Silver Lode (1954)

Film: Silver Lode (1954)

Stars: John Payne, Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Dolores Moran

Director: Allan Dwan

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on John Payne: click here to learn more about Mr. Payne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Payne left Fox in 1947.  Payne had struggled at the studio, thinking that they hadn't used his talents as well as they should have, and walked away from an extremely lucrative offer since his contract with the studio extended another four years and was worth $670k (worth almost $9 million today).  He worked in noirs for a while, but nothing that was particularly noteworthy, and by the early 1950's he was largely a star for hire in B-and-C Grade westerns for various studios, including some on Poverty Row.  The actor who had been a poor man's Tyrone Power for much of the 1940's was clearly in the waning years of his career when television came with an offer that he couldn't refuse.  Before that, though, we're going to take a look at one of those films, a western Payne made for RKO called Silver Lode.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Dan Ballard (Payne) who on the day of his wedding to Rose Evans (Scott) is charged with murder, in this case the murder of Fred McCarty (Duryea) who also happens to be a marshal that's bringing him in to justice.  While Dan eventually tells Rose he did kill McCarty's brother, he didn't murder him, and didn't shoot him in the back as alleged, and the money that he won off of him was through a bet rather than theft.  The film progresses as the town continues to turn against Dan, particularly after several bodies start to pile up as we learn this is all a ruse-that McCarty is the one wanted for crimes, and in fact it's a case where he's going to kill Dan no matter what happens.  With the help of a local "saloon gal" named Dolly (Moran), Rose & Dan end up clearing his name, and defeating McCarty in a final shootout.

The movie is clearly a ripoff of the successful High Noon from two years previous, except in this movie the entire town turns against Dan rather than just leaving him in the lurch.  The movie is also not subtle about its critiques of the Red Scare, in this case literally calling the main character McCarty (an allusion to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who after years of dominating the press was in 1954 seeing his meteoric rise slip to a point where by the end of 1954, he would be publicly censured by the US Senate).   Unfortunately, though, it's not a particularly good movie, thanks in large part to the actors.  While Duryea is always a treat and I quite liked Moran's sassy hooker routine (even if it's not breaking new ground), Payne & Scott don't work here.  Lizabeth Scott is a star we profiled in our first season of Saturdays with the Stars, and I generally like her even though her highly-stylized method of acting is not something many are a fan of (her critics call her wooden).  But here it doesn't work, and she blends in to the scenery.  The same can be said for Payne, who is not great in the lead even though this might be the best work we got from him this month.  His character has to take a lot of wild swings, and there's not enough emotion in his work to really get that across.  After spending a month with him, I have to side with Fox...he was no Tyrone Power.

Payne's career changed in the coming years to television.  His most significant role was the lead in The Restless Gun, one of the many TV westerns that dominated the ratings in the late 1950's coming off of the success of Gunsmoke.  Payne only lasted two seasons on the show, and never really recovered the momentum he had in the mid-1940's with Sentimental Journey and Miracle on 34th Street.  He was hit by a car in 1961 on Madison Avenue that nearly killed him, and while he made a full recovery, he spent most of the rest of his career doing sporadic work on TV and in movies before dying of heart failure in 1989 at the age of 77.  Next month, we're going to move down the call sheet and talk about a character actor, in this case one who also eventually found his way into TV westerns, but while he never had his name above the title like John Payne, he starred in some of the most important movies Hollywood ever made.

Saturdays with the Stars: Season 1 Recap

Ida Lupino & Ann Sheridan, two of our
stars kicking their heels!

With yesterday's sojourn into the South Pacific, we have finished our first season of "Saturday with the Stars!"  I'm not much for naval-gazing (mostly because I am aware this blog is not read by swaths of people), but I am really, really proud of this past season.  When I came up with this idea, I mostly wanted to see if I could do it for a year, and with one exception (you won't be able to tell this unless you were paying really close attention because I pre-dated the article, but when I was suffering from a 103-fever & pneumonia, I published one article on a Sunday), I did!

This year has taught me about the careers of twelve amazing artists, and I hope you learned some things about them too.  I had never really done something like this with actors, focusing instead on genre or something arbitrary like Oscar nominations, but getting to see the progressions in these women's careers was eye-opening, noting the similarities as well as the differences in their journeys.  I am struck by how expansive the universe of classic film is still to me some 25 years after I first started to delve into it. This year we watched movies that I'd never even heard of until I included them in the project, and made a bunch of "deep cut" discoveries.

We'll begin our second season in a few days (click here if you want to learn more about it), but before we go I am a lover of lists, and wanted to rank a few of the movies we watched this year.  I'm appreciative to all of these actresses for the education & cinematic pleasure they gave me during this journey, so I'm only focusing on the positives (no "worst of" lists).  If you have enjoyed this series, please feel free to comment or tweet this post-I'd love to have more people joining us in Season 2.  And if you have opinions on these actresses (or further research I should do), share in the comments as well!

