late August 2022. Mixed on notebook paper

 

Late summer. august 2022. Mixed on board.

 

Leon Vitali 1948-2022

 

Raw Deal 1948

 

Dennis O’Keefe’s 2^nd movie made for Anthony Mann was a back to back “B” with “T-Men” made a year before. Both movies can easily be described as raw in its story line but both are smooth and great looking mainly thanks to the black and white cinematography by the very important John Alton. He photographed both films along with many other “B movies” and also went on to do “A” films mainly at M.G.M. and ironically won an Oscar for his color work on “An American In Paris” in 1951. Alton was the author of an important and collectable book on cinematography “Painting With Light” published in 1949 which I’ve sold several times for nice money and is still valuable as a text on cinematography.

The story is simple but as I said raw and its themes can be seen as revenge and redemption. O’Keefe with the help of his main twist played by Claire Trevor who later that year would win herself an Oscar for playing another wounded dame in “Key Largo” plan to break Dennis out of prison for a crime he was convicted of but didn’t do. That they would even consider this loopy plan is pretty weird but they do it anyway.  O’ Keefe was the fall guy for the sick psycho Raymond Burr who sets up the escape hoping that O’ Keefe will be taken out in a hail of bullets and make his paying him the 50 Grand that he owes him from the crime moot. Burr likes to play with fire and one of his terrible crimes off camera is throwing a chafing dish of flaming cherries jubilee in the face of a doll who annoys him. Wonder if Fritz Lang saw this movie.

On the way out of the big house and on the lam, O’Keefe kidnaps Marsha Hunt his legal case worker who earlier in the film visits him in prison to lay out his time still owed to the state for his crime. Three more years if he behaves but Dennis has no interest in this offer and will later wake Marsha from a deep slumber to kidnap her and her car. She tries to convince Dennis to give it up to no avail. So off they go into the long night of noir with Mann and Alton calling the shots, the moods and the look of this deep dish little B. This three’s company also sets up a jealousy riff between Claire and Marsha which will come to a bitter end later in the movie.

The restored film looks great and you can really appreciate the images by Alton with his deep focus set ups, cramped interior car scenes, roads taken, on location footage and lots of reflections in mirrors, windows and even on the faces of clocks. It’s a cheap production to be sure, but because of the caustic casting including John Ireland (when wasn’t he great) in a somewhat small part along with a bevy of B character actors and a snarling larger than life nasty villain it’s all good. I’m not a big fan of Theremin music and Paul Sawtell who did the score uses it over the narration by Claire Trevor a little too much for my liking otherwise as I said it’s all good.   

August 2022 Notebook drawing paint and ink

 

Wolfgang Petersen 1941-2022

 

notebook drawing August 2022 Mixed

 

Anne Heche 1969-2022

 

Jean-Jacques Sempe 1932-2022

 

Issey Miyake 1938-2022

 

David McCullough 1933-2022

 

Olivia Newton john 1948-2022

 

Clu Gulager 1928-2022

 

Strange Impersonation 1946

 

This little “B” blue plate Noir special runs a tight and fast 68 minutes and is what I would call a shoe string production, looking as I have said many times before about Little cheap B’s that it looks like it was shot in that shoe. This marked the beginning of Anthony Mann’s impressive career in which he made movies of all kinds well into the late 60’s. His filmography includes some 40’s b&w tight noir B’s,  a few of which I would call masterworks along with some well-respected westerns in the 50’s and a few brightly colored epics most notably “El Cid” in the early 60’s.  He also made some bombs.

This strange little stain and strain of a movie is about a woman research scientist who works along side her doctor boyfriend at Mindret Wilmott Chemical Institute which by the way is the name of the screenwriter Mindret Lord. Cute. The Institute is situated somewhere on the back lot of Republic Pictures so you know that every expense has been spared, and Mann works this lack of big bucks for everything he has. The female scientist named Nora Goodrich is played in a tight manner by the limited but good-looking Brenda Marshall who made very few films and devoted most of her life to her husband William Holden and their  30 year marriage.  William Gargan not exactly my idea of a romantic lead plays her doctor squeeze who wants to get hitched to her, but Nora is more hot to trot for her experiments especially the major anesthetic breakthrough that she spends most of her waking hours on. Nora is prim and plain especially along side her sexy blonde bombshell assistant played by that tall drink of water the always threatening Hillary Brooke who stole more than her share of scenes during her long career in films and television.

The minute we see Hillary we know trouble in on its way, and all I’ll say about her is that she has a flirty eye for Gargan. Into the mix comes another hard edge dame Jane Karaski played by Ruth Ford who Nora hits with her car as she is backing out of a driveway. Jane is not hurt but will come back to haunt Nora. Ford had an interesting line of life, married to the bicoastal and bisexual Zachary Scott and then to the actor Peter Van Eyck who nicknamed her “Ruthless”.  She did more theatre and t.v. than films and along with her noted literary surrealist brother Charles Henri Ford  was a presence on the New York art and literary scene entertaining the elite in her Dakota apartment. The film moves on to a terrible accident, and Nora winds up in the hospital burned and in need of some big time plastic surgery. Also on view is the wonderful Mary Treen who plays a talky happy nurse, H.B. Warner who is the plastic surgery doctor, George Chandler as a creepy ambulance chaser and Lyle Talbot as a no holds bar police inspector. So I now must end my review because I don’t want to give away anything else away except to say that while it is not high end noir, it might give some pleasure to some and I will add and warn  that a friend threw his shoe at the tv at the “surprise” ending.           

New Box. August 2022 Mixed.

 

George Bartenieff 1933-2022

One of the treasures of my late teen years was George who I discovered along with many other great actors when I went to off off and off off broadway, Especially The Judson Church Theatre where he performed with the amazing Crystal Field his wife at the time and others. I also saw him in Home Movies pictured with the late great Gretel Cummings and the last thing I saw him was the revival of Albee's The American Dream. 

Early August 2022. Mixed on notebook paper