Noir Alley

[Dargo]

17 hours ago, Thompson said:

On Gunsmoke Chester shot a rabbit and stole a chicken in order to save Doc.  He didn’t order no vitamins over the internet.

Nope, Chester did this the old fashion way.

He sent off a telegraph message and then waited for the Wells Fargo stage to deliver 'em to him.

And then weeks later, this would've been when a young freckle-faced redheaded boy with a pronounced lisp would have loudly announced to all the townfolk the arrival the stage with Chester's vitamins on it 

(...now, please don't make me have to now explain THIS one to ya here TOO, Thompson ol' boy?!!!)  

 

[Thompson]

20 hours ago, Dargo said:

Nope, Chester did this the old fashion way.

He sent off a telegraph message and then waited for the Wells Fargo stage to deliver 'em to him.

And then weeks later, this would've been when a young freckle-faced redheaded boy with a pronounced lisp would have loudly announced to all the townfolk the arrival the stage with Chester's vitamins on it 

(...now, please don't make me have to now explain THIS one to ya here TOO, Thompson ol' boy?!!!)  

 

I was wrong in my original assessment of Balance of Nature vitamin users as being from all walks of life.  Yeah,  if you walk with plenty bucks in your pocket.  These “vitamins” are expensive.  “They work right away.”  “Never felt so good.”  “My energy level is much improved.”  That’s the comments from the red capsule takers.  “Never had a better night’s sleep.” “Fell asleep right away.” Those are the comments from the green capsule takers.  So this drug cartel disguising itself as a vitamin company is pretty clever.

[Thompson]

You would think these “vitamins” would be FDA approved but it’s obvious they are not available in stores.  It’s like this Kratom stuff.  Legal, a plant derivative, and therefore a dietary supplement, easily available over the net and in the vape shops.  I’ve done a dose or two of heroin in my time and this Kratom is very similar.  Anyway, my advice is to steer clear of Balance of Nature vitamins and eat fruits and vegetables the old fashioned way.

[Vautrin]

Chester needed some vitamins or something to give him a little get up and go. He spent inordinate amounts of time taking naps

in the chair out in front of Matt's office. 

[Thompson]

I love the scenes where Kitty is pealing and eating hard boiled eggs in the Longbranch.  That’s where Chester gets his egg shells to make his famous coffee.

[Dargo]

22 hours ago, Vautrin said:

Chester needed some vitamins or something to give him a little get up and go. He spent inordinate amounts of time taking naps

in the chair out in front of Matt's office. 

Well, it does take a lot of energy to fake a pronounced limp ya know.

(...word is Walter Brennan took a lot of naps on the set of The Real McCoys for this very same reason as well, ya know...dagnabbit!)

[Vautrin]

3 hours ago, Thompson said:

I love the scenes where Kitty is pealing and eating hard boiled eggs in the Longbranch.  That’s where Chester gets his egg shells to make his famous coffee.

I like  hard  boiled eggs. I can't  recall if she also had a salt  shaker handy.

[Vautrin]

1 hour ago, Dargo said:

Well, it does take a lot of energy to fake a pronounced limp ya know.

(...word is Walter Brennan took a lot of naps on the set of The Real McCoys for this very same reason as well, ya know...dagnabbit!)

I remember reading once the reason why Chester was given a limp, can't recall it now. I  always thought it was kind of stupid,  as Chester

probably would have been almost as ineffective even if he had two good legs. I like Chester but he was something of  the Dodge City

oddball. Grandpappy Amos, head of  the clan,  he  smells  like  a lion and  he's as dumb as  a lamb.  Brennan  was  a much older than Weaver, 

so I can see why he needed  lots of  shuteye. 

[Thompson]

Yes, she always salts  them after peeling and just before eating them.  There are at least three scenes and probably many more on Gunsmoke where she does this.

[Thompson]

Hard boiled eggs always remind me of Columbo.  

[Thompson]

Chester wears suspenders and a belt, which seems unnecessary.  However, as a fashion statement it is golden.  

