The “double-cross to end all double crosses”: TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. is Ernest Hemingway, Anthony Veiller, and Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), with Edmund O’Brien, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw, Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey and Charles D. Brown

By David in TN
friday, may 9, 2025 at 5:32:00 p.m. edt

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. is Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) with Edmund O’Brien, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw, Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey and Charles D. Brown.

Film Noir Guide: “Two brazen hit men (McGraw and Conrad, in his film debut) show up one evening in an unlikely film noir locale (Brentwood, New Jersey) and put eight slugs into a filling station attendant (Lancaster), who had waited passively for them in his cheap hotel room. (When asked by a friend why the killers were after him, Lancaster replied simply, ‘I did something wrong once.’)

“An insurance investigator (O’Brien), obsessed with discovering the reason for the killing, seeks out Lancaster’s friends and enemies—his beautiful but scheming girlfriend (Gardner), his prison cellmate (Brown), his partner in a big heist (crime boss Dekker and goons Lambert and Corey) and a police detective (Levine).” What the investigator uncovers turns out to be the ‘double-cross to end all double crosses.

“Lancaster, in his film debut, gives a sensational performance as the depressed loser. Gardner distinguishes herself in the femme fatale role, proving she was not just a gorgeous sex symbol but a genuinely talented actress.

“This classic noir, based loosely on an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same title, was remade in 1964 with John Cassavetes in the Lancaster role, Angie Dickinson as the femme fatale, Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager as the killers and Ronald Reagan (in his final film before turning to politics) as the crime boss. The classic TV show Dragnet borrowed Miklos Rozsa’s compelling score (dum da dum dum) and made it famous.”

David in TN: This is said to be the only film made from an Ernest Hemingway story he liked.

After showing a long line of mediocre entries, Red Eddie Muller for the first time features one of the best noir films.

Best known as Mrs. Olson in Folger’s TV commercials and a long film and TV career in character roles, a young Virginia Christine plays a nice girl who Lancaster throws over for bad girl Ava Gardner.