By David in TN
friday, july 4, 2025 at 7:04:00 p.m. edt
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Richard L. Bare’s This Side of the Law (1950) with Kent Smith and Viveca Lindfors.
This Side of the Law is a relatively obscure film. Smith is trapped in a dry cistern and wondering whether he will die there. The main portion of the rest of the film is a flashback to a week earlier then forward, detailing the events that landed him in that precarious pit.
His wife (Lindfors) is estranged, apparently as a result of her husband’s many affairs and general callousness.
N.S.: Kent Smith was a busy actor who never became a star. He was talented, tall, and very handsome, in a patrician way, yet somehow became quickly typecast as moral or physical (blind and dependent) weaklings.
In middle age, Viveca Lindfors became a professional feminist. I saw a feminist one-woman show she did on Channel 13 (PBS) in the early 1970s. I recall thinking that she definitely needed to wear a brassiere.
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In January 1990 Viveca Linfors, then aged 69, was thrown to the ground and slashed in the face by a group of five or six "teen" muggers in Greenwich Village. A 36-year-old Manhattan man a few blocks away was also slashed by the same group. Both victims required dozens of stitches. There was no attempt to rob them; it was called a "random" attack.
The next week a single 18-year-old suspect was arrested. If there was any follow-up account of the incident, I haven't found it. Linfors died in Sweden five years later.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/01/14/Swedish-actress-Viveca-Linfors-slashed/7378632293200/
Thanks for the details on that incident- was going to mention it, but didn't feel like looking it up online. Perhaps that sad event cured her "feminism," though probably too late.
Kent Smith- another favorite actor! He may not have made a big splash in movies (he actually started as a somewhat-bland leading man, in films such as the original CAT PEOPLE), but he seemed to go into a cocoon and re-emerge as a marvelous character actor- he was on TV constantly! Great voice, terrific presence- outstanding in two OUTER LIMITS episodes.
Richard L. Bare had a long career that was all over the map- directed AND wrote the creative and funny "Behind the 8-Ball" one-reel comedies at WB, segued into their mostly cookie-cutter TV Westerns, did some TWILIGHT ZONEs (including the well-remembered "To Serve Man,"), directed the entire (!) GREEN ACRES series, wrote/directed a feature in 1973 called WICKED WICKED in what was dubbed "Duo-Vision"- the whole movie was made with two separate shots on the screen side-by-side! I thought it was a unique tour de force of storytelling- probably showed his real talent. AND he lived to be 101! Whew!
-RM
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night_Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Gordon Wiles' The Gangster (1947) with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Joan Lorring, Akim Tamiroff, Henry (Harry) Morgan, John Ireland, Sheldon Leonard.
Film Noir Guide: "Sullivan plays a neurotic hood who had to fight his way out of the gutter to get where he is. But now he spends all of bis time worrying about whether his showgirl lover (Belita) is cheating on him. Despite warnings from his high-strung associate (Tamiroff) that a rival (Leonard) is trying to take over the business, Sullivan continues to wander around in a paranoid daze, feeling ugly and unoved because of a facial scar, and seeking acceptance from Tamiroff's cashier (Lorring), who despises him."
"Morgan is cast against type as a soda jerk who sees himself as quite the ladies man, and Ireland is a pathetic gambler always just on the verge of hitting it big (sez he). It's overly melodramatic at times, but if you hang in long enough, murder will rear its ugly head."
"Sullivan gives a strong performance as the insecure hood who finds himself losing the little empire he's built. Look for some familiar noir faces in bit roles: Shelley Winters (Tamiroff's new cashier), Charles McGraw (a hood, of course) and Elisha Cook, Jr. (Ditto)."
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night_Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Gordon Wiles' The Gangster (1947) with Barry Sullivan, Belita, Joan Lorring, Akim Tamiroff, Henry (Harry) Morgan, John Ireland, Sheldon Leonard.
Film Noir Guide: "Sullivan plays a neurotic hood who had to fight his way out of the gutter to get where he is. But now he spends all of bis time worrying about whether his showgirl lover (Belita) is cheating on him. Despite warnings from his high-strung associate (Tamiroff) that a rival (Leonard) is trying to take over the business, Sullivan continues to wander around in a paranoid daze, feeling ugly and unoved because of a facial scar, and seeking acceptance from Tamiroff's cashier (Lorring), who despises him."
"Morgan is cast against type as a soda jerk who sees himself as quite the ladies man, and Ireland is a pathetic gambler always just on the verge of hitting it big (sez he). It's overly melodramatic at times, but if you hang in long enough, murder will rear its ugly head."
"Sullivan gives a strong performance as the insecure hood who finds himself losing the little empire he's built. Look for some familiar noir faces in bit roles: Shelley Winters (Tamiroff's new cashier), Charles McGraw (a hood, of course) and Elisha Cook, Jr. (Ditto)."
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