By David in TN
friday, may 12, 2023 at 8:50:00 p.m. edt
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Michael Curtiz’s Flamingo Road (1949) with Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet, David Brian and Virginia Huston.
Film Noir Guide: “Crawford is a performer (one of the sultan’s dancing girls) in a traveling carnival. When Sheriff Greenstreet runs the show out of town, she stays on, falling in love with deputy sheriff Scott.
“She soon finds herself framed on a prostitution charge by Greenstreet, who has political plans for Scott, and doesn’t want Crawford around to ruin them. The spineless Scott, drinking heavily, allows the malignant sheriff to force him into a loveless marriage with socialite Huston, which helps him get elected state senator.
“Next stop, if Greenstreet gets his way, is the governor’s mansion. Meanwhile, Crawford returns to town and marries political boss Brian, causing the depressed
Scott to hit the bottle even harder.
“Crawford, at 45 [sic], isn’t believable as a veiled, exotic dancer, but once the carnival leaves town, she’s back on her own turf—playing a tough, sensible and, at times, fragile woman choosing to settle down in a town that doesn’t want her. Greenstreet is at his nastiest as the fat, old sheriff grasping at political power from behind closed doors and
willing to do whatever it takes to get it.”
N.S.: Film Noir Guide got Crawford’s age wrong: As she was born in 1906, she would have been 42 when she made Flamingo Road. I never thought much of her as a beauty, at any age. Cute, but never gorgeous.
It looks like neither David nor me has seen this one, but Mike Curtiz was still Warner’s top director (though not for long), and had guided Crawford to her Oscar for Mildred Pierce (1945), so Jack Warner clearly believed in this project.
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2 comments:
Nicholas,
You're right. I've never seen Flamingo Road. One, I never have cared for Joan Crawford. Two, I disliked the 80s TV series based on the movie.
I'll watch it this time.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Gerald Mayer's Dial 1119 (1950) with Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Andrea King, Sam Levene, Leon Ames, Keefe Brasselle, William Conrad, James Bell.
Film Noir Guide: "Thompson stars as an escaped lunatic heading for the town where he was arrested. After ruthlessly gunning down a bus driver, he holes up in a bar across the street from police psychiatrist Levene's apartment, waiting for the good doctor to come home so he can kill him. When the bartender (Conrad) recognizes him from a TV newscast, the gunman takes the employees and customers hostage, demanding that the police send in the doctor."
"His terrified hostages (Brasselle, Field, King, Ames, and Bell) wait nervously while police surround the establishment. This suspenseful and innovative film contains interesting similarities to modern day hostage films--the news-hungry TV reporters and their live coverage of the crisis, the hostage negotiator, the argument over whether to storm the place or talk the killer out, an ice cream truck peddling its goods to curious thrill seekers, and the killer viewing events on, believe it or not, the baar's 3 x 4--foot projection TV screen (in 1950!)."
"A lot happens in 74 minutes. Thompson is believable as the psycho with an ax to grind."
David In TN: I'm curious as to what Eddie Muller will say about Marshall Thompson. He was a conservative of sorts. Thompson starred in two early Vietnam movies, A Yank in Vietnam (1964), and To the Shores of Hell (1966). Thompson directed the first, which was filmed completely in South Vietnam. Both are pro-American and neither has been shown on TCM to my knowledge.
Thompson also starred in The Basketball Fix (1951) as a star basketball player caught up in the 1950-51 point-shaving scandal. It has (I have a DVD) a noirish feel. John Ireland played a sportswriter trying to break the story and get Thompson on the right track.
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