Between Two Worlds (1944). Directed by Edward A. Blatt. Cast: John Garfield, Paul Henreid and Sydney Greenstreet.
At an English port, Henry Bergner, a pianist asks for a room on a ship leaving for the United States. But, is denied because he does not have a visa. During an air raid, Henry's wife Ann, goes looking for her husband and witnesses a bomb hit a taxi full of passengers: reporter Tom Prior, actress Maxine Russell, Genevieve and her husband Benjamin, Merchant Marine Pete Musick, housekeeper Mrs. Midget, Reverend William Duke, and businessman Lingley.
Henry, can not find work as a pianist, so he commits suicide. Ann, can not live without her husband, so decides to join him in death....
They find themselves on a huge ship along with the people who were killed in the taxi. Henry and Ann, soon realize that everyone on board is dead, but Scrubby, the steward, asks them not to say anything.
Later, all the passengers realize while telling their stories that they have died. An Angel known as The Examiner, is to decide who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell.
This film has a fascinating eerie atmosphere helped along by the wonderful music score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Eleanor Parker, was only 22 and she looks beautiful. Some viewers might be offended by the theme of the film. Hopefully, you can enjoy the film's touching moments and message of making your own, Heaven or Hell in life.
Faye Emerson (July 8, 1917 – March 9, 1983). In 1944, she played one of her best known roles as Zachary Scott's ex in, The Mask of Dimitrios.
In 1948, she made a move to television and began acting in various anthology series, including The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, The Philco Television Playhouse, and Goodyear Television Playhouse.
She served as host for several short-lived talk shows and musical/variety shows, including Paris Cavalcade of Fashions (1948) and The Faye Emerson Show (CBS, 1950).
Although The Faye Emerson Show only lasted one season, it gave her wide exposure because her time slot immediately followed the CBS Evening News and alternated weeknights with the popular, The Perry Como Show. The show was broadcast from a studio CBS built on the sixth floor of the Stork Club building. The studio, a complete replica of the Stork Club's Cub Room, was built for The Stork Club, also seen on CBS beginning in 1950.
After The Faye Emerson Show, she continued in TV with other talk shows, including: Wonderful Town, U.S.A. (1951), Author Meets the Critics (1952), and Faye and Skitch (1953).
She also made numerous guest appearances on various variety shows and game shows.
Emerson hosted or appeared on so many talk show such as, I've Got a Secret.
The glamorous Emerson was so popular in the early 1950's that it was rumored that the newly created Emmy Award was named after her.
She was once married to Elliott Roosevelt, son of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Emerson was later married to bandleader Skitch Henderson in the 1950's.
Escape Me Never( 1947). Cast: Errol Flynn, Ida Lupino, Eleanor Parker and Gig Young. It was adapted by Lenore J. Coffe(uncredited) and Thames Williamson and was directed by Peter Godfrey, with music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
A romance between aspiring composer Caryl Dubrok and Fenella MacLean is quickly ended by her parents when they believe that Caryl living with a young widow named, Gemma Smith and her son Piccolo.
Caryl learns that Gemma lives with his brother Sebastian a composer. Sebastian says that they go after Fenella and clear up the terrible misunderstanding. At first, Sebastian wants to leave Gemma and Piccolo behind, but when she says that she is going accept a marriage proposal from someone else, Sebastian decides to bring her along.
One evening, when Sebastian and Gemma perform without Caryl. A beautiful woman catches Sebastians eye, he does not know that it is Fenella. He sends Gemma home, while Sebastian stays behind with Fenella and is inspired to write the music that he will use in his ballet.
The next day, Gemma goes to the hotel to pick up their pay, she learns Fenella is staying there and explains the mix up. Fenella so upset that Sebastian is really Caryl's brother that Gemma leaves with Sebastian. Gemma and Sebastian marry and move to London, where he continues his work.
The MacLeans also return to London, followed by Caryl, who becomes engaged to Fenella. Sebastian finishes his music and everything is going well until one day during rehearsals, Piccolo becomes very ill. Sebastian refuses to go with Gemma to the hospital.
Fenella tells Sebastian that she has broken her engagement to Caryl and wants to go back to her family's home in the country. While Gemma's life falls apart, Sebastian realizes how much Gemma means to him, and rewrites the music for her. Will Gemma and Sebastian ever find each other again?
I just saw the film, Escape Me Never, on TCM for the first time. I thought it was a very charming film. It is quite a change of pace for Flynn and... he is still very sexy even in rags!
Ida Lupino, was an English-American film actress and director, and a pioneer women filmmaker.
In her forty-eight year career, she performed in fifty-nine films, and directed nine others.
She also performed in television shows fifty-eight times and directed fifty other episodes.
