Irene Seidner Movies

Ten North Frederick is a generally satisfying adaptation of one of John O'Hara's weaker novels. Gary Cooper plays wealthy businessman Joe Chapin, whose politically ambitious wife Edith (Geraldine Fitzgerald) hopes to ramrod into the White House. To this end, Edith donates tons of money to the party of her choice and forces Joe into a maelstrom of power meetings and high-profile social engagements. Threatening to upset Edith's plans is her daughter Ann (Diane Varsi), who insists upon conducting a romance with an "undesirable" musician. Joe buys off Ann's boyfriend, thereby alienating his daughter. Soon Joe's chickens come home to roost when a rival politician makes public Ann's indiscretions. Adding insult to injury, Edith lets her husband know about her many extramarital affairs. In hoping to win back his daughter's affections, Joe falls in love with Ann's roomate Kate Drummond (Suzy Parker). Finding true happiness and contentment for the first time in his life, Joe is denied even this balm when he becomes mortally ill. Gary Cooper makes a valiant effort at playing a more complex individual than he was accustomed to, succeeding about 75 percent of the time. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Vincent Sherman replaced an uncredited Robert Aldrich as director of this noirish and atypically pro-union film from the 1950's. Tulio Renata (Robert Loggia), an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, campaigns to unionize the employees of dress factory owner Walter Mitchell (Lee J. Cobb). Viscerally opposed to the union, Mitchell has hired Artie Ravidge (Richard Boone) to thwart Renata's efforts. In a complex oedipal sub-plot, Walter's son Alan (Kerwin Matthews) returns home and joins the firm following the suspicious death of his father's partner. Alan is more sympathetic to the union and attempts to persuade his father to sign a contract. Only after Ravidge kills Renata, and the elder Mitchell finally admits to himself that Ravidge is a thug who also killed his partner, does he agree to negotiate with the union. Before he can do so, however, he, too, is murdered by Ravidge's goons. It is then left to Alan, increasingly involved with Renata's widow Theresa (Gia Scala), to run the business, bring Ravidge to justice, and settle with the union. Similar to Herbert Biberman's Salt of the Earth (1954) in its overt support of the labor movement, The Garment Jungle is clearly a liberal, not a radical, film. Rather than advocate class warfare, it asserts that honest unions and decent capitalists can work together honorably. The film's real fire is found in the personal conflicts between Tulio and Theresa and Walter and Alan. Cobb, Loggia, and Scala perform with intense and multi-dimensional passion. Particularly noteworthy is Theresa's fury at her husband for taking excessive, and ultimately fatal, risks. ~ Steve Press, Rovi

Although a few character names and minor details are different, Vicki is a fairly faithful remake of the 1941 murder melodrama I Wake Up Screaming. The title character, Vicki Lynn, played by Jean Peters, is a waitress who is transformed into a top fashion model by press agent Steve Christopher (Elliot Reid). When Vicki is murdered, psychotic detective Ed Cornell (Richard Boone) tries to pin the blame on Christopher. In fact, Cornell knows who the real killer is, but he was so desperately (and hopelessly) in love with the dead girl that he intends to railroad Christopher into the electric chair. With the help of Vicki's sister (Jeanne Crain), Christopher tracks down the genuine culprit and exposes Cornell for the nutcase that he is. Featured in the cast is future TV producer Aaron Spelling. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This Gay-90s musical interweaves a number of fictional characters with real-life theatrical impresario Tony Pastor (played by Gordon MacRae, who resembles the real Pastor not at all). The plot involves a roisterous Irish papa (James Barton) who, when not on a drunk, tries to keep his two daughters (June Haver and Debbie Reynolds) from the clutches of predatory men. The older daughter (Haver), who entertains notions of a stage career, meets Tony Pastor during an audition, and promptly falls in love. She becomes a star singing such turn-of-the-century hits as the title song, while Pastor tries to suppress his own warm feelings towards the girl. Warner Bros. stalwart S.Z. Sakall shows up in Daughter of Rosie O'Grady, fully justifying his nickname "Cuddles." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An unusually disturbing noir from a director better known for more mainstream fare like High Noon and From Here to Eternity, Act of Violence focuses on a WWII veteran haunted by his past. A film that was close to the director's heart, he said that it represented "the first time that I felt confident that I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it." Van Heflin stars as Frank Enley, a contractor living a peaceful life in a small California town, when Joe Parkson, a man who served in the army with him, arrives in the area, intent on killing him. He follows Frank to a lake where he's fishing but is unable to kill him. When a lakeside bartender tells Frank that a man with a limp is looking for him, Frank is frightened, realizing why he has come. He tells his wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), that Joe is a man who spent time with in a Nazi POW camp, who is now mentally ill, and that he intends to avoid him. When Frank goes to Los Angeles for a business convention, Joe arrives at his house and tells his wife that her husband is responsible for his injury and for the deaths of a number of men. Fearing for her husband's life, Edith heads for L.A. with Joe not far behind. ~ Michael Costello, Rovi

Eric Ambler's intriguing novel Uncommon Danger is brought down to a Republic serial level in Warner Bros.' Background to Danger. George Raft, who always seems miscast, plays an American undercover intelligence agent operating in Turkey. Sultry Osa Massen passes on some valuable secret papers to Raft just before she is killed. Our Hero then finds himself at the mercy of enemy agent Sidney Greenstreet, who knows that the papers contain Nazi plans to invade Turkey. Despite several brutal beatings, Raft and his cohorts Peter Lorre (a good guy for a change) and Brenda Marshall turn the tables on Greenstreet. Background to Danger was the first of many Warner Bros. follow-ups to the studio's megahit Casablanca; it's also the film wherein the prankish Peter Lorre stole George Raft's hat between takes--an affront that rankled the touchy Raft to his dying day. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Humphrey Bogart plays Gloves Donahue, a rough-hewn but essentially decent New York gambler. The Runyonesque plot gets moving when Gloves tries to find out what's holding up his favorite restaurant's daily shipment of cheesecake. Paying a call on the bakery, Gloves stumbles into a Nazi spy ring, masterminded by Conrad Veidt. Mixed up in all this is nightclub singer Kaaren Verne, whose loyalties are in question in her early scenes but who turns out to be as true-blue as the patriotic Gloves. Combining a quick wit with quicker fists, Gloves and his "mob" thwart the Nazis before they're able to skip the country. The cast is a movie buff's dream, ranging from Jane Darwell as Bogart's mom to Peter Lorre as a cynical Nazi flunkey to William Demarest, Frank McHugh, Phil Silvers and Jackie Gleason as Bogie's favorite cohorts. The film's best scene would have us believe that Bogart could confound a gang of erudite Nazis with a steady stream of Manhattan slang. One shudders to think how leaden All Through the Night would have been had George Raft accepted the role of Gloves Donahue. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi