Virginia Farmer Movies

This Western classic stars Gary Cooper as Hadleyville marshal Will Kane, about to retire from office and go on his honeymoon with his new Quaker bride, Amy (Grace Kelly). But his happiness is short-lived when he is informed that the Miller gang, whose leader (Ian McDonald) Will had arrested, is due on the 12:00 train. Pacifist Amy urges Will to leave town and forget about the Millers, but this isn't his style; protecting Hadleyburg has always been his duty, and it remains so now. But when he asks for deputies to fend off the Millers, virtually nobody will stand by him. Chief Deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) covets Will's job and ex-mistress (Katy Jurado); his mentor, former lawman Martin Howe (Lon Chaney Jr.) is now arthritic and unable to wield a gun. Even Amy, who doesn't want to be around for her husband's apparently certain demise, deserts him. Meanwhile, the clocks tick off the minutes to High Noon -- the film is shot in "real time," so that its 85-minute length corresponds to the story's actual timeframe. Utterly alone, Kane walks into the center of town, steeling himself for his showdown with the murderous Millers. Considered a landmark of the "adult western," High Noon won four Academy Awards (including Best Actor for Cooper) and Best Song for the hit, "Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling" sung by Tex Ritter. The screenplay was written by Carl Foreman, whose blacklisting was temporarily prevented by star Cooper, one of Hollywood's most virulent anti-Communists. John Wayne, another notable showbiz right-winger and Western hero, was so appalled at the notion that a Western marshal would beg for help in a showdown that he and director Howard Hawks "answered" High Noon with Rio Bravo (1959). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Of the many attempts by Republic Pictures' CEO Herbert J. Yates to turn his lady friend Vera Ralston into a star, Surrender is one of the better efforts. Ralston plays a conscienceless "femme fatale" who works out a complex scheme to secure her financial comfort. The plan, enacted in a western border town, involves bigamy, betrayal, and ultimately murder. She plays one man against another all too well; in the end Vera's perfidy backfires, and she falls victim to her own machinations. Vera Ralston tries hard indeed but the audience can sense that she is basically too nice to be making such mean faces. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Fred Zinnemann's sensitive film on the plight of paraplegic WWII veterans features Marlon Brando in his superbly moving screen debut. He plays Lt. Bud Wilozek, one of a group of veterans recovering in the paraplegic ward of a hospital in his hometown. His former fiancée, Ellen (Theresa Wright), explains to his physician, Dr. Brock (Everett Sloane), her concern about his isolation and apparent depression since he has broken their engagment and refuses to see her. He counsels her to be patient, but when he decides to broach the issue with Bud, the embittered patient reacts angrily to the doctor's intrusiveness, and continues to refuse to see Ellen. The doctor cajoles the withdrawn paraplegic into the life of the ward, where fellow patients Richard Erdman, Jack Webb, and Arthur Jurado begin to pull Bud out of his spiritual miasma. At length, his sense of hope starts to return, and after seeing Ellen for the first time in months, he begins to contemplate the possibility of marriage. Zinnemann and screenwriter Carl Foreman spent a month in a veteran's hospital researching the film, and Brando lived in the paraplegic unit for a time as part of his preparation. ~ Michael Costello, Rovi

One of the most oft-revived of the pre-Technicolor Nicholas Ray efforts, Born to Be Bad offers us the spectacle of Joan Fontaine portraying a character described as "a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Peg O' My Heart". For the benefit of her wealthy husband Zachary Scott and his family, Fontaine adopts a facade of wide-eyed sweetness. Bored with her hubby, she inaugurates a romance with novelist Robert Ryan. All her carefully crafted calculations come acropper when both men discover that she's a bitch among bitches. She might have gotten away with all her machinations, but the censors said uh-uh. Originally slated for filming in 1946, with Henry Fonda scheduled to play the Robert Ryan part, Born to Bad was cancelled, then resurfaced as Bed as Roses in 1948, this time with Barbara Bel Geddes in the Fontaine role. RKO head Howard Hughes' decision to replace Bel Geddes with the more bankable Fontaine was one of the reasons that producer Dore Schary left RKO in favor of MGM. Based on Anne Parrish's novel All Kneeling, Born to be Bad is so overheated at times that it threatens to lapse into self-parody; though this never happens, the film was the basis for one of TV star Carol Burnett's funniest and most devastating movie takeoffs, Raised to be Rotten. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Lieutenant Harry Grant (William Lundigan) and Sgt. Art Collins (Jeff Corey) have been handed the unenviable assignment of tracking down "The Judge," a mysterious serial murderer responsible for seven deaths over the past few months. The police have plenty of clues and forensic evidence, but no solid leads to who this highly resourceful strangler is. Complicating Grant's work is the presence of Ann Gorman (Dorothy Patrick), an ambitious reporter for a sensationalistic crime magazine, who keeps sticking her nose into this case and into his work. In exasperation over The Judge's latest victim, a newspaper editor named McGill (Frank Ferguson), Grant decides to take a novel approach to catching the killer -- he prepares a life-size blank-faced dummy using all the clues the police have, as to height, weight, physique, preferred way of dressing etc., in order to give his officers a clearer picture of who and what they're looking for. The result is creepy but effective, and soon Grant is getting closer to the killer -- but The Judge is insane, and agitated by all manner of outside stimuli, and he might prove too much even for a police detective to deal with in a direct confrontation. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The definitive Joseph H. Lewis-directed melodrama, Gun Crazy is the "Bonnie and Clyde" story retooled for the disillusioned postwar generation. John Dall plays a timorous, emotionally disturbed World War II veteran who has had a lifelong fixation with guns. He meets a kindred spirit in carnival sharpshooter Peggy Cummins, who is equally disturbed -- but a lot smarter, and hence a lot more dangerous. Beyond their physical attraction to one another, both Dall and Cummins are obsessed with firearms. They embark on a crime spree, with Cummins as the brains and Dall as the trigger man. As sociopathic a duo as are likely to be found in a 1940s film, Dall and Cummins are also perversely fascinating. As they dance their last dance before dying in a hail of police bullets, the audience is half hoping that somehow they'll escape the Inevitable. Some critics have complained that Dall is far too effeminate and Cummins too butch, but Joseph H. Lewis was never known to draw anything in less than broad strokes: recall the climax of Terror in a Texas Town, wherein Sterling Hayden participates in a western showdown armed with a whaler's harpoon. The best and most talked-about scene in Gun Crazy is the bank robbery sequence, shot in "real time" from the back seat of Dall and Cummins' getaway car. Originally slated for Monogram release, Gun Crazy enjoyed a wider exposure when its producers, the enterprising King Brothers, chose United Artists as the distributor. The film was based on a magazine article by MacKinlay Kantor; one of the scenarists was uncredited blacklistee Dalton Trumbo. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Another Part Of The Forest begins some twenty years before the events of Lillian Hellman's play and movie The Little Foxes and shows how that film's Hubbard family became the ruthless, greedy lot they were. It's fifteen years after the Civil War, and the Hubbards dominate their small Southern town financially, if not socially; The patriarch of the family (Fredric March) sold salt for $8 a pound to the Confederate Army at a time when they needed it most. Edmond O'Brien and Dan Duryea play his sons, the former as mean as his father, the latter and younger one a weakling. When the elder child finds out that his father was responsible for the death of Southern troops during the war, he threatens to expose the truth unless the family fortune is placed in his hands. In the end, only Hubbard's wife (Florence Eldridge) stands by her husband during his inevitable fall, and she banishes her own children from their house. Brilliant acting by all, especially March, Duryea, and O'Brien, plus a sharp script, make this unrelentingly grim melodrama fascinating to watch. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

