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If you got it, flaunt it On her twenty-fourth birthday, Orson Wells gives his future wife Rita Hayworth a 1941 Lincoln Continental Coupe. It costs $2,800. The average annual household income at the time is $1,750. The 1% has always been with us. As depicted in film noir, they were often old wealth and modern gangsters. They were also the actors who portrayed them. Five years later, the celebrity pair were married and co-staring in the film noir classic The Lady from Shang

I knew him as Ward, the kind-hearted dad of Beaver Cleaver, long before I discovered him playing cops and gumshoes. Hugh Beaumont had an impressive B-film noir resume. He was no Humphrey Bogart, but Bogart was no Ward Cleaver. Many personalities who cut their acting teeth on the dark streets found kinder and gentler careers on the small screen. This transition required special acting versatility. As a medium beamed free into the sanctity of your living room, television answer

This cast, directed by Sam Fuller, is worth the price of admission alone. Thelma Ritter was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and Richard Widmark continued to polish his bad-boy noir credentials playing a petty pickpocket suddenly ensnarled with dangerously beautiful Jean Peters and a lethal foreign spy ring. Perhaps the best of the anti-Communist film noirs. Intrigue, a rough-and-tumble love affair, and gritty action in that urban underbelly. A noir film that has gone u

The slang and street talk in noir films is familiar to us. You know chump, stoolie, scram - this is 1930s/40s "Runyonesque" dialect that went mainstream and is now regarded as campy vernacular. But some of the language is more esoteric and can be confusing. Here is a glossary to help. Bangtails: racing horses B-girl: Literally, “bar girl.” B-girls were young women paid to converse and dance with male patrons. It ranged from selected “nice” ladies entertaining GIs at the

If there is a first or “pronto” film noir, this is it — 1931 German Expressionist thriller directed by Fritz Lang. The screen role established Peter Lorre. Shortly after M, the rise of Nazis forced both artists to flee Europe for Hollywood. Some of the most talented writers and directors of German cinema were in that migration. It will be an important part of the foundation for what we today call film noir. Fritz Lang would go on to direct some of the greatest American noirs.

Film noir seldom has the patience for unhurried romance. Plots are convoluted, emotions intense, and the flames of passion must ignite fast and furious. Not the long and tortured road of When Harry Met Sally or the “slow burn” of Pride and Prejudice. “When it hits you it’s like a two-ton truck,” says a nightclub singer in The Strip. "You feel like that." Perfectly sensible people are victims. Brilliant and beautiful but sexually repressed psychoanalyst Ingrid Bergman falls he

Directed by a young Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) and now regarded as a classic. Tough-as-nails P.I. Mike Hammer gets ensnarled with a mysterious and lethal “Great Whatsit” box — a mad chase brimming with Cold War paranoia as people are literally dying to possess it. Watch Cloris Leachman in a riveting first screen role, plus extended looks at two iconic sports cars: the 1954 Chevrolet Corvette C1, one of the earliest screen appearances fo

Some say this is not a true film noir. Nevertheless, it’s as downright cynical and pessimistic as you could want. If you know Andy Griffith only as a good ole boy single-dad Sheriff, this movie will shock you. It shocked him, too. Griffith - in his first screen performance - found the role of amoral, narcissistic charlatan “Lonesome” Rhodes so personally distasteful he declared never to play such a character again. In 1960, he moved permanently to Mayberry. Co-starring Pa

In noir films, almost everyone smokes, and almost all the time. By modern standards this is excess verging on parody. But no one at the time saw it that way. At least half the population was smoking and the other half were second-hand smoking without complaint. In fact, smoking gradually increased during the 1950s and hit its peak in the mid-60s. Women were puffing almost as much as men. Film noir was reflecting reality. If you were that proverbial alien from another planet w