Henry S. Kesler Movies
- 1957
Five Steps to Danger was adapted from thenovel The Steel Mirror by Donald Hamilton. When her scientist brother is killed in East Berlin, Ruth Roman finds herself in possession of a secret code, engraved on the back of a mirror. To prevent Ruth from delivering the secret information to the authorities, double agent Werner Klemperer has her committed to a mental institution. She finds an unlikely savior in the form of misanthropic drifter Sterling Hayden. Producer-director Henry S. Kesler also penned the numbingly complicated screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Roman, Sterling Hayden, (more)
In Sirocco Humphrey Bogart is cast as Harry Smith, a casino operator in 1925 Damascus. For a tidy profit, Smith runs guns to the Arab insurrectionists attempting to overthrow the French Protectorate. Chastised by French Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb) for his lack of morals and political convictions, Smith merely sneers in agreement. Before long, he has become romantically involved with Feroud's mistress Violetta (Marta Toren), who hopes to use Harry as means of escape to Cairo. Only after being betrayed by the Arabs and roughed up by the French authorities does our "hero" begin to behave ethically -- but by then, it's too late. A weak attempt by Bogart's Santana Productions to duplicate the success of Casablanca. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Märta Torén, (more)
A haunting work of stark confessionalism disguised as a taut noir thriller, In a Lonely Place -- Nicholas Ray's bleak, desperate tale of fear and self-loathing in Hollywood -- remains one of the filmmaker's greatest and most deeply resonant features. It stars Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele, a fading screenwriter suffering from creative burnout; hired to adapt a best-selling novel, instead of reading the book itself he asks the hat-check girl (Martha Stewart) at his favorite nightclub to simply tell him the plot. The morning after, the girl is found brutally murdered, and Steele is the police's prime suspect; however, the would-be starlet across the way, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), provides him with a solid alibi, and they soon begin a romance in spite of Gray's lingering concerns that the troubled, violent Steele might just be a killer after all. During production, Ray's real-life marriage to co-star Grahame began to crumble, and his own vulnerability and disillusionment clearly inform the picture; the brooding, bitter Steele -- a role ideally suited to Bogart's wounded romanticism -- is plainly a doppelganger for Ray himself (the site of his first Hollywood apartment is even employed as the set for Steele's home), and the film's unflinching examination of the character's disintegration makes for uniquely compelling viewing. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, (more)
- 1949
Though Humphrey Bogart is the official star of Knock on Any Door, the film is essentially a showcase for Columbia's newest young male discovery John Derek. The first production of Bogart's Santana company, the film casts Bogart as attorney Andrew Morton. A product of the slums, Morton is persuaded to take the case of underprivileged teenager Nick Romano (Derek), who has been arrested on a murder charge. Through flashbacks, Morton demonstrates that Romano is more a victim of society than a natural-born killer. Though this defense strategy does not have the desired result on the jury thanks to the badgering of DA Kernan (George Macready), Morton does manage to arouse sympathy for the plight of those trapped by birth and circumstance in a dead-end existence. As Nick Romano, John Derek would never be better, nor would ever again play a character who struck so responsive a chord with the audience. Nick's oft-repeated credo--"Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse"--became the clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth. Director Nicholas Ray would later expand on themes touched upon in Knock on a Any Door in his juvenile delinquent "chef d'oeuvre" Rebel without a Cause. Viewers are advised to watch for future TV personalities Cara Williams and Si Melton in uncredited minor roles. Knock on Any Door spawned a belated sequel in 1960, Let No Man Write My Epitaph. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, John Derek, (more)
One of the less famous Humphrey Bogart films is this 1949 drama about post-war guilt and remembrance. Bogart plays U.S. airman and war hero Joe Barrett. During the war, he believes, his wife Trina (Florence Marly) died in a Japanese concentration camp. But when Barrett returns to Tokyo and the bar named Tokyo Joe that he used to own, he discovers that Trina is not only alive, but she has married Mark Landis (Alexander Knox), an attorney, and they have a seven-year-old daughter Anya (Lora Lee Michel), whom he suspects is really his child. Baron Kimura (Sessue Hayakawa) forces Barrett into running an airborne smuggling operation by threatening to reveal publicly that Trina made wartime radio propaganda broadcasts. The shipment Barrett must fly includes three Japanese war criminals being brought back into the country, and Kimura insures that Barrett will comply by kidnapping Anya and holding her hostage. But the war criminals hijack the plane and are arrested. Barrett then tracks down Kimura and both die in a shoot-out which saves the life of Anya. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Florence Marly, (more)
- 1943
Another of a wartime cycle of Hollywood films lauding the praises of America's Soviet allies, Three Russian Girls is a remake of Russia's The Girl From Stalingrad. Set just after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the film stars Anna Sten as Natasha, a Red Cross volunteer who is dispatched to a field hospital located in an old pre-revolution mansion. American test pilot John Hill (Kent Smith), who'd been in Russia on a goodwill mission, is wounded in battle and brought to the hospital. As he slowly recovers from his wounds, Hill falls in love with Natasha. A last-act crisis develops when the hospital personnel are forced to move immediately to Leningrad as the Nazis advance. Most of the "counter attack" scenes that follow were obviously lifted from the original Girl from Stalingrad. For the record, the other two "Russian girls" are played by Mimi Forsaythe and Cathy Frye. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Sten, Kent Smith, (more)