Sexual harassment can work both ways as can be seen in this romantic comedy when ad man endeavors to maneuver out of a relationship with his girlfriend. This is difficult as she controls a major account for his company and refuses to renew it unless he continues to go out with her. The frustrated fellow then begins having neurotic fits until, at last, he is taken off her account. For his new assignment, he must promote a psychiatrist's latest book. They meet and he is captivated by the lovely doctor. The nervous fellow then becomes her patient, and before long they both fall in love. Unfortunately, the other woman has not given up. His troubles are far from over when he later discovers that the shrink doesn't really love him--she is only using him for a case study. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Two icons of 1950s television, June Lockhart and Hugh Beaumont, appear in uncharacteristic roles in the 1947 B-plus melodrama Bury Me Dead. It begins when Barbara Carlin (Lockhart) shows up amongst the mourners at a funeral. Thing of it is, it's her funeral-or at least it's supposed to be. With the help of family lawyer Michael Dunn (Hugh Beaumont), Barbara endeavors to find out who's been buried in her place?and who, if anyone, wants her dead enough to murder her. The prime suspects include Barbara's husband Rod (Mark Daniels) and sister Rusty (Cathy O'Donnell), who appear to be in the middle of an illicit affair. Ultimately, the instigator of Barbara's presumed death is revealed, but not in this synopsis. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Three years after song-and-dance man Dick Powell reshaped his nice-guy image by playing hard-boiled gumshoe Phillip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet, he returned to film noir with this crime-based thriller. Johnny O'Clock (Dick Powell) and his partner Pete Marchettis (Thomas Gomez) operate a gambling casino that has seen better days. Chuck Blayden (Jim Bannon), a cop on the take, wants in on the casino, and he makes friends with Pete while trying to convince him that Johnny, the smarter of the two, should go. When Chuck's girlfriend Harriet (Nina Foch) is found dead, a supposed suicide, his sister Nancy (Evelyn Keyes) smells a rat, especially after Chuck skips town. Nancy is convinced that her sister was murdered, and she asks Johnny to help her prove it. Johnny, who already has a number of women in his life -- including Nelle (Ellen Drew), Pete's wife -- figures that one more can't hurt and agrees to help her. But Police Inspector Koch (Lee J. Cobb), convinced that Johnny and Pete were behind Harriet's death, is making it hard for Johnny to do much investigating, and matters get worse when Chuck's body is found floating in the river. Screenwriter Robert Rossen made his directorial debut with this film, 14 years later, he would return to this film's tough, gritty style for his best picture, The Hustler. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

California began life as a remake of Paramount's silent western epic The Covered Wagon, but by the time it emerged on-screen in 1946, the project had metamorphosed into a standard Technicolor frontier "spectacular", concentrating more on star power than anything else. Set during the 1848 mass migration to California, the film stars Ray Milland as Army deserter Jonathan Trumbo and Barbara Stanwyck as "shady lady" Lily Bishop. Since it is clear from the outside that the purportedly disreputable Trumbo and Lily will emerge as the film's true hero and heroine, it is easy to ignore the melodramatic plot convolutions and concentrate on the outsized, well-directed wagon train sequences. George Coulouris has a few ripe moments as a sagebrush Hitler who intends to set up his own despotic empire in California, while Barry Fitzgerald does his usual Irish-blarney routine as an itinerant farmer. As a bonus, Barbara Stanwyck sings a couple of newly-minted "cowboy" songs. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Olivia De Havilland won the first of her two Academy Awards for To Each His Own. During World War I, De Havilland falls in love with a young soldier (John Lund). He is killed in battle before they can marry, leaving De Havilland to raise their child alone. She gives the baby up for adoption, then goes to work in the cosmetic business, working her way up to an executive post. While in London on business during World War II, Olivia comes face to face with her grown son (John Lund again), now a military officer himself. Though she resists revealing her true identity, mother and son are brought together by a wise old British peer (Roland Culver). Olivia De Havilland's Oscar win was doubly sweet in that To Each His Own was her first film after an enforced two-year absence, brought about when she sued Warner Bros. to get out of her restrictive contract. Long available only in washed-out TV prints, To Each His Own was eventually restored to its pristine 35-millimeter glory by the American Film Institute. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi