16th Festival of Film Noir, Baseball Legends

BORN TO BE BAD (22nd March, 7:30 p.m., Egyptian Theatre) 1950, Warner Bros., 94 min, USA, Dir: Nicholas Ray -Joan Fontaine looks sweet and innocent on the surface, but after she steals millionaire Zachary Scott away from another woman, she continues an illicit affair with novelist Robert Ryan. Things just get more complicated from there in this energetic, daring and slightly nasty little melodrama. One of Nicholas Ray's best early films, and certainly his most audacious until Johnny Guitar. With Mel Ferrer - and the original deleted ending!

ANGELS OVER BROADWAY (28th March, 7:30pm, Egyptian Theatre) 1940, Sony Repertory, 79 min, USA, Dir: Ben Hecht, Lee Garmes - An off-beat, mordant melodrama that was written, directed and produced by the great Ben Hecht. A con-man (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) lures a suicidal embezzler into a rigged poker game with an unemployed chanteuse (Rita Hayworth) only to have the tables turned by a boozing playwright (Thomas Mitchell in a superb performance). Hecht received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay with co-director Lee Garmes providing the shadowed cinematography.

Get paroled, whatever it takes - because we need you to be part of our racket on Saturday, April 5th. Instead of getting weepy when our travels in Noir City come to the end, we're celebrating the close of our 16th annual series of Film Noir (on the big screen) at the Egyptian Theatre! Pull the brim of your fedora down low over your face and jump on the Red Car to join a bevy of other shady characters for a celebration - Noir City style. Get in a noir mood with a screening of DETOUR, followed by a party in the Egyptian Theatre Courtyard! Source: www.amaericancinemathequecalendar.com

Today, the figure of the femme fatale is often seen as one of the distinctive features of film noir and as emerging at the end of World War II. As Pam Cook has claimed, the femme fatale was born out of "the historical need to re-construct an economy based on a division of labour by which men control the means of production and women remain within the family, in other words the need to reconstruct a failing patriarchal order." The femme fatale is therefore claimed to operate as a demonization of the independent working woman at a time when there was a concerted effort to persuade women to surrender the jobs that they had taken on during the war and to return to their roles as wives and mothers within the domestic sphere.

However, critics writing during the 1940s seem to have understood the women usually identified as femme fatales in ways that were remarkably different from current accounts of these figures. Certainly critics recognised that "vicious womanhood" was one of "Hollywood's hardest-worn current themes" but the films associated with this theme did not develop towards the end of the war but rather at its start. As many critics have noted, it is not simply that the name film noir did not exist within US culture during the 1940s, but that the films associated with this term today were not understood as constituting a distinct category at the time. As James Naremore puts it, film noir is "an idea we have projected onto the past" a retrospective category that may hinder rather than help an understanding of that past. -"Vicious Womanhood": Genre, the Femme Fatale and Postwar America" (2011) by Mark Jancovich

Of all the players in baseball history, none possessed as much talent and humility as Lou Gehrig. His accomplishments on the field made him an authentic American hero, and his tragic early death made him a legend. Gehrig's later glory came from humble beginnings. He was born on June 19, 1903 in New York City. The son of German immigrants, his endurance and strength earned him the nickname "Iron Horse." In 927 Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, breaking his old record of 59, and Gehrig clouted 47, more than anyone other than Ruth had ever hit. During his career, Gehrig averaged 147 RBIs a season. No other player was to reach the 147 mark in a single season until George Foster did it in 1977. And, as historian Bill Curran points out, Gehrig accomplished it "while batting immediately behind two of history's greatest base-cleaners, Ruth and DiMaggio." Doctors at the Mayo Clinic diagnosed Gehrig with a very rare form of degenerative disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is now called Lou Gehrig's disease. There was no chance he would ever play baseball again. Source: www.lougehrig.com

World War II had its effect on sports as all able-bodied men between 18 and 26 were expected to serve in the military. Rubber went to the war effort; consequently, balls were soggy and unresponsive. Wood was in short supply, leading to a shortage of baseball bats and bowling pins. Even so, professional sports were encouraged to continue, to improve the morale of the troops. President Roosevelt signed the Green Light letter, supporting baseball. Baseball games were considered so important to troop morale that the Japanese tried to jam radio broadcasts. By 1943, half the baseball players had enlisted.

In the All-American Girls Baseball League, players wore dresses and had to attend charm school. After the war, television and easier transportation changed the face of American sports. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black professional baseball player - in fact, the first black professional athlete outside of boxing. By 1950, the top earning player, Stan Musial, was making $50,000. Postwar baseball names included Ted Williams, Ralph Kiner and Joe DiMaggio. Source: kclibrary.lonestar.edu

Early Edition's executive producer Bob Brush: "Kyle Chandler should have played Lou Gehrig - that kind of quiet leader who performs and isn't flashy about it and yet has this sly sense of humor tucked underneath. He doesn't act like a star; he's a guy going through his life."

Kyle Chandler's mind is preoccupied with a time and place far, far away - a bygone era when folks were just folks and soda came in glass bottles. "I'd love to be able to buy Fanta in a bottle again, or grape Nehi," he says wistfully. "That was the best. That stuff was great. Holy Toledo!" No wonder Chandler was cast as Jeff Metcalf, Homefront's boyishly earnest brother-lover-baseball player. In person, he projects the same homespun warmth and old-fashioned idealism that the show captures. Chandler is a walking, talking slice of Americana. He turns the world around him into a Frank Capra movie. Later, for dessert, he requests apple cheesecake and "a glass of milk - a large one." He obviously has an affinity for the character he plays: "I like that Jeff could go to kiss a girl" -he reaches impetuously across the table- "and knock her glass over!" Like his 'Homefront' character, Chandler was cut from the cloth of middle America: "I liked Jimmy Stewart a lot."

Once, Chandler says he saw Jimmy Stewart give a lecture at the dinosaur museum where he was working. "He talked so slow," Chandler recalls. "People were sort of laughing. But at the very end, he pulled out a little quip, and you knew the whole time he was almost making fun of them." As he tells the story, Chandler's left eyebrow goes up a fraction of an inch, in an almost invisible wink. His eyes are smiling. Maybe this aw-shucks persona is an act; maybe it isn't. Either way, Jimmy Stewart would be proud. -Kyle Chandler Offscreen: 'The star of the retro-Americana series Homefront' by Karen Schoemer (US Weekly Magazine, November 1992)