Monday, June 26, 2017

Breaking News! Film Noir on Hump Day: See the Smouldering, Original Version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)!

 

 

By David in TN
Monday, June 26, 2017 at 2:07:00 P.M. EDT

Although it's not a Film Noir Sunday special, TCM is showing the original, 1946 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, with John Garfield and Lana Turner at 12:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, June 27.
 

 

It took several years to film the story due to concerns about the material being taboo, Production Code-wise. After Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) which was also based on a James M. Cain novel with a similar plot line, it was decided to go ahead with The Postman.

Lana Turner is always dressed in white and her legs are shown frequently. A possible false note? Turner is too gorgeous to be married to a dumpy guy 30 years older than her.

 

 

 

N.S.: I saw the re-make with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson about 35 years ago, in West Germany. The husband was a paunchy, middle-aged Greek in that version. But if Cora was white trash, the Greek having a successful diner would have made him rich as Croesus in her eyes.
 


5 comments:

  1. jerry pdx
    I love it when this happens. Black professor gets a taste of the kind of PC hysteria that whites usually get in trouble for. Something tells me they never pick up on the iron though:

    "A college professor who recently appeared on Fox News to defend a Black Lives Matter event in which only black people were invited has been fired."

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/college-professor-fired-following-appearance-on-fox-news-where-she-defended-a-black-lives-matter-party/ar-BBDbiCw

    "It was announced Friday that Lisa Durden, a former adjunct professor at Essex County College in New Jersey, would be let go from her job following a heated argument on the June 6 episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight. While speaking about an “all-black Memorial Day celebration” hosted by a Black Lives Matter group, Durden, who is black, told the host “you white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card” to attend the event".

    "The former professor, who taught communications and pop culture classes as an adjunct according to the Newark Star-Ledger, also called America a “racist society.”

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  2. If you haven't seen the 1946 version, you have to watch or record it.

    Lana Turner's father was born (per Wikipedia) in Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee and her mother was from Arkansas. Lana was born in Idaho and after several trials and tribulations (including her father's unsolved murder in San Francisco) she ended up in Los Angeles.

    If Lana Turner hadn't been discovered when she was, she might well have been in real life the character she played in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

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  3. Thanks, David.

    Violence always seemed to follow her, dinnit?

    She was attracted to brutes like Johhnny Stompanato (talk about a pulp fiction name for a real mobster!), which led to her daughter, Cheryl Crane killing him, and being tried and acquitted in a trial that was itself the stuff of pulp fiction!

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  4. I don't see it on the schedule for Wednesday. I've seen it before, though, and it's great.

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