Favorite Performances from Each Star
January: Ann Sheridan-Woman on the Run
February: Virginia Mayo-Along the Great Divide
March: Cyd Charisse-The Band Wagon
April: Alice Faye-Hello Frisco Hello
May: Linda Darnell-A Letter to Three Wives
June: Lizabeth Scott-Too Late for Tears
July: Rhonda Fleming-While the City Sleeps
August: Ruth Roman-Lightning Strikes Twice
September: Esther Williams-Bathing Beauty
October: Hedy Lamarr-Ecstasy
November: Ida Lupino-The Hard Way
December: Mitzi Gaynor-Les Girls

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical)

Linda Darnell
Alice Faye
Rhonda Fleming
Ida Lupino
Lizabeth Scott

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Linda Darnell, A Letter to Three Wives
Alice Faye, Hello Frisco Hello
Ida Lupino, The Bigamist
Ida Lupino, The Hard Way
Lizabeth Scott, Too Late for Tears

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

The Band Wagon
The Bigamist
Brigadoon
It's Always Fair Weather
Les Girls
A Letter to Three Wives
The Man Who Came to Dinner
My Darling Clementine
Strangers on a Train
Too Late for Tears

10 Favorite Performances of the Year in these Films (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra
Kirk Douglas, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Nanette Fabray, The Band Wagon
Patricia Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train
Van Johnson, Brigadoon
Kay Kendall, Les Girls
Janis Paige, Silk Stockings
Ann Sothern, A Letter to Three Wives
Robert Walker, Strangers on a Train
Monty Woolley, The Man Who Came to Dinner

Scared Stiff (1953)

Film: Scared Stiff (1953)
Stars: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Lizabeth Scott, Carmen Miranda, Dorothy Malone (plus two hilarious cameos I won't spoil here, but I do tag below)
Director: George Marshall
Oscar History:  No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

The career of Lizabeth Scott was incredibly short for a woman that was the lead for 21 of her 22 pictures.  When we think of careers of major stars, they slip quietly into the night, their fame slowly downgraded as they move into lesser and lesser roles/films, eventually getting to play parents and judges and more dismissible parts.  Scott didn't do that.  While she did occasionally make films after her partnership with Hal Wallis (whose obsession with her fueled much of her stardom, though it's kind of distasteful to give him too much of the credit since she was clearly a hit with audiences for a time), Scott's movie star career ended just a few short years after it began, sputtering out in the mid-50's.  Therefore, we're going to end our month-long journey with her penultimate film for Wallis, and her playing weirdly both against-and-within type, as a mysterious, tortured heiress in the middle of a criminal ring...who is aided by the slapstick stylings of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Larry Todd (Martin), a cool lounge singer who is caught romancing a mobster's girlfriend (Malone) and his bumbling best friend, busboy Myron (Lewis).  The two go out on the run with Larry romancing an heiress Mary (Scott) who has just inherited her family's home, a small island off of the coast of Cuba.  The film sets into play a number of hijinks as the trio try to evade the mobsters who are trying to get after Larry & Myron, all the while trying to understand why Mary keeps getting threatening messages to sell her island and not to go there.  We learn soon that the island is haunted, but it's also very much being guarded by someone who has been in plain sight the whole picture, and we get an ending where Mary & Larry get the treasure, and live happily ever after while Myron is left to tag along.

I believe this is the first actual movie of Martin & Lewis I've ever seen, usually only watching their standup acts together or television appearances as themselves.  However, it's not hard to realize that Larry and Myron are pretty disposable as characters, and really they're just playing their big-screen personas here.  Based on a cursory look around the internet, this appears to be one of their best-loved pairings, but I'm not super familiar with the critical consensus on their pictures-if you have thoughts on the best Martin & Lewis movie, I'd be curious to know, as I quite liked their chemistry here.  There's an ease here, and Lewis is hilarious if repetitive, and while some of the jokes are so well-known that they're antiques, you can't hide star charisma, which is what both these men have.  The musical numbers in the film are pretty disposable (there's one where they literally sing the word "enchilada" seemingly a 100 times), but it's pretty fun.  There's also a cameo by Bing Crosby & Bob Hope at the very, very tail of the movie that made me do a spit-take I was so shocked it came out of left field.

Scott, in our final film profiled this month, seems more at ease here than she has in any other role we've seen.  After nearly a decade of playing similarly-designed femme fatales and damsels-in-trouble, it's great to see her play with this character a bit and milk her sturdy delivery and incredible beauty for laughs. It's interesting to see Scott getting to play with this motif a bit, never scoring the biggest laughs (Lewis is there for a reason), but at least having a ball in the picture, against someone like Carmen Miranda, who essentially also plays herself here, in her last role.  Miranda more than almost any other actor in Hollywood's Golden Age, got stuck playing the same character over-and-over again, and it's weird to contradict here Scott, who did get some room to breathe with her character despite as we've seen this month routinely being typecast, and Miranda, who was never given that sort of leverage when she was typecast herself.  Miranda's character feels unfortunately disposable as a result-there's a scene where she's randomly missing for seemingly no reason (other than for Lewis to dress in her famous fruit hat), and then shows up in a future musical number, no questions asked.  Scott at least is afforded more courtesy with her character, and I feel like I leave understanding a bit more of her talents.  Next month we'll investigate a different actress who also got her start in noir, but soon expanded into proper leading lady roles throughout the 1950's...something she'd later regret.

