Tag Archives: Frank Lovejoy

Film Noir Friday-Sunday Evening: Try and Get Me! aka The Sound of Fury [1951]

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Welcome!  The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.  Tonight’s feature is TRY AND GET ME! aka THE SOUND OF FURY, starring Frank Lovejoy, Kathleen Ryan, and Lloyd Bridges.

The film is based on the 1947 novel The Condemned by Jo Pagano, who also wrote the screenplay. The Pagano novel was based on events that occurred in 1933 when two men were arrested in San Jose, California for the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart. The suspects confessed and were subsequently lynched by a mob of locals. The 1936 film, Fury, directed by Fritz Lang, was inspired by the same incident.

Enjoy the movie.

TCM says:

Impoverished Howard Tyler decides to move his pregnant wife Judy and their young son Tommy from Massachusetts to the friendly town of Santa Sierra, California, to find his fortune working in the mines. Once there, however, Howard cannot find a job and the family’s poverty deepens to the point where Judy cannot even afford a doctor to monitor her pregnancy. In his desperation, Howard meets a petty thief named Jerry Slocum and is easily convinced to work for him, helping him to commit a series of robberies. Convinced that the town is experiencing an incipient crime wave, publisher and editor of the Santa Sierra Journal Hal Clendenning assigns featured columnist Gil Stanton to sensationalize the new trend. 

Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir, introuced this film for TCM’s Noir Alley, which he hosts. Check it out.

Film Noir Friday: The Crooked Web

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Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Today’s feature is THE CROOKED WEB starring Frank Lovejoy, Mari Blanchard, and Richard Denning.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Former G.I. Stan Fabian runs a drive-in restaurant with his waitress girl friend, Joanie Daniel, who receives an unexpected visit from her brother Frank. Frank asks Joanie for a loan for a “deal” in Chicago, but she refuses. At dinner that evening, Stan reveals to Frank that he wants to marry Joanie, but she has declined, wary of his lack of financial security. Later, when Stan drives Frank back to his hotel, he inquires about his deal and Frank divulges that years earlier during the war, he and partner Ray Torres hid a sizeable amount of gold, but they have been unable to raise the money necessary to return to Germany to retrieve their treasure.

Film Noir Friday–Sunday Matinee: The Crooked Web [1955]

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crooked web 1955

Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Today’s feature is THE CROOKED WEB starring Frank Lovejoy, Mari Blanchard, and Richard Denning.

Enjoy the movie!

TCM says:

Former G.I. Stan Fabian runs a drive-in restaurant with his waitress girl friend, Joanie Daniel, who receives an unexpected visit from her brother Frank. Frank asks Joanie for a loan for a “deal” in Chicago, but she refuses. At dinner that evening, Stan reveals to Frank that he wants to marry Joanie, but she has declined, wary of his lack of financial security. Later, when Stan drives Frank back to his hotel, he inquires about his deal and Frank divulges that years earlier during the war, he and partner Ray Torres hid a sizeable amount of gold, but they have been unable to raise the money necessary to return to Germany to retrieve their treasure.

Wanna Buy A Story?

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Frank Lovejoy with Betty Winkler and director, Himan Brown

Frank Lovejoy with Betty Winkler and director, Himan Brown

From February 6, 1950 to September 25, 1952, Frank Lovejoy starred as Randy Stone in the NBC radio series Night Beat.  The series was sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Wheaties breakfast cereal.

On September 18, 1950 at the end of the episode entitled Wanna Buy a Story? Frank Lovejoy was presented with an award by none other than Aggie Underwood. At the time Aggie was only a few years in to her post as City Editor of the Evening Herald and Express.  Her autobiography, Newspaperwoman, had been out for about a year before this episode of Night Beat aired, and it was a great opportunity for her to plug the book.

