Joan Lorring Movies

One night after finishing his rounds as security chief at Jordan College, Quartz Willinger (Cameron Mitchell) stops by an after-hours club for a drink and walks in on the middle of a robbery, during which he is savagely beaten by three hillbilly thugs. While recovering from his injuries, he needs a replacement and arranges to hire an old friend, Jim Slade (Burt Lancaster), an ex-cop who has just been paroled on a murder conviction, for killing the man he caught with his wife. He finds the job an awkward fit but a welcome relief from prison, especially once he meets his parole officer, Linda Thorpe (Susan Clark). On his first night on the job, there's a break-in at the office of the college's resident psychiatrist (Robert Quarry), and the theft of some tapes made by students, only one of whom -- Natalie Clayborne (Catherine Bach), a pretty yet troubled coed, and daughter of a very powerful politician (Morgan Woodward) -- isn't upset by the incident. The next night, Slade finds her getting drunk in town and gets her back to the campus. When Natalie turns up dead, the county sheriff, Casey (Harris Yulin), glances at him briefly as a suspect before arresting the custodian Ewing (Charles Tyner), who was a religious nut with a collection of pornography and a fixation on Natalie. But Slade isn't convinced of Ewing's guilt and starts to investigate the crime himself with help from Linda. Despite Casey's pressuring him to stay out of it, the ex-cop soon discovers Jordan College, the town, and the surrounding county are a nasty border-state version of Peyton Place, populated by lots of people with skeletons in their closets, including blackmail, incest, and murder, with hardly an institution not corrupted by some part of it. What's more, in a series of twists worthy of The Big Sleep (book or movie), he uncovers a connection between the thugs who beat up Quartz and the stolen tape and the murder, which results in the brutal killing of his witnesses and Slade fighting for his life. And he still has to face the truth about the two people in the midst of this corruption that he trusted. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The official credits for the Italian-made Stranger on the Prowl read: "written and directed by Andrea Forzano." In truth, Andrea Forzano was two people: screenwriter Ben Barzman and director Joseph Losey, both of whom had been blacklisted by Hollywood and were forced to work under pseudonyms. Essentially a two-person character study, the film stars Paul Muni as a down-and-out crook on the lam. Muni befriends a young street urchin (Vittorio Mazzunchelli, billed as "Manunta" in many prints) in an Italian port city. At first amused that the boy is a sneak thief, Muni tries to deflects the kid from a life of crime. Tipped off by a woman anxious to collect the reward for Muni (who is wanted for murder), the police pursue the two lost souls. Muni sees to it that the boy manages to escape, but is himself gunned down. A weak-tea imitation of the Italian neorealist movement, Stranger on the Prowl was cut by 18 minutes for its English-language release (in Britain it was titled Encounter). The full, original 100-minute Italian version, released in 1951, was known as Imbarco a Mezzanote. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Small-town department store manager Sam Clayton (Gary Cooper) is a born "Good Samaritan", which in his case translates as "sucker." Much to the dismay of his wife Lu (Anne Sheridan), who'd like to save up enough cash for a new house, Sam habitually gives his money away to one "deserving" soul or other. But when Sam himself is in dire financial difficulty, none of the people to whom he's extended his generosity come to his aid. Disillusioned, he goes on a bender and disappears into the night. Thanks to Lu's not-so-gentle remonstrations, however, Sam's debtors finally own up to their obligations, and a happy ending is had by all. Producer/director Leo McCarey has a good thing going in the first few reels of Good Sam, but eventually loses control of the film, resulting in a great deal of illogical plot twists and character transformations in the final footage. Still, it's interesting to watch Gary Cooper doing what amounts to an imitation of Jimmy Stewart. Originally released a 128 minutes, Good Sam was pared down to 114 minutes for reissue. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Barbara Stanwyck headlines this romantic tearjerker as a free-spirited concert pianist dying of tuberculosis. She checks into a posh Alpine sanitarium and there falls in love with her suave and gentle doctor (David Niven). The poor physician has his hands full trying to keep the energetic Stanwyck quiet so her body can rest. She tries, but when the fellow patient she befriended dies, she becomes afraid of her own death and flees to have a crazy affair with a race car driver. Together they tear across Europe until she becomes weak and must return to the sanitarium for the tragic conclusion. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The novel The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill had been filmed in 1928 as The Perfect Crime and again in 1934 as The Crime Doctor. This 1946 version was the best and marked the directorial debut of Don Siegel. It also paired the popular duo of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet for the last time. Greenstreet plays George Grodman, a veteran Scotland Yard chief who is forced out after a murderer that he helped convict is found innocent after his execution. His successor is the pompous Buckley (George Coulouris), who vows to do much better. Lorre plays Victor Emmric, an artist illustrating a crime book that Grodman is writing. A tenant in a building near Grodman's apartment is found dead by a landlady who summons Grodman to the scene. The victim's door appears to have been locked from the inside. Chief Buckley fingers Clive Russell (Paul Cavanagh), a friend of Grodman. With only circumstantial evidence, the superintendent railroads Russell into a conviction that carries the death sentence. Grodman tries to prove his friend innocent, but the only woman who can provide Russell an alibi is dead. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

In this 1945 filmization of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical 1938 play The Corn is Green, Bette Davis steps into the role originated on Broadway by Ethel Barrymore. Davis plays Miss Moffat, a turn-of-the-century schoolteacher in a Welsh mining town. She has opened her own school in hopes of lowering the town's illiteracy rate, thus enabling the younger residents to seek out more fulfilling lives than merely sweating away in the mines until they drop. She runs into a great deal of resistance from mine-owner Nigel Bruce, who realizes that as soon as the citizens can read and write, they'll rebel against his benevolent despotry. Even Miss Moffat concludes that her mission is hopeless until she is visited by young miner John Dall, who wants to know "what is behind all those books". Within two years, Dall has made so much progress that he has qualified for Oxford. A last-minute snag involving Dall's illegitimate child is solved when Miss Moffet herself agrees to adopt the baby so that her student can complete his education. Emlyn Williams himself came from a backward mining town, and was himself inspired to better things by a compassionate schoolteacher; the pregnancy angle was (probably) added to provide the story with a third act. The Corn is Green was remade for television in 1978, with Katharine Hepburn as Miss Moffat. Watch for one amusing gaffe in the original: despite carefully setting up the premise that the villagers are illiterate, they are shown hovering around a poster and reading it out loud in an early scene. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One can only imagine the reaction of arch-conservative MGM head Louis B. Mayer when Song of Russia first tumbled over the spools in the studio projection room. It must be remembered, however, that back in 1944 it was politically expedient for Hollywood to offer hosannas to America's Russian allies, and to gloss over the less-attractive aspects of the Stalin regime. Based on Scorched Earth, a story by Leo Mittler, the film stars Robert Taylor as John Meredith, a famous American symphony conductor who is touring Russia just before the war. Meredith falls in love with Russian lass Nadya Stepanova (Susan Peters), who impresses him with her conviviality and charm: why, she's almost like a typical American girl! In the course of their romance, Meredith and Nadya visit a collective farm, where the peasants sing, dance and smile all day. The lovers marry, only to have their honeymoon abruptly halted when the Nazis invade the Soviet Union. Nadya promptly joins the Resistance, solemnly assembling molotov cocktails and shooting down Germans with her comrades. Just before the Nazis swarm into Nadya's village, the peasants set fire to the place so that Hitlers minions will not be able to plunder its resources. All of this is played out against the music of Tschiakovsky and other Russian composers. During the HUAC investigations in the early 1950s, several of the personnel involved in Song of Russia were required to explain why they'd been involved in so blatantly "pro-communist" a project. Louis B. Mayer blithely explained that he "just wanted to make a picture about Russians, not communists," while star Robert Taylor -- likewise a staunch anti-Red -- insisted that he'd been forced to make the film, and that he'd demanded script deletions throughout productions. In the end, the losers were screenwriters Richard Collins and Paul Jarrico, both of whom ended up on the egregious Hollywood Blacklist, simply for adhering to America's wartime pro-Soviet sentiments. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi