Ruth Roman Movies

This episode is based on a story by Marie Belloc Lowndes, the author of Alfred Hitchcock's 1926 "breakthrough" film, The Lodger. Tyrannical Howard Raydon (Gene Lyons) fires his maid, Addie (Ruth Roman), much to the dismay of Howard's wife, Eve (Anne Francis), who feels that Addie is her only ally against Howard's domineering mother (Gladys Cooper). Vengefully, Addie poisons Howard -- but it is Eve who is accused of murder thanks to the persistence of her hateful mother-in-law. Figuring into the climax of the story is a dark secret harbored by both Addie and her late employer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Farrow's movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer (and produced by future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum), is a near-perfect match for the book, telling in generally superb visual style a tale set against the backdrop of upscale 1940s New York and offering an early (but accurate) depiction of the modern media industry. Told in the back-to-front fashion typical of film noir, it opens with George Stroud (Ray Milland) trapped, his life in danger, his survival measured in the minute-by-minute movements of the huge central clock of the office building where he's hiding. In flashback we learn that Stroud works for media baron Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), loosely based on Henry Luce, as the editor of Crimeways magazine. Janoth is a manipulative, self-centered megalomaniac with various obsessions, including clocks; among other manifestations of the latter fixation, the skyscraper housing his empire's headquarters has as one of its central features a huge clock that reads out the time around the world down to the second.

Twenty-four hours earlier, on the eve of a combined honeymoon/vacation with his wife, Georgia (Maureen O'Sullivan), that has been put off for seven years, Stroud was ordered by Janoth to cancel the trip in order to work on a special project, and he resigned. As the narrative picks up speed, in his depression, Stroud misses the train his wife is on and crosses paths with Pauline York (Rita Johnson), a former model for Janoth's Styleways magazine, who is also Janoth's very unhappy mistress, and the two commiserate by getting drunk together in a night on the town. While hurriedly leaving Pauline's apartment, he glimpses Janoth entering. Janoth and York quarrel, and the publisher kills her in a jealous rage, using a sundial that she and Stroud picked up the night before while wandering around in their revels. Janoth and his general manager, Steve Hagen (George Macready), contrive to pin the murder on the man that Janoth glimpsed leaving York's apartment, whom he thinks was named Jefferson Randolph -- the name Stroud was drunkenly bandying about the night before. He gets Stroud back to Crimeways to lead the magazine's investigators in hunting down "Jefferson Randolph," never realizing that this was Stroud. And Stroud has no choice but to return, desperately trying to gather evidence against Janoth and, in turn, prevent the clues gathered by the Crimeways staff from leading back to him. The two play this clever, disjointed game of cat-and-mouse, Janoth and Hagen planting evidence that will hang "Randolph" (and justify his being shot while trying to escape), while Stroud, knowing what they don't about how close the man they seek to destroy is, arranges to obscure those clues and, in a comical twist, sends the least capable reporters and investigators to follow up on the most substantial clues.

Janoth sometimes seems to be unraveling at the frustrating pace and lack of conclusion to the hunt, but Stroud can't escape the inevitable, or the moments of weakness caused by fear and his own guilt over his near-unfaithfulness to his wife or the inscrutable gaze of Janoth's mute bodyguard Bill Womack (Harry Morgan), a stone-cold killer dedicated to protecting his employer. The trail of proof and guilt winds ever tighter around both men, taking some odd twists courtesy of the eccentric artist (Elsa Lanchester) who has seen the suspect. Milland is perfect in the role of the hapless Stroud, and Laughton is brilliant as the vain, self-centered Janoth, but George Macready is equally good as Hagen, his smooth, upper-crust Waspy smarminess making one's skin crawl. Also worth noting is Harry Morgan's sinister, silent performance as Womack, and sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize such performers as Douglas Spencer, Noel Neill (especially memorable as a tart-tongued elevator operator), Margaret Field (Sally's mother), Ruth Roman, and Lane Chandler in small roles. Additionally, the Janoth Publications building where most of the action takes place is almost a cast member in itself, an art deco wonder, especially the room housing the clock mechanism and the lobby and vestibules, all loosely inspired by such structures as the Empire State Building and the real-life Daily News headquarters on East 42nd Street. This film was later remade as No Way Out. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

