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)

Screen Feisty Heroines, Veronica Mars

STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS: Many film scholars and critics have commented on the inadequacy of roles for women in American cinema in recent years, especially compared to the feisty, independent women seen in screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. This seems particularly true when we think of Preston Sturges's comic heroines.

Who can forget Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve or Claudette Colbert in The Palm Beach Story, whose blend of street smarts, flirtatious cunning, and solid inteligence puts them miles ahead of their men.

Then there's Jean Arthur's Mary in Easy Living, who exhibits that rare quality in American film comedy: a balance between complete innocence and a native intelligence that sees immediately to the heart of an issue, a moment, a person. -"Three More Screenplays by Preston Sturges: The Power and the Glory, Easy Living, and Remember the Night" (1998) by Andrew Horton

It Happened One Night (1934): -I asked you a simple question, do you love her?, -Yes, but don’t hold that against me, I’m a little screwy myself

"This seriocomical ritual of a feisty but vulnerable heroine didn't originate with the official masterminds at the big studios - this formula came from Frank Capra and other directors who, like him, started out on the margins of the movie industry: George Stevens, Gregory La Cava, Leo McCarey and Preston Sturges." -"The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s" (2002) by Elizabeth Kendall

The focused, purposeful Veronica has lost none of her sarcasm in the intervening years, though she claims to have mellowed out. "People say I'm a marshmallow," she says during the opening credits. Veronica's private eye days are seemingly beyond her. "I don't -- really do that anymore," she says with hesitation when ex-boyfriend, naval man and Neptune resident Logan (Jason Dohring), accused of murdering a singing sensation, requests her help.

"Veronica Mars" is a light, comedic drama that mixes the ingredients of mystery, photography, goofiness and noir for an entertaining experience on the big screen. Ms. Bell brings intelligence, smarts and a toughness to the title role, giving the character an appealing gloss and fearlessness. She possesses charm, quick-wittedness and easy-going charisma too. I found "Veronica Mars" to be a lovely, engaging surprise. "Veronica Mars" is a clever, pleasant and enjoyable film that does most things right (save for the appearance of the mega over-exposed James Franco.) Sadly, in this film year, it may be the only one with a female lead character that does. Source: www.popcornreel.com

Kristen Bell makes sure we maintain our attention, as she’s such a beguiling and charismatic lead. Veronica Mars is a feisty individual, with bags of charm and all of the zinger one-liners. It’s illusory and absurd at the best of times, and considering the entire case is one heavily scrutinised by the press and very much in the public eye, what the leading suspect gets up to is difficult to believe in to say the least. He’s convicted of murder and he’s going out to nightclubs with lookalikes of the deceased victim, and his ex-girlfriend. Source: www.heyuguys.co.uk

The Maltese Falcon, War Bond, Kyle Chandler

Some have tried to claim that the 1941 version The Maltese Falcon was the first film noir; but while Falcon certainly influenced subsequent films, it was influenced by earlier ones, several of which are now regularly called noir. Most of the famous early examples were adapted from novels, and during the 1940s and 1950s we can find noir radio drama, noir jazz (known to Hollywood as “crime jazz”), and noir comic books. None of this means that film noir is a figment of the critical imagination. It’s safe to say that before 1941 noir was an emergent, little-known cultural category accurately describing certain French films and French popular literature; between roughly 1945 and 1950, when the French began writing about American film noir, it was a dominant category, its characteristic moods and themes affecting many different kinds of movies and other media; after 1958 it became a residual category.

John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is ostensibly a Bay area story, pure Dashiell Hammett, with its most lingering images centered in offices and apartment interiors that could exist anywhere since they are cloistered, withdrawn, and private; still outside somewhere there is always the presence of the forbidding city, and its stringent light and dark shadow that filter into these comfortably bounded interiors more as warnings than as actualities. What is also unmistakably urban is Sam Spade’s ennui, his knowingness, his flat-footed assurance – as well as the polish and façade shown by the femme fatale. -"A Companion to Film Noir" (2013) by Andrew Spicer & Helen Hanson

