John Garfield with Frances Farmer, Lana Turner, Jennifer Jones, Shelley Winters

John Garfield as John Alexander - aka Johnny Blake - in drama "Flowing Gold" (1940) directed by Alfred E. Green

Frances Farmer & John Garfield in "Flowing Gold" (1940)

John Garfield pulled strings to get Frances Farmer cast as his leading lady in "Flowing Gold" (1940). Both actors would eventually be destroyed by Hollywood's ignorance.

Promotional still of John Garfield in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) directed by Tay Garnett

John Garfield and Lana Turner in Laguna Beach, filming "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)

Cecil Kellaway, John Garfield and Lana Turner in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)

"I could never belong to only one man -- I belong to all men," says Lana Turner in 'The Prodigal'.

Lana never lets you (or herself) forget that she is the ultimate sex goddess -- but in 'Postman', at least, she rarely forgets that she's playing a character and not herself. It is perhaps her finest work -- from a body of work that includes very few truly stellar performances.

'Postman', which predates all that, is a stunner -- a cruel and desperate and gritty James Cain vehicle that sorely tests Lana's skills.

But she succeeds marvelously, and from the first glimpse of her standing in the doorway in her white fuck-me pumps, as the camera travels up her tanned legs, she becomes a character so enticingly beautiful and insidiously evil that the audience is riveted. It is a noir tale of lust, betrayal, and murder that, along with 'Mildred Pierce' and 'Double Indemnity', remains one of the few truly important women's roles in film noir.

Turner wears white, head-to-toe, throughout the film -- hot, stark, tawdry white -- and is anything but virginal. But it is a nice counterpoint to the double-crossing and noir feel. Cora is a dame who wants out, but killing her husband (Kellaway) was never really part of her plan. Then along comes Frank (Garfield), a drifter with itchy feet who beats Cora at her own game of seduction and manipulation. 'Postman' is a stunning achievement that will live forever. Source: www.austinchronicle.com

Now that their relationship is poisoned with distrust and they are turned against each other, Cora wants to be rid of Frank: "Well, goodbye, Mr. Yellow. I don't know what you're going to do and I don't care. But I'm going in and open up my lunchroom." Cora wants to be respectable and well off, rather than on the road and wandering away with Frank. He is permitted to stay, although the two lovers are very divided:

Frank: Cora, Cora, look. Maybe, maybe you could sell the place and we can go away somewhere and start fresh, where nobody knows us.

Cora: Oh, no! You've been trying to make a tramp out of me ever since you've known me. But you're not going to do it. I stay here.
Frank: All right. I'm gonna stay too.
Cora: Well, let me tell you something. If you do stay, there's gonna be a lot of hard work done around here because I've got ideas for this place.

John Garfield posing on the set of 'Force of Evil' (directed by Abraham Polonsky), on 11th June, 1948 in New York City.

John Garfield and Jennifer Jones in "We Were Strangers" (1949) directed by John Huston

Jennifer Jones declared: "It's such a pleasure to play with John Garfield. He is a powerful actor and one feels his security in a scene".

Jennifer Jones played Emma Bovary in "Madame Bovary" (1949) directed by Vincente Minnelli. The film was a project of the MGM studios and Lana Turner was set to star, but when pregnancy and the Breen office forced her to withdraw, Jennifer Jones stepped into the title role. The story of the adulterous wife who destroys the lives of many presented censorship issues with the Production Code. A plot device which structured the story around author Gustave Flaubert's obscenity trial was developed to placate the censors.

Jennifer Jones joins the rebels for revenge but falls for the terse passion of the mastermind (John Garfield), her house becomes the group's hideout as they dig a tunnel under the Havana Cemetery and towards the dictator. Dynamite is concealed in conga drums, Gilbert Roland ("something of a poet") grabs a pickaxe and delivers the first blow on a rocky side, "this is for the President" .

Huston's overt sympathy for sedition might be a jibe at the McCarthyism just around the corner, and his filmmaking is up to the task -- the stark claustrophobia of the compositions (a bedrock for Le Trou, The Great Escape, Kanal) is continuously goosed by an urgent surrealism out of Buñuel's Mexican period, as in the moment when the heroine, roused by nightmares, descends into the tunnel as if into a tomb and is startled by Garfield's face covered in red dust. Jones with a machine-gun in hand anticipates Mao's ode to female warriors ("Spirited and attractive, with a five feet rifle...") Source: www.cinepassion.org

John Garfield and Shelley Winters during the filming of a bedroom scene on the set of 'He Ran All the Way' (January 1951) directed by John Berry.


"He Ran All The Way" (1951) directed by John Berry - Ending Scene: When Nick (John Garfield) discovers that he killed the cop, he decides to use Peggy's apartment as hideout to wait the police manhunt cool down, forcing the family to lodge him. When Nick finds that Peggy (Shelley Winters) loves him, he invites her to leave the town with him and asks her to buy a used runaway car. However, the paranoid Nick cannot trust anybody and believes Peggy has betrayed him.

‎"Must I tell the story of my life again?" -John Garfield

Jake Gyllenhaal shows off his beard while out for sushi lunch in Hollywood

Jake Gyllenhaal out for lunch with friends in Hollywood, on 4th January 2012

Jake Gyllenhaal showing off his 'Lumberjack Look' while lunching with friends in Hollywood. Gyllenhaal is beard-ly recognizable with his new scruffy look. The actor was spotted in grabbing sushi with some friends.

Happy New Year 2012!

New additions of Jake Gyllenhaal attending 'Love & Other Drugs' Press Conference in New York City

Jake Gyllenhaal out for coffee with Friends in Venice, CA on 1st January 2012

What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

"She & Him" with M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel

Still of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "50/50" directed by Jonathan Levine


I have known Joe Gordon-Levitt for going on 12 years. We first met in the summer of 2000 while doing a tiny movie called Manic, where we bonded over a mutual appreciation for Harry Nilsson and Nina Simone and I have been lucky enough to call him one of my dearest friends ever since. When we did 500 Days of Summer 8 years later, we spent every lunch hour dancing to Marvin Gaye in the hair and make up trailer; we had loads of fun. I hope to do a thousand more movies with him because he's simply the best. But in the meantime, we made a little New Year's duet for all of you! The original by Nancy Wilson. ENJOY!

John Garfield in "The Postman Always Rings Twice", "Castle on the Hudson", "Out of the Fog" and "Body & Soul"

John Garfield and Lana Turner as Frank and Cora in a promotional still of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)

In his retrospective narration, Frank remembers how fatal his decision to stay became. Cora, the quintessential femme fatale, sneaks into Frank's room later in the evening to talk about their future on her own terms. The lovers plan to murder the woman's unloved husband - and it is the unfaithful wife Cora who plants the idea of murder into Frank's head so that they can be together. The ambitious, yet soul-less seductress argues that with her husband dead, she would inherit the financial security of the restaurant:

Cora: Frank, do you love me?
Frank: Yes.
Cora: Do you love me so much that nothing else matters?
Frank: Yes.

Cora and Nick enjoy an idyllic week together. They frolic at night in the surreal surf and enjoy romantic trysting with the breathing room given them by Nick's absence:

"It was the happiest I'd ever spent in my life. I wouldn't let myself think. And Cora wouldn't even discuss what was going to happen when Nick came home. All I cared about was her being happy. And as for me, I felt as if I was riding on a cloud". However, when Nick is being driven home, Frank has only one option. He hurriedly packs and leaves and becomes a vagabond once more: "After a couple of weeks in L.A., I-I sunk low enough to hang around the wholesale market where they bought a lot of their stuff, hoping I, I'd run into her. I just couldn't get her out of my mind".

Obsessed and drawn back by the memory of angel-faced Cora, Frank locates Nick's car at the Los Angeles market, and with only a half-hearted protest, he is convinced to return with Nick to Twin Oaks. In the cafe, Cora is stunned to see Frank re-appear: "Frank: Have you been thinkin' about me, Cora?" -Cora: "I couldn't forget ya that quick".

"For the first time in his life he has done the decent thing... protecting the Warden’s reputation and saving Kay from a jail term. This is clearly of comfort to him as he is led to the chair. The sub-text is that none of this would have been possible without the inspiration and influence of Warden Long, whose ethical approach was no doubt modelled on the man who wrote the screenplay, Lewis E Lawes, Warden of Sing Sing.

Is it any better than the original? Marginally. It’s fast paced (just 76 minutes) and Garfield’s brashness and quick-fire gangsterisms perhaps top Spencer Tracy’s, and Sheridan’s Kay is more believable than Bette Davis the first time around". Source: www.prisonmovies.net

"Garfield was on voluntary suspension from Warner Bros. because of dissatisfaction with roles the studio was offering him (usually criminals or prison inmates) when he was sent the script for "Castle on the Hudson". His reported response when offered one more prison saga was, "Parole me!" It was director-screenwriter-producer Robert Rossen, a friend of Garfield's, who persuaded him to take on Spencer Tracy's old role. Garfield agreed to do the film provided the studio would not change the original ending, which had Tommy going to the electric chair to cover for the girlfriend, who had shot and killed a treacherous lawyer. When the film opened, The New York Times began its review by joking, "This is merely a routine notice that Mr. John Garfield, formerly of the Group Theatre, who was recently sentenced to a term in Warner Bros. Pictures, is still in prison."

"Garfield had some trepidation about succeeding the highly regarded Tracy -and, indeed, some critics accused the younger actor of borrowing from both Tracy and James Cagney in his performance. When the film is viewed today, however, it's easy to see that Garfield made the role his own. In later describing his preparation for the climactic execution scene, he explained how he used his Method training to make the experience seem real: "Naturally I hadn't ever been to the chair before, so it required a little imagination to go back into my past and find the emotion I needed... When I got onstage for the first performance of Awake and Sing (his first major stage role with the Group Theatre), it felt like the electric chair... and that feeling is what I was remembering when the movie cameras were grinding." Source: www.tcm.com

In his analysis of the Cagney persona, Harvard intellectual Lincoln Kirstein wrote, "No one expresses more in terms of pictorial action, the delights of violence, the overtones of a semi-conscious sadism, the tendency towards destruction, towards anarchy, which is the basis of American sex appeal". Cagney had become a big star, but the poor Irish kid from the Lower East Side never forgot where he had come from. Taking note of this, Communist screenwriter John Bright was going to put him in with some folks who could use the star's new altruism for their benefit. The involvement with the radicals came back to haunt Cagney in 1940 when he testified before Martin Dies' then kinder, gentler convening of the HUAC in Washington. With his career at stake, Cagney disowned his former friends and claimed that as a kid growing up in a poor neighborhood, he just wanted to help those who were on the bottom. "What the hell did I know about the ebb and flow of political movements?" he cried.

Poster of "Out of The Fog" starring Ida Lupino and John Garfield (1941) directed by Anatole Litvak

Goff (John Garfield) is dazzling Stella (Ida Lupino) with his ill-gotten wealth. After introducing Stella to several ritzy clubs, he conspires to take her to Havana's more decadent hot spots -shades of Clifford Odets' aborted anti-Batista play.

To "The Boston Daily Record", John Garfield enthused: "The film has something important to say. It shows how men such as I portray are kicked around until they eventually turn against society, adopting the fascist idea of seizing what they want". The casting for the plum role of fascistic gangster Goff became intense. Though James Cagney was discussed for the role, director Anatole Litvak had favored George Raft.

Howard Barnes felt that "Out of the Fog" was "a work of genuine distinction" and said Garfield gave "what is unquestionably his greatest screen portrayal as the petty hoodlum who turns gentle people into killers." Garfield is frightening and he imbues the thug character with chilling mood swings. -"The Left Side of the Screen: Communist and Left-Wing Ideology in Hollywood, 1929-2009" by Bob Herzberg (2011)

John Garfield as Charley Davis in "Body and Soul" (1947) directed by Robert Rossen

"Garfield pushed himself to the limit for authenticity, suffering a mild heart attack while exercising in one scene and knocking himself out when he collided with a camera boom while filming a fight with former welterweight fighter Art Darrell. This last injury gave him a head wound that took six stitches to close. 'Body and Soul' opened to rave reviews and huge box office returns. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times said, "Altogether this Enterprise picture rolls up a round-by-round triumph on points until it comes through with a climactic knockout that his the all-time high in throat-catching fight films." Garfield was nominated for Best Actor by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as was Abraham Polonsky for his screenplay. Francis Lyon and Robert Parrish won the Oscar for Best Editing. Source: www.tcm.com