According to Wikipedia, Ripperologist editor Paul Begg offered this description of the series:

Broadcast on NBC, Nightbeat… starred Frank Lovejoy as Randy Stone, a tough and streetwise reporter who worked the nightbeat for the Chicago Star, looking for human interest stories. He met an assortment of people, most of them with a problem, many of them scared, and sometimes he was able to help them, sometimes he wasn’t. It is generally regarded as a “quality” show, and it stands up extremely well. Frank Lovejoy (1914–1962) isn’t remembered today, but he was a powerful and believable actor with a strong delivery, and his portrayal of Randy Stone as tough guy with humanity was perfect. The scripts were excellent, given that they had to cover much in a short time. There was a good supporting cast, orchestra and sound effects. “The Slasher,” broadcast on 10 November 1950, the last show of season one, has a very loosely Ripper-derived plot in which Stone searches for an artist.
For those of you who enjoy old radio shows, like I do, I recommend Night Beat–in fact here’s the episode with Aggie’s brief appearance. If you don’t want to listen to the entire show you can catch Aggie at about 27:21.
Enjoy!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Film Noir Friday–Saturday Matinee: Shack Out on 101 [1955]

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SHACK ON 101Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open. Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.

It’s time for a Saturday Matinee.  Today’s feature is SHACK OUT ON 101 starring Terry Moore, Frank Lovejoy, Keenan Wynn and Lee Marvin. I’ll watch pretty much anything with Lee Marvin in it.

Enjoy the film!.

 

TCM says:

George Bater owns a diner located near the 101 highway in California, and although he enjoys his somewhat isolated existence, he tires of the bickering between his staff, waitress Kotty and cook Slob. Kotty, who is dating Professor Sam Bastion, a nuclear physicist at a nearby laboratory, is irritated by Slob’s constant harassment. George, who secretly loves Kotty, reprimands Slob, a slovenly man who resents George for never calling him by his real name, Leo. Their latest quarrel is interrupted by the arrival of Sam, after which Kotty announces that she has been studying for the civil service exam. Kotty hopes to better herself in order to make Sam proud, although he tells her that he loves her as she is. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Slob receives a shipment from commercial fisherman Perch, who sells him a small film canister, which Slob hides. George is cheered by the arrival of his pal, Eddie Miller, with whom he fought in World War II. Eddie, who has never recovered from the bloodshed he and George experienced during D-Day, is a traveling salesman. Although Sam presses Eddie to seek psychiatric help for his aversion to violence, Eddie protests that he has recovered from a minor nervous breakdown and is anticipating his upcoming vacation to Acapulco with George.

 

 

https://youtu.be/4p13ozSx1e0

Film Noir Friday: The Hitchhiker [1953]

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hitch-hiker-poster2My posts this week have been about a personal experience. Years ago my brother’s best friend and I picked up a hitchhiker — he was a guy we knew but hadn’t seen in a while. When we picked him up we didn’t know that just days later he would be arrested in connection with two murders.

I’ll be wrapping up the series The Devil in Orange County over the next day or so.

Meanwhile, it is Film Noir Friday, and tonight’s feature is THE HITCHHIKER, starring Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman and directed by Ida Lupino. The tagline for the film was great: “There’s death in his upraised thumb!”

From Wikipedia:

Critic John Krewson lauded the work of Ida Lupino, and wrote, “As a screenwriter and director, Lupino had an eye for the emotional truth hidden within the taboo or mundane, making a series of B-styled pictures which featured sympathetic, honest portrayals of such controversial subjects as unmarried mothers, bigamy, and rape…in The Hitch-Hiker, arguably Lupino’s best film and the only true noir directed by a woman, two utterly average middle-class American men are held at gunpoint and slowly psychologically broken by a serial killer. In addition to her critical but compassionate sensibility, Lupino had a great filmmaker’s eye, using the starkly beautiful street scenes in Not Wanted and the gorgeous, ever-present loneliness of empty highways in The Hitch-Hiker to set her characters apart.

ENJOY THE FILM!