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Perhaps more than any other genre, the Western demands a specific, rugged essence from its actors to be believable. For example, character actors such as Ben Johnson, Jack Elam, Chill Willis, and John Ireland possessed a certain aesthetic that allowed them to become part of the iconography of the genre as a whole. However, some Western stars can manage the aesthetics of the genre without the acting chops of character actors.

Cinema's greatest Western stars embody toughness, grit, and self-reliance. They also are able to transcend time, shedding their modern sensibilities and encompassing the spirit of the Old West. Actors such as Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and James Stewart rank among the best Western stars of all time.

This article was updated on February 4, 2025, by Christopher Raley: The Western is one of the greatest genres in cinema. It straddles the line between fantasy and reality, and the Golden Age of...

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall are rightfully classified as one of the best actor pairings in the film noir genre, but Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake aren't far behind them. Each pair made a total of four movies together in the 1940s. But of course, it's the work of Bogart and Bacall that's received the most attention, due in part to their real-life relationship.

The pair, often dubbed "Bogie and Bacall," worked together for the first time when the latter was just 18 years old on the set of To Have and Have Not. The movie, which now has a reputation as one of the best film noir movies of all time, spawned an extremely successful Hollywood partnership. The chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall prompted Warner Bros. to make them the headlining attractions of three more films: Key Largo, Dark Passage, and The Big Sleep. While it may be...

Starting in the 1940s, the classic film noir genre reached a significant peak with movie goers and was one of the most popular among American audiences. Like many of its contemporaries, classic film noir eventually started to blend with other genres, like thrillers and dramas, but when mentioned today, most people automatically think of criminal noir films such as This Gun for Hire, Double Indemnity, and The Killing.

Hollywood icons and classic cinema legends Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd rose to prominence during the 1940s and were one of Paramount Pictures' most popular on-screen couples. Together, they starred in several classic noir films, including The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia, and This Gun for Hire. Both icons of the classic film noir genre in their own right, Lake and Ladd also appeared together along with many other Paramount Picture players in three studio ensemble films, Duffy's Tavern (1945), Variety Girl (1947) and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), playing themselves. Throughout their careers, the duo starred in four notable classic noir films together that put them on the map.

Veronica Lake's Hollywood career might have been short, but there's no denying the impact she made. Spellbinding audiences with her unique "Peek-a-Boo" hairstyle, which would go on to influence the creation of Jessica Rabbit, Lake continues to epitomize a bygone era. In an age of femme fatales that graced multiple film noir pictures, such as Lauren Bacall, Joan Bennett, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner, Lake was a stand-out with her blonde hair and captivating eyes. Some of Veronica Lake's most memorable roles include The Blue Dahlia (1946), I Wanted Wings (1941), The Glass Key (1942), Sullivan's Travels (1941), and This Gun for Hire (1942).

With Halloween season approaching, it's the perfect time to revisit one of her most memorable performances, I Married a Witch (1942), currently streaming on Max. Far removed from the Femme fatale roles from some of her other films, Lake shines in a romantic comedy about a witch who sets out to...

Some of Steve Martin's best films are underrated and relatively unheard of, showcasing his versatile talents beyond comedy franchises. Titles like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and Shopgirl highlight Martin's nuanced humor and ability to tackle complex characters in underappreciated films. From a detective in a parody film to a struggling architect in a romantic comedy, Martin's range as an actor shines in lesser-known gems like My Blue Heaven and Housesitter.

Iconic comic actor Steve Martin has appeared in several huge Hollywood hits, but some of his best movies were underrated and relatively unheard of. Martin is generally remembered for his absurd humor and for appearing in some of the best comedy franchises of all time, such as Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen. He is also the most recent incarnation of Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Pink Panther movies.

In recent years, Martin has made...

Hit Man blends genres to create a well-balanced mix of screwball comedy, action, and film noir. Onscreen references to classic hitman movies help underscore the concept of hitmen as commodities. Linklater includes clips from iconic hitman films like Branded to Kill and The Mechanic in Hit Man.

There are several onscreen references to other classic hitman and assassin movies in Richard Linklater's Hit Man. The new Glen Powell film features the Top Gun: Maverick breakout star in his most versatile role yet, playing a loner college professor who moonlights as an assassin for his local police department. Hit Man also became Powell's highest rated movie of his acting career after earning a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, slightly getting the edge over the massively successful box office hit Top Gun: Maverick, which earned a score of 96%. Since releasing on Netflix on June 7, 2024, the film has become one of the most...

The hitman has proven a consistent source of inspiration for movies, from 1942’s “This Gun For Hire” to 1967’s “Le Samourai” to the recent “Hitman.” With so many movies centered around a hitman, it’s hard not to feel derivative. One of the ways that filmmakers make their take on the hitman feels fresh and unique is to give the contract killer a quirk, an easily distinguishable characteristic. Some examples include Alain Delon’s love of birds in “Le Samourai,” Michael Fassbender’s The Smith’s playlist in “The Killer,” or Tom Cruise’s use of taxis in his murder method in “Collateral.” “Knox Goes Away,” directed by and starring Michael Keaton (“Batman” “Birdman”), tells the story of John Knox, a hitman dealing with a degenerative brain disorder, Cretuszfeldt-Jakob Disease, similar to Alzheimer’s.

Continue reading ‘Knox Goes Away’ Trailer: Michael Keaton Directs & Stars In A Crime Noir About Dementia- Afflicted Hitman at The Playlist.

The desert will again be a hotbed of deceit and larceny in luxurious black-and-white as the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival returns to Palm Springs this Thursday through Sunday, with the quintessential noir classics “The Killing” and “Double Indemnity” bookending a marathon weekend that otherwise tends toward more rarely screened ‘40s and ‘50s titles.

Several sons or daughters of the original actors or directors will be on hand, but of special interest to festival attendees will be the presence of one of the actual filmmakers: James B. Harris, 94, Stanley Kubrick’s producing partner for several of his best early films, who’ll be able to speak first-hand about the making of 1956’s “The Killing,” the crime drama that turned out to be Kubrick’s first real masterpiece.

“I’m just utterly thrilled that ‘The Killing’ will show and Jimmy will be the guest on opening night,” says the festival’s longtime guiding light,...

This lesser-known suspense thriller is an excellent adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene, and a fine showcase for actor Anthony Hopkins and the upcoming Kristin Scott Thomas, with an able assist from Derek Jacobi. A Paris lawyer is sentenced to die as a random hostage of the German occupiers, but swaps with another prisoner with a desperate, questionable death-cell contract. Three years later, he must pretend not to be himself when he returns to the house he traded for his life, to face a woman who has sworn to kill the man who allowed her brother to die. Fans of Hannibal Lecter will be impressed by Hopkins’ deep, absorbing performance — the show’s moral tension and strange twists of fate are quite moving.

The Tenth Man

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1988 / Color / 2:35 1:85 1:66 widescreen 1:37 Academy / 99 min. / Street Date August 30, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Kristin Scott Thomas,...

Alan Ladd Jr., the revered Hollywood producer and studio executive who saved Star Wars when Fox wanted to shut down production and gained vindication when he received an Oscar for Braveheart after being dumped by MGM, has died. He was 84.

Ladd, who headed production at Fox, Pathe Entertainment and MGM (in two stints) and ran his own outfit, The Ladd Co., with great success, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles.

“With the heaviest of hearts, we announce that on March 2, 2022, Alan Ladd, Jr. died peacefully at home surrounded by his family,” his daughter Amanda Ladd-Jones wrote on social media. “Words cannot express how deeply he will be missed. His impact on films and filmmaking will live on in his absence.”

As a studio executive and producer, Ladd — the son of screen idol Alan Ladd (This Gun for Hire, Shane) — had a hand in 14 best picture nominees. His imprint...

And now the 93rd Annual Oscars are finished. Another one for the records books, it is now history. But how to quench your thirst for a bit more Hollywood history? Here’s the perfect refresher. It’s a warm, interview and clip-filled look back at one of the motion picture industry’s greatest producers. As a matter of fact (and it’s hammered home here) he was the head (or close to) of four of the major studio. Oh, and he’s still with us, offering his sage advice and counsel to filmmakers and stars. So we’re not talking about the cigar-chomping Golden Age studio moguls who are usually vilified in the non-fiction books and films (The biggest villain of Mank may be the ruthless and controlling Louis Mayer). No, this is about a man whose influence may have ushered in, maybe not a silver, but a bronze age,...