Lupino was born into a family of performers. Her father, Stanley Lupino, was a music-hall comedian, and her mother, Connie Emerald, was an actress.
Ida trained at RADA and made her first movie in, The Love Race(1939).
It was after her performance in, The Light That Failed (1939) that Lupino was taken seriously as an actress.
She called herself "the poor man's Bette Davis."
Lupino best known films are: They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), both opposite Humphrey Bogart. The Hard Way (1943), Road House and On Dangerous Ground.
Caged(1950). The movie was adapted by Virginia Kellogg from the story Women Without Men by Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld. It was directed by John Cromwell. Cast: Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson, Betty Garde, Sheila MacRae, Jan Sterling, Lee Patrick, Jane Darwell and Gertrude Hoffman.
Among the new prisoners at the Women's State Prison is 19 year old Marie Allen, who has been sentenced as an accessory in a armed robbery where her husband was killed. During Marie's physical they find out that she is pregnant, the warden, assigns her to work in the laundry. When the matron of Marie's cell block learns that Marie has no money, she reassigns her to scrubbing floors. Marie is befriended by Smoochie, Kitty Stark and Claire, who believe most of the women are in prison because of men.
Marie is still in jail when the baby is born, she hopes that her mother will take the child until she is paroled.
Kitty invites Marie to join her shoplifting racket when she gets out, telling her that even if she is paroled, she will be forced to stay in jail until she is offered a job. Marie, turns her down. One of the convicts then has a breakdown and when June, is denied parole, she hangs herself.
After Marie goes into labor, the doctor is disgusted by the prison conditions and goes to the medical board. The Warden is aware of the matrons treatment of the women, but her efforts to have the matron fired are always stop by her political friends. Her request for teachers and a psychologist are also denied by the prison board.
Marie's mother refuses to take her baby, so she puts him up for adoption and as Marie's parole hearing nears, Kitty renews her job offer. Even though the matron gives favorable recommendation, Marie's parole is denied. Will her experience in prison change her from a Innocent young girl into a hardened convict?
I thought this film was very engaging and you will find yourself getting wrapped up in the characters and how they choose to cope in unbearable circumstances.
Gertude Hoffmann, began her film career in Germany in 1918, aged 40, but made her American film debut in 1933.
She made quite a few films over the next 20 years, though many of her parts were unbilled.
She played Mrs. Odets on Gale Storm's My Little Margie, a situation comedy that alternated between CBS and NBC from 1952 to 1955. The series was created by Frank Fox and produced at Hal Roach Studios by Hal Roach, Jr. and Roland D. Reed. My Little Margie premiered on CBS as the summer replacement for I Love Lucy on June 16, 1952.
She also performed in films: Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, which was nominated for Best Picture Oscar in 1941, as well as The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), Caged (1950), and The War of the Worlds (1953).
Eleanor Jean Parker, versatility led to her being called a Woman of a Thousand Faces, the title of her biography by Doug McClelland.
After high school, she was signed by Warner Brothers in 1941, at the age of 18. She would have debuted that year in the film, They Died with Their Boots On, but her scenes were cut.
Her actual film debut was playing nurse Ryan in, Soldiers in White(1942). About a young intern, who is drafted in the Army Medical Corps as a private. After, being injured he is sent to a hospital where a Major, informs him about advances in medical science and his future looks good.
Eleanor Jean Parker, Probably best known as the baroness in, The Sound of Music (1965). A story about a young woman, who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the children of a Naval officer widower.
My favorite Eleanor Parker movie is: The Naked Jungle(1954). Director Byron Haskin. Cast: Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker. Telling the story of an attack of army ants on a Peruvian cocoa plantation, it was based on the short story "Leiningen Versus the Ants" by Carl Stephenson.
Below are two Eleanor Parker movies, recommended by, Clara.
Caged(1950). Film about a teenage newlywed, who is sent to prison for being an accessory to a robbery. Her experiences while incarcerated, along with the killing of her husband, change her from a very frightened young girl into a hardened convict. The movie was adapted by Virginia Kellogg from the story Women Without Men by Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld. It was directed by John Cromwell.
The Man with the Golden Arm(1955). Based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a heroin addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. It stars Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang and Darren McGavin. Director: Otto Preminger. Eleanor Parker plays Zosh, the supposedly invalid wife of a morphine addicted, would-be jazz drummer Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra).
Above and Beyond (1952). The film is about Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. Cast: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker and James Whitmore.
Brent believes that Paul, an Army Air Corps pilot, is the man for an important job and orders him to leave Africa and return to the U.S. When they are on the plane flying to Washington, Brent tells Paul that he will be sent to Wichita to test the B-29.
His wife Lucey, learns that it is going to be a short reunion and later visits Paul in Wichita.