[Dargo]

2 hours ago, Vautrin said:

I remember reading once the reason why Chester was given a limp, can't recall it now. I  always thought it was kind of stupid,  as Chester

probably would have been almost as ineffective even if he had two good legs. I like Chester but he was something of  the Dodge City

oddball. Grandpappy Amos, head of  the clan,  he  smells  like  a lion and  he's as dumb as  a lamb.  Brennan  was  a much older than Weaver, 

so I can see why he needed  lots of  shuteye. 

Yeah, well, in Walter's case and besides the the whole age difference thing, it can also be quite taxing on the body to dig and build bomb/fallout shelters in your off-hours away from the set as well.

(...and to say nothing about holding inside one all of that hatred and fear can often drain a person of so much of their energy reserves as well)

 

[Vautrin]

3 hours ago, Dargo said:

Yeah, well, in Walter's case and besides the the whole age difference thing, it can also be quite taxing on the body to dig and build bomb/fallout shelters in your off-hours away from the set as well.

(...and to say nothing about holding inside one all of that hatred and fear can often drain a person of so much of their energy reserves as well)

 

A few months ago I happened to come  across a recording  Walter  made  giving  a speech before the John Birch  society sometime in  the mid 1960s.

Lots  of  stuff  about  how bad  LBJ and his Great Society  are, and other wacky right  wing  obsessions from that period.  Pretty funny.

[mr6666]

 

[Thompson]

Ya can’t beat Matt Dillon’s pants.  Ever thrown your back out?  I always thought that people who gripe about throwing their backs out are a bunch of pansies.  Not so.  The pain is unbelievable, from every angle.  No relief.  But, just like pain does, I don’t feel my toothache now  because of the back pain.  The stab wound in my leg is meaningless.  A big ol’ tree roach just crawled into my Budweiser can, bold as can be.  Nature abhors the weak and has no sympathy.

[Dargo]

6 hours ago, Thompson said:

Ya can’t beat Matt Dillon’s pants.  Ever thrown your back out?  I always thought that people who gripe about throwing their backs out are a bunch of pansies.  Not so.  The pain is unbelievable, from every angle.  No relief.  But, just like pain does, I don’t feel my toothache now  because of the back pain.  The stab wound in my leg is meaningless.  A big ol’ tree roach just crawled into my Budweiser can, bold as can be.  Nature abhors the weak and has no sympathy.

Oh yeah. I dig all you're sayin' here Thompson, and 'cause...

[Vautrin]

As  far as I can  recall, I've never seen Hit  and  Run. Maltin's  Movie  Guide gives  it  a  BOMB rating,  but  we'll see.

Even BOMBS  are sometimes entertaining. As a  point  of trivia, Bob Mitchum's  older  sister Julie  has a  small  part in the movie. 

[Thompson]

The shot that Mr. 6666 posted looks very promising. Dang, it’s on now, but I’ll have wait ‘cause it’s Lights Out at 9pm in this joint.

[cigarjoe]

I wrote this four years ago

Hit And Run (1957) Wrecking Yard Noir (Monday, December 3, 2018)

This film was a bit of a pleasant surprise. I'd never seen it before and did not know the storyline so when I saw it's wrecking yard setting I was hooked.

I lived in western Montana for roughly 24 years. Montana was quite off the beaten track back then. Coming from New York City I found much to my surprise that Montana was also in a sort of cultural and visual time lag. That visual time lag was in the vicinity of ten or twelve years. Instead of being 1972 it was as if you were still in 1962. There were quite a few cars still actively running about from the early to mid 60s and pickups and larger trucks from the late 40s and 50s.

They didn't use salt on the roads in Montana like they did in New York. Vehicles had a much longer life span. In winter after a big snow you didn't see pavement again in quite a few areas of the mountains until spring. They sanded the roads, so basically you drove on frozen sand packed snow the color of light butterscotch. Occasionally you'd get a mid winter thaw and sections of road in the open and exposed to the sun would bear off, the shaded passes in the mountains though would not. They had pull offs that were chain up areas and there were lots days where I made trips from Libby to Kalispell with tire chains for most of the 89 mile way on my 1949 Chevy 3/4 ton.

