Clark Gable flew five combat missions in World War II, including one to Germany. Gable’s military awards were the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal. He also received aerial gunner wings.
Adolf Hitler admired Gable more than any other actor and offered a sizable reward to anyone who could capture and bring Gable to him unscathed.
There are two cool events going on Thursday night in the noir capital of the world, i.e. Los Angeles.
Master storyteller James Ellroy will read from his new novel, “Perfidia,” set in 1941 LA.
Ellroy’s other novels include: “The Black Dahlia,” “The Big Nowhere,” “L.A. Confidential,” “White Jazz,” “American Tabloid,” “The Cold Six Thousand” and “Blood’s a Rover.”
Several of his books have been made into movies. This influential writer was born in Los Angeles in 1948.
Publishers Weekly calls the new book: “A sprawling, uncompromising epic of crime and depravity.” We’re in.
The reading is at 7:30 p.m. at Skylight Books.
The Autry Center is hosting Celebrate Steinbeck! The Road Trip as Inspiration, in honor of the 75th anniversary of “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Artists will recount The Grapes of Wrath Journey, a 2013 retracing of the route taken by the Joad family. The event starts at 6 p.m.
By Mr E Man and Mark Harrington
The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week: A Day with Sam Fuller
Tuesday, April 29
Cigar-chewing, ex-New York City newsman Sam Fuller was one of the toughest of all the tough noir directors. He made tough crime thrillers, tough war movies, tough westerns, and even a tough period newspaper drama (“Park Row,” which was his own favorite). Eight of his movies are on tap this Tuesday.
Offhand, we can’t think of another moviemaker who began his scenes and camera takes by firing off a gun, or who ended one picture (“Shock Corridor”) by flooding and destroying his own set and vamoosing from the studio.
Sam Fuller knew what real crooks, cops, Army men and news guys were like, and he encouraged his casts to play it hard, spiky and dark. American film executives were often bewildered by Sam, and so were American film critics. But the French loved him.
Fuller served as a soldier with the famed WWII infantry squadron The Big Red One (which he and star Lee Marvin portrayed, to the hilt, in their 1980 war saga of the same name). And he served as a 20th Century Fox contract writer-director, under the formidable Darryl F. Zanuck, which may have been almost as dangerous.
Like Don Siegel and Phil Karlson, Fuller was one of the masters of B-budgets, though he did all right with a few “As” too, including “The Big Red One,” and the Venice Film Festival prize winner (with Richard Widmark), “Pickup on South Street.” He never made anything soft and he never made anything that put you to sleep.
7:15 a.m. (4:15 a.m.): “I Shot Jesse James” (1949, Samuel Fuller). With John Ireland, Preston Foster and Barbara Britton. Reviewed in FNB on July 13, 2012.
8:45 a.m. (5:45 a.m.): “The Baron of Arizona” (1950, Fuller). Vincent Price at his slickest, suavest and meanest, playing a real-life Arizona land-grabber who almost stole the whole state.
10:30 a.m. (7:30 a.m.): “The Steel Helmet” (1951, Fuller). A very dark, grim and relentless Korean war movie, about a platoon under fire bivouacked in a Buddhist temple, led by a hard-case sergeant named Zack (Gene Evans). One of the few times Fuller had most of the critics in his corner; “The Steel Helmet” is a B-movie classic. With Steve Brodie, James Edwards and Robert Hutton.
12 p.m. (9 a.m.): “Run of the Arrow” (1957, Fuller). The Civil War is over. Southern rebel survivor Rod Steiger is in Sioux country out west, trying to survive. This film and Forty Guns (with Barbara Stanwyck as a tough cattle queen) are Fuller’s best westerns, though “Run of the Arrow” has the stronger cast. Besides Steiger, who affects an outrageous Irish- Confederate brogue, there’s Charley Bronson, Brian Keith, Ralph Meeker, Sarita Montiel and Jay C. Flippen.
1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “Verboten!” (1958, Fuller). James Best, who usually plays sensitive cowboys, is a nosey yank soldier in post-war Germany, whose German girlfriend (Susan Cummings) leads him to a secret neo-Nazi group.
3 p.m. (12 p.m.): “Merrill’s Marauders” (1962, Fuller). Jeff Chandler, in his last movie, plays the real-life WW2 hero General Frank Merrill of the famed Merrill’s Marauders — fighting and suffering in the Burmese jungles, in what’s probably Fuller’s most conventional war picture. But it’s a good one anyway. Chandler is backed by much of the Warner Brothers TV Western repertory troupe: Claude Akins, Andrew Duggan, Ty Hardin, Will Hutchins and Peter Brown.
4: 45 p.m. (1:45 p.m.): “Shock Corridor” (1963, Fuller). With Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Gene Evans, James Edwards and Larry Tucker. Reviewed in FNB on Nov. 16, 2011.
6:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m.): “The Naked Kiss” (1964, Fuller). With Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Virginia Grey, Michael Dante, and Patsy Kelly. Reviewed in FNB on Jan. 16, 2012.More
By Mr E Man and Mark Harrington
The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
“Odds Against Tomorrow”
(1959, Robert Wise). 1 a.m. (10 p.m.) Monday, Jan. 20
Here is one of the great, underrated film noirs – a movie whose reputation and stature was recognized early on by French critics and has continued to grow over the past half century.
Based on a novel by suspense specialist William McGivern (“The Big Heat”), “Odds Against Tomorrow” boasts a riveting and exciting story, unforgettable characters and a social/political allegory that’s pointed and powerful. With Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame. Read the full review here.
Thursday, Jan. 16
12:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m.): “A Woman’s Face” (1941, George Cukor). A crime boss (Joan Crawford) with a ruined face has her physical damage repaired by plastic surgery. Embarking on another crime, she must decide whether to pursue the evil she knows or the good that beckons. Remade from the 1939 Swedish thriller by director Gustaf Molander, with Ingrid Bergman in Crawford’s part. The original was better, but the remake is good. The supporting cast includes Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt (in his Hollywood specialty, a smooth sadistic villain), Reginald Owen, Marjorie Main and Henry Daniell. Script by Donald Ogden Stewart and mystery writer Elliot Paul.
4:15 a.m. (1:15 a.m.): “These are the Damned” (1963, Joseph Losey). Expatriate American director Losey, a Black List victim, was still in Britain when he made this scintillatingly shot mix of neo-noir, juvenile delinquent thriller, and “Village of the Damned”-style anti-war science fiction. MacDonald Carey is the boat enthusiast/ businessman at a coastal British city, who falls for a Teddy Girl (Shirley Anne Field). Her gang-boss brother (played by sullen young Oliver Reed) is touchy, jealous and dangerous. Chased by the gang (whose signature song is the bizarrely uncatchy psychotic-sounding pseudo-rock ballad “Black Leather! Black Leather! Kill! Kill! Kill!”), the couple escapes to an island in the grip of a doomsday scientific experiment with irradiated children, run by Alexander Knox. It’s a pretty crazy show, but it really grips you, and it looks great. Written by Losey regular Evan Jones (“Eva” and “King and Country”).
Saturday, Jan. 18
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Lifeboat” (1944, Alfred Hitchcock). During World War II, an American ocean liner is torpedoed by a Nazi submarine. The survivors – now trapped in the lifeboat and in the vast waters – have to decide whether to trust the only person among them who knows how to navigate the boat: the Nazi captain of the sub that sunk them (Walter Slezak). This anti-Fascist parable/thriller and character study, the most political and left-wing movie Alfred Hitchcock ever made, was originally written by John Steinbeck; Ben Hecht and Jo Swerling also had hands in it. Shot basically in one studio tank and in the lifeboat, this underrated flick features a shocker of an ending and a first-rate cast, including Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, William Bendix, Canada Lee, Hume Cronyn and Henry Hull.
Sunday, Jan. 19
6 a.m. (3 a.m.): “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” (1947, Peter Godfrey). With Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck and Alexis Smith. Reviewed in FNB on June 27, 2012. More
