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George Sanders is one of the most underrated actors from Hollywood's Golden Age who gave unforgettable performances in several noteworthy classics, including Witness to Murder, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, and All About Eve. Known for his dastardly cad characters and suave baritone voice, Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia and, while working at a British advertising agency, the company's secretary and future film star, Greer Garson, suggested that he take up acting. He started performing on the stage and, in 1936, he made his feature film debut in Lloyd's of London starring Tyrone Power, making him an instant success with American audiences.

Hallmark Channel news suggests a royal twist and teases Megan Markle could be a step closer to returning to Hallmark, but is she? Meghan might be far removed from her Hallmark days, but she recently was spotted lunching with another Hallmark star.

Hallmark Channel News – Once A Part Of The Hallmark Family, Always A Part Of The Hallmark Family?

It seems that Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, may have moved on from her Hallmark days, but it looks like she still has strong ties to the Hallmark family.

Recent photos of Markle having lunch with another Hallmark star, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, suggest that she still has friends within the Hallmark community.

However, it’s unlikely that Markle will be returning to Hallmark anytime soon, although the pair was spotted at Tre Lune, an Italian restaurant in Montecito, California.

Markle gained fame for her role as Rachel Zane in the...

Hulu’s list of new releases for May 2024 is missing a certain amount of original series firepower. In the place of a blockbuster like The Handmaid’s Tale or Shōgun, however, is some content diversity.

The first of the month sees the premiere of four-episode British series Shardlake. This mystery drama takes place during the reign of Henry VIII and features none other than Thomas Cromwell (Sean Bean) investigating a murder. Other series of note this month include the Korean drama Uncle Samsik on May 15.

Movies are bit more interesting on Hulu in May. Teen comedy Prom Dates premieres on May 3. That will be followed by the 2023 Adam Drive film Ferrari on May 24. Before all that though is the real heavy hitter. You can watch Austin Butler’s acclaimed performance as The King in Elvis as early as May 1. But get to it quick before the Baz Luhrmann film departs on...

Kino Lorber has released three Barbara Stanwyck films in a boxed set collection. Here is the official announcement:

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This collection feature three classic films starring screen legend Barbara Stanwyck:

Internes Can’T Take Money (1937) – Young Dr. James Kildare, interning at a clinic, falls for his patient Janet Haley. The feeling is mutual, but Janet has a secret she will not divulge: She’s the widow of a bank robber who hid their daughter before he died and she is desperately trying to find the little girl. She will use anyone—including Dr. Kildare—to get her child back. The doctor’s association with gangster Hanlon, whose injuries Kildare secretly patched up, and Janet’s connection with gangster Innes (Stanley Ridges, Black Friday), who’s helping her find her daughter, bring it all to a rousing head filled with action, suspense and the unexpected!

Although only one of these 1950s B&w thrillers falls within a mile of a hard definition of film noir, all give us glamorous actresses in interesting roles. Claudette Colbert takes her turn at playing a nun, Merle Oberon tries a femme fatale role on for size and Hedy Lamarr does very well for herself as a man-hungry movie star. Kino gives all three excellent transfers, and one comes with an appropriately gossipy audio commentary.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema II

Thunder on the Hill, The Price of Fear, The Female Animal

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951-58 / B&w / 1:37 Academy, 1:85 widescreen / 84,79,82 min. / Street Date May 12, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95

Starring: Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Connie Gilchrist, Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate, Phillip Friend; Merle Oberon, Lex Barker, Charles Drake, Gia Scala, Warren Stevens, Phillip Pine, Konstantin Shayne, Stafford Repp; Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell,...