After the B-29 is determined to be safe, Paul returns home to Washington, again their family time is cut short when Paul is called to Colorado Springs.
Paul meets Maj. Bill Uanna, who goes over details of Paul's past conversations with other officers over the past year as a security check. Brent then informs Paul that he is one of four men considered for the most important project of the war. Before telling Paul what the job is, he hands him a buzzer and asks if he would press it if by doing so the war would end tomorrow and save 1,000,000 lives but he would have to kill 100,000 people. Paul pauses for a moment, then presses the buzzer.
Brent invites several scientist of the "Manhattan Project," to explain the project to Paul. Brent then tells Paul that only he, Uanna and Paul will know that his mission is to drop an atomic bomb over Japan. Paul agrees and soon leaves for base in Wendover, Utah. To make Wendover seem like the other bases, Uanna suggests that families should live on base, but tells Paul not to bring Lucey, who is now pregnant.
After Lucey gives birth, she makes plans to join him. After seeing Paul Lucey soon detects a change in him.
Meanwhile, Paul and his team are constantly testing the B-29s to make sure that they will be able to carry the weight of an atomic bomb.
Their relationship begins to fall apart when she shares her feelings over the innocent people who died during the war.
Meanwhile, Brent has told Paul that the Japanese have refused to surrender and the president has given the go ahead for use of the bomb. Repeated testing is taking its toll on Paul.
One night, when the exhausted Paul returns home, Lucey casually mentions that Harry had made up an excuse to get a weekend off to take Marge on a vacation. Paul immediately has Harry relieved of his duties. Angry, Lucey, says she wants out of the marriage.
The next day, Paul goes to Colorado Springs to see Brent, who has been injured in a plane crash, and tells him that it is "blue light." When he returns to the base, he learns from Uanna that Lucey came to him wanting to know what was going on. When Lucey apologizes to Paul, for interfering, he tells her that she and the children will leave for Washington that afternoon.
With the work at Wendover now finished, the project's next phase, called "Operation Silverplate" sends Paul and his crew to the island of Tinian. Paul soon learns that weather conditions will allow them to make the mission the next morning. Paul cannot sleep and writes a letter to his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, telling her his fears about killing so many people, then names his plane after her. Will Paul have the courage to accomplish his mission?
One of my favorite scenes, is when Paul comes home one to hear sounds from someone working on the plumbing. Lucey tells him that she has found someone to fix the plumbing. "Who?", asks Taylor and Lucey says "One of the sanitary engineers". The plumber turns out to be one of the scientists with the Manhattan Project.
FUN FACTS: (spoiler alert).
The sequences showing the bombing of Hiroshima were lifted from another MGM film, The Beginning or the End (1947).
In 1951, Taylor met Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets and found that they had much in common. Both had thought about studying medicine, and were avid skeet-shooters and fliers. Taylor learned to fly in the mid-1930s, and served as a United States Navy flying instructor during World War II. His private aircraft was a Twin Beech called "Missy" (wife Stanwyck's nickname) which he used on hunting and fishing trips. She complained that he spent all his time polishing his guns and aircraft, but when airborne could "do anything a bird could do, except sit on a barbed wire fence".
Marilyn Erskine, started her performing career at the age of three years, appearing on a local radio show in Buffalo, New York. She also appeared on the nationwide CBS radio show Let's Pretend sometime between 1929 and 1937, where children played all the roles in adaptions of fairy tales and other children's stories, Erskine performed the role of Jane Baxter in Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air adaptation of Seventeen (October 16, 1938).
As a teenager, she appeared in at least nine Broadway productions in New York City.
She appeared in several Hollywood movies in the early 1950's:
Westward the Women (1951) playing Jean Johnson
Above and Beyond (1952) playing Marge Bratton
The Girl in White (1952) playing Nurse Jane Doe
Just This Once (1952) playing Gertrude Crome
The Eddie Cantor Story (1953) playing Ida Tobias Cantor
A Slight Case of Larceny (1953) playing Mrs. Emily Clopp
Confidentially Connie (1953) playing Phyllis Archibald
She played herself in an MGM documentary Challenge the Wilderness (1951), on the production problems faced while filming Westward the Women. She was also one of the narrators for the MGM documentary The Hoaxters (1953), a short history of Communism.
She appeared in almost every anthology drama series of the Golden Age of Television, from General Electric Theater to Westinghouse Studio One to Science Fiction Theater to Lux Video Theater to Climax, appearing in over fifty different productions on thirty different series from 1949 to 1962.
In her later career, after 1962, she primarily played roles on westerns and crime dramas.
She was a co-star in the television series The Tom Ewell Show, playing Tom's wife, Fran Potter. This situation comedy ran from September 1960 through May 1961 on the CBS television network.