Alan Ladd Jr greenlit Star Wars, Alien, The Omen and many more – winning the lasting admiration of countless directors and actors. Now, his daughter has made a heartfelt celluloid tribute to the producer

Here is a highly watchable documentary about Hollywood executive Alan Ladd Jr: an old gold Hollywood profile leavened with top-notes of family strife and reconciliation. Ladd, famously, was the studio boss at 20th Century Fox who got Star Wars through when the corporate brass wanted to pull the plug; but as this film shows, there was quite a lot more to him than that.

As his name indicates, Ladd was the son of troubled he-man actor Alan Ladd and it’s safe to say they didn’t have the best of relationships: as a gawky teenager, Ladd Jr didn’t fit in with his father’s attempts to project a wholesome family image and can be seen...

Graham Greene’s tense crime tale is as important as his classic The Third Man but nowhere near as well known. Down Brighton way the race-track boys have sharp ways of solving disputes and terrorizing the common folk — think ‘straight razor.’ Richard Attenborough’s breakthrough film is also a showcase for Hermoine Baddelely and a marvelous newcomer that every horror fan loves even if they don’t know her name, Carol Marsh. Kino’s disc has a Tim Lucas commentary; this review balances thoughts about mercy and damnation, with an extra insight about a piece of ‘stick candy’ unfamiliar to us Yanks.

Brighton Rock

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. / Street Date May 5, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley, William Hartnell, Harcourt Williams, Wylie Watson, Nigel Stock, Virginia Winter, Reginald Purdell, George Carney, Charles Goldner, Alan Wheatley.

Cinematography: Harry Waxman

Camera operator:...

This Gun For Hire (1942) starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake screens at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium(470 E Lockwood Ave) screens Tuesday February 4th. The film begins at 7:00pm. This is the opening film in a 3-film ‘Lake and Ladd’ series that continues February 11th with The Glass Key and February 18th with The Blue Dahlia. A Facebook invite can be found Here.

The first pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake wasn’t meant to be so—Ms. Lake’s love interest in the film is played by Robert Preston (The Music Man)—and yet all of the chemistry is between her nightclub singer and Mr. Ladd’s hit man. Based on the Graham Greene novel A Gun for Sale, This Gun for Hire shot Ladd to instant stardom and immediately had audiences clamoring for more Lake/Ladd films.

Admission is:

$7 for the general public

$6 for seniors, Webster...

Chicago – There are movie exhibitors, screening rooms, multiplexes and grindhouses, but there is only one Music Box Theatre, and Chicago is privileged to have it. The movie theater of all movie theaters opened on August 22nd, 1929, and is celebrating its 90th Anniversary all week at the venue, in the Southport Corridor neighborhood.

As a transplant from small town Indiana to Chicago, I wasn’t used to the Windy City history of grand neighborhood movie theaters, and was gobsmacked when I first entered the Music Box, shortly after it reopened as a film “double feature” house in the 1980s. I had never visited a glory days example of the urban movie theater, where each neighborhood had its own film venue in the days before television. The Music Box was a smaller example of the escape-from-real-life atmosphere of these theaters, with its luxurious architecture and welcoming lobby, twinkling stars with projected clouds...

Retitled from The Honorary Consul and sold in America with one of Paramount’s sleaziest ad campaigns, John MacKenzie and Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of a Graham Greene novel features a fine Michael Caine performance, but prefers to stress sex scenes between star Richard Gere and Elpidia Carrillo. Just call it ‘Lust in the Argentine Littoral’ — but performed in English.

Beyond the Limit (The Honorary Consul)

Der Honorarkonsul

Blu-ray

1983 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date January 10, 2019 / Available through Amazon.de / Eur 14,99

Starring: Michael Caine, Richard Gere, Bob Hoskins, Elpidia Carrillo, Joaquim de Almeida, A Martinez, Stephanie Cotsirilos, Domingo Ambriz, Geoffrey Palmer, Jorge Russek, Erika Carlsson, George Belanger.

Cinematography: Phil Meheux

Film Editor: Stuart Baird

Original Music: Stanley Myers

Written by Christopher Hampton from the novel by Graham Greene

Produced by Norma Heyman

Directed by John Mackenzie

Director John Mackenzie, fresh off his marvelous gift to the gangster film The Long Good Friday,...

