to belatedly nitpick what was probably just a typo, it was Cregar, not Burr, who died at a very young age. Cregar left us at the age of 31, but Burr made it to 76. Sorry, but that wasn't clear to me when I read it, though I couldn't imagine you were confusing the two actors. Also, Burr wasn't in The Lodger. Of course not, but that only added to my confusion when I read what you wrote the first time around. My bad. And Burr wasn't nearly as talented as Cregar, he was just good at being evil and creepy. But he was memorable in the tacked-on scenes in Godzilla, I have to give him that. Bill James the baseball stat maven makes the distinction between "Career Value" and "Peak Value". That may be what we're seeing here with Burr and Cregar. I do agree that there's a dimension of evil that Cregar exhibited in several films that Burr never quite reached, great as Burr was in the many roles he played.

CaveGirl, on 29 Jul 2015 - 3:55 PM, said: I also love Laird Cregar. I just got to thinking about what an interesting movie "American Graffiti" would be if Raymond Burr had been playing the Wolfman Jack role. He did have a great voice for radio! primosprimos Posted Yesterday, 08:45 PM Same here. He was excellent in The Lodger. Shame. I didn't know he died when he was only a kid. What a waste of talent. Just to belatedly nitpick what was probably just a typo, it was Cregar, not Burr, who died at a very young age. Cregar left us at the age of 31, but Burr made it to 76.

Somewhat along those lines, I'll never forget the early 70's radio commercial for one of those dessert wines, either Mogen David or Manischewitz, whose punch line was "It's as modern as a peace demonstration".

Of course there's the Daddy of All Such Films: The Thin Man.

Which may be why I've always found Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck to be among the dullest actors imaginable.

Cregar had a bit more edge to him than even Burr, which is saying a LOT. While Burr's characters usually assumed the sort of serious thuggish determination and somewhat psychotic behavior we associate with classic noir criminals, Cregar's often seem to walk the line between uninhibited evil and some sort of mental illness, as in his famous Ed Cornell role in I Wake Up Screaming, or in his horrified-by-violence, rather effeminate Nazi enabler in This Gun For Hire. And in his final two movies, The Lodger and Hangover Square, he enters realms of darkness that Burr never quite approaches. But all that said, Burr is such a perfect noir archetype that I can think of nothing better than to make him a SOTM or at the very least, feature him in an all-noir SUTS day. He never mails it in, and his presence alone makes any movie a must-see.

I dunno, sometimes a cigar is just a smoke, and sometimes a man with the head of a fly is just a man with the head of a fly. And the two-bit antics depicted in noir movies are far more reflective of life in the world we actually live in, which in my subjective opinion is far more interesting than the depiction of endless parallel universes. Now obviously some horror / sci-fi films do achieve greatness by their sheer skill of storytelling: Metropolis; Frankenstein; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; House of Wax; Them!; Night of the Living Dead; etc. But films on that level are rare birds indeed within that category. Too many of the others simply overload us with special effects and other gimmicks as a substitute for coherence.

"More important" is a completely subjective categorization that exists solely in the mind of the viewer, so I won't argue with that. Some people probably think that those 1950's technicolor musicals are "more important" than any other category, and who am I to argue? Different strokes for different folks. But I'll tell you why in my equally subjective opinion, classic film noir is a far more compelling category than fantasy, horror, or science fiction. The answer is simple: Noir is set in the here and now, and it's far more representative of the real world than any of those other three categories, however implausible some of those noir plot lines may be. We don't live in a world of witches, elves, gnomes, disfigured monsters, or aliens from Mars. We live in a world that's full of the sort of characters I see depicted in film noir: A world of greed, two-timing, insane ambition, and general lowlife behavior. It's not a pretty world in spite of all those gorgeous nightclub singers and adrenaline rushes, but it's one that's far more reflective of the real world than a bunch of Martians or little green men enhanced by special effects and Oscarworthy costume designers. I don't think it's a coincidence that the core audiences for those movies are primarily teenagers and overaged adolescents of the type you see populating comic book conventions. Harmless, but not that interesting. To each his own, but I'm grateful for the Summer of Darkness, and would retch at the thought of devoting that much air time to fantasy or horror or Sci-Fi. Featuring horror movies in October is fine, but one month a year for special emphasis is enough. There's nothing particularly wrong with those other three categories, but only in VERY small doses.

I'll take your word for it, but although he'd certainly qualify for a "Brand" award for his role in The Killing, I can't place him in any of his other movies. He was in Crime Wave, but where?

I've been racking my brain trying to think of another actor who's so completely defined by his signature creepiness, but I'm drawing a blank. The closest I've come is Jack Lambert, who played "Dum-Dum" in The Killers, but there's something about the glow of Brand's radioactive teeth that makes him the winner of the gold medal. Other sadistic thugs like Lee Marvin, Richard Widmark, Rudy Bond and Mike Mazurki are too well known in other types of roles to have them meet Brand's almost Ivory Soap level of 99.44% evil.

Another actor in Kansas City Confidential who looked like he'd aged 10 years in two is the perennial two bit thug, Neville Brand. Just look at his face in D.O.A., (immediately below) which was made in 1950, and compare it to Kansas City Confidential from 1952, in the picture at the bottom.

Never heard of such a plot, but it sounds like a movie I could go for.