Dirty cops were a movie vogue in 1954, and Edmond O'Brien scores as a real dastard in this overachieving United Artists thriller. Dreamboat starlet Marla English is the reason O'Brien's detective kills for cash, and then keeps killing to stay ahead of his colleagues. And all to buy a crummy house in the suburbs -- this man needs career counseling. Shield for Murder Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1954 / B&W / 1:75 widescreen / 82 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Edmond O'Brien, Marla English, John Agar, Emile Meyer, Carolyn Jones, Claude Akins, Herbert Butterfield, Hugh Sanders, William Schallert, Robert Bray, Richard Deacon, David Hughes, Gregg Martell, Stafford Repp, Vito Scotti. Cinematography Gordon Avil Film Editor John F. Schreyer Original Music Paul Dunlap Written by Richard Alan Simmons, John C. Higgins from the novel by William P. McGivern <Produced by Aubrey Schenck, (Howard W. Koch) Directed by Edmond O'Brien, Howard W. Koch

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Here's the kind of '50s movie we love, an ambitious, modest crime picture that for its time had an edge. In the 1950s our country was as blind to the true extent of police corruption as it was to organized crime. Movies about bad cops adhered to the 'bad apple' concept: it's only crooked individuals that we need to watch out for, never the institutions around them. Thanks to films noir, crooked cops were no longer a film rarity, even though the Production Code made movies like The Asphalt Jungle insert compensatory scenes paying lip service to the status quo: an imperfect police force is better than none. United Artists in the 1950s helped star talent make the jump to independent production, with the prime success stories being Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. But the distribution company also funded proven producers capable of putting out smaller bread 'n' butter movies that could prosper if costs were kept down. Edward Small, Victor Saville, Levy-Gardner-Laven. Aubrey Schenck and Howard C. Koch produced as a team, and for 1954's Shield for Murder Koch co-directed, sharing credit with the film's star, Edmond O'Brien. The show is a smart production all the way, a modestly budgeted 'B' with 'A' ambitions. O'Brien was an industry go-getter trying to channel his considerable talent in new directions. His leading man days were fading but he was in demand for parts in major films like The Barefoot Contessa. The producers took care with their story too. Writers Richard Alan Simmons and John C. Higgins had solid crime movie credits. Author William P. McGivern wrote the novel behind Fritz Lang's The Big Heat as well as Rogue Cop and Odds Against Tomorrow. All of McGivern's stories involve crooked policemen or police corruption. Shield for Murder doesn't tiptoe around its subject matter. Dirty cop Detective Lt. Barney Nolan (O'Brien) kills a hoodlum in an alley to steal $25,000 of mob money. His precinct boss Captain Gunnarson (Emile Meyer) accepts Barney's version of events and the Asst. D.A. (William Schallert) takes the shooting as an open and shut case. Crime reporter Cabot (Herbert Butterfield) has his doubts, and lectures the squad room about the abuse of police power. Barney manages to placate mob boss Packy Reed (Hugh Sanders), but two hoods continue to shadow him. Barney's plan for the money was to buy a new house and escape the rat race with his girlfriend, nightclub cashier Patty Winters (Marla English). But a problem surfaces in the elderly deaf mute Ernst Sternmueller (David Hughes), a witness to the shooting. Barney realizes that his only way forward is to kill the old man before he can tell all to Det. Mark Brewster (John Agar), Barney's closest friend. Once again one of society's Good Guys takes a bite of the forbidden apple and tries to buck the system. Shield for Murder posits an logical but twisted course of action for a weary defender of the law who wants out. Barney long ago gave up trying to do anything about the crooks he can't touch. The fat cat Packy Reed makes the big money, and all Barney wants is his share. Barney's vision of The American Dream is just the middle-class ideal, the desirable Patty Winters and a modest tract home. He's picked it out - it sits partway up a hill in a new Los Angeles development, just finished and already furnished. Then the unexpected witness shows up and everything begins to unravel; Barney loses control one step at a time. He beats a mob thug (Claude Akins) half to death in front of witnesses. When his pal Mark Brewster figures out the truth, Barney has to use a lot of his money to arrange a getaway. More mob trouble leads to a shoot-out in a high school gym. The idea may have been for the star O'Brien to coach