HER KIND OF MAN (1946)

Generalizations about the sexes are treacherous, but men and women alike agree that there’s a certain kind of girl who invariably finds herself attracted to the wrong type of guy. Such relationships have been film fodder since the birth of the medium, and1946’s Her Kind of Man is no different. It tells the familiar story of a lounge singer, who finds herself caught between two men, one a professional gambler and heel, the other a clean cut newspaper hack. At first glance Her Kind of Man appears to be nothing more than a routine Warner Bros gang programmer—not to mention one made in the days after such films had gone out of style. However it has the shadings of film noir, and features a cast and production team well-represented in the noir cycle. In the end though, it’s just one helluva strange movie.

Her Kind of Man is strictly a star vehicle. The good guy / bad guy love triangle plot was familiar even to 1946 audiences, leaving the picture to sink or swim on the charisma of its three leads. The inescapable fact that this has been unseen and unmissed for many decades provides some insight into the relative magnitude of the star power in play. And yet there’s something to be said for the rediscovery of forgotten performers—in this instance TV’s Janis Paige. She’s the pretty part of the three-way; the other two sides of the triangle are noir stalwarts Dane Clark and Zachary Scott. It practically goes without saying that Scott is the heavy (and the real star despite third billing), while Clark is uncomfortable and miscast as a gossip columnist. The stars are competent—it’s just that this project was probably intended for, and would have been more gratifying with, water dipped from the deeper end of the Warner Bros talent pool.

Janis Paige (still with us!) was a talented singer with a throaty voice and fleshy, yet angular Maureen O’Hara-like good looks. She and Hollywood never quite saw eye-to-eye during the studio years, so Paige left the west coast for Broadway in the fifties and made a splash in the initial theatrical productions of a few iconic musicals, particularly The Pajama Game. Doris Day got the nod for the Hollywood adaptation, but Janis returned to films and cemented her reputation as a firecracker alongside Astaire and Charisse in Silk Stockings, the screen role for which she is best remembered. She transitioned to television, and worked steadily on the tube until the late-1990s. When Her Kind of Man was made, the studio was trying Janis out in a variety of parts in low-rent pictures to see how audiences would take to her.

The film is a sort of hybrid of multiple forms: romance, gangster movie, film noir (just a little), and musical. Paige gets to do three numbers, but despite being a popular singer herself, the studio decided to dub her—and with at least two different vocalists. The music is worked into the story seamlessly—after all, Paige plays a lounge singer—with the highlight coming in a glamorous, if incomplete version of Body and Soul. Somehow the genre mashup works, though as the film becomes more and more noirish as it goes along, the early musical numbers feel out of place. But perhaps such diverse genre-based thematics at play in one B picture is what makes Her Kind of Man inordinately interesting.

Besides, I’m not even certain it’s fair to call this a legitimate gangster film. Zach Scott’s character is more a gambler and opportunist schooled during the Prohibition era than he is a professional criminal. And while it’s true that he eventually gains enough bankroll to open his own nightclub-cum-backroom-gambling-parlor the film depicts him more as a cad and a polished bumbler than a Robinson-esque big-timer. He mixes it up throughout the film: slapping his toady (Harry Lewis) around, talking tough at the dice table, shooting it out with a second-rate Moose Malloy, and finally with the cops; but we are constantly left with the impression that Scott is a lot more lucky than he is good—and in the end he isn’t even that lucky. His criminal ineptitude is most evident in a crucial scene at the end of the film where he finds himself wielding a shotgun from on high, tangling with the cops who have just busted in on his gambling operation. Scott fires a few shots to let them know he means business, but forgets to aim and accidentally blasts his sister in the gut. What a schmuck.

Clark is hardly better—frankly it’s difficult to believe that this is the same actor who made such a vivid impression in Moonrise. He plays second or third fiddle despite top billing—leering his way through the reels, his hair standing so tall that he brings to mind Seinfeld’s Kramer. In one eyebrow-raising scene Clark and Scott actually put on boxing gloves and climb into a ring to fight over Paige. The good guy wins, though ludicrously, as Clark KOs Scott with a twice-around-the-world haymaker of an uppercut that looks as if it were swiped from a Popeye cartoon. Hard to fathom considering rumors that before coming to the movies, Clark tried to make a go of it in the ring.

