By David in TN
Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 10:01:00 P.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 a.m.) is Dead Reckoning (1947).
Humphrey Bogart again plays a WW II veteran, with Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, Marvin Miller, Wallace Ford, William Prince. John Cromwell directed.
Film Noir Guide: “Bogey stars as an Army captain whose publicity-shy buddy (Prince) deliberately disappears just before he is to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bogey tracks him to his hometown, where he discovers that Prince has been murdered. Determined to find the murderer (“When a guy's buddy is killed, he ought to do something about it”), he soon runs into Prince’s ex-girlfriend (Scott), a former night-club singer whose husband was supposedly killed by Prince several years earlier...Bogart’s gritty performance compensates for the convoluted plot, told mostly in flashback, and Miller is in top form as the repugnant henchman. Look for a grown-up Stymie Beard, former ‘Little Rascal’ Stymie, as a bellhop in Bogey's hotel.”
Sounds like a typical Noir scenario. If you kill a buddy of Bogey’s, you’re in trouble.
Captain Warren “Rip” Murdock (Bogey): “I'm the brass-knuckles-in-the-teeth-to-dance-time type.”
N.S.: I first saw this picture when I was maybe 12. The only thing I could remember almost 50 years later, was the image of Bogey’s war buddy (Prince) saluting him, as his train pulled out of the station, with Bogey helpless to do anything.
David did a blog item on this picture about a year ago, and I responded at the time with my recollection, and then saw the picture again, but it’s not showing up at Google, DDG, or Bing.
Be that as it may, Dead Reckoning proved itself to be a classic film noir, up there with Out of the Past, from the same year.
1 comment:
First, a comment about last week's Noir of the Week. Early on, while riding a train to Washington D.C., Bogey tells his buddy (Prince): "You're going to get the Congressional, the Big One from the Big Guy. Maybe he'll let you sit on his piano."
This was an inside joke, referring to this (https://purpleclover.littlethings.com/entertainment/550-presidents-celebrities/item/harry-s-truman-lauren-bacall/), Bogey's wife, Lauren Bacall, sitting on a piano being played by then-Vice President Harry Truman.
Eddie Muller didn't mention this, but managed to bring up the blacklist in his outro remarks.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:45 am ET (and 10 am ET) Sunday Morning is John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950). There's a great cast with Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, and Marilyn Monroe.
The Asphalt Jungle is the prototype heist film.
Film Noir Guide: "When an aging criminal genius (Jaffe) is released from prison, he goes straight to a small-time bookie (Lawrence) to seek financial backing for a jewelry caper he had planned before he was sent up. Lawrence introduces him to a 'big fixer' corrupt lawyer Calhern, who has squandered his fortune on his lusty young mistress (Monroe). Calhern agrees to fence the jewels after the job but secretly plans a double cross....A sensational film noir classic and one of the greatest crime films of all time, the Asphalt Jungle gave a big boost to the struggling career of Sterling Hayden, once billed as 'the most beautiful man in the movies,' and was a spark that helped ignite Monroe's meteoric rise to stardom. Marc Lawrence is terrific as the weasely middleman, and Jaffe earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as the luckless criminal mastermind with a costly penchant for young girls. He lost the Oscar but went on to co-star in the successful TV medical series Ben Casey."
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