Local journalist and television producer, Terri Landry, will lead a crime fiction discussion of “The Maltese Falcon” on March 18 from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Covington Branch Library, located at 310 W. 21st Avenue and on March 25 from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Slidell Branch Library’s temporary location, 610 Robert Blvd. Landry will lead a book and film discussion, along with a viewing of the 1941 film, “The Maltese Falcon,” at the Madisonville Branch Library on April 9 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. She will lead another film discussion at the Slidell Little Theatre, located at 2024 Nellie Drive, on April 12 from 10 a.m.-11:45 a.m., with the film being shown from noon-2 p.m. A Mystery Writers Gathering will be held in the theatre lobby with members of the community able to meet and greet the writers. A Film Noir Series at the Madisonville Branch Library will feature viewing “The Big Sleep” on April 16, “Double Indemnity” on April 23 and “Strangers on a Train” on April 30. Source: www.nola.com

Kyle Chandler's favorite film is "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). Kyle Chandler is the modern Ward Bond.

Ward Bond was a popular character actor who appeared in more movies than any other performer on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 U.S. films. He had roles in seven titles on the AFI list — “It Happened One Night,” “Bringing Up Baby,” “Gone with the Wind,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Searchers.”

Jimmy Stewart is next on the list, appearing in six movies. Bond was never a leading man, but he was able to enjoy a long, flourishing Hollywood career by being a dependable presence in a number of films — from a screwball comedy like “Bringing Up Baby” to dramas (“Gone with the Wind,” “The Grapes of Wrath”) and John Ford’s searing Western classic, “The Searchers.” In all, he made 23 films with his longtime friend John Wayne and also starred in the TV series “Wagon Train” until his death at age 57 of a heart attack.

I hope Chandler — who is probably best known as high school football coach Eric Taylor on “Friday Night Lights,” for which he won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2011 — enjoys a long, Bond-like career.

He had roles in the big-screen films “King Kong” (Peter Jackon’s 2005 version) and 2011’s Steven Spielberg sci-fi romp “Super 8.” Chandler also had supporting roles in “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” which were both Academy Award Best Picture nominees (“Argo” won). That places him squarely in Ward Bond territory; Bond appeared in 11 Best Picture nominees. Source: www.kenoshanews.com

Easy Living with Jean Arthur, Veronica Mars

Jean Arthur as Mary Smith in "Easy Living" (1937) delivers her lines with aplomb — something quite amazing given how insecure she was as an actress. Like Cary Grant, her high level of insecurity is in contrast with the high degree of confidence that comes through in her on screen performances. Arthur was feisty, independent, insecure and had fragile physical and emotional health. She was a bundle of contradictions but perhaps it’s the conflict of all those contradictions that made her so good on screen.

Arthur’s timing is dead on in Easy Living and much of what is really funny and holds an audiences’ attention resides in that. There is, for example, the scene where she and an extraordinarily youthful Ray Milland go to sleep together then… one of Arthur’s eyes opens. Then, she sits up. As the short sequence plays, you see every thought cross her face as it is thought. Easy Living is a wonderful comedy, one that is founded on one of Jean Arthur’s best performances and the pervasive Preston Sturges influence.

It mixes slapstick, romance and even another subtle Sturges touch, social awareness — the vacuous, self-absorbed rich and the hard-working, decent poor. Source: piddleville.com


J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold), a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith (Jean Arthur). Mary meets an automat busboy named Johnny (Ray Milland), the two who end up falling for each other. Mary does not know Johnny is John Ball Jr., the well-to-do son of the man who gave her the coat and hat, and Johnny does not know Mary's loose connection to his wealthy father.

"Veronica Mars" (2014) directed by Rob Thomas - Review: Kristen Bell is flat-out terrific, mixing spunk, smarts and sex in a way that brings to mind the leading ladies of Hollywood's golden age. There aren't a lot of people working today who merit comparison to the likes of Jean Arthur and Rosalind Russell, but Bell's working on that level here. The ensemble cast is generally fast and funny, zipping through the script's clever repartee, and even “Mars” newcomers will find themselves welcome in their company, even if we don't always know who's an ally and who's secretly a murderer. Source: www.thewrap.com

TV Gentlemen: Jon Hamm & Kyle Chandler

"Mad Men" Season 7's theme: Expanding some on a comment he made when the show's key art was released, Weiner says, "[W]e're acknowledging what happened to Don at the end of last season. That really did happen... The consequences of that activity were kind of what we're writing about on some level. What part is irrevocable?

People searching for clues in the cast photos (promo images) and their airport setting will come away frustrated: "We pick a milieu for the publicity photography every year where we can lean on the good looks of the cast and place them in an environment that puts people in the mood for the show. We love the contrast because there is zero glamor in air travel right now. It was just an environment to take pictures." Season 7 of "Mad Men" premieres Sunday, April 13 on AMC. Source: blog.zap2it.com

The various images feature Don (Jon Hamm), Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Roger (John Slattery), and Megan (Jessica Paré) at the airport and aboard a plane. Does this mean change is in the air for the seventh season? Is a trip in their future, or is this more of a metaphor about the characters going places? Source: www.buzzsugar.com

Hamm's favorite episode of season 3 was "The Gypsy and The Hobo," in which his character's secret double life exposed to wife Betty. "It was beautifully written and shot." He's equally thrilled for pal Kyle Chandler's first nomination for Friday Night Lights. "I can't believe it finally happened. I was so happy to see him and Connie [Britton] recognized because they've been doing it so long and so great. I wish them the moon! Kyle and I had small parts in The Day the Earth Stood Still so we had a lot of time to get to know each other. But I may have lost his phone number, so if he reads this—please call me!" Source: www.tvguide.com

Jon Hamm — The only reason Jon Hamm doesn’t have a string of Emmy Awards himself is because Cranston keeps blocking him, but in the movie world, Hamm is outgunning Cranston with strong performances in dramas (The Town) and comedies (Bridesmaids) and killing it on other TV shows like 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, and his British series, A Young Doctor’s Notebook. Source: www.pajiba.com

Gary Ross has signed on to write 'East of Eden,' the new adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel that has Jennifer Lawrence attached to star. Set in California's Salinas Valley before World War I, the 1952 novel tells of two families over the course of two generations, loosely alluding to the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, focusing on a father, his two sons, and the children's mother, whom they thought was dead. The book was famously adapted as a 1955 James Dean movie directed by Elia Kazan. That movie focused on the second half of Steinbeck's book and on the second generation. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Kyle Chandler is ready to be back in the long-form narrative television business. He will now be starring in a Netflix series described as a “family thriller” about grown-up siblings. It sounds like it’s on some 'East of Eden' ish, centering on a responsible family man and his “black sheep” brother who comes back into the fold. Guess which one Chandler is playing? If you guessed “not the black sheep,” you guessed right.

Chandler has become the go-to good guy. It’s a side effect of his performance on Friday Night Lights: Who wants to see Coach Taylor turn bad? But it might feel limiting to Chandler in a cable TV climate in which antiheroes with last names like Draper, Soprano, and White tend to reign supreme. Or maybe Chandler likes playing straight arrows and finds that it’s just as difficult (if not more so) to portray a man who is capable of refusing temptation. He’s a hardworking actor who’s been on a million TV shows and turned in solid performances every time.

He logged modest hits with Homefront and Early Edition before gaining critical respect with Friday Night Lights. He’s also been on bombs like the Joan Cusack sitcom What About Joan and Rob Lowe vehicle The Lyon’s Den. He’s made a lot of TV movies. Although he’s been in movies periodically, like the George Strait and Lesley Ann Warren romance Pure Country and the excretory Peter Jackson remake of King Kong, it’s only recently that Chandler has become a secret weapon for movies in need of a white hat.

In Wolf of Wall Street, Chandler’s Agent Denham is the movie’s conscience, giving its antihero a fairly matched rival that the audience can relate to. Denham is moral in a cinematic world where nobody else is, and he suffers the consequences for not selling out to the devil, embodied by Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort (with Leo running at peak Jack Nicholson capacity). Chandler plays characters whose lot in life is humble, and who take satisfaction in doing their jobs well.

Interestingly enough, Chandler was actually in the running for the role of Sergeant Nick Brody on Homeland. As brilliant as Damian Lewis turned out to be, it’s tantalizing to imagine an alternate world where Chandler played Brody. The goodness that Chandler projects onscreen could easily be flipped on viewers who should know better than to trust appearances. Somebody should put Chandler in a Western already. Let’s get the Coen brothers to remake Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country with Chandler and Jon Hamm. Source: grantland.com

David Goodis: A Life in Black & White

DAVID GOODIS: A LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE: Finally available in English in the United States! If you're a fan of classic noir fiction, grab a copy of Philippe Garnier's legendary biography of David Goodis (edited and published by Eddie Muller), on sale from Black Pool Productions (not available on Amazon). Source: blackpoolproductions.com

David Goodis is the mystery man of American crime fiction. A cipher even to people who knew him, Goodis would have vanished from the annals of America literature were it not for the extraordinary esteem afforded him by French readers. At a time when none of his books were in print in the United States (the 1970s)--all were available in France, lauded as classics of noir-stained existentialism.

A prodigious producer of pulp fiction in the late 1930s and early '40s, Goodis scored an immense success with his second novel, Dark Passage, published in 1946.

It was immediately snapped up by Warner Bros. and turned into a hit movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Goodis was promoted by Warner Bros. as the next big thing--the latest incarnation of Hammett. He struggled to live up to the hype, writing several unproduced original scripts and a remake of Bette Davis' 1940 hit The Letter, released in 1947 as The Unfaithful. But Goodis had his own ideas about what--and how--he wanted to write--as well as a few personal peccadilloes--that drove him back to his native Philadelphia, where he spent the next decade churning out paperback originals for low-end publishers.

And it's those books--dark, stream-of-consciousness nightmares (Cassidy's Girl, Black Friday, Down There, The Burglar, The Wounded and the Slain)--that are his literary legacy. Goodis was back in native Philadelphia, churning out manuscripts for Lion Books and Gold Medal Paperbacks, when he was approached by first-time film director Paul Wendkos to adapt his 1953 novel, The Burglar, into a screenplay. It's his only screenwriting credit after he'd left Hollywood.

After achieving international success with his directorial debut, The 400 Blows (1959), 27-year-old Francois Truffaut surprised the film world by choosing as his next project an obscure American paperback called Down There, written by Goodis in 1956. Well, everyone was surprised but the French. Their "New Wave" filmmakers often turned to the work of American crime writers for inspiration. They'd read translations of the novels in the Serie Noire, a line of crime novels wildly popular with French intellectuals. Adapting these books allowed a new generation of French directors like Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, to honor an American genre they revered--in both its literary and cinematic form. Goodis may have had no literary cachet in the States, but in France he had a reputation as a poet of the urban demimonde, the master of existential despair. Source: www.noircon.info

“Ralph stood on the corner, leaning against the brick wall of Silver’s candy store, telling himself to go home and get some sleep.” That’s the opening line of The Blonde On The Street Corner, a 1954 novel written by David Goodis. Of course, Ralph doesn’t go home. Instead, he spots a blonde across the dark street and gawks at her. She eventually calls him over to light her cigarette, which he does. Now, at this point, one might expect that Ralph would be irresistibly lured into a tight web spun by this dazzling femme fatale, resulting in his eventual moral destruction. But Goodis doesn’t write that way. Ralph knows that she’s married. She propositions him right on the corner, but he rejects her. “I don’t mess around with married women,” he tells her. Then he goes home. Source: www.davidgoodis.com

While Goodis toiled in his little room at 6305 N. 11th Street in Philadelphia, filmmakers mined his ever-increasing wealth of material. OF MISSING PERSONS was made in Argentina and NIGHTFALL in Hollywood. Warner Brothers’ television division used one of his stories for an episode of their “Bourbon Street Beat” series and Goodis adapted a Henry Kane story for “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.” The closest Goodis came to reigniting his Hollywood flame came in 1957, with the film adaptation of THE BURGLAR. Shot in the streets of Philadelphia by his friend Paul Wendkos, Goodis helped write the screenplay based on his own work for this inventive film noir.

Delayed after completion and overlooked upon release, THE BURGLAR didn’t fulfill the promise of a Wendkos/Goodis creative partnership. Goodis may have labored in the penumbra of obscurity in the United States, but his existential and essentially bleak portrayal of the empty American dream caught the attention of European intellectuals in general and the French Nouvelle Vague in particular. In 1960, Cahiers du Cinema writer-turned-director Francois Truffaut brought Goodis’s Down There to the cinema in SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER. Source: www.davidgoodis.com