By David in TN
friday, december 2, 2022 at 4:52:00 p.m. est
Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Jack Bernhard’s Decoy (1946) with Jean Gillie, Edward Norris, and Herbert Rudley.
Decoy was made by Poverty Row’s Monogram, and wasn’t rated highly until “rediscovered” by Red Eddie Muller, among others.
Jean Gillie (1915-1949) was an English actress briefly in Hollywood. She was married to the director, Jack Bernhard, who was a minor director. Gillie plays a gang moll who, with cohorts, revive an executed killer from the gas chamber to find where he buried a fortune in stolen money.
Eddie Muller has raved about Gillie’s over-the-top performance as a ruthless killer femme fatale. The screenwriter was Communist Nedrick Young. The film’s selling point is supposed to be how women can be as bad as men.
Gillie and Bernhard divorced in 1947. She went back to Britain and died in 1949, age 33.
I’ve seen Decoy once, didn't make much impression.
According to imdb.com, Jean Gillie was so bad that, although she’d been born and raised in England, American audiences didn’t buy her British accent.
feminazis: Who’d a thunk it that a crime movie could negatively depict a female?
This must have been Red Eddie’s first time doing a crime movie.
Jean Gillie’s IMDB.com page says she “allegedly” died of pneumonia. The writer finds everything about her dubious.
She’s so obscure that she’s not even the answer to a trivia question.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Robert Stevenson's Walk Softly, Stranger (1950) with Joseph Cotten, (Alida) Valli, Spring Byington, Paul Stewart, Paul Stewart, John McIntire.
Film Noir Guide: "While hiding out after his last robbery, a small-time crook (Cotten) falls in love with a crippled girl (Valli), and decides to go straight. Complicating his plan is his on the run, former partner (Stewart), who shows up looking for a place to hide."
"McIntire is Cotten's boss at his legit factory job, and Jack Paar, before his TV heyday as the Tonight Show host, plays Cotten's co-worker and poker buddy. Byington (TV's December Bride) is Cotten's sweet old landlady. Except for a terrific car crash, this romantic melodrama is snooze material."
David In TN: I don't recall ever seeing this film. Reviews are negative. Walk Softly, Stranger's selling point seems to be Cotten and Valli soon after both were in The Third Man (1949). "Raspy-voiced" Paul Stewart is usually fun to watch.
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