Film noir? Forget it—though some familiar trappings are put to use: narration, flashback, and montage. And as mentioned above, Her Kind of Man gets much darker as it comes to a close. So dark that on the basis of the final sequence alone, it has been ascribe noir status by some. I disagree, but I’ll happily acknowledge that the final moments do much to redeem an otherwise absurd movie, and make the noir label forgivable. It’s an exciting scene: Scott, having shotgunned his sister (Faye Emerson, the Lady Gangster herself) is holed up looking to dodge the cops. The toady with Scott’s handprint on his left check drops a nickel on him, and the police, along with Clark, come roaring along hellbent for blood. They get it when Scott, the born loser, staggers out into the rainy night and a downpour of gunfire. The visual atmosphere and fatal determinism of the scene come on like a ton of bricks as Scott collapses face-first into the gutter—his blood and Paige’s tears mingling with the filthy rainwater as it rushes through an eddying whirlpool and into the sewer. The camera sweeps from the corpse along the gutter to the whirlpool, then upwards to rest on a one-way street sign before cutting abruptly to a long shot and the end card.

Note: for another write-up about Her Kind of Man, check out Laura’s review over at Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings.

Her Kind of Man (1946)
Directed by Frederick de Cordova
Produced by Alex Gottlieb (Macao, The Blue Gardenia)
Screenplay by Gordon Kahn and Leopold Atlas (Raw Deal)
Story by Charles Hoffman (The Blue Gardenia) and James V. Kern
Cinematography by Carl Guthrie (Caged, Hollywood Story)
Art Direction by Ted Smith (High Sierra, The Mask of Dimitrios)
Starring Zachary Scott, Janis Paige, Dane Clark, Faye Emerson, Harry Lewis.
Released by Warner Bros Studios
Running time: 78 minutes

9/17

FEAR (1946)

Released by Monogram in 1946, Fear is film noir’s take on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It’s a little-remembered movie that has all the flaws typical of a Poverty Row production, including a low budget, a less-than-stellar ensemble, and a swiss-cheese storyline. However in spite of those limitations it’s also an inventive, exciting, and thought-provoking little movie. It takes that famous narrative: man desperately needs money, man commits murder to get it, man’s life falls apart — and embroiders it with a series of story developments that are either surprising, inexplicable, or just plain weird. What makes the film truly fascinating is the final plot twist, which leaves viewers wondering if the whole thing was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek gag. Whatever else it might be, Fear is put together with unexpected panache, and the results are as pleasing as they are mystifying.

Peter Cookson stars as medical student Larry Crain. (Fear is his only legitimate leading role, though he was notably married to Poltergeist actress Beatrice Straight for forty years) The opening scene finds a morose Crain in his shabby one-room flat, sodden over a bizarre telegram from the medical school: “Circumstances beyond our control compel us to discontinue all scholarships.” Of all the set-ups in film noir this is one of the most absurd. As an academic of many years, I can assure you that the chances of a school being compelled to ‘discontinue all scholarships’ is pretty far out there. However in Fear, baffling developments are par for the course. Wait and see.

Compounding his troubles at school, Crain’s landlady Mrs. Williams (the ubiquitous Almira Sessions) seems to live outside his door, incessantly badgering him for the rent. Desperate to scrape together even a few smackers, Larry shambles over to see professor Stanley, who teaches at the medical college but makes extra money moonlighting as a pawnbroker. Larry’s lone valuable is his dead pop’s engraved watch, for which the old man offers just a sawbuck. Stanley adds insult to injury by withholding two dollars to cover the vigorish on previous loans. Though it seems a bit too convenient that Stanley must open his wall safe in order to retrieve a measly eight clams, it gives Larry the chance to scope out the wads and wads of cash camping in the professor’s strongbox, as well as a heavy set of brass fireplace tools by the mantle. Larry gets the impulse to kill the professor then and there, but resists. However he’s so enamored by the idea that he walks home in a daze.

Cue the girl. With his eight bucks in hand Larry grabs a stool and a hot meal at the local hangout. He spends more than expected when he has to buy coffee for a girl who appears to have everything in her purse except loose change. The money is happily spent however, when Eileen (Anne Gwynne) agrees to a date. Romance blooms, but as far as the movie is concerned Eileen doesn’t much matter. She gives Larry someone to talk to so the audience can know what he’s thinking: Larry believes that any crime is excusable providing the ends justify the means. What other films accomplish through voiceover narration, Fear provides by giving the protagonist a conversation partner.