Too Late for Tears (1949)

Film: Too Late for Tears (1949)
Stars: Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller
Director: Byron Haskin
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

One of my pet issues is film preservation.  We've done several articles in the past talking about lost films and ways that we should try to preserve cinema for future generations (I'm working on another, similar article right now but I'm not going to promise when it'll be done as it's taking an inordinate amount of research to complete, but I promise it'll be cool when I eventually publish it).  So when I get the opportunity to highlight an organization that is doing some of this terrific work, I'm going to take it.  The Film Noir Foundation basically saved Too Late for Tears by creating a properly cinematic version of the original film, rather than some of the bootlegged public domain copies that came under a variety of different titles.  This is incredibly cool, having an organization devoted to bringing the original, pristine forgotten classics back to film-lovers everywhere, and actually they've done it for another film we've featured in our Saturdays with the Stars series, 1950's Woman on the Run with Ann Sheridan.  Not only are these restorations vital to study these actresses from an historical perspective, they're also important for film fans themselves, because like Sheridan in Woman on the Run, Too Late for Tears gives us by-far the best performance from Lizabeth Scott we have had throughout our look at her career in June.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around Jane (Scott) and Alan (Kennedy) Palmer, a seemingly normal couple on their way to a dinner party Jane is resistant to attend.  While swerving during a fight on the road, a car drives by carrying a brief case full of money, and throws it into the backseat of the Palmers' convertible.  This strange case of fortune causes a quick change in Jane, who sees this as a way for her to get the life she always dreamed of (we learn there's about $60k in the suitcase, which is just over $600k in modern money, so we're talking about a "change our lives forever" sort of situation here).  Alan, though, wants to go to the police, and to make things more confusing, a man (the man whose money it was supposed to be) named Danny (Duryea) shows up, and demands the money from Jane.  We get a second mysterious man soon after who claims to be an old army buddy of Alan's named Don (DeFore), who shows up just after Alan "goes missing" (but we know that Jane accidentally shot him on a boat, and buried him at the bottom of the lake since it's certain that she & Danny would be blamed for the death).

The film continues to unfurl at a breakneck speed.  As we've seen in our profiles not only of the films of Ms. Scott this month, but also our film noir classics, the genre is good at throwing out loads of plot, frequently to distract the viewer from occasionally questionable acting decisions & thin budgets.  This isn't needed in Too Late for Tears, though, as it's very watchable and doesn't have a weak link in the cast list.  I loved the many clever choices with the plot, frequently throwing out twist-after-twist-after-twist which all make sense (Don being the former brother-in-law to Jane through her first husband probably felt a little bit much that late in the picture, but it was a good explanation as to why he so instantly hated her).  The biggest thing holding back the movie may have been the Hays Code-considering how much she sacrificed to get there, Jane almost certainly would have gotten to keep the money in a neo-noir, rather than plummeting to her death, a clenched fist of bloody bills her bon voyage (because it's also the 1940's, we get to see Scott looking radiant even though she just collapsed onto cement from a penthouse window).

Scott has never been better (and I've seen all of our films for her this month, so while I liked next week's movie, she's nowhere near as good as this).  This is almost certainly what Hal Wallis saw she was capable of when he forced her into stardom, and probably why select pockets of Film Twitter have been obsessed with her in the years since.  Her Jane is craven, beautiful, dangerous, and somehow still girlish.  This has been called one of the "quintessential" femme fatales, and it works best because Scott is so hard-to-read until the last moments of the film.  You can't quite tell how often she's just shocked that she's this evil or whether she just keeps getting pulled down further through a combination of greed and bad luck.  Either way, it's a marvelous performance, ruthless & unique; Joan Crawford was the original choice to play this part, but while Crawford is the superior actress of the two, it's impossible to think of her improving upon Scott's Jane Palmer, and in fact her hardened edge would have stolen some of the twists that would eventually come from the character.  Whereas other femme fatales need to make their characters' folly be love of a man or "imperfection in the eyes of her lover" sealing her doom, Scott's Jane Palmer is brought down simply by greed, a lust for what's just out-of-reach.

I Walk Alone (1947)

Film: I Walk Alone (1947)
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Wendell Corey
Director: Byron Haskin
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In our third week with Lizabeth Scott, we also welcome back two stars that seem to be popping up at TMROJ a lot in the past few weeks, Kirk Douglas & Burt Lancaster.  Lancaster & Douglas would make seven films together over the next four decades (ending their long-running tenure as a cinematic pair with 1986's Tough Guys)-this is the only film where they don't have equal billing, though, as Douglas (who, like Scott, was having a big few years as an actor) was not yet an established star like Lancaster.  That such a film set off such a long film partnership is odd, because while I Walk Alone is fine, it's also relatively forgettable, the sort of late-night television you watch and wonder the next day what it was called.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Frankie (Lancaster), a man freshly out of prison and trying to find the money he is due from his former partner Noll (Douglas).  Noll & Frankie had been bootleggers in 1933 (which, considering their ages would have made Lancaster & Douglas teenage bootleggers, but let's not get bogged down by facts just yet), and made a promise they'd split any money they made 50/50, even if one of them got caught and sent to prison.  Year later, Noll, now a legitimate businessman with a thriving nightclub, is visited by Frankie asking for half of what he has, and Noll refuses, but first tries to have his girlfriend Kay (Scott) seduce Frankie to figure out what his angle is, and the two fall in love (Noll is also stepping out with Kay with a wealthy socialite and has no intention of marrying Kay, which is why she doesn't come across as a harlot for the 1940's crowd).  The movie has multiple standoffs between Noll & Frankie, one of which ends with their mutual friend Dave (Corey) dead at Noll's hand, and eventually Noll gets his comeuppance when he's gunned down by police, after it's clear he was the one who killed Dave.