actors John Agar and Marla English to better performances. Agar is slightly more natural than usual, but still not very good. The gorgeous Ms. English remains sweet and inexpressive. After several unbilled bits, the woman often compared to Elizabeth Taylor was given "introducing" billing on the Shield for Murder billing block. Her best-known role would be as The She-Creature two years later, after which she dropped out to get married. Co-director O'Brien also allows Emile Meyer to go over the top in a scene or two. But the young Carolyn Jones is a standout as a blonde bargirl, more or less expanding on her small part as a human ashtray in the previous year's The Big Heat. Edmond O'Brien is occasionally a little to hyper, but he's excellent at showing stress as the trap closes around the overreaching Barney Nolan. Other United Artists budget crime pictures seem a little tight with the outdoors action -- Vice Squad, Witness to Murder, Without Warning -- but O'Brien and Koch's camera luxuriates in night shoots on the Los Angeles streets. This is one of those Blu-rays that Los Angelenos will want to freeze frame, to try to read the street signs. There is also little downtime wasted in sidebar plot detours. The gunfight in the school gym, next to an Olympic swimming pool, is an action highlight. The show has one enduring sequence. With the force closing in, Barney rushes back to the unfinished house he plans to buy, to recover the loot he's buried next to its foundation. Anybody who lived in Southern California in the '50s and '60s was aware of the massive suburban sprawl underway, a building boom that went on for decades. In 1953 the La Puente hills were so rural they barely served by roads; the movie The War of the Worlds considered it a good place to use a nuclear bomb against invading Martians. By 1975 the unending suburbs had spread from Los Angeles, almost all the way to Pomona. Barney dashes through a new housing development on terraced plots, boxy little houses separated from each other by only a few feet of dirt. There's no landscaping yet. Even in 1954 $25,000 wasn't that much money, so Barney Nolan has sold himself pretty cheaply. Two more latter-day crime pictures would end with ominous metaphors about the oblivion of The American Dream. In 1964's remake of The Killers the cash Lee Marvin kills for only buys him a patch of green lawn in a choice Hollywood Hills neighborhood. The L.A.P.D. puts Marvin out of his misery, and then closes in on another crooked detective in the aptly titled 1965 thriller The Money Trap. The final scene in that movie is priceless: his dreams smashed, crooked cop Glenn Ford sits by his designer swimming pool and waits to be arrested. Considering how well things worked out for Los Angeles police officers, Edmond O'Brien's Barney Nolan seems especially foolish. If Barney had stuck it out for a couple of years, the new deal for the L.A.P.D. would have been much better than a measly 25 grand. By 1958 he'd have his twenty years in. After a retirement beer bash he'd be out on the road pulling a shiny new boat to the Colorado River, like all the other hardworking cops and firemen enjoying their generous pensions. Policemen also had little trouble getting house loans. The joke was that an L.A.P.D. cop might go bad, but none of them could be bribed. O'Brien directed one more feature, took more TV work and settled into character parts for Jack Webb, Frank Tashlin, John Ford, John Frankenheimer and finally Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch, where he was almost unrecognizable. Howard W. Koch slowed down as a director but became a busy producer, working with Frank Sinatra for several years. He eventually co-produced Airplane! The Kl Studio Classics Blu-ray of Shield for Murder is a good-looking B&W scan, framed at a confirmed-as-correct 1:75 aspect ratio. The picture is sharp and detailed, and the sound is in fine shape. The package art duplicates the film's original no-class sell: "Dame-Hungry Killer-Cop Runs Berserk! The first scene also contains one of the more frequently noticed camera flubs in film noir -- a really big boom shadow on a nighttime alley wall. Kino's presentation comes with trailers for this movie, Hidden Fear and He Ran All the Way. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Shield for Murder Blu-ray rates: Movie: Good Video: Very Good Sound: Excellent Supplements: Trailers for Shield for Murder, Hidden Fear, He Ran All the Way Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? N0; Subtitles: None Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: June 7, 2016 (5115murd)

Visit DVD Savant's Main Column Page Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: dvdsavant@mindspring.com

Text © Copyright 2016 Glenn Erickson...