You're right, of course. Here's what the authoritative Dictionary of Underworld Lingo has to say about it. The book was published in 1950, just two years before the movie. Skin. 1. (P) A one-dollar bill. "The screw (guard) wants a skin for his end (share) to bring in stickers (contraband stamps)." 2. Loose women or degenerates generally; a loose woman; a degenerate; (A hunk of skin.) 3. (Pickpocket jargon) A wallet. "Week (take the money out of) that skin and whip (get rid of) it." Deuce. 1. Two dollars. 2. A two-year prison term. "Bits (prison terms) was tough in the old days, but you got a deuce then whee you get hit with a sawbuck (ten years) now."

I love Charles McGraw more and more as an actor the more I see of him. He's almost the Platonic ideal of two Hollywood archetypes---the sadistic thug and the lockjawed cop---and yet as you hint at, he could also have stepped into many Spencer Tracy-like roles with characters that were variants of those two. When you get right down to it, Tracy himself was pretty much of an archetype pigheaded Irishman throughout his entire career, only with an ability to adapt that basic character to play anything from judges to sportswriters to lawyers to seamen to gruff but doting fathers. I can't think of any particular reason why given the opportunity, Charles McGraw couldn't very well have done the same.

One word answer with only one letter: M

Just watched Kansas City Confidential, and I have to wonder whether poor Lee Van Cleef got some kind of bonus for the number of times during the course of the movie he was disarmed, punched out, and / or shot by John Payne. I don't think even the great William Bendix used Alan Ladd as that much of a punching bad in The Glass Key, and brother that's saying something.

"Personalities?" I ain't gotta show you no stinkin' personalities!

Leaving out the only one I haven't seen (Roadblock), here's how I'd fill up the 8 hours, with a few shorts included to fill up the tape: 1:05 PM I Love Children, But -8 min. 1:15 PM Kansas City Confidential - 99 min. 6:03 PM Nostradamus Says So! - 11 min. 6:15 PM Split Second - 86 min. 8:00 PM The Narrow Margin - 72 min. 11:45 PM The Locket - 85 min. 1:21 AM Getting Glamour - 8 min. 3:13 AM The Future Is Now - 15 min. 3:30 AM Elevator to the Gallows - 91 min. That's 7 hours and 55 minutes of entertainment for the whole family. Pot 'n' popcorn not included. The absolute Essentials™ are The Narrow Margin and Elevator to the Gallows, though in truth if you could record the entire 24 hours you couldn't really go wrong on any of them.

Well, in The Company She Keeps, Greer plays the bad girl while Scott plays the goody two shoes. It's an all-around clinker of a movie in any event, but three guesses which character is even more uninteresting. Moral: Bad girls not named Barbara Stanwyck should generally stick to playing bad girls.

Hey, Corpse #2 was Alan, not Andy. Hope that wasn't a Freudian slip. Your point is logical and well taken, but of course without Duryea's suitcase being thrown into the car there wouldn't have been any movie to begin with. DeFore's suspicions were enough to bring him to look up Scott, even if his entry story was shaky, and from that point on I don't see the plot development being much more risible than the countless number of impossible things we're supposed to believe before breakfast we can find in most any Hollywood film, such as the casting of Audrey Hepburn with Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon. In real life, if Alan had still been alive, I doubt if that would have lessened DeFore's suspicions about Scott, since they were already strong enough to make him concoct his WW2 story to enable him to get into Scott's apartment in the daytime, when presumably a live Alan would have been at work. In real life, I suspect DeFore would have continued digging into Scott's character even after that punch in the jaw, and when that real life merged with Hollywood, the screenwriter simply would have invented another impossible to believe turn of events that would have led to Scott been electrocuted by lightning or run over by a horse in Central Park, with the horse winding up being the guest of honor at DeFore's and Kathy's inevitable wedding ceremony. Those screenwriters are always an imaginative lot.

I dunno if I'd take everything quite so literally. My read is that DeFore was absolutely convinced that Scott was morally responsible for her first husband's death, regardless of whether was legally responsible, and inferred with very good reason that she might well have bumped off Kennedy.* He then figured that by proving her role in Kennedy's death, she would be in effect punished for the death of her first husband. IMO all of that hangs together pretty well, although it is true that he had fortunate timing in having that second case fortuitously drop into his lap. * That's Arthur Kennedy, not JFK

There's not a cough in that entire lineup's carload, but I'm most looking forward to Roadblock (1951), because (1) it's the only one I haven't seen; and (2) For a nice change of pace, Charles McGraw is playing an ordinary man turned crook, rather than a pure thug or a sadistic cop.

Whatever it is today, it sure beats what they used to call this joint in upper NW Washington that was around until well into the second half of the 20th century, before changing its name to "The Washington Home" for obvious reasons. We used to visit it every day during Summer vacations in the early 1960's because it was also the home of the last nickel Coke bottle machine. And then there was this. At least they didn't call it The Washington Bughouse. It's now just called St. Elizabeth's.

In that case she's a scared good girl who only certifies her goodness in the end when it became safe to do so. Not exactly a profile in courage. But in any event that particular role of Scott could have been played by any actress with a minimally torchy look, and The Racket belongs to Robert Ryan from start to finish, It's seldom that any actor can make Robert Mitchum almost seem like an afterthought, but Ryan does it rather easily, just as he did in Crossfire.