It's strange to watch Lancaster become the hero here, and possibly we watch the film violate the Hays Code by having him be a criminal who gets away pretty much scot-free at the end, simply by making the argument that he's a better person than Douglas's Noll.  This is odd because Douglas's character, at least until Frankie shows up, is working within the law (even though he hadn't always), trying to make his business profitable and respectable.  The movie therefore feels more like one that would be released in the 1950's or 60's, where establishment, moneyed villains, rather than the type of hoods that Lancaster is playing here, would become en vogue.

This juxtaposition is probably the most interesting part of I Walk Alone.  Lancaster, whom I've been warming to this month, goes completely bombastic and overacts throughout the movie, every mood swing needing to be underlined.  This is what has always kept me from being a fan of his work in the past, and while I'm now someone who is going to be less shy of his filmography, I don't know that I'll ever be an ardent fan.  Douglas is also growing on me, and is considerably better as Noll, giving him a creepy supporting sheen that works for the picture.  But the movie is repetitive, and its politics are complicated.  It's honestly a pretty socialist film, with Lancaster demanding to be paid for his initial investment in the partnerships despite doing little of the tangible work, and I'm quite surprised that it was Martha Ivers, and not a picture like I Walk Alone that has been associated with the Black List in a major way.

Scott gets a relatively thankless role as Kay, basically a beautiful woman for the two men to spar with and spar over, but I honestly think this is the movie where I kind of become obsessed with Scott.  I have two more pictures of hers to see before the end of the month, including the film that is generally considered to house her finest performance, but while I'm not entirely sure she's a good actress, she's utterly compelling onscreen.  Her stilted delivery, broad-shouldered stance, and baritone voice shouldn't work, but they do.  You instantly get why someone would fall for Kay, becoming enamored after a decadent French dinner, and why these two men want to make sure she's on their side before the end of the battle.  Scott's work here is impossible to ignore, and by-far the thing you best remember as you contemplate the film.  A stiff, but never lifeless, personage on the screen is so rare in movies of this era that it feels almost like method acting coming from Scott.  Like I said, I don't know if it's a great performance, but it left me entranced.

Dead Reckoning (1947)

Film: Dead Reckoning (1947)
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Camovsky, Charles Cane, William Prince
Director: John Cromwell
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout her career, Lizabeth Scott was never not a leading lady, something virtually no other performer can claim.  Other than a cameo appearance in Variety Girl as herself, Scott was the lead in every single one of her pictures.  But she obviously wasn't always a star, something that came about with two films, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, which we profiled last week, and Dead Reckoning, where she managed to gain shared billing alongside one of the quintessential leading men of the era, Humphrey Bogart.  Dead Reckoning was a big hit (commercially, it was more mixed with critics), and this one-two punch is truly what managed to transform Scott from an overnight leading lady into a proper movie star.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of Dead Reckoning is convoluted to say the least.  I'll try to summarize a bit though.  Bogie plays Rip Murdock, an army officer whose buddy Johnny (Prince) is about to get the Medal of Honor and then disappears, with Murdock going AWOL to pursue him.  We soon learn that Johnny joined the military under an assumed name to avoid a murder charge (something that is actually a really good plot device that is not given enough credence in this convoluted picture).  The murder was of a rich, older man who was married to Coral (Scott), a woman that Johnny was desperately in love with.  Soon Coral & Murdock are involved in something of an affair, though in the process Murdock is framed for murder after being drugged at a casino.  This makes Murdock suspicious of Coral, who admits that she killed her husband (but in self-defense), and we learn that Coral is married to the sadistic club owner who drugged Murdock, and he himself killed Coral's wealthy husband, framing Johnny.  Martinelli is killed, by Coral, and Murdock realizes that Coral was trying to murder them both.  They struggle, getting into a car accident that eventually kills Coral, but leaves Murdock just fine.

The film is almost weird enough to make up for a messy, frequently nonsensical plot.  The movie's ending is strange, where we suddenly see Scott (still glamorous as hell, but in a bandaged bald cap), try to cling to Murdock as she dies with an almost theremin-style score playing in the background.  We see the film almost from her point-of-view, and understand that so much of the movie we've been trying to see her as Murdock does, gorgeous, and not nearly as dangerous as she clearly is.

It's worth noting this would work better with an actress like Gene Tierney, one with more emotional resonance, but while Scott is very watchable here (it's easy to get her appeal, and it's not just surface-level), we probably needed an actress with better dramatic skills to land this role.  We have three more films left of hers so I might yet change my mind, but she feels more like a Gina Lollobrigida or someone that would have worked really well with a director like David Lynch-she has unmistakable presence on screen, but it doesn't work in terms of connecting to her character and the world around her.  The filmmakers here are clearly trying to make her into Lauren Bacall, but she's really more an auteur actress than the ballsy movie star that Bacall was, someone that would have been more at home in a more properly abstract vision.  You see that in the desperation in her lip syncing to "Either It's Love or It Isn't."  Sadly, Dead Reckoning isn't an interesting enough or artsy enough film to capture such a performer's specific gifts.

OVP: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Film: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Judith Anderson
Director: Lewis Milestone
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Lizabeth Scott became a star by the sheer force-of-will of mega-producer Hall Wallis.  Unlike virtually every other star in our series, Scott didn’t really have a wilderness or supporting part period-she made 22 films in her career and 21 of them she got star billing.  The reason for that is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, a film that she got to be ranked alongside Barbara Stanwyck & Van Heflin despite being a virtual unknown (to underline point here, below-the-line but with nearly as large of a part is Kirk Douglas in his screen debut, who without Wallis pushing him wasn’t given the same level of publicity as Scott).  Barbara Stanwyck at the time protested (she didn’t share star billing with anyone that wasn’t her equal), but Wallis insisted, and Martha Ivers delivered enough to make Scott the star that Wallis wanted.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a well, strange, movie.  The film hearkens back to a young Martha (played by Janis Wilson as a child, Stanwyck as an adult) trying to run away with Sam (eventually to be played by Van Heflin).  The problem is she’s the richest girl in town, and her aunt (Anderson) is cruel & domineering of her.  Martha attempts to escape one night with Sam but in the process accidentally kills her aunt.  Certain to be sent to jail and see her life ruined, she is convinced by a greedy tutor (Roman Bohnen) that he’ll keep her secret, and eventually pushes Martha onto his son Walter (Douglas) who will then inherit her family fortune and political power.  The film cuts to the characters’ adulthood, where Sam is going through town and learns that Martha is still there, successful as ever, and befriends she and Walter, who find Sam suspicious and try to run him out of town (or even have him killed) as they assume he saw Martha kill her aunt and will tell that they let an innocent man go to the chair for Martha’s crime.  The movie eventually ends with a murder-suicide between Martha & Walter, and Sam runs off into the sunset, letting this chapter of his life go.

You’ll notice two things in that description-one, it sounds normal but it’s not.  Martha is diabolical, and more than willing to dispose of people in order to get what she wants.  The film feels a bit gimmicky in Stanwyck’s performance, letting her play Martha as wild-eyed as she possibly can.  It kind of works because she’s such a good actor she can do scenery-chewing with great aplomb, but it’s not particularly strong acting, especially when you consider that Stanwyck is capable of a role like Phyllis Dietrichson, the grand teton of femme fatales.  Arguably the best performance in the film comes from Kirk Douglas, playing a sniveling man capable of both murder and being totally whipped by his hot wife.  Douglas rarely played this kind of weak character in a career that would find him most identified with Spartacus or western heroes, but he’s really good in the part.

The second thing you’ll notice is that I don’t talk about Scott’s character at all, and that’s because she’s totally unnecessary for the actual film.  She plays the love interest for Van Heflin’s Sam, Toni.  Toni has some petty crime under her belt, and is blackmailed by Walter to get to Sam, but she’s ancillary to the main showdown between Martha, Walter, and Sam, and it’s easy to see how Scott would’ve gotten lower billing if it weren’t for Wallis. Her performance is…fine.  It’s a throwaway part, and she doesn’t elevate it the way that Douglas does, but as I’ve read about Scott, she became famous so fast that she struggled with learning how to act while getting to headline proper films (with her beauty & husky voice, she was unkindly compared to Lauren Bacall).  We’re going to get to some of the peak Scott performances in a few weeks, but this week-and-next we’ll be staying in the earliest reaches of her career, where she starred with luminaries like Stanwyck & Douglas, and struggled to stand out.

Saturdays with the Stars: Lizabeth Scott

Each month of 2019 we will be looking at the careers of leading ladies of Classical Hollywood who were never nominated for an Academy Award as part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Last month, our focus was on Linda Darnell, a gorgeous star at Fox who briefly had a supernova moment in her career in the 1940's before alcoholism, depression, and an unspeakable tragedy ended her life at the age of 41.  This month, we'll take a look at an actress whose life was very long (she died just four years ago), but also had some very interesting twists-and-turns, and to go along with our film noir theme for June, we'll be investigating one of the most important actresses of the genre who was a major player for Hal Wallis Productions in the late 1940's/early 1950's, Ms. Lizabeth Scott.

Lizabeth Scott may well be best-remembered today by film historians not for her roles in 22 films (where she appeared as the leading lady in all but one, almost unrivaled in Classical Hollywood where you had to work your way up or ended up working your way down), but for the role she (allegedly) inspired: Eve Harrington.  Though the inspiration for the short story The Wisdom of Eve (which ended up being the source for Best Picture winner All About Eve) is debatable, it is frequently cited that during the stage production of The Skin of Our Teeth, Scott was hired as Tallulah Bankhead's understudy in a way to try to get Bankhead to show up for rehearsals and never miss a performance.  The plan worked, as the 40-year-old Bankhead despised the 20-year-old Scott, and was convinced Scott was having an affair with the play's producer Michael Myerberg (there appears to be some truth to this rumor).  Throughout the production, Bankhead and Scott fought and loathed each other, and Bankhead supposedly gloated when she left the production to Scott, as Scott didn't get to replace her but instead the part went to Miriam Hopkins, and then finally Gladys George, by which point Scott had left the production briefly (replaced by another future film noir superstar, Gloria Grahame) and returned.  It was during George's run in the play that Scott was finally able to play the role of Sabina in the production, and was spotted by Hal Wallis, who eventually signed her to a contract to his production company, which was closely associated with Paramount.  Another legend about Scott states that at this point in her career she dropped the "E" in her first name to just be Lizabeth in an effort to "conserve newsprint during a time of war."

In a move that mirrors Alice Faye/Linda Darnell, Lizabeth Scott became a star in Hollywood thanks to the obsession of one Hollywood producer (Wallis) who wanted to feature her more than the established star of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers Barbara Stanwyck (this is one of the films we'll profile this month, which also has the screen debut of Kirk Douglas).  The trick worked though, as in conjunction with her role opposite Humphrey Bogart in Dead Reckoning the following year, Scott became a proper star, though a typecast one who rarely worked outside of noir (something that frustrated her but she put up with since it paid the bills).

Scott's life offscreen is perhaps more famous during this period than any of the films she made for Wallis.  She read Aldous Huxley, and nearly joined a cult devoted to him, and somehow was friendly with both the Dalai Lama and Ayn Rand; in her spare time she'd take random classes about philosophy at USC.  She apparently had affairs with everyone from James Mason to Peter Lawford to David Mountbatten (the best man at Queen Elizabeth's marriage to Prince Philip)-she was even the "rebound" after Burt Bacharach broke up with Angie Dickinson.  During the mid-1950's, she was the target of a Confidential Magazine article which alleged that she was a lesbian, for which she sued the magazine (this was unsuccessful, but a later, larger suit that involved celebrities like Dorothy Dandridge and Maureen O'Hara was successful and basically made Confidential into a laughingstock).  Largely retired by the mid-1950's, she occasionally came out for films (including the Elvis Presley musical Loving You and the noir comedy Pulp with Michael Caine), and briefly pursued a career in music, but largely disappeared from the limelight, rarely doing interviews (though she was apparently best friends with Michael Jackson for a time).  She died in 2015 from heart failure, decades after her heyday, one of the final film stars of the 1940's to still be alive.  This month we'll look at her short career at the top of Hollywood, investigating her work to see if it can somehow match the fascinating woman behind the camera.

AFI's 25 Greatest Actresses, Part 6

We have been tracking, in honor of both the late Lauren Bacall and the 15th Anniversary of the AFI 100 Stars list the many great actresses honored on that list.  Please look through Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 as well as reading through this, our conclusion (for the actresses at least).

My brother and I were discussing this series this morning, and I put in the caveat above with "at least," since clearly I'm going to have give the fellas their due after spending so much time on the brilliant actresses of yore.  So expect that write-up at some point later this week (when, that's anyone's guess, but definitely before Sunday).  In the meantime, though, we will wrap up the living women who were nominated for this list (the greatest actors who either A) made their debut at or before 1950 or B) who had died by the time the list was being put together), but didn't make the Top 25.  Like I said above, please make sure and click all five links above if you're new to the fun, and add Netflix movies to your queue for anyone you haven't seen enough of (or particularly, if you haven't heard of), and share your thoughts on them in the comments!  Now, on to our final nine ladies (and one extra, for balance).

Editor's Note: Since this article was written Joan Leslie, Lizabeth Scott, and Luise Rainer have all since passed, meaning only seventeen women on the AFI ballot are still alive.

Joan Leslie (1925-2015)

Oscar Nomintions: Never nominated
Most Famous For: A trio of classic films made in the early 1940's.  Leslie made her film debut opposite Greta Garbo in Camille (how great is it that someone living can still claim they got their first part with Greta Garbo?), but her star didn't truly take off until she signed with Warner Brothers in the early 1940's, starring in three of the biggest films of the era: High Sierra, Sergreant York, and Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Though she went on to star opposite Fred Astaire and Ronald Reagan (Leslie, from what I can tell, was another one of our many long-living Republicans), her career never recovered when she sued to get out of her contract with Warner Brothers, though she went on to do a number of television guest spots (including what is becoming a bit of a pattern here: a guest spot opposite Angela Lansbury on Murder, She Wrote).
Is She Still Working?: No, Leslie retired from acting in 1991, her last role being in the TV movie Fire in the Dark with Olympia Dukakis and Jean Stapleton.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have somehow never seen Humphrey Bogart in the role that made him a star in High Sierra, so I'd probably go with that amongst Leslie's brief but oddly classic-filled (the film with Ronald Reagan is one of his most beloved: This is the Army, so that brings her up to four major pictures in three years) filmography.

