Classic Cinema, 1946 - 1976

SPOILER ALERT
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

It all started way back in early November 2022 when Gerry and I were watching The Big Sleep, with all those dark night driving sequences, leading up to an eerie, dreary mansion. Something about the droll way that the butler greets Bogart in the opening scene rang a bell in my brain. What other movie had we watched recently that began with a similar scary driving scene and a wacky butler?

How hard could it be to remember the name of an old black and white movie that begins with a man driving over a rickety wooden bridge to a big old house where he is staying for a house party / dinner party? Sadly my memory was embarrassingly hazy! I could recall neither the stars, nor the crime, nor any further details that might narrow down the possibilities.

All I could come up with were some behind - the - scene subplots involving cooking in the kitchen, or hiding in there, or something like that. Or maybe the host of the party decides to some of the cooking. There is definitely one of those scenes, like in an Agatha Christie, where all the characters are sitting around the dinner table questioning each other."

I called on my movie experts, Steven and Victoria, who wrote back with their hunches. Perhaps I was thinking of Crimes at the Dark House (1940) or Dead of Night (1945). These are good movies to know about, and I appreciated Steven's connections:

1. I haven't seen Dead of Night for a long time. I keep mixing it up with Dead of Winter starring Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowell. That's not the movie you're looking for, though; it's in color from 1987.

2. Crimes at the Dark House (1940), starring Tod Slaughter, was originally titled The Woman in White because it was loosely based on the 1860 Wilkie Collins novel The Woman in White, which was later made into a movie of the same name, in 1948.

However, neither one of these titles rang exactly the right bell. The plot summaries didn't quite match up with my memory, despite containing winding roads, dark and stormy nights, haunted houses. Of course, a lot of classic thrillers contain all / most of those elements; so I definitely needed to provide more information. Or better yet, we needed a good coincidence!

A few weeks later, I was flipping through my journal from the year before, and there it was: Murder By Death. I knew right away, that was it! Funny, it was not old, after all, as I had been incorrectly remembering, but a 1976 spoof with guest appearances by Truman Capote and Peter Falk! Mystery solved at last! Now it made sense why each of the other movies seemed similar but not quite right -- because Murder By Death includes motifs from all of them! As Steven sums up, the "problem with Murder by Death was that after the characters are introduced, the script doesn't really go anywhere. Same with Clue. They should both be much cleverer than they are."

Agreed! All the effort is in the elaborate set - up. Yet, you never know what will start you off on a scholarly path. After all the work I did (with a little help from my friends!) to retrace my viewing steps and retrieve Murder By Death from my memory bank, it has become a show that I will not soon forget. Nor will I get it confused with The Big Sleep!

From this wild goose chase, Gerry and I learned that we need to keep a movie list. We've been watching so many cinematic treasures that we've missed over the years, or forgotten about -- old black and whites, film noirs, box - office hits of yore, whodunits, musicals, holiday favorites. It would be a shame to forget the specifics, as we wander nightly from genre to genre.

We also owe our seemingly random but somewhat intentional viewing of American classics to this incredibly informative World War II documentary:

Five Came Back ~ on Netflix
exploring the war-related works
-- and continued popular cinema --
of John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston,
Frank Capra, and George Stevens

and to the Facebook page: The Name is Archer,
a gold mine of legend, lore, references,
connections, and literary allusions.

***************

So, for now -- with a promise of more to come --
here is our once and future film survey,
stretching from 1946 -- the year of The Big Sleep,
to 1976 -- the year of Murder By Death:
1946 May 2
The Postman Always Rings Twice ~ Lana Turner
[and 1981 ~ Jessica Lang & Jack Nicholson]

1946 May 24
Dressed to Kill ~ Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
[no connection to the 1980 film with Michael Caine & Angie Dickinson;
in fact, the title doesn't really fit either movie]

1946 August 15
Notorious ~ Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains

1946 August 30
The Killers ~ Ava Gardner & Burt Lancaster

1946 August 31
The Big Sleep ~ Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall
[& 1976 Murder By Death]

1946 November 1
Stairway to Heaven: A Matter of Life and Death ~ David Niven & Kim Hunter

1946 November 21
Best Years of Our Lives ~ Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright

1946 December 16
Great Expectations ~ John Mills / Anthony Wager, Valerie Hobson / Jean Simmons, Alec Guinness

1946 December 20
It's A Wonderful Life ~ Jimmy Stewart & Donna Reed


Check this very helpful website
for the specific day - month - year of every release:
The Numbers

1947 Out of the Past ~ Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer, Virginia Huston [also 1984 Against All Odds ~ Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward]

1947 The Voice of the Turtle ~ Ronald Reagan & Eleanor Parker

1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ~ Gene Tierney & Rex Harrison

1947 Miracle on 34th Street ~ Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood, Edmund Gwenn


1948 The Winslow Boy ~ Margaret Leighton & Robert Donat
[also 1999 ~ Rebecca Pidgeon & Jeremy Northam]

1948 The Red Shoes ~ Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring

1948 Sorry, Wrong Number ~ Barbara Stanwyck & Burt Lancaster

1948: Road House ~ Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark


1949 Criss Cross ~ Burt Lancaster & Yvonne De Carlo

1949 Twelve O'Clock High ~ Gregory Peck, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe

1949 Shop Around the Corner ~ Jimmy Stewart

1949 The Heiress ~ Olivia de Havilland & Montgomery Clift
[based on Henry James' Washington Square]

1949 The Third Man ~ Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard


1950 In a Lonely Place ~ Humphrey Bogart, Martha Stewart, Gloria Grahame

1950 Sunset Boulevard ~ Gloria Swanson & William Holden

1950 All About Eve ~ Bette Davis, Celeste Holme, Anne Baxter, Marilyn Monroe

1950 Come Back, Little Sheba ~ Burt Lancaster, Shirley Booth, Terry Moore
[also 1977 ~ Laurence Olivier, Joanne Woodward, Carrie Fisher]

More by William Inge (1913-1973)
1953: Picnic
1955: Bus Stop
1957: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still ~ Michael Rennie & Patricia Neal

1951 A Place in the Sun ~ Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters

1951 Strangers on a Train ~ Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker
[see also The Lady Vanishes 1938, 1979, 2013]


1952 Carrie ~ Jennifer Jones, Laurence Olivier, Eddie Albert
[based on Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie]

1952 Singin' in the Rain ~ Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor


1954 Hobson's Choice ~ Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie, Prunella Scales, Daphne Anderson, John Mills, [a treatment of King Lear]

1954 Three Coins in the Fountain ~ Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, Maggie McNamara,

1954 Rear Window ~ Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr

1954 White Christmas ~ Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger


1955 Daddy Long Legs ~ Leslie Caron & Fred Astaire

1955 All That Heaven Allows ~ Rock Hudson & Jane Wyman

1955 To Catch a Thief ~ Cary Grant, Grace Kelly

1955 Not as a Stranger ~ Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame


1956 Baby Doll ~ Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach
[based on Tennessee Williams' one-act play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1955).


1957 The Seventh Seal ~ Max von Sydow

1957 An Affair to Remember ~ Deborah Kerr & Cary Grant

1957 Witness for the Prosecution ~ Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Charles Laughton [also 1949, 1982, 2016]

1957 The Three Faces of Eve ~ Joanne Woodward, Lee J. Cobb

1957 Sweet Smell of Success ~ Tony Curtis & Burt Lancaster & Martin Milner

1957 Paths of Glory ~ Kirk Douglas


1958 Marjorie Morningstar ~ Natalie Wood & Gene Kelly & Martin Milner

1958 Touch of Evil ~ Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich

1958 Vertigo ~ Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak

1958 Party Girl ~ Robert Taylor, Cyd Charisse, Lee J. Cobb


1959 North by Northwest ~ Cary Grant, Eva Maria Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau

1959 Anatomy of a Murder ~ Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick


1960 The Apartment ~ Shirley MacLaine, Jack Lemmon, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday

1960 Psycho ~ Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh

1960 Elmer Gantry ~ Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Shirley Jones, Patti Page, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe

1960 Inherit the Wind ~ Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly, Dick York,

1960 Where the Boys Are ~ Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, and Frank Gorshin

1960 Breathless Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo
[French New Wave crime: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard]


1962 Light in the Piazza ~ Olivia de Havilland, Rossano Brazzi, Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton,

1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ~ Bette Davis & Joan Crawford

1964 Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte ~ Bette Davis & Olivia de Havilland


1963 The Birds ~ Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette


1964 The Night of the Iguana ~ Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon

1964 Carol for Another Christmas ~ Eva Marie Saint, Percy Rodriguez, Peter Sellers, Britt Eckland


1965 I Saw What You Did ~ Joan Crawford & John Ireland


1966 Georgy Girl ~ Lynn Redgrave, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, James Mason, and Redgrave's mother Rachel Kemps

1966 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ~ Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis


1967 Up the Down Staircase ~ Sandy Dennis, Eileen Heckart, Patrick Bedford, Jean Stapleton

1967 To Sir, with Love ~ Sidney Poitier & Lulu


1968 Targets ~ Boris Karloff


1971 The Last Picture Show ~ Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, and Cybill Shepherd

1976 Murder By Death ~ David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith
[Niven played detective Dick Charleston and Smith played his wife Dora Charleston, a little intertextual pun on Nick & Nora from The Thin Man]

1995 Devil in a Blue Dress ~ Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals
[American neo-noir set in late 1940s]


Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, February 14th ~ More Classic Cinema, 1924 - 1945

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