She was a co-presenter for the Short Subject Awards category of the 26th Annual Academy Awards in 1954, and appeared as herself in the last episode of the The NBC Comedy Hour June 10, 1956.
In the 1960's she made two guest appearances on Perry Mason starring Raymond Burr.
Her last role on television was in 1972, in the Ironside TV series, also starring Burr.
She married Hollywood producer/director Stanley Kramer in May 1945. The marriage was annulled two months later.
She married insurance executive Charles Curland in 1955, and had two children. Their home in Brentwood, California was featured in an article in the Fall 1958 issue of Architectural Digest.
One day in a New York City police precinct where all kinds of people intersect. Kirk Douglas is the tough detective who is dealing with a case involving an abortionist. It also has a shoplifter, two dangerous burglars, and an embezzler. A taut in your face crime drama that features a strong performance by Mr. Douglas and another good one by Eleanor Parker who plays his wife. One of the best of the detective movies from the 1950's. Wonderfully directed by William Wyler.
Detective McLeod: "Take a couple of drop dead pills".
A Hole in the Head (1959) Comedy directed by Frank Capra. Cast: Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eleanor Parker, Keenan Wynn, Carolyn Jones, Thelma Ritter, Dub Taylor and Joi Lansing. The song in the film "High Hopes", was the song used as a John F. Kennedy campaign song. Wynn plays a character based on Walt Disney who agrees to go into a partnership with Sinatra's character to build an amusement park in Florida. The screenplay was written by Arnold Schulman. The hotel used for some of the scenes was the Cardozo Hotel, located on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive. The hotel was once owned by Gloria and Emilio Estevan.
Tony Manetta, a widower with an eleven-year-old son, moved from the Bronx to Miami Beach hoping to make it big. He lives like a high roller but in truth is in danger of losing Garden of Eden Hotel. The bank gives him forty-eight hours to come up with the money he owes in back payments, Tony calls his brother Mario in New York to ask for a $5,000 loan. Mario, who looks down on his brother's lifestyle, says "no". Desperate Tony lies to his brother and says that his son Ally, is sick. Concerned about her nephew Sophie tells her husband he should fly down to Miami. Mario, offers to help Tony open a five-and-dime store if he settles down and gets married.
Tony worried that his son might have to live with his brother agrees to meet a widow friend of Sophie's, Mrs. Eloise Rogers. Tony then explains to his bohemian girl friend that he is just doing this for his brother and promises to take her on a romantic get away.
When Mrs. Rogers arrives at the hotel, Ally hopes that Tony will marry her, but when Mario reveals his plan to set her and Tony up in a five and dime store, then rudely asks if her deceased husband left her any money, Mrs. Rogers wants no part of the plan. Tony runs after her and after a little smooth talking (Frank Sinatra style) and they decide to go to her place for dinner. While having dinner, Mrs. Rodger's talks about the accidental drowning deaths of her husband and son. Tony, feeling a little guilty admits that he only agreed to meet her so that Mario would loan him money. Mrs. Rogers invites him to stay any ways. When Tony returns to the hotel and says he had a wonderful time, Sophie and Ally are happy, but Mario, not trusting his brother, still is slow to give him any money until he opens the five and dime store himself.
Tony is invited to a high rollers party at the Fontainebleau Hotel by his old friend Jerry, who is now has come into money. At the party, Tony tells Jerry about his dream of buying property and building a Florida Disneyland. Tony believes that Jerry might be interested in investing so he plans to meet him at a dog track to talk about his ideas.
Needing money quick to look like a big shot, Tony sells his Cadillac convertible for $500. At the track, when Jerry and his beautiful girl friend Dorine each bet $500 on a dog, Tony is able to match their bets. His dog comes in a winner and his winnings are enough for him to make up his payments on the hotel. He can not believe his luck and calls Ally. When Mario hears the good news, he is not happy that Tony can go on with his plans without his help. Later, Tony makes another bet on a dog by the name of "Lucky Ally". The dog loses. Now what will happen to Tony's Hotel and his son?
Video: High Hopes.
Joi Lansing, played an uncredited role in, Singin' in the Rain.
She received top billing in Hot Cars (1956).
In the opening sequence of, Touch of Evil (1958), she performed as Zita, the dancer who dies at the end of the famous first tracking shot, during which her character says to a border guard, "I keep hearing this ticking noise inside my head!"
Lansing had a brief role as an astronaut's girlfriend in the 1958 sci-fi classic Queen of Outer Space.
During the 1950's, she performed in short musical films for the Scopitone video-jukebox system. Her songs included "The Web of Love" and "The Silencers".
Lansing played "Lola" in Marriage on the Rocks (1965) with Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, and Dean Martin.