During my years in Montana there was also period of years back between 1977 - 1980 when my wife's step father-in-law Hugh suffered from a heart attack. He was an old cowboy/trucker who had made a lot money driving supply trucks 24/7 on the North Slope Haul Road for the Alaska Pipeline right at the get go in 1974. He made a killing. When he got back to Montana a year later he bought out his partner in the wrecking yard he part owned, married my wife's mother, and in 1976 had a mild heart attack. He had to take it easy and needed help to run the place.  I needed work so I offered to help out. We had a rent free house in the rear to live in once we cleaned out the auto parts that were stored in it. The wrecking yard was on the Flathead Indian Reservation, just South of Flathead Lake and just North of Ronan.

The way a typical Western wrecking yard, where you have a lot of acres to spread out is, you place all the makes of cars built by the same manufacturer together. That way makes it much easier to find interchanging parts. Most manufactures use the same carbs, starters, radiators, generators, water pumps, power steering pumps, gas tanks, and some body parts etc;, etc., between models. Ford used FoMoCo parts in Fords, Lincolns, and Mercurys. General Motors uses Delco parts in Chevys, GMCs, Buick, Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles. Chrysler uses Mopar parts in Chrysler, Dodges, and Plymouths.

For instance the only difference in a Delco starter was the "nose cone" where it bolted to the bell housing. It was a simple matter of undoing two bolts holding the "nose cone" to the starter motor and putting the one that fit the car you needed it for. Some starters mounted on the drivers side some on the passenger side.

So you'd set aside areas of the yard accordingly, Chevyland, Fordland, Dodgeville, the smaller company still in the business in the 70's was American Motors models and Jeep was still their best known model, they had their own motors and transmissions, however they often used accessory parts from all of the big three. We still had recently demised brands like Studebaker, Nash, Rambler, etc., etc., that we kept together. Sort of a everything else land.

Our supply of autos came from cleaning up junked cars from the various farms and ranches, or from what people wanted to sell us. We never payed more than $100 dollars for pickups of $50 dollars for cars. Being on the Rez the Flatheads would get occasional money allotments and they'd haul their junkers in to us and buy new cars and trucks.

If we had time we'd either tinker around with the cars to see if we could get them running again. This BTW was a major plot point in Hit And Run, or we'd pull the quick selling items, the generators, alternators, batteries, and starters, but only if the starters were easy to get to, which was usually on the six cylinder engines. Those parts we'd shelve in the shop.

We ran the yard do-it-yourself. We'd let people park at the shop and let them wander around with their own tools looking for what they needed. When they came back with the parts they took off, a lot of times we'd just pull a price out of our ****. We had a sort of sliding scale where we'd give breaks to down and out folks that looked as if they could use one. But even then you'd get some crazies. I remember one guy wanted a used fuel pump. A new one was about 30-35 dollars, I told the guy ten dollars and he went apocalyptic. "what is it plated in gold!" He paid it though/

We'd get advance orders over the phone and head out with the fork lifts and grab off parts. We had two of them an ex logging company Ross lift truck for the big stuff and a smaller Scoopmobile for the regular work. Each forklift had a toolbox, a cutting torch, and an air wrench.

I got to where I could pull any motor in twenty minutes. You didn't **** around undoing everything, you just cut all the wires and hose lines. Lifted the car up by the front end. Took off the drive shaft, and air-wrenched off the bolts holding up the transmission mount. That loosed the engine and tranny. Then you dropped the car back down to the ground and either air wrenched off the engine mount bolts or cut them off with the smoke wrench. The final step was taking off the carburetor. Once the carb was off, you had the central hole in the intake manifold that you could insert a "C" shaped hook and with that pull the motor and tranny out.

The cars that had pretty much been stripped down to hulks we crushed in a homemade "smasher." The "smasher" was a 3/4 inch welded steel box filled with about  2 1/2 feet of concrete. It was hinged at one end. The steel lined concrete box fit into a slightly larger hollow steel box. This steel box had two slots where the forks of the Ross lift truck could slide in and lift out the crushed car.