Gina Lollobrigida (1927-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Look at the picture to the left and I'll give you one (err...two) guesses.  Lollobrigida was the Italian sex symbol, a counterweight to the American Marilyn and the French Bardot.  She did make a handful of films with the leading men of the era (Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra), but quite frankly it was her incredible beauty and her bizarre change in careers late in life (she became a journalist, and eventually managed to land an interview with Fidel Castro of all people in the 1970's) that made her a household name.
Is She Still Working?: She is not acting, but she does still stay in the papers, recently auctioning off $5 million worth of jewelry to benefit stem cell therapy.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I don't know if I've ever actually seen a Lollobrigida film, so I would probably make it a bit of a marathon to catch up.  I'd start with her Golden Globe-winning work in Come September with Rock Hudson, follow it with her Esmerelda opposite Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and finish things with her Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner, which has the distinction of being King Vidor's final film.

Dorothy Malone (1925-Present)

Oscar Nominations: One nomination (which she won for-Best Supporting Actress for 1956's Written on the Wind)
Most Famous For: Her soap opera antics on Peyton Place, where she played Constance Mackenzie, the mother of main character Allison Mackenzie (the role which made Mia Farrow a household name). Malone played the role for four years, after already proving her worth on the screen winning an Oscar by playing a nymphomaniac in Written on the Wind.  Malone may also be recognizable for her final film role in the 1992 blockbuster Basic Instinct (a film that launched another sexually charged blonde, Sharon Stone).
Is She Still Working?: No-after Basic Instinct she retired permanently back to Dallas (random fact: she could have played the Barbara bel Geddes role on Dallas but turned it down).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I have somehow never seen Written on the Wind, even though it is considered the high-point in 1950's melodramas.  I also feel bad that I have never seen any episode of the television series Peyton Place-the movie was dreadful, but I have a feeling that the actual television series would be considerably better.  Any fans out there?

Rita Moreno (1931-Present)

Oscar Nominations: One nomination (which she won for-Best Supporting Actress for 1961's West Side Story)
Most Famous For: For thoroughly enjoying life in Ame-RIC-a.  Moreno starred in one of the great American musicals in 1961, taking over the role made famous by Chita Rivera on Broadway and becoming a household name as a result (as well as an Oscar-winner).  Though at that time she had been featured in three of the best-loved musicals of all-time (she was also in Singin in the Rain and The King and I), she didn't star in a lot of high-profile films again (a Latina actress at that time frequently had to rely on stereotypical roles, which Moreno refused to partake of).  Instead she forged a bold multi-platform career, winning an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony in the 1970's to complete her EGOT.  She is best known from this period for her work on The Muppets and The Electric Company (with Morgan Freeman).  Moreno also had a pretty spectacular personal life, being romantically involved with both Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley during her career.
Is She Still Working?: Absolutely (that Kennedy Center Honor isn't going to earn itself...and man has she earned it at this point, so they better give it to her).  She recently finished a stint as Fran Drescher's mom on the TV Land series Happily Divorced.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen her three iconic musicals, so I'm going to go with The Ritz, which earned Moreno a Tony Award on Broadway and a Golden Globe nomination on film.

Margaret O'Brien (1937-Present)

Oscar Nominations: None, though she won the Juvenile Academy Award in 1944.
Most Famous For: Being one of the biggest child stars on the planet.  Margaret O'Brien was to the 1940's what Shirley Temple and Judy Garland were to the 1930's.  She even appeared opposite Garland in the most famous of O'Brien's movies: Meet Me in St. Louis, where she played Tootie.  O'Brien was a major star, but couldn't jump to adult roles like Garland, whom she is oftentimes compared to, and instead only made the occasional television or film appearance.  If you ever want a fun story, read about O'Brien's Oscar and how she lost it for some fifty years before it finally returned to her.
Is She Still Working?: She is, in fact.  I don't know if this is just IMDB pulling my leg, but she and Mickey Rooney of all people will be appearing together in a film of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde out next year (seriously-is this real?  And is it Rooney's final picture?  And most importantly, how can I see it this very second?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'd probably go with the film that made her a star, Journey for Margaret with Robert Young and Fay Bainter, as I've seen (and loved) Meet Me in St. Louis before.

Luise Rainer (1910-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Two nominations (and she won for both-Best Actress for 1936's The Great Ziegfeld and Best Actress again for 1937's The Good Earth).
Most Famous For: Being the original Oscar curse.  For most layman of the Academy Awards who still value their knowledge of filmic history, you may be wondering how you know next to nothing about a woman who won the Best Actress trophy twice.  That's probably because Rainer had one of the biggest take-offs and crashes in the history of Hollywood.  She was signed to MGM in hopes of them replicating the success of Greta Garbo, and she clearly did well to start out, winning an Oscar for The Great Ziegfeld (which may well have been a supporting role today, but she was too much of a "leading lady" for such things), and then following it up with a dramatic turn in The Good Earth, an adaptation of the Pearl S. Buck novel.  She couldn't maintain this success, though, and so based on the advice of her then husband Clifford Odets (the great playwright and screenwriter) she quit Hollywood, eventually moving to London.  And since then every Oscar-winner who had a career setback has been in her shadow.
Is She Still Working?: Absolutely not-after 1943's Hostages she only made one other picture, 1997's The Gambler with Michael Gambon.  She does occasionally stop out for the star on a walk of fame or Oscar cameo, however.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen her in The Great Waltz, but haven't seen either of her Oscar-winning roles, the only actor who has won more than one Oscar and I haven't seen either performance.  I must rectify this post haste!

