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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

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

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

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