By David in TN
Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 12:47:00 AM EDT
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is John Farrow's Where Danger Lives (1950), with Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, Claude Rains and Maureen O'Sullivan.
Film Noir Guide: "Mitchum plays a hospital doctor who treats attempted suicide victim Domergue and, of course, falls in love with her, dumping his girlfriend (O'Sullivan). When he drunkenly barges into Domergue's mansion to confront her father, who he believes wants to break up the relationship, he discovers that the 'father' is really her elderly husband (Rains)."
"A fight ensues and Mitchum gets hit over the head with a fireplace poker, before knocking the older man to the floor. After dousing himself with cold water, he finds that Rains is dead. Not thinking straight because of a concussion, he allows Domergue to talk him into taking a powder with her to Mexico. Their nightmare car trip ends tragically at the Mexican border, after Mitchum discovers that Domergue is a pretty sick dame."
"Mitchum's performance saves the film, which is nearly ientical to his Angel Face. The part must have been a natural for the sleepy-eyed, laid-back Mitchum because for more than half the film he walks around in a semi-comatose condition as a result of the concussion. Domergue, while quite a looker, isn't persuasive as the psychotic femme fatale."
David in TN: Before Noir Alley at 10 p.m. Saturday Night, TCM shows Don Siegel's Coogan's Bluff (1968), with Clint Eastwood as an Arizona lawman in Manhattan to extradite a killer (Don Stroud). Susan Clark provides a love interest, and Lee J. Cobb plays an NYPD detective.
David,do you remember the first movie you saw in a theater?Anyone else can answer too.
ReplyDeleteFantastic Voyage was it for me.My mom took me to a matinee in downtown(no blacks)Grand Rapids
--GRA
GRA,
ReplyDeleteNot sure if it was the first but I remember us going to see Song of the South (1946), which is now banned, in the Spring of 1957, age six. It was on a Sunday afternoon in Columbia, Tennessee at the Polk Theater.
There was a large number of blacks attending. I remember them paying and going in a separate entrance. They sat in the balcony while we White people sat in the theater seats.
James Baskett's character, Uncle Remus, was the most sensible adult in the film. The story took place post-Civil War Civil War and after slavery. Baskett was a worker on the plantation and was free to leave any time he wanted to.
I was frightened when the bull chased down and gored Bobby Driscoll.
We went to the same theater around that time to see another Walt Disney film, Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier starring Fess Parker.
These two I have a vivid memory of seeing at the Polk Theater in Columbia.
THE 3 STOOGES IN ORBIT, 1962, at the RKO Coliseum. They made an appearance live on stage (it was at night; both parents took me) and I have only a vague memory of seeing them (I was 5 years old!). They only spoke as far as I recall; no slapping or eye-poking. That theatre was there quite a long time:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.uptowncollective.com/2020/12/11/op-led-the-end-of-an-era
-RM
Thanks,guys.I never would have guessed either movie.It's possible I went to a drive-in with my parents and cousin to see "Pinocchio" earlier than the trip to the movie theater.There were many drive-ins back in the mid 60s.
ReplyDeleteOf course,that's when the customers were all White.Now,if there were drive-ins,the blacks would have shootouts at every showing.
--GRA
Maybe you will enjoy this: photos of movie theatres showing horror-sf movies from the 30s through the 70s:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.universalmonsterarmy.com/forum/index.php?topic=19842.0
-RM
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:30 and 10 a.m. ET is Richard Quine's Pushover (1954) with Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak, Phil Carey, Dorothy Malone, E.G. Marshall, Paul Richards.
ReplyDeleteFilm Noir Guide: "MacMurray plays a good cop gone bad over a gorgeous dame and a case full of money. As part of an undercover operation to catch Novak's bank robber boyfriend (Richards), MacMurray romances her while he and partner Carey spy on her with binoculars and tape her phone conversations, hoping that Richards will show up with the 250 Gs from a recent bank heist. Although Novak discovers his deception, she realizes that she loves him anyway and tempts him with a plan to kill Richards and run off with the dough."
"At first, he's repulsed, but later agrees to her plan, which, of course, immediately goes awry. Watching MacMurray's world crumble around him might arouse some viewer sympathy and a secret hope that he'll get away with it, but this has happened to too many film noir characters too many times to expect a different outcome now (to MacMurray himself in Double Indemnity and to Charles McGraw in Roadblock, among others)."
"Malone plays Novak's next-door neighbor, a nurse whom the lecherous Carey has been admiring from afar with his binoculars. Marshall, who went on to star in the highly successful 1960s TV series The Defenders, has a small role as MacMurray's boss."
"This is a fast-moving, nicely acted film, a worthy addition to the bad cop theme so prevalent in film noir."
David In TN: This is another one that's been on Noir Alley before. A good example of the "sap falls for the wrong woman leading to his destruction" trope.