By David in TN
Friday, July 10, 2020 at 9:59:00 P.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and 10 a.m. ET is Richard Fleischer's Bodyguard (1948), with Lawrence Tierney, Priscilla Lane, Philip Reed, Steve Brodie and Elizabeth Risdon.
This is a 62-minute late 40's RKO crime film, one of Richard Fleischer's early films. Lawrence Tierney plays an LAPD detective who beats crooks up, even then it gets him in trouble. This is a rare Good Guy role for Tierney.
Film Noir Guide: “Tierney, a hot-headed, hard-hitting cop, socks a superior officer then resigns from the force rather than accept a suspension. He takes a job as a bodyguard for a meat packing heiress (Risdon) and soon finds himself framed for the murder of the cop he assaulted.
“His fiancee (Lane) is a police department secretary and his inside contact for information that may clear him.
“Reed plays the shady nephew of the meat packing company owner, and Brodie is the ex-con who works as a meat cutter. Tierney is fine in a good-guy role for a change, but Lane is much too cutesy. This is a fast-moving film (at sixty-two minutes, it has to be).”
N.S.: Sixty-two was Richard Fleischer’s magic number. Maybe he bet it in Vegas later on. As David has pointed out before, Fleischer loved to churn out fast-paced, 62-minute B pictures.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET and 10 am ET is Jean Negelsco's Three Strangers (1946) with Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Peter Lorre, Alan Napier, Rosalind Ivan. John Huston and Howard Koch wrote the screenplay.
Film Noir Guide: "Fitzgerald, a worshipper of Kwan Yin, the Chinese goddess of 'fortune and destiny, of life and death,' convinces two men (Lorre and Greenstreet) to join her in a ceremony in front of a statue of the goddess at midnight on the Chinese New Year, when, according to legend, the goddess will grant a wish to three strangers. After they make their collective wish (that Lorre's sweepstakes ticket will win), the three go their separate ways. Alcoholic Lorre is later arrested and charged with a bobby's murder; barrister Greenstreet misappropriates a client's funds, loses it all, and contemplates suicide; and Fitzgerald ruthlessly schemes to win back her straying husband. The cast is perfect, with the usual sinister Lorre playing a sympathetic character for a change, and the ending is wonderfully ironic. Screenwriter Huston reportedly based this unusual and entertaining story on his real-life experience with a lottery ticket and a mysterious Burmese statue."
TCM has three other famous film noirs on Saturday: Murder my Sweet (1944) at 2 pm ET. The Maltese Falcon (1941) at 8 pm ET and High Sierra (1941) at 10 pm ET.
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