By David in TN
Friday, May 8, 2020 at 5:25:00 P.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and 10 am ET is Michael Curtiz’ Mildred Pierce (1945), Starring Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Moroni Olsen, Jo Ann Marlowe.
Film Noir Guide: “This brilliantly directed noir opens with someone emptying a revolver into restauranteur Crawford’s second husband (Scott) and Crawford trying to set up her business partner (Carson) as the fall guy.
After all of the suspects are summoned downtown, homicide inspector Olsen drags the sordid tale out of the businesswoman by informing her that he has charged her first husband (Bennett) with the murder.
Crawford is sensational (winning a Best Actress Oscar for her performance, beating out Gene Tierney for another great film noir, Leave Her to Heave), as the dedicated mom determined to provide for her children (Blyth and Marlowe).
After Bennett leaves her for a wealthy woman, Crawford takes a job as a waitress, despite the embarrassment it causes Blyth, her spoiled older daughter. Crawford’s ambition, however, drives her to open a chain of restaurants; in the process, she falls in love with professional loafer Scott, who’s dollar poor and real estate rich.
At last, Crawford reaches a position where, she thinks, Blyth should be content and proud of her workaholic mother. But things quickly deteriorate after Crawford, again catering to Blyth’s social climbing obsession, reluctantly marries playboy Scott, leading to the scoundrel’s untimely death.
Blyth is wonderfully bitchy as Crawford’s femme fatale daughter, and Arden is entertaining in her usual wisecracking sidekick role. Both received Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress. The film also garnered nominations for Best Picture (losing out to The Lost Weekend), Best Screenplay and best Black and White Cinematography.”
N.S.: The revenge part was Crawford’s revenge against MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer, for cutting her loose.
Mike Curtiz’ classics and masterpieces, all at Warner’s:
1935 Captain Blood
1938 Four Daughters
1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood
1938 Angels with Dirty Faces
1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy
1943 Casablanca
1945 Mildred Pierce
And about 1,000 other Warner’s pictures starring Errol Flynn
About Jack Carson (1910-1963). This guy was such a talent that some directors may have thrown him into their pictures, just because he was a good luck charm. But more Carson was always welcome.
During the 1950s, the Golden Age of Live TV Drama, Carson became a perennial guest star of live TV drama anthologies: The Alcoa Theatre; The United States Steel Hour; Playhouse 90; Schlitz Playhouse; Studio One in Hollywood; The Ford Television Theatre; General Electric Theater; Lux Video Theatre; and many more!
1937 Stage Door
1938 Bringing Up Baby
1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
1939 Destry Rides Again
1945 Mildred Pierce
1954 A Star is Born
1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
According to an unnamed source plagiarized by an anonymous contributor at IMDB.com, Jack Carson led a double-life. For a few weeks every year during the 1940s, he would disappear off to parts unknown. He was performing in the Clyde Beatty circus as a clown! Only his wife at the time, Kay St. Germain Wells, knew. I wonder if he was the inspiration for the fugitive professor played by Jimmy Stewart in Cecil B. deMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), who is hiding out under the big top as a clown.
Saturday, May 09, 2020
It’s Joan Crawford’s Comeback-Revenge Picture, and Mike Curtiz Just Doing What He Did, in Those Days: Mildred Pierce (1945)! TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and 10 a.m. ET, with Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Moroni Olsen and Jo Ann Marlowe
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning is Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono (1959) with Glenn Corbett, James Shigeta, Victoria Shaw.
Film Noir Guide: "Corbett and Shigeta are Los Angeles homicide detectives investigating a stripper's murder. While searching for the killer, the former war buddies both fall in love with a pretty artist (Shaw) who ultimately chooses Shigeta. This standard murder mystery is enhanced by the love triangle subplot, the interracial affair between Shigeta and Shaw, and Shigeta' paranoia after he mistakes his best friend;s jealousy for racism. The exciting jazz score and the Los Angeles backdrop add a realistic dimension to the film. Fuller relates in a interview published in Film oir Reader 3 that the opening nighttime sequence, in which a stripper is shot to death after being chased through a heavily trafficked downtown street, was filmed without the knowledge of the real-life pedestrians, most of whom ignored the nearly naked actress racing past them. A neighborhood shopkeeper, however, did call the police when a shot rang out and the actress fell to the ground. Fuller and his crew quickly packed up and left before the cops arrived."
Last week Eddie Muller called The Crimson Kimono "racially charged." Actually less than that and not especially convincing. Fuller's previous film, China Gate (1957) has a similar theme, but more entertaining.
China Gate has Gene Barry and Nat King Cole as Americans in the French Foreign Legion during France's Indochina War with Angie Dickinson playing Barry's Eurasian ex-wife. To my knowledge China Gate has never been on TCM.
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