Following his encounter with Eileen, Larry returns home to more bad news: a huge tuition bill and an ultimatum from Mrs. Williams: pay up or hit the bricks. He immediately recalls the professor’s strongbox, and decides to do the deed. The strongest segment of the film is the murder sequence, which takes place in Stanley’s tenement house. Director Alfred Zeisler amps up the tension, beginning with Larry’s ascent up the apartment building’s stairs, wary of a black cat lurking along the way. At one landing he pauses outside a flat that is being painted. The painter shimmies his ladder from one spot to another without climbing down, like some grotesque insect on stilts. This interlude turns out to be important rather than just absurd; the painter and the freshly painted room shortly become critical story elements.

When Larry finally rings Stanley’s bell, the academic is reluctant to admit him, considering that the younger man was just there the previous evening. Larry offers a wrapped and tied package that he claims contains a silver cigarette case, though in actuality it’s just a cheap glass ashtray from his own drab room. As the professor struggles to open the bundle, he chastises Larry for wrapping the damn thing so tightly. In a moment where the script really comes to life Larry apologizes, dolefully saying “I’m sorry” as he bends over, unseen by the professor, to pick up that heavy fireplace poker. We don’t get to see Larry land the killing blow — once the camera leaves his strained face, it shifts to capture the prof’s trembling hands as he struggles with the bundle. It’s in this expressionistic moment, and a few others like it, that Fear really scores as a film noir. Just as the wrapping paper finally falls away and Larry’s ruse is revealed, the blow is struck and the ashtray drops, shattering the old man’s glass of port, which spreads against the white table cloth like so much lifeblood.

Larry escapes the murder scene, barely, and makes it back to his room where he passes out, to be roused later by a detective who takes him in for questioning — his engraved watch makes him a suspect. The man in charge of the investigation is the jovial Captain Burke (Warren William, so rakish and debonair that he must think this is a Lone Wolf picture). The two play cat and mouse with each other for a while, until Larry’s mind begins to unravel under the strain. A brief but excitingly expressionistic montage finds him once again wandering the streets in a daze, assaulted by visions of nooses and other portents of death. Fate leads him to a train yard, where he barely avoids being struck by an onrushing locomotive. This brush with death convinces Larry to confess to Eileen — who inexplicably decides to stand by him. He returns home to find Captain Burke waiting to show him the morning’s headlines: the painter from the second floor apartment has confessed to bludgeoning Professor Stanley! Burke clearly stills believes that Larry is the murderer, but in light of the painter’s confession Larry overcomes his conscience and keeps his mouth shut. Nevertheless, in film noir neither fate nor justice can be thwarted — Fear climaxes as an ebullient Larry is struck by a car and killed as he rushes to reunite with Eileen.

Hang on a second. Cue the harp music and the swirling vortex — Larry isn’t dead after all, he was just dreaming! Instead of lying dead in the street we find him lying in bed, yanked from a deep sleep by someone knocking at his door. It’s Professor Stanley, except this time the dear fellow wants to give Larry a loan to tide him over until his scholarship check, thankfully restored, arrives in the mail. As a bewildered but carefree Larry leaves his room to a brighter day he bumps into Eileen in the hallway — except her name isn’t Eileen, it turns out to be Kathy. She’s tracked him down to pay back his sixty cents, and has decided to take a room at Mrs. Williams boarding house as well! Once again, for the first time, Larry makes a date with the girl, and in a moment of Vertigo creepiness asks if he can call her Eileen. Unfazed, she remarks that he “sure must have been in love with that girl!” To which Larry replies, as the screen fades to black and the end titles, that someday he’ll “tell her all about it.”

The ending of Fear is frustrating and silly, though it still begs an interesting question: Why take a film that already closes well and tack on a coda sure to leaves audiences wagging their heads? Maybe to extend the running time: there are several passages in Fear that suggest Zeisler was stretching for length rather than tension. Or perhaps to give viewers a surprise to talk about as they waited for the A-feature to begin. Poverty Row films were usually as derivative as they were low-budget, and Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window had been a hit with a big twist. It’s also clear that Zeisler was enamored of Lang — he was working in the German film industry just as Lang was making his best films. The dreamy denouement, along with a clever smear of white paint on Larry’s jacket strongly argue that Zeisler was paying homage to an admired fellow filmmaker.

