Posted on 10/11/2010 7:54:08 PM PDT by FromLori
Hollywood, CA—I just finished watching another great Henry Hathaway, film noir classic, The Dark Corner (1946) starring Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens and Clifton Webb. Mark Steven’s plays a recently paroled private eye trying to rebuild his life and business. Ball plays the private dick’s new secretary. After the PI is targeted and endangered in a somewhat convoluted scheme, Ball’s clever character comes to his rescue at every opportunity. This film is available for instant play if you’ve got a Netflix account.
As a long time real life PI, I can’t imagine the luck of having a secretary like that in a million years. Together they overcome amazing odds and in case you’ve never seen the film I won’t spoil it be revealing the ending.
In The Dark Corner, Ball was a stunning 35 year-old looker that appeared much younger. Her grace, charm and acting were terrific. This is amazing in spite of the fact that Ball left, The John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City after only a few weeks. He acting coaches told Ball she had no talent!
As a child I grew up with a family TV show, I Love Lucy. It had its comic moments but it was more a comic soap opera of sorts in the lives of two couples, the Ricardo’s and the Mertz’s. Lucy was always up to mischief that usually backfired to the chagrin of her real life husband Desi.
Ball died in 1989 at age 77, when a recently repaired aorta ruptured. Aging and death is most unfair but the truth is we’re all in this together and none of us will get out alive.
What I really did not know was Ball’s age. She was already in her 40’s when she began her, I Love Lucy series. Her first husband Desi Arnez was seven years her junior.
This famous TV pioneer couple made entertainment history beginning with the three camera shoot of their series. With three cameras, scenes could be shot and edited together saving countless hours of setups and retakes.
Together they formed Desilou Productions and that led to many thousands of hours of programming that still seen and enjoyed today all over the world. Their 20 year marriage was volatile and finally ended after their second divorce filing in 1960. It’s always been said by their biographers that their love for each other never really waned, they just had difficulties mostly attributed to Desi that could not be overcome.
Not that long ago I had to do some business with Kelsey Grammar’s production company, Gramnet which was at the time located in the Lucille Ball Bungalow at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. I suspect the name Lucille Ball will be repeated hundreds of years after her death. She was indeed an artist.
When doing a little research for this story I learned that Ball actually joined the Communist Party and registered to vote that way in her earlier days. Ball’s politics were as red as her hair. The Communists always recruited members heavily in Hollywood because they knew that movie stars influence the masses. That still is the case today for sure.
The funny thing about Hollywood’s Communists, they all made huge fortunes through Capitalism. I will never be able to figure out that paradox.
Although James Stewart and Henry Fonda were best friends, they were polar opposites politically. I’m not sure Fonda was a Communist, but he was definitely a liberal, and he did support his daughter’s activism. Both he and Stewart served their country in WWII.
Freepers will have to watch the clever depictions of conscientious, decent Americans on the jury and make up their own minds. You see it one way; I see it another. In my graduate studies of propaganda films, it was considered a masterpiece of agitprop.
It was way too much like the UN. Prime directive nonsense.
The whole cast were Canadian. It was like Second City sci fi. At least UFO had an American in the lead and he was ex-military. LAter in life he was a lefty.
In your graduate study of propaganda films, what arguments were put forward to support that thesis? You can say that virtually ALL films have a ‘message’ of some sort. A view of human nature.
I’d read that actors and actresses would be invited to parties and persuaded to sign up for “good causes” only to find that they’d signed up for communist-backed activities.
Jimmy Stewart was a bomber pilot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoY8Cj1larg
He was a real B-24 combat pilot. These commies like Lucy, Lloyd Bridges and Henry Fonda were filthy commie scum.
More
“In August 1943 he was finally assigned to the 445th Bombardment Group in Sioux City, Iowa, first as Operations Officer of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron and then its commander. In December, the 445th Bombardment Group flew its B-24 Liberator bombers to RAF Tibenham, England and immediately began combat operations. While flying missions over Germany, Stewart was promoted to Major. In March 1944, he was transferred as group operations officer to the 453rd Bombardment Group, a new B-24 outfit that had been experiencing difficulties. As a means to inspire his new group, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. These missions went uncounted at Stewart’s orders. His “official” total is listed as 20 and are limited to those with the 445th. In 1944, he twice received the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions in combat and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He also received the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. In July 1944, after flying 20 combat missions, Stewart was made chief of staff of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing of the Eighth Air Force. Before the war ended, he was promoted to colonel, one of only a few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years.”
You sure are quick to impugn people. Henry Fonda was a decorated Air Combat vet. Lloyd Bridges was cleared by the FBI in the early 1950s.
You sure are quick to impugn people. Henry Fonda was a decorated Air Combat vet. Lloyd Bridges was cleared by the FBI in the early 1950s.
I stand corrected. HUAC, then. Thanks for letting me know.
Can't speak for The Ox-Bow Incident. I saw it not too long ago for the first time and I think something bugged me about it, but darned if I can remember. I suggest, though, you go back and watch Twelve Angry Men again with a more unbiased eye. For crying out loud, he might as well have been the defense attorney, making up excuses and analyzing the evidence. In our country the jury is only to consider the evidence put before them, not go out and do independent research. He went himself to the store where the murder weapon was purchased, recreated the murder scene in the jury room, asserted that the eyewitness really didn't see clearly because he wore glasses and probably wasn't wearing them at the time, and made socialist arguments about society's guilt.
If I was a jurist in that trial I would have reported him to the judge. All the ridiculous assumptions he made were never allowed to be rebutted by the DA because they were never made in the courtroom. Yet this was the "evidence" they used to acquit the defendent.
The whole storyline was a precursor to the whole "racial profiling" argument, and Fonda specifically took on this project because of it.
Besides, I heard Fonda was a complete SOB.
Well, you just called me a communist, you arrogant jackass.
Time has proven a surprisingly high number of innocent people have been convicted and if it's a capital crime, the defendant pays for such a mistake with his life.
No, she wasn’t. I worked in the film industry and I know her biography well. Her grandfather registered as a socialist. The statement that was made about her when her politics were questioned was “the ONLY thing red about her was her hair.”
Jimmy Stewart was a Reserve BG in the Air Force Reserve.
Fonda’s speeches about ‘society’s guilt’ were the weakest elements of the film and thankfully they don’t go on too long. The knife thing was a contrivance to geenrate drama and it certainly worked. It’s a very well constructed piece of drama with each character coming of as a distinct ‘type’. Writer Reginal Rose later wrote the great TV film ‘Escape from Sorbibor’.
“Reagan was friends with everyone in Hollywood it seems. Lots of friends on the left”
Reagan’s politics changed when he married Nancy Davis. Never underestimate the influence of a woman on a man.
Making sure of it's verdict? They went well beyond that. Beside the fact that if found guilty there can always be an appeal, but once acquitted double jeopardy goes into effect, I'm pretty sure they have yet to find anyone that was later proved innocent that received the death penalty.
This movie is a pure societal statement from beginning to end. It drives me crazy.
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