Ben Erway Movies

Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry. And McGuire's sister Eve Arden is stuck in a loveless marriage with spineless Frank Overton. Robert Eyer plays the young alter-ego of William Inge, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play on which this film is based. Eyer's fear of the "dark at the top of the stairs" is meant to be symbolic of the other characters' inner demons, a fact that Inge drives home every three minutes or so. In typical Inge fashion, an unlikely happy ending is reached just before "The End." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eliot Ness may have gotten lots of publicity (especially long after the fact) for breaking the Capone mob, but as Joseph H. Lewis' The Undercover Man reminds us, it was the accountants and the numbers-crunchers that brought down Capone and his mob. Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) started out as an accountant, but now serves as an investigator for the Treasury Department. His job has frequently required him to go undercover, masquerading as a criminal to get the goods on the top-level tax-law violators that his unit targets. But now his assignment is to gather evidence on the operations of the nation's number-one crime boss and get proof of the income that he and his lieutenants are not declaring, and this proves not only frustrating but dangerous. Potential stoolies are murdered and witnesses intimidated, and when one otherwise "respectable" lawyer (Barry Kelley) starts mentioning Warren's wife (Nina Foch) in casual conversation, he takes the hint. He's ready to quit until the mother (Esther Minciotti) of a witness-turned-victim tells him about what life was like in Italy under the Black Hand, and why she came to America to raise her sons. Warren and his men (James Whitmore, David Wolfe) make one last attempt to get the proof they need, tracing signatures and handwriting to get evidence implicating a small man in the operation, using it to turn him and going for bigger fish. Finally, even the shyster lawyer who has been dogging Warren every step of the way ends up in the sights of the feds, and the mob turns its attention to getting rid of this new "liability" and taking care of Warren as well. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Bargain-budget Screen Guild Productions was in the process of metamorphosing into Lippert Studios when Rimfire was filmed in 1949. This "government vs. gold thieves" affair has all of the virtues of the eager-to-please Lippert production team and none of the shortcomings of the pinchpenny Screen Guild operation. James Millican heads the cast as a special agent tracking down a lost shipment of Army gold. This leads him to a superstition-laden village where the townsfolk are convinced that the ghost of a hanged gambler is wreaking all sorts of havoc. It doesn't take Millican long to get to the bottom of the occult activity-and to locate the gold robbers in the process. With bigger star names, Rimfire might have secured better bookings; still, it did respectable business under the circumstances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Technicolor follow-up to Columbia's 1946 blockbuster The Jolson Story again stars Larry Parks as legendary entertainer Al Jolson--and Jolson himself, as Parks' singing voice. The story concentrates on Jolson's tireless activities entertaining the troops during WW II. After VJ day, Jolson finds that his services are no longer required. Fortunately, he stages a spectacular comeback, thanks in great part to the release of The Jolson Story! The film's Pirandellian overtones come to a head when Larry Parks as Jolson meets Larry Parks as Larry Parks. Also returning from The Jolson Story are William Demarest as the title character's manager Steve Martin, Bill Goodwyn as Broadway-producer Tom Baron, and Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne as Jolson's old-world parents. Barbara Hale appears as Jolson's wife (his third, though this fact is not dwelled upon), renamed Ellen Clark for the moment, while Myron McCormick plays a composite character based on several Hollywood executives (including, one supposes, Columbia mogul Harry Cohn). Song highlights include "After You've Gone", "You Made Me Love You", "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy", "Sonny Boy", "About a Quarter to Nine", "April Showers", "Back in Your Own Backyard", and, of course, "Mammy". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Raymond Chandler's famed detective Philip Marlowe (George Montgomery) is hired by a rich, eccentric widow, Mrs. Murdock (Florence Bates) to find and return a stolen gold coin. Marlowe quickly finds himself involved an a case which includes robbery, blackmail and murder. Just as Marlowe begins to solve the mystery, he is savagely beaten by Vannier (Fritz Kortner). Marlowe finally puts all the pieces of the puzzle together when he discovers a blackmail scheme involving Murdock's mentally-ill secretary, Merle Davis (Nancy Guild) which leads him to suspect his employer. The Brasher Doubloon, adapted from Chandler's novel, The High Window, and beautifully photographed by Lloyd Ahern captures a proper film noir sensibility with its moody, low-key images and dense, dark background shots, while failing to capture the complexity of the novel. Director John Brahm, who also directed the excellent films The Lodger and Hangover Square, is disappointing, failing to create the depth of characterization and plot which he showed in these films. The Brasher Doubloon remains bland, with undistinguished acting by the entire cast. The only exception is Fritz Kortner, a veteran character actor molded in the expressionist cinema of pre-war Berlin, who creates the grotesque character of Vannier, bringing a sense of evil vitality to an otherwise bland production. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an accused WWII traitor, commits suicide. American secret agent Devlin (Cary Grant) is ordered to enlist the libidinous Alicia's aid in trapping Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), the head of a Brazilian neo-Nazi group. Openly contemptuous of Alicia despite her loyalty to the American cause, Devlin calmly instructs her to woo and wed Sebastian, so that that good guys will have an "inside woman" to monitor the Nazi chieftain's activities. It is only after Alicia and Sebastian are married that Devlin admits to himself that he's fallen in love with her. The "MacGuffin" in this case is a cache of uranium ore, hidden somewhere on Sebastian's estate. Upon discovering that his wife is a spy, Sebastian balks at eliminating her until ordered to do so by his virago of a mother (Madame Konstantin). Tension mounts to a fever pitch as Devlin, a day late and several dollars short, strives to rescue Alicia from Sebastian's homicidal designs. Of the several standout sequences, the film's highlight is an extended love scene between Alicia and Devlin, which manages to ignite the screen while still remaining scrupulously within the edicts of the Production Code. In later years, Hitchcock never tired of relating the story of how he and screenwriter Ben Hecht (who was nominated for an Oscar) fell under the scrutiny of the FBI after electing to use uranium as a plot device -- this before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A huge moneymaker for everyone concerned, Notorious remains one of Hitchcock's best espionage melodramas. In 1992, Notorious was remade for cable television; it goes without saying that the original is vastly superior. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Setting something of a record for flashbacks within flashbacks, The Locket recounts the mental disintegration of bride-to-be Laraine Day. As a child, Day was accused of stealing a locket at a fancy party. She has spent her life getting even for this false accusation by becoming a kleptomaniac and ruining the lives of those around her. She drives one man (Robert Mitchum) to suicide, and stands by as another man is executed for a murder which she has committed. Assuming her revenge on the world is complete when she becomes engaged to the son of the woman who'd accused her of thievery, Day is overtaken by the demons within her and collapses on the altar. The Locket is difficult to follow at times, especially when seen in commercialized chunks on the Late Late Show. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Keep 'Em Slugging was the last of Universal's "Little Tough Guys" series-which, like Monogram's "East Side Kids", was an offshoot of Warner Bros.' "Dead End Kids" films. This time around, the kids decide to mend their troublemaking ways and get real jobs. Tommy (Bobby Jordan) is hired by the department store where his sister Sheila (Evelyn Ankers) is already employed. Frank (Frank Albertson), Tommy's supervisor, is mixed up with a gang of hijackers. When Tommy refuses to join the crooks, Frank frames the kid on a robbery rap. With the help of fellow Little Tough Guys Pig (Huntz Hall), String (Gabriel Dell) and Ape (Norman Abbott, nephew of comedian Bud Abbott), Tommy not only proves his innocence, but gives the criminals a real soaking. By the time Keep 'Em Slugging was released, Huntz Hall and Gabriel Dell were already repeating their antics in Monogram's "East Side Kids" flicks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this cornball comedy, the Weavers start a Victory garden to help out with the war. The encounter resistance from the local upper-class school. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide