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I guess Howard Hughes wanted to go easy on Minnesota Nazis. William Cameron Menzies directs a Cold War thriller about an insidious germ warfare conspiracy -- it's an early paranoid suspense tale with apocalyptic consequences. But the story behind the movie's making -- and then remaking -- is even more fantastic. The Whip Hand DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1951 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date February 16, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 18.59 Starring Elliott Reid, Raymond Burr, Carla Balenda, Edgar Barrier, Otto Waldis, Michael Steele, Lurene Tuttle, Peter Brocco, Lewis Martin, Frank Darien, Olive Carey, George Chandler, Gregory Gaye. Cinematography Nicholas Musuraca Film Editor Robert Golden Original Music Music by Paul Sawtell Written by George Bricker, Frank L. Moss, Ray Hamilton Produced by Louis J. Rachmil Directed by William Cameron Menzies

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Film writers Bill Warren and Tom Weaver have reported extensively on the unusual production story...

Former child actor George Winslow has died at the age of 69.

Born George Karl Wentzlaff, Winslow was best known for playing Marilyn Monroe's young admirer in 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and featured in other classic films of the era.

His longtime friend confirmed to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat that he died of a heart attack on June 13 at his Northern California home.

Under the stage name George 'Foghorn' Winslow, he became known for his raspy voice and deadpan delivery, and landed roles opposite the likes of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers.

His roles also included Monkey Business with Grant, and leading roles in My Pal Gus and The Rocket Man.

He retired from acting at the age of 12, before serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War. He retired from the Postal Service several years ago.

Watch a scene featuring George Winslow below:...

Blacklisted screenwriter and president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The screenwriter Fay Kanin, who has died aged 95, was the only female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in its 86-year history (apart from Bette Davis, who resigned after two months in 1941). She served as president from 1979 to 1983, for the maximum of four consecutive one-year terms. Kanin, who committed herself to the preservation of early Hollywood movies, was first elected president by a board consisting of 34 men and one woman.

"I'm a big feminist," she declared at the time that her play Goodbye, My Fancy opened on Broadway in 1948. "I've put into my play my feeling that women should never back away from life." The serious comedy, with Madeleine Carroll as a powerful congresswoman revisiting her alma mater to receive an honorary degree, ran for more than a year and was made into a 1951 film starring Joan Crawford.

Fay Kanin, Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning screenwriter and former President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, died today at the age of 95. A New York native, Kanin began her showbiz career in the early 1940s. One of her earliest works was the MGM film Sunday Punch, about boxers living in a boarding house, which she co-wrote with her husband Michael Kanin. The duo went on to become one of the most successful husband and wife writing teams in Hollywood history. The couple also penned 1952′s My Pal Gus, 1954′s Rhapsody and 1956′s The Opposite Sex and they shared an Oscar nomination for the 1958 Clark Gable-starrer Teacher’s Pet. Fay Kanin also went to Broadway with Goodbye My Fancy (1949), about a female congressional representative renewing past loves, which her husband produced. When her husband’s interest in writing waned in the late 1960s, Fay Kanin went solo mainly writing TV movies,...