0:00 – Intro 8:45 – Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows 45:50 – Headlines: Ghostbusters Day, Daniel Craig Undecided About Next Bond Movie + Casting Rumours 59:00 – Other Stuff We Watched: The Great Outdoors, The Money Pit, Alice in Wonderland, Witness to Murder, The Wrong Man, Letter Never Sent, Neighbors 2: […]...

An exercise in dizzy disorientation, this Cornell Woolrich crazy-house noir pulls the rug out from under us at least three times. You want delirium, you got it -- the secret words for today are "Obsessive" and "Perverse." Innocent Robert Cummings is no match for sicko psychos Peter Lorre and Steve Cochran. The Chase Blu-ray Kino Classics 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Cummings, Michèle Morgan, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre, Lloyd Corrigan, Jack Holt, Don Wilson, Alexis Minotis, Nina Koschetz, Yolanda Lacca, James Westerfield, Shirley O'Hara. Cinematography Frank F. Planer Film Editor Edward Mann Original Music Michel Michelet Written by Philip Yordan from the book The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich Produced by Seymour Nebenzal Directed by Arthur D. Ripley

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

As Guy Maddin says on his (recommended) commentary, the public domain copies of this show were...

The American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation present the 17th annual Noir City fest, running April 3-19 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Rarely seen gems, restorations, new 35mm prints, films unavailable on DVD and Oscar nominees abound in this journey of 12 nights and 26 films through the side streets and back alleys of film noir. This year, some true giants of the genre get a salute, including Humphrey Bogart in Delmer Daves' pitch-black 1947 "Dark Passage" opposite Lauren Bacall, Barbara Stanwyck in Roy Rowland's 1954 "Witness to Murder" (like Hitchcock's "Rear Window" through the eyes of a woman) and John Sturges' 1953 "Jeopardy" and French-American auteur Jacques Tourneur's "Circle of Danger" and "Berlin Express." Also check out the Film Noir Foundation's 35mm restoration of "Woman on the Run," which world-premiered earlier this year at San Francisco's Noir City. Directed by Norman...

Good Neighbors: Levine’s Indie Murder Mystery a Passing Homage to Classic Comedy

Actor/writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine reunites with director/actress wife Sophia Takal for his third feature, the harmlessly charming Brooklyn set murder mystery Wild Canaries, which tends to favor a bygone tradition of slapstick, noir tinged comedy. Several have compared Levine and Takal’s spousal chemistry to the likes of Myrna Loy of William Powell in their famed Thin Man series of classic films—but such an association is a tad hyperbolic. They make a charming duo, certainly, but the ragtag charm melts away in the face of the narrative’s eventual flaccid inability to remain energetically inventive, seemingly tired of its own formula by the final frames. Witty writing and effortless performances magically keep familiarity at bay, but at the end of the day, the film’s more provocative characterizations fade into a safe peripheral zone,...

Available for the first time on Blu-ray or DVD and remastered in high definition is forgotten film noir Witness to Murder, a 1954 Barbara Stanwyck potboiler also starring George Sanders and Gary Merrill. As written by Chester Erskine (The Egg and I, 1947), the film feels like plenty of other narratives, though its frustrating contrivance of hysteria as dramatic tension places it squarely within a particular male dominated paradigm. In particular, the film feels eerily reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which actually opened a month after this Roy Rowland directed venture, doomed to be overshadowed and quickly forgotten. But, magnificently photographed by John Alton, it’s a shadowy and angular motion picture, enjoyable for its considerable melodrama as a portrait of misinformed and misogynistic gender politics.

Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) witnesses a young woman being murdered in the apartment complex adjacent to her own. She calls the police to report what she sees.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Kino Lorber has released the relatively forgotten 1954 murder thriller "Witness to Murder" on Blu-ray. The flick is film noir in the best tradition: modest budget, creative lighting and cinematography, an inspired cast and a compelling story. Barbara Stanwyck stars as Cheryl Draper, an independent, career-minded woman who has the misfortune to look out the window of her apartment late one windy evening only to observe a murder being committed across the street in another apartment. She is horrified to see an attractive young woman being strangled to death by a well-dressed, middle-aged man. She phones the police and is visited by two detectives: Lawrence Matthews (Gary Merrill) and Eddie Vincent (cigar-chomping Jesse White), who dutifully take the details and head over the apartment where the crime was committed. The murderer is Albert Richter (George Sanders), a snobby author of some repute who has had time to hide...

Oscar-nominated actor who brought sensitivity and warmth to her most famous role in Imitation of Life

From its earliest days, Hollywood, which has always lagged behind wider social advances, limited the roles of black actors to stock, wide-eyed cowards, simpletons or servants, often referred to as "uncles" and "mammies". Juanita Moore, who has died aged 99, suffered from this limitation by having to play maids throughout most of her long career. However, Moore could have echoed what Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, once said: "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

Where McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett O'Hara's lovable, sassy servant in Gone With the Wind (1939) was the apotheosis of the black maid, Moore's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Annie Johnson, housekeeper to the glamorous Broadway star Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) in Douglas Sirk...

Oscar-nominated ‘Imitation of Life’ actress Juanita Moore has died Juanita Moore, Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee for the 1959 blockbuster Imitation of Life, died on New Year’s Day 2014 at her home in Los Angeles. According to various online sources, Juanita Moore (born on October 19, 1922) was 91; her step-grandson, actor Kirk Kahn, said she was 99. (Photo: Juanita Moore in the late ’50s. See also: Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner photos at the 50th anniversary screening of Imitation of Life at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.) Juanita Moore movies The Los Angeles-born Juanita Moore began her show business career as a chorus girl at New York City’s Cotton Club. According to the IMDb, Moore was an extra/bit player in a trio of films of the ’40s, including Vincente Minnelli’s all-black musical Cabin in the Sky (1942) and Elia Kazan’s socially conscious melodrama Pinky (1949), in which Jeanne Crain plays a (very,...

A man comes out of a building in Chinatown on fire in the rain. Mac (Gary Sinise) comments on his eyebrows and eyelashes being singed. There's bruising on his his cheek but his face hasn't got the same degree of burns as his chest. Stella (Melina Kanakaredes) comments on there being "something gooey here." Mac: "gooey that's a good forensic word, gooey, I'll have to use that more." Mac notices the trace of melted plastic and finds a discarded mask. Inside the bank, the safety deposit vault was cut away from the wall. Flack: "Gotta wear a mask for a bank robbery, it's a rule." Two bank security guards fired shots and the acetylene tank caught fire. Martin Hummel (Matt Bushell) one of the guards thinks there were two, but he was trying to save his partner, Tony's life. One shot the other and Tony (Andre Ware) was Doa. Stella...

This Friday, San Francisco's Roxie Theater begins two weeks of unfiltered B-movie goodness when "I Wake Up Dreaming: The Haunted World of the B Film Noir" unleashes some of the nastiest film noir of the 40's and 50's, coming in not so long after the fog of Noir City 7 rolled over.

There's plenty of things to like about San Francisco. The view, the vibe, the history... But for a noir fan, it's a place I had come to know as and will always associate with the nooks and crannies depicted in hardboiled crime stories. Where else, I ask, would you get two stirring film noir festivals only a few months apart, but in Sam Spade's chosen city?

As the program guide itself notes, the films shown are "the doomed and forgotten, rough and ready step-children of Hollywood’s lower depths; poverty row gems that, in many ways, capture the true,...

Variety reports that MGM Pictures has hired screenwriter Ari Schlossberg for their upcoming remake of Witness to Murder. The classic 1954 thriller starred Barbara Stanwyck as Cheryl Draper, a woman who watches a murder from her bedroom window, but is unable to convince anyone that it happened. Schlossberg, who's certainly no stranger to the genre, sold his psychological thriller Hide and Seek to Fox 2000 Pictures last year.