It’s also fair to suggest that Larry Crain’s imaginary death, steeped as it is in the relentless fatalism that defines film noir, is only obvious to contemporary audiences as the best spot to close the movie. In 1946, audiences were enamored with the psyche, and the psycho-neurotic dream conclusion would have pressed some topical buttons. For my part, I can only explain Fear’s eyebrow-raising oddities, its plot holes, and its bizarre twists, its general balderdash, by asking: Who says dreams have to make sense?

Fear (1946)

Director: Alfred Zeisler

Cinematographer: Jackson Rose

Screenplay: Dennis Cooper and Alfred Zeisler

Starring: Peter Cookson, Warren William, and Anne Gwynne

Released by: Monogram Pictures

Running time: 68 minutes

9/17

SUSPENSE (1946)

On the one hand, if you are going to call your movie Suspense, try to make sure you’ve got some. On the other, unless you can imagine someone walking up to the box office and asking for a pair of tickets to “Turgid Potboiler,” Suspense ain’t so bad.


There are about a dozen standard plots that account for at least half of the movies ever made. It might be fun to figure them all out at some point, but it’s enough to say that Suspense implements one of the doozies: Down-on-his-luck guy breezes into town and finds a chump job. Through some stroke of genius (or luck) he quickly becomes the boss’s right hand man. Guess what? The boss has a honey of a wife, and she and the new boy light a fire together. The boss feels the heat and all of a sudden he isn’t so chummy with his right hand anymore — and the dame is stuck in the middle. Something’s gotta give and someone’s gotta go — the hard way. Sound familiar? This story has been played out in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda, The Strip, and a million more stretching all the way back to Josef von Sternberg’s iconic Underworld. The trick to using such an old saw effectively is to sharpen it up somehow — in the case of Suspense screenwriter Phillip Yordan put the production on ice — literally.


Maria Belita Jepson-Turner, known in film just by the exotic moniker Belita, was only twelve when she skated for Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, finishing well back of Norwegian gold medalist Sonja Henie. With a face and figure to die for, Belita skated after Henie to California to make it in the picture business. While Henie landed at Fox and began appearing in frothy romantic comedies with Tyrone Power, Belita ended up at Monogram. The studio, one of the better B factories, was home of the Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong, The Shadow, Joe Palooka, and Cisco Kid franchises. Monogram had scored a huge hit in 1945 with Lawrence Tierney in Dillinger. (On a side note, the bosses at Monogram knew you just can’t beat a well-made gangster picture — following Suspense, they would reteam Belita, sans skates, with Barry Sullivan in The Gangster.) In an attempt to achieve big boy status for the studio, the Dillinger profits were pumped into Suspense, the only truly big-budget picture to bear the Monogram trademark. Both Suspense and The Gangster did fair box office, though not enough to elevate either Monogram’s status as a studio or Belita’s as a star. She made a picture a year in the forties, and appeared in a few more in the fifties, then retreated to life on the road as a professional figure skater.


Look, Suspense isn’t a very good picture, but nevertheless it is interesting. What makes it so is its absurdity. Postman’s banal roadhouse becomes a neon nightspot with an ice show in Suspense. Incandescent sweater girls like Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth had that magical something that allowed them command audiences while standing still. Not so with Belita —  she’s forced to skate about in sequined outfits and soar through hoops ringed with razor-sharp swords. In an effort to cash in on her talents, the movie is punctuated every fifteen minutes or so with an ice number, leaving contemporary viewers is perplexed — as in ‘Were there really night clubs with ice shows in the forties?’


In a sense the viability of the plot is beside the point, as the film was trumped up in order to cash in on the public’s new interest in skating, and grab some of Henie’s audience for Monogram. The movie is remembered today primarily as a film noir, but at the time of its theatrical run it was first and foremost an ice skating picture, and the skating sequences play with much more verve than the story.


Phillip Yordan’s screenplays in the mid-forties were derivative — he still had a way to go before penning The Big Combo. Yet with Yordan’s pulpy story and Frank Tuttle’s direction a film noir was inevitable. Tuttle doesn’t rise to the level of This Gun for Hire, but the fault lies in the screenplay rather than budget or talent. Yordan’s dialog doesn’t approach that of Graham Greene, and the screenplay borders on obnoxious — filled with contrivances that add at least 20 minutes of unnecessary prattle to the film. Worst of all, the darn thing doesn’t generate a lick of the promised suspense.


