Like Somewhere in the Night, The Crooked Way focuses on a war veteran who’s in search of his identity. His second wife, and the mother of his children, was actress Eileen Ryan, who played in Benny and Joon (1993) and I Am Sam (2001), and portrayed the grandmother of her sons, Sean and Chris, in At Close Range (1996). Penn’s first wife was actress Olive Deering, perhaps best known for portraying Miriam in The Ten Commandments (1956). He kept afloat by acting in television and stage productions, and later became a television director, helming episodes for a wide variety of popular series, including 77 Sunset Strip, Bonanza, Marcus Welby, St. He was blacklisted during the 1940s and 1950s after he publicly supported the Hollywood 10, a group of screenwriters, directors and producer who were accused of having Communist sympathies. Trivia tidbit: The film’s star, Leo Penn, was the father of actors Senn and Chris Penn. He later escapes and teams up with his girlfriend ( Teala Loring) and a policeman friend ( Robert Armstrong) in an effort to find out what really happened.įall Guy (1947) starring Leo (aka Clifford) Penn, Robert Armstrong and Teala Loring He can only remember attending a party, blacking out, and awakening to find the body of a dead woman in the closet. When Cochrane wakes up in the hospital to incessant grilling by detectives, he’s unable to recall the circumstances that led to his capture. The film was based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich entitled “Cocaine,” and starred Leo (billed as Clifford) Penn as Tom Cochrane, who is found drugged and unconscious in the street with a bloody knife beside him. Released in a year known for such famed noir features as Out of the Past, Kiss of Death, and Nightmare Alley, Fall Guy was definitely one of the year’s lesser-known outputs. Ads for the movie urged: “Meet that Guild girl – she rhymes with wild!” Although she signed a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox in 1946, Guild retired from the big screen in the early 1950s after appearing in just seven films (including 1951’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man). Trivia tidbit: Somewhere in the Night was Nancy Guild’s film debut. John Hodiak and Nancy Guild, Somewhere in the Night (1946) Kendall ( Lloyd Nolan), a wily detective who reveals that Cravat vanished two years earlier with a cool $2 million. Along the way, Taylor encounters a number of individuals who have a connection to Cravat, including nightclub singer Christy Smith ( Nancy Guild), Christy’s boss ( Richard Conte), who offers to help Taylor in his quest, and Lt. And I shall pray as long as I live for someone or something to hurt and destroy you.” Taylor later learns that he’s been left $5,000 and a gun by a man named Larry Cravat, and he makes up his mind to track the man down, certain that he holds the key to his past. The hospital personnel call him “George Taylor” and the only clue the man has to his past is a rather unsettling note in his wallet that says, in part: “I’m ashamed for having loved you. This feature, directed and co-written by Joseph Mankiewicz, opens as a man ( John Hodiak) awakens in a military hospital to find that he has no idea who he is. He promptly answered, “I’m sorry, but I don’t recall making this movie.” (I didn’t occur to me until just now, but I wonder if his response was tongue-in-cheek!) …. Trivia tidbit: In the mid-1990s, when I was working on my first book, Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film(shameless plug), I wrote to actor Burgess Meredith to ask him to share with me his recollections about Street of Chance. Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor in Street of Chance (1942) He gets his first clue when he returns to the construction site and is recognized by a girl ( Claire Trevor) who calls him “Dan” and informs him that he’s being sought for the murder of a wealthy landowner. He’s finally able to track her down, but when he does, he discovers that he’s been missing for more than a year and he makes up his mind to unearth what happened to him during that time. Knocked unconscious by the blow, he awakens to find himself in an unfamiliar part of town, and when he makes his way home, he learns that his wife ( Louise Platt) has moved away. Street of Chance (1942)Īs this film opens, Frank Thompson ( Burgess Meredith) is walking along a busy street when he’s struck on the head by a piece of wood from a construction site. This month’s column takes a look at five films from the noir era with the amnesia motif. Am-noir-sia: The Amnesia Motif in Film NoirĪlong with rain-swept streets, voiceover narration, and shadows neatly sliced by venetian blinds, one of film noir’s common features is the character suffering from memory loss.
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