Debbie Reynolds (1932-Present)

Oscar Nominations: One nomination (for Best Actress in 1964's The Unsinkable Molly Brown)
Most Famous For: Wishing us all a LOVELY morning.  Reynolds would star in dozens of pictures after her first big break, but she will forever be Kathy in Singin' in the Rain, jumping out of cakes and onto couches.  Reynolds would of course spend a good chunk of the rest of her career making light-hearted romantic comedies, and be involved in one of the most notorious of Hollywood love triangles, when Elizabeth Taylor stole away her husband Eddie Fisher in a scandal that rocked Hollywood (Reynolds was the Jennifer Aniston of her day).  She also, of course, is the mother of Princess Leia herself Carrie Fisher.
Is She Still Working?: She definitely is.  She recently starred in the multiple Emmy-winning Behind the Candelabra with Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, and will be receiving the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award next January.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen Singin' in the Rain more times than I can count, as well as her Oscar-nominated work in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.  I might go with her 1996 comeback in Mother (she did an hilarious bit at the Oscars with her daughter that year, showing up despite being snubbed for a nomination) but would probably prefer her in Tammy and the Bachelor, one of her most iconic characters and films (Sandra Dee would take over the role in the sequels).

Lizabeth Scott (1922-2015)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being the ultimate femme fatale.  Scott never quite got the stardom that Barbara Stanwyck (whose rejected roles fed Scott's career) achieved, but she was definitely a cool blonde with a sense of danger, starring opposite the likes of Kirk Douglas, Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, and (before an extremely long self-imposed retirement) Elvis Presley in his second film.  No other actress has appeared in as many film noir movies as Scott.  She is also well known for kicking off the legendary libel suit against the 1950's tabloid Confidential.  Oh, and to cap it all off, she is also a lifelong Republican.
Is She Still Working?: No.  Her last film was 1972's Pulp with Mickey Rooney and Michael Caine, and though she makes the occasional appearance at a film tribute or gala, she hasn't worked on-screen since.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I don't think I've ever seen a Lizabeth Scott film, and considering film noir is my favorite genre at the movies, this is probably the crime I'm most ashamed of in this entire project (Scott is an actress I honestly had never heard of until this write-up, and now I cannot get enough-she looks like Lauren Bacall and Jane Greer had a love child).  I'll probably go with The Strange Love of Martha Ivers with Kirk Douglas and Barbara Stanwyck since it's the film I've actually heard of in her filmography, but I suspect any of her movies would intrigue me.

Jane Withers (1926-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being insufferable.  Or rather, playing insufferable, in the Shirley Temple classic Bright Eyes, where Withers plays her bratty nemesis.  Withers became one of the biggest stars of the late 1930's, joining Shirley Temple as a major box office draw despite being a child star, and then eventually going into supporting roles, like her work in Giant (she and James Dean were good friends) and eventually commercials, taking on what would become her most famous role for the Baby Boomer generation: Josephine the Plumber in the Comet commercials (for comparison's sake, think of Flo from the Progressive commercials and her ubiquity).  And continuing our streak, she was in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote and appears to be politically conservative.
Is She Still Working?: From what I can tell her most recent work would be voiceover contributions to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its direct-to-video sequel, so I'm going to go with no since that was twelve years ago, though who knows-she may still be willing to give it a go.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I mentioned this for Temple, but I think Bright Eyes, Withers' most noted work, would probably have to be at the top of the list.

And finally, though she wasn't nominated by the AFI, I could not list this many conservative actresses without including perhaps the most famous Republican Hollywood starlet of them all...

Nancy Reagan (1921-Present)

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: There are other actresses still living who deserved to be on the AFI long list more, but considering that these articles have oddly shifted toward discussing the conservative politics of long-living actresses, I felt that a perfect way to end with an even number would be to talk about the former First Lady of the United States.  For those that don't know this, before she was wearing red to state dinners and "just saying no," Nancy Reagan was Nancy Davis, an MGM leading lady who never quite took off with the public.  She did appear in eleven films though, and in addition to starring opposite her husband, she also appeared with the likes of Barbara Stanwyck, Ann Sothern, and Ray Milland (truly random fact-Reagan was asked late in her life to star in Mother with Albert Brooks, a part she declined which then went to Debbie Reynolds, listed above).
Is She Still Working?: Reagan retired from acting when her husband's political career took off, and while she's frequently seen at political funerals and events for her late husband, she's never returned to the screen.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'd probably have to go with Hellcats of the Navy, a movie I have always wanted to see if only for the curiosity of it all (it's the only film the Reagans ever appeared together in).

And there you have it-time for the conclusion.  As I stated above I will probably try the actors sometime later in the week, but let's give proper due to the actresses (and also to the fact that it took me days to complete these posts) by sharing your thoughts on these women.  Who would you like me to look a little more closely at by perhaps reviewing a film or two? Who are some of your favorites?  Who had you never heard of before I wrote about them today?  Share in the comments!