Still, the movie has its saving graces. Bonita Granville is one of them. The star of the late-thirties Nancy Drew franchise did a fair impersonation of Dick Powell and reinvented herself as a tough broad in the 1940s. In Suspense she plays the Barry Sullivan’s jilted lover from Chicago. She makes a delectable woman scorned and pumps a ton of life into Suspense — if only she could skate. Also of note is Eugene Pallette, appearing in his final film. Pallette was a fixture in classic movies, and one of those guys with an unfamiliar name but instantly recognizable face — and voice. Many will recognize him as Henry Fonda’s father in The Lady Eve. Here he plays the sort of character who serves as a bridge between the two male leads. He’s older, and consequently non-threatening to either man — a confidant to Albert Dekker’s man in charge and a mentor to Sullivan’s boy on the make. Pallette’s presence has the same affect of someone like William Bendix — the film feels a lot more comfortable with him in it.


Also of note is the cinematography. If I’m putting a beating on this film, noir purists will still want to see it for it for Karl Struss’s camera work. Suspense is really Struss’s only film noir, which is a shame. This is the guy who won the first Academy Award for shooting Sunrise, and went on to DP The Great Dictator and Limelight for Charlie Chaplin. Suspense has overwhelmingly dark look, more shadow than light, yet still seems bright and sharp because Struss’s use of high contrast. 


In the end Suspense is a film that leaves you wanting: wanting a more original story and better dialog, wanting more Bonita Granville, and wanting more Karl Struss. But it doesn’t leave you wondering what’s gonna happen — you’ll figure that out in the first ten minutes.

Suspense (1946)

Director: Frank Tuttle
Cinematographer: Karl Struss
Screenplay: Phillip Yordan
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker, Bonita Granville, and Eugene Pallette.
Released by: Monogram Pictures
Running time: 101 minutes

NOIR RISING: JOSEPH LEWIS & BURNETT GUFFEY DOUBLE FEATURE

Just after the war director Joseph Lewis and cinematographer Burnett Guffey collaborated on two prototypical film noir pictures for Columbia’s B unit. Both My Name is Julia Ross and So Dark the Night are suspense thrillers set overseas. While neither is a full-fledged film noir, each film has definitive noirish elements — both in terms of Lewis’ conceptual handling of the material and Guffey’s visual style. Although neither man’s name would ever become part of the public consciousness, each made a significant impression in the realm of the crime film. Lewis would go on to direct numerous noir films, including two with iconic status: The Big Combo and Gun Crazy, though he wouldn’t work with Guffey on either. Guffey however had an incredibly bright future. He would hone his skills photographing a multitude of iconic noirs. In addition to Scandal Sheet, The Sniper, Human Desire, Convicted, and the extraordinary In a Lonely Place and The Reckless Moment, Guffey shot the Best Picture Winners All the King’s Men and From Here to Eternity, as well as indelible classics such as Birdman of Alcatraz and Bonnie and Clyde. The pair would cross paths one last time in 1949 on The Undercover Man with Glenn Ford and Nina Foch — the resulting film a noir programmer that ostensibly covers the same ground as The Untouchables. However if Lewis and Guffey ever struck gold together, it was with My Name is Julia Ross, a film that has risen in stature steadily throughout the decades.

My Name is Julia Ross concerns an elderly society widow, Mrs. Hughes, and her eerie, knife-obsessed son Ralph, who contrive to find a substitute for the wife that Ralph strangled during a psychotic fit. They plan to shanghai a young woman on the pretense of hiring her as a live-in secretary, and then pass her off as Marian, Ralph’s emotionally troubled and recently murdered wife. The pair’s ultimate goal is to snuff the young woman and make it appear that Marian has committed suicide — thus getting Ralph off the hook. The audience is let in on their plan within the first few minutes, and most of the story is concerned with the title character’s attempts at escape. Nina Foch is fine in that role, though it’s difficult to get through the film without once imagining the part in more versatile hands. Foch plays it with a bit of a poker face, and her British accent tends to come and go. May Whitty is dependable as the old bag and Macready is menacing as the son. Lewis and Guffey use visual style to accentuate the neurotic, unhinged aspects of Macready’s character throughout the film, often by photographing his face half in shadow. The same can be said to a lesser degree of Foch’s character, though the filmmakers never invest much of the narrative into any struggle she may have had with her own sanity, which is, perhaps, where they missed an opportunity. For Foch’s part she never seems to doubt herself — and the point is wasted about thirty minutes in when Julia conveniently overhears a conversation between her captors and gets wise.

Although the British setting gives the film the feel of a gothic mystery, and much of it is presented in that mode, the trappings of film noir are everywhere: Julia is an unwitting victim of fate, guilty of nothing more than answering an ad in the newspaper. But like the typical noir protagonist (in spite of her gender) she has difficulty in distinguishing between the benign and malevolent forces at play around her; and unable to properly anticipate danger, she’s forced to defensively react in order to save her life. Had the film been made just a few years later, it’s certain that more effort would have been placed in depicting her struggle with madness. The casting of an actress often described as aloof makes the portrayal of these struggles difficult.

Despite the low budget, and in a few shots because of it, the visual style is quite vivid, from the opening scene with a hand-held camera that tracks Foch as she walks through a downpour to her boarding house, to the expressionistic ending where Macready tries to lure her down a treacherous stairway. Although not entirely cohesive from start to finish, Guffey’s camera work shows the virtuosity that would make him the most dependable and prolific noir cinematographer of them all, not to mention the winner of two Academy Awards.

Made the following year and set in France, So Dark the Night tells the story of a famous Parisian police inspector, who after eleven years of solving cases finally takes a vacation, only to find himself on a busman’s holiday, investigating a string of murders centered around the residents of his country hotel. There’s a romantic angle to the killings, as the first victim is none other than the innkeeper’s daughter. Coincidentally, the dead girl has just agreed to marry the detective, in spite of their vast age difference and her already impending nuptials to the local Brom Bones, himself soon to be a victim. All roads lead toward the film’s climax, when a major plot twist is revealed. It’s the sort of development that may seem obvious to some viewers, while others may need to re-watch in search of clues. At any rate it stymies attempts to review the film, as practically every noirish morsel is wrapped up in the twist.

So Dark the Night is not a very good movie, and it suffers greatly because of its cast. Steven Geray is featured as inspector Henri Cassin. Hungarian actor Geray participated in nearly 200 Hollywood films, and although this was a routine project for him it did provide the almost unheard of opportunity to play the lead. He tries but comes up short: his acting underscores why he never managed larger parts. The supporting cast is disastrous. Lewis seems to be going through the motions, but despite numerous obstacles he’s able to grind out a watchable, modestly entertaining picture. Guffey as well makes the most of a bad situation. As other writers have noted, many of the shots of Geray’s character are filmed through windows, which become an integral prop in the climax, and central in understanding his character.

Film noir was still in its early stages in the mid-forties when Lewis and Guffey collaborated on My Name is Julia Ross and So Dark the Night. The European settings of these two films, Julia Ross in England and So Dark in France, may appear at first to be problematic in establishing them as film noirs, but it’s important to note that both productions are completely American — made by the second unit at a major studio and filmed entirely on lots and sound stages in California. If the settings themselves are troublesome, consider their place early in the cycle before passing judgment. My Name is Julia Ross is by far the better known of the pair, for numerous reasons — chief among them that it is simply a stronger movie. It also airs with some regularity on television, ensuring that many more viewers are aware of it. Over the years it has gained in reputation and has come to be considered one of the better B pictures of the 1940s. Much like another famous B project, The Narrow Margin, My Name is Julia Ross was given the remake treatment in the 80s, as Dead of Winter starring Roddy McDowell and Mary Steenburgen. So Dark the Night is currently only available as a bootleg, and is likely to stay that way.

MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS (1945)

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Cinematographer: Burnett GuffeyScreenplay: Muriel Roy Bolton, based on a novel by Anthony Gilbert

Starring: Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, and George Macready.Released by: Columbia

Running time: 65 minutes 

SO DARK THE NIGHT (1946) 
Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Cinematographer: Burnett GuffeyScreenplay: Dwight Babcock and Martin Berkeley, based on a story by Aubrey Wisberg

Starring: Steven Geray, Micheline Cheirel, and Eugene Borden. 
Released by: Columbia

Running time: 71 minutes