The "smasher" ran off of an old Chrysler Hemi motor still housed in the front end of a 1956 Dodge D-500. The motor ran a winch which lifted one end of the concrete filled steel box. A hulk filled with as much scrap weight, i.e. cracked engine blocks, wheel hubs, axle housings etc. would be placed in the hollow steel box and the smasher would gravity drop upon it. The crushed car would be lifted out and stacked. When we got a semi load of crushed cars we'd ship them to Tacoma for scrap cash.

The rest of my review here  it's probably also in Recently Watched Noir on Film Noir & Gangster Pages

[JamesJazGuitar]

Dolores Reed was an interesting addition to Hit and  Run.    

[ElCid]

Watched Hit and Run and not a bad movie and probably not the worst I have seen on Noir Alley.  I didn't turn it off and watched all of it so that's a plus. Although it does echo The Postman Rings Twice too much.  

As for Cleo Moore, while not outstanding I have always liked her.  She was pretty good in Over-Exposed and even in One Girl's Confession, another Haas production.   As for Haas, so-so as an actor.

The lion tamer, Delores Reed, was about as dull as dishwater.

[Janet0312]

I enjoyed this film and am so happy to have Eddie back!

[Thompson]

There was a lot of eating going on and I’m pretty sure it didn’t rain.  I like this guy Hugo Haas.  This is only the second film of his I’ve seen but I’ll be on the lookout for others.  Vince Edwards has a cool style and I thought the dialogue was pretty good.  Cleo’s line about not liking her drink refilled until the one she was working on was done was great. How did she say it?  — I can’t pull it up but it passes the Thompson test of drinks left undrunk.  I agree that Haas as an actor is so-so but for only a hundred grand to make a movie you have to cut some corners.  It has that ‘campy’ feel but that’s okay because isn’t that what we want?  Cleo Moore is not my type, blond and buxom, but she sure beats the heck out of that chatterbox Katherine Hepburn who’s never been in a noir as far as I know., thank goodness.  The film was fast, and like Janet said, it’s great to have Eddie and Noir Alley back!

[Dargo]

1 hour ago, ElCid said:

Although it does echo The Postman Rings Twice too much.  

Sorry, but I don't see this nearly as much as you and Eddie in his intro suggested it is.

Nope, I mean sure, while its storyline is one of an older man marrying a much younger woman, and that there's a younger man who plots to kill off the older one because he becomes infatuated with his wife, there are still SO many other and different plots twists which depart from The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Take for instance just the idea that in the Haas film, the wife is not actually or willingly a member of the murder plot. But, ESPECIALLY take into account here that the proposed murder victim does NOT die and actually gets the last laugh on the perpetrator.

In fact, I'd say when comparing films with these sorts of plots, Double Indemnity is FAR more akin to TPART than this Haas film ever is.

(...btw, did anyone else notice how TCM cut off the last few seconds of TPART last night and then suddenly there was Mankiewicz doing his outtro of it?)

[ElCid]

30 minutes ago, Thompson said:

There was a lot of eating going on and I’m pretty sure it didn’t rain.  I like this guy Hugo Haas.  This is only the second film of his I’ve seen but I’ll be on the lookout for others.  Vince Edwards has a cool style and I thought the dialogue was pretty good.  Cleo’s line about not liking her drink refilled until the one she was working on was done was great. How did she say it?  — I can’t pull it up but it passes the Thompson test of drinks left undrunk.  I agree that Haas as an actor is so-so but for only a hundred grand to make a movie you have to cut some corners.  It has that ‘campy’ feel but that’s okay because isn’t that what we want?  Cleo Moore is not my type, blond and buxom, but she sure beats the heck out of that chatterbox Katherine Hepburn who’s never been in a noir as far as I know., thank goodness.  The film was fast, and like Janet said, it’s great to have Eddie and Noir Alley back!

One Girl's Confession and Over-Exposed are on Bad Girls' of Film Noir, Vol. 2 DVD if it is still around.