World-renowned humanitarian Juliet Sinclair (Ruth Roman) has arrived in America to deliver a cute Chinese orphan girl named Linh (Cherylene Lee) to loving couple named Kenyon (Gene Hackman, Phyllis Love). What the general public doesn't know is that Juliet is also a Communist courier, and that her American contacts are none other than Mr. and Mrs. Kenyon. Unfortunately, Linh has learned the truth about her benefactor--and unless Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) can act quickly, the Kenyons will follow orders and silence the girl permanently. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This genuinely perverse horror film stars John Savage as a young man forced to participate in the beachfront gang rape of Sue Bernard by his nasty friends. After two years in jail, he returns to the boardinghouse run by his mother (Ann Sothern), who does things like kissing him on the mouth and photographing him in the shower. Before long, he freaks out and strangles a cat while peeping at a new tenant (Cindy Williams), then almost drowns the poor girl in the pool before slashing her panties with a razor and choking her in the bathtub. He forces Bernard's car off a cliff, then makes his lawyer (Ruth Roman) drink herself stupid at knifepoint before setting her on fire. Savage and Sothern are fabulous and Luana Anders is creepy as the librarian next door who keeps trying to seduce the disturbed man. Quite a twisted little chiller, with several priceless bizarre moments like a dream sequence featuring a diapered Savage in a crib on the beach surrounded by laughing neighbors. The ubiquitous Gary Graver did 2nd unit photography. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In Volume 34 of a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, an astronaut returns from Venus to find he can no longer stay warm in Earth's climate. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

The made-for-television western The Sacketts combines the plotlines from two seperate Louis L'Amour novels, The Daybreakers and The Sacketts. In this film, the three Tennessee-raised Sackett brothers migrate to the West following the conclusion of the Civil War. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Ruth Roman proves the old adage about "the female of the species" in the role of ruthless mob wife Georgie Drake. A clever businesswoman, Georgie is the real brains behind the heroin-trafficking racket overseen by her husband Nick Dolov (Grant Richards); all she asks in return is Nick's total and unquestioning fidelity. Alas, Dolov has a yen for sexy showgirl Marian Keyes (Anne Helm), prompting Georgie to take out a contract on her own husband. But though she is able to keep Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) off her trail, Georgie hadn't figured on the vengeful determination of her rival Marian--nor the eleventh-hour treachery of her hired torpedo Maxie (Jay Adler). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Three Secrets is a darker variation on a theme first explored in A Letter to Three Wives (1949). There's only one survivor when a private plane crashes in the mountains of California. That survivor is a five-year-old boy, who hovers between life and death. As efforts continue to save the boy, three women -- Susan Chase (Eleanor Parker), Phyllis Horn (Patricia Neal) and Ann Lawrence (Ruth Roman) -- wait in agony. Years earlier, each of the three women had given up a baby son for adoption. Could it be that the little boy on the mountain top is actually the son of one of the three women? And if so, how many painful secrets will be revealed in the next few hours? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having drunk his way out of most of the major studios and not a few of the minor ones, cowboy star Ken Maynard had trouble finding work in the 1940s. Independent producer Walt Mattox came to the rescue in 1944 when he cast Maynard opposite young singing cowboy Eddie Dean, veteran comedy relief Max Terhune, and general-purpose actor Rocky Cameron in the cheaply assembled Harmony Trail. The plot concerns the efforts by marshal Cameron to locate a gang of bank robbers. He is given plenty of help in the form of Maynard, Dean and Terhune -- indeed, one observer noted that this was one film in which the good guys outnumbered the bad guys. Peddled on the States' Rights market for several years, Harmony Trail resurfaced in 1947, when Astor Pictures shipped out the film as The White Stallion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"You can live a long time in three days -- sometimes when you're in a tight spot, you can live a year in ten seconds." US Army Air Force Major Bob Collins (Robert Cummings), Captain "Shakespeare" Anders (Don Defore), and Lt. "Handsome" Janoshek (Charles Drake) are three happy-go-lucky combat pilots, decorated heroes who are on a tour promoting War Bonds. Their public relations representative from the Treasury Department, Ivy Hotchkiss (Lizabeth Scott), finds at first that can't do much more than tag along, picking up after them and observing their carousing, especially Collins, who seems to have a wide array of female acquaintances in every city they visit. Indeed, although she says little about it, their carousing is out-of-proportion to their circumstances -- yes, their current mission involves a lot of cramped traveling cross-country. shaking hands, endless speechifying, and even more endless listening to tributes to the heroism of the air corps, all of which gets boring and tiring very fast; but these men act like they're burning the candle at both ends, almost manic in their pursuit of women and laughs, and just as devoted to the three of them enjoying anything they do together, past the point of pilots' usual comraderie. They go so far as to sneak out ahead of one extremely important rally, but eventually Ivy gets them to straighten up and fly right, at least when they're supposed to, and the trio -- who has taken a liking to her for being such as good sport -- agrees to behave, at least when they're supposed to be meeting the public. After a few more misunderstandings, some of them comical, she actually gets to like the trio; the four of them become friends, and Ivy starts getting especially close to Bob, despite his womanizing ways -- but whenever she asks Handsome and Shakespeare about Bob's story, they get very close-mouthed and vague. She doesn't think too much of it, enjoying the time she's having with them, until the truth is accidentally dumped in her lap by a well-meaning medical officer (Rhys Williams) -- that Bob, for all of his freewheeling, happy-go-lucky outlook on life and love, is terminally ill. She suddenly understands their behavior and the true depth of the friendship that Handsome and Shakespeare share with him -- she's also nearly shattered, but she dares not let Bob know that she knows, for fear of destroying what little time he has left. The trio at last becomes a true foursome, bound together around Bob and Ivy. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide