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Few creative talents have the breadth of a career equal to Lee Grant. The 98-year-old director, actor, and writer has a storied body of work, debuting on screen in 1951 in William Wyler’s Detective Story, for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and Cannes Best Actress win, while also receiving a Supporting Actress Oscar for Shampoo. Grant, who has also appeared in Mulholland Drive, Valley of the Dolls, and In the Heat of the Night, has also set a few records: she’s the oldest living film director, while 1980’s Tell Me a Riddle was the first major American film to be entirely written, produced and directed by women, and she’s the only Academy Award-winning actor to also direct an Academy Award-winning documentary with 1986’s Down and Out in America.

Among the most revelatory repertory cinema I saw last year, the much-deserved 4K restorations of Grant...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Samuel Fuller is today regarded as a revered name among directors. Unlike his peers- John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Howard Hawks, to name but a few- Fuller didn't get much respect when he needed it, at least from critics and studio heads who regarded his talents as workmanlike. Consequently, this talented director, screenwriter and occasional novelist and actor, toiled under meager budgets and scant support from studio executives. Fuller was typical of directors of his generation who had come of age during the Great Depression and World War II. He had a tough guy persona and had learned to survive on the mean streets of Manhattan where he worked as a crime reporter in the 1930s. Fuller could have landed a cushy job in the military during the war but eschewed the opportunity in favor of volunteering for combat duty in the European campaign. His scripts were tightly-written,...

Sam Fuller turns the crime film inside-out with this tale of on infiltrator taking down the syndicate. Vengeful Cliff Robertson uses both the mob and the cops to wipe out the hoods that killed his dad, with the help of two women, one of them a hooker with a heart of gold. The show feels like a ’30s throwback with a precociously violent streak, spiked with a healthy helping of what the critics would call Fuller’s ‘Cinema Fist.’

Underworld U.S.A.

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1961 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Cliff Robertson, Dolores Dorn, Beatrice Kay, Paul Dubov, Robert Emhardt, Larry Gates, Richard Rust, Gerald Milton, Neyle Morrow, Peter Brocco, Bernie Hamilton.

Cinematography: Hal Mohr

Film Editor: Jerome Thoms

Original Music: Harry Sukman

Written, Produced and Directed by Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller’s successes with distributor-producer Robert Lippert...

Randolph Scott Westerns, comedies, war dramas: TCM schedule on August 19, 2013 See previous post: “Cary Grant and Randolph Scott Marriages — And ‘Expect the Biographical Worst.’” 3:00 Am Badman’S Territory (1946). Director: Tim Whelan. Cast: Randolph Scott, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Ann Richards. Bw-98 mins. 4:45 Am Trail Street (1947). Director: Ray Enright. Cast: Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan, Anne Jeffreys. Bw-84 mins. 6:15 Am Return Of The Badmen (1948). Director: Ray Enright. Cast: Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan, Anne Jeffreys, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Jacqueline White, Steve Brodie, Tom Keene aka Richard Powers, Robert Bray, Lex Barker, Walter Reed, Michael Harvey, Dean White, Robert Armstrong, Tom Tyler, Lew Harvey, Gary Gray, Walter Baldwin, Minna Gombell, Warren Jackson, Robert Clarke, Jason Robards Sr., Ernie Adams, Lane Chandler, Dan Foster, John Hamilton, Kenneth MacDonald, Donald Kerr, Ida Moore, ‘Snub’ Pollard, Harry Shannon, Charles Stevens. Bw-90 mins. 8:00 Am Riding Shotgun (1954). Director: André De Toth. Cast: Randolph Scott, Wayne Morris,...