Frank Tuttle, the man who made a star of Alan Ladd with the twisted film noir This Gun for Hire (1942), began as a comedy specialist, churning out three or more films a year as vehicles for Eddie Cantor, Edgar Bergen and his knee-pal Charlie McCarthy, Burns & Allen et cetera. Pleasure Cruise (1933) is a pre-Code farce centered on improbably couple Roland Young and Genevieve Tobin.Young plays a penniless author working as house-husband to the gainfully employed Tobin, while seething with jealousy at the thought of the young blades romancing her in the office. In one of many unusual stylistic touches, we see her portrait come to life and watch as she mingles with the staff, none of whom looks to be under sixty, and they're not exactly silver foxes. The stage is set for a film mocking male paranoia and jealousy and questioning notions of fidelity, virtue, and honesty.Young is his usual self,...

No, it’s not a the-day-after sequel to The Lost Weekend, but a class-act mystery-horror from 20th-Fox, at a time when the studio wasn’t keen on scare shows. John Brahm directs the ill-fated Laird Cregar as a mad musician . . . or, at least a musician driven mad by a perfidious femme fatale, Darryl Zanuck’s top glamour girl Linda Darnell.

Hangover Square

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1945 /B&W / 1:37 Academy / 77 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders, Faye Marlowe, Glenn Langan, Alan Napier.

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Film Editor: Harry Reynolds

Original Music: Bernard Herrmann

Written by Barré Lyndon

Produced by Robert Bassler

Directed by John Brahm

Here’s a serious quality upgrade for horror fans. Although technically a period murder thriller, as a horror film John Brahm’s tense Hangover Square betters its precursor The Lodger in almost every department. We don...

Jean-Pierre Melville’s tale of an emotionless killer is distilled to a narrative minimum. Alain Delon stars as Jef Costello, an imperturbable, ultra- slick hit man who follows a strict personal code. When a contract goes bad, he’s caught between irreconcilable compulsions. Following this Zen-like assassin through the mean streets of Paris never seems to get old.

Le samouraï

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 306

1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 14, 2017 / 39.95

Starring Alain Delon, Francois Périer, Nathalie Delon, Cathy Rosier, Jacques Leroy.

Cinematography Henri Decaë

Production Designer Francois de Lamothe

Film Editor Monique Bonnot, Yo Maurette

Original Music Francois de Roubaix

Written by Jean-Pierre Melville, Georges Pellegrin from a novel by Joan McLeod

Produced by Raymond Borderie, Eugène Lépicier

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

Le samouraï has survived the Quentin Tarantino years Looking better than ever, and with its reputation intact, which is not a minor...

Do you think older crime thrillers weren’t violent enough? This shocker from 1948 shook up America with its true story of a vicious killer who has a murderous solution to every problem, and uses special talents to evade police detection. Richard Basehart made his acting breakthrough as Roy Martin, a barely disguised version of the real life ‘Machine Gun Walker.

He Walked by Night

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1948 / B&W /1:37 flat full frame / 79 min. / Street Date November 7, 2017 / 39.99

Starring: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb, Dorothy Adams, Ann Doran, Byron Foulger, Reed Hadley (narrator), Thomas Browne Henry, Tommy Kelly, John McGuire, Kenneth Tobey.

Cinematography: John Alton

Art Direction: Edward Ilou

Film Editor: Alfred De Gaetano

Original Music: Leonid Raab

Written by John C. Higgins and Crane Wilbur

Produced by Bryan Foy, Robert T. Kane

Directed by Alfred L. Werker

Talk about a movie with a dynamite...

I tell you it’s rough out there on Frisco Bay, especially when you say the word ‘Frisco’ within earshot of a proud San Francisco native. This Alan Ladd racketeering tale could have been written twenty years earlier, but it has Warner Color and the early, extra-wide iteration of the new movie attraction CinemaScope.

Hell on Frisco Bay

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen Academy / 98 min. / Street Date , 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, Joanne Dru, William Demarest, Paul Stewart, Perry Lopez, Fay Wray, Nestor Paiva, Willis Bouchey, Anthony Caruso, Tina Carver, Rod(ney) Taylor, Jayne Mansfield, Mae Marsh, Tito Vuolo.

Cinematography: John F. Seitz

Film Editor: Folmar Blangsted

Stunts: Paul Baxley

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by Martin Rackin, Sydney Boehm from a book by William P. McGivern

Produced by George C. Berttholon, Alan Ladd

Directed by Frank Tuttle

Alan Ladd had always been...

Turner Classic Movies has released three Alan Ladd titles in a set titled "Alan Ladd: The 1940s Collection". Here is the official press release:

Handsome leading man Alan Ladd found success in the 1940s and ‘50s, first as the tough guy in several films noir co-starring Veronica Lake and then as the stoic hero in Westerns such as Shane (1953). Turner Classic Movies and Universal are proud to present this three-film collection that showcases Ladd’s talents in a range of genres from thriller to adventure, as well as the work of such directors as Irving Pichel and Frank Tuttle, and writers the likes of Richard Maibaum and Seton I. Miller. Lucky Jordan (1942) Directed by Frank Tuttle (who also directed Ladd’s breakthrough film This Gun for Hire the same year), Lucky Jordan stars Ladd as a racketeer who gets drafted into the Us Army and will do anything to...

'Trumbo' movie: Bryan Cranston as screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and Helen Mirren as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. 'Trumbo' movie review: Highly entertaining 'history lesson' Full disclosure: on the wall in my study hangs a poster – the iconic photograph of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, with black-horned rim glasses, handlebar mustache, a smoke dangling from the end of a dramatic cigarette holder. He's sitting – stark naked – in a tub surrounded by his particular writing apparatus. He's looking directly into the camera of the photographer, his daughter Mitzi. Dalton Trumbo's son, Christopher Trumbo, gave me the poster after my interview with him for the release of Peter Askin's 2007 documentary also titled Trumbo. That film combines archival footage, including family movies and photographs, with performances of the senior Trumbo's letters to his family during their many years of turmoil before and through the blacklist, including his time in prison. The letters are read by,...

This Gun for Hire

Written by Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett

Directed by Frank Tuttle

U.S.A, 1942

The great American actor Alan Ladd died at the unfairly young age of 50. With a series of leading roles in some timeless classics during the 1940s and 1950s he carved himself a firm place in Hollywood lore. His quality work in such films as The Blue Dahlia, Two Years Before the Mast and Shane earned him critical acclaim as well as a bevy of movie fans. He could play cool and he could play tough as nails, yet was also clearly capable of demonstrating a subtle humane side to even his most hardened characters. One of the early films of his career that helped pave his way into stardom was the 1942, Frank Tuttle directed This Gun for Hire, a multi-genre mashing of WWII, spy and noir themes.

An alarm clock wakes up...

On December 3, the TCM Vault Collection released a tantalizing box set of three film noirs, “The Glass Key,” “Phantom Lady” and “The Blue Dahlia,” all previously unavailable on Region 1 DVD. The connecting thread is crime fiction -- the first two films are based on novels by Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich, respectively, and the third is from an original screenplay by Raymond Chandler. “The Glass Key” was Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake’s second onscreen pairing, made the same year as the duo’s better-known noir “This Gun for Hire,” in 1942. Production on “The Glass Key” actually began before “This Gun for Hire” was released, showing the amount of confidence Paramount had in Ladd and Lake’s sizzling chemistry. The studio knew it had blonde, exquisitely fine-boned lightning in a bottle. In the film, which is a very good adaptation of Hammett’s novel of the same title, Ladd...

“How come you only show us clips from movies none of us ever heard of?”

She was 30, a single mom who’d admirably gone back to school for a business degree to better things for her and her family. She’d taken my film appreciation class as an elective, a break from the grind of her business classes, expecting it would be – her word – “fun.”

But, due to the aforementioned “movies none of us ever heard of,” she was not having the anticipated fun.

I explained, “Because most movies were made before you were born.”

Simple and obvious, it still didn’t satisfy her, and the unasked next question in her eyes I guessed to be, “But why do we have to see them?”

Most of my class – not all, but most – I knew felt similarly. They didn’t say it but I could tell: rolled eyes, glazed eyes, eyes...

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, with one of the sultriest musical numbers ever committed to film.

Nightclub acts are scattered throughout the seamy annals of film noir. For starters, you've got Lauren Bacall singing "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" at the casino in The Big Sleep, and Veronica Lake putting on a magic act in This Gun for Hire. Live music, cut with equal parts despair and eroticism, is just perfect for noir's postwar underworld. In Gilda, Rita Hayworth outdoes every other noir chanteuse with her unforgettable rendition of "Put the Blame on Mame." It's sexy, sassy, and bundles up the film's themes in a black satin ribbon.

By the time the nightclub performance arrives, though, we've already heard Hayworth rehearsing the song twice. She's humming along to it during her indelible introduction ("Gilda, are you decent?" / "Me?") and later, her paramour-turned-husband Johnny (Glenn Ford) catches her singing it for Uncle Pio,...

An elegant George Clooney exudes mystery and inner torment as a cold-hearted assassin in picturesque Italy

Anton Corbijn, the Dutch portrait photographer long resident in Britain, made his directorial debut three years ago with Control, an accomplished portrait, shot in black and white, of the doomed rock musician Ian Curtis who committed suicide in 1980. His second feature, The American, is another portrait of a doomed figure, handsomely photographed by the same German cameraman, Martin Ruhe, but this time in beautiful colour.

It's a poised, self-conscious film that begins with a pre-credit sequence set around a snow-covered lake in Dalarna, the Swedish province where the painted wooden horses come from, and ends beside an idyllic stream in the mountainous Abruzzo region of central Italy. The pre-credit sequence resembles a Bond movie when a lyrical walk suddenly erupts into violence as lethal hunters ambush the hero and have the tables turned on them.

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Kim Basinger

Bay•sing•er

I think it’s time again to give Kim Basinger (remember, it's Bay-singer, not Bah-sinjahr, folks) some major credit. The lady's due. She’s gone from supporting eighties female through a love-hate (but Oscar-nabbing) nineties to her current career bloom as a character actress of some depth. Ms Basinger has always quietly impressed me. Here are three reasons why.

Take One: She loooovves purple.

Basinger’s career was birthed alongside the eighties. Feisty ladies in adventurous circumstances were her trade back then. Although through either slip-ups or fate she was often eclipsed by her male co-stars. In Never Say Never Again, The Man Who Loved Women, The Natural, Fool for Love, 9½ Weeks, No Mercy, Blind Date and Nadine she played second-fiddle female to, respectively, Connery, Reynolds, Redford, Shepard, Rourke, Gere, Willis and Bridges. These regulars of male-patterned eighties flicks...

No 84 Alan Ladd 1913-64

He had a hard early life and a long apprenticeship. Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, he was four when his accountant father died and, still a child, he moved to North Hollywood, California with his mother (who would become an alcoholic and commit suicide) and stepfather, a painter and decorator.

He was a high-school athletic star, principally as a swimmer, and developed the fine physique he was often to expose on screen, including two scenes of public flogging. Living so close to the movie business, he had certain acting aspirations but was constantly told he was too short (5ft 6in) and unfashionably fair-haired for stardom.

But after leaving school in the Depression, briefly running his own burger joint (disarmingly called Tiny's Patio) and working as a studio carpenter, he spent nearly a decade freelancing in radio and taking minor movie parts. Many of the latter were without dialogue,...

Movielovers are living in a rather turbulent time. The old guard of leading men and action heroes are fading away into low key roles, retirement or unpopularity. You can't bank on Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, or Sylvester Stallone (although he's making a decided comeback) any longer. Bruce Willis is still kicking hard, but he'll soon be at that age where he's just too old to play the wisecracking cop, or the weary soldier. And who will replace him? Who will replace any of them?

Well, Hollywood doesn't know. If you've watched the industry as closely as I expect Cinematical readers do, you'll know they've been sweating over the lack of red-blooded males available to action and thrillers. Gone are the days of Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson where you could find a whole magnificent seven or dirty dozen of them if you needed. Now, Hollywood just seems to...

My obsession with all things L.A. Confidential has extended to the real life Veronica Lake. I think she may have been the epitome of the 1940s -- the hair, the sassy line delivery, the glamor. She's also the epitome of Hollywood's dark side too, as she went from great success to a penniless and tragic end.

Over the weekend, Netflix finally delivered me a copy of This Gun For Hire, which is a pretty cool noir. (Trivia nerds probably know it's the film Lynn Bracken and one of her clients are "reenacting" when Bud White shows up.) If you've never seen it, it's worth a watch for Alan Ladd's icy assassin, who makes many of our modern killers seem weak in comparison. It also features one of the quirkiest heroines ever in Ellen Graham. Graham is a spy for the U.S. government, a nightclub singer (did down-on-their-luck...