We’re so thrilled to see you again. Even this guy is filled with exuberance can’t you tell!
It’s now three days since we’ve all got caught up in the ballyhoo, gimmickry, thrills and chills of the wonderful man that is William Castle! Today- I’m pleased (as Ruth at the house on haunted hill would say) as ‘Scotch and…’ to offer you these fabulous bloggers for your consideration…
William Castle had success with When Strangers Marry ’44, with (Kim Hunter and Robert Mitchum) and was well regarded for the work he did for RKO with his brilliantly offbeat The Whistler series.
With Johnny Stool Pigeon,Castle directs this uncluttered and obscure little film noir, pairing Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea who made Larceny a year earlier and would then do another picture together, Winchester ’73 in 1950.
Dan Duryea and Shelley Winters in Winchester 73 photo courtesy of all things Duryea @ http://danduryeacentral.blogspot.com/Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea in William Castle’s Johnny Stool Pigeon 1949 promo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central blog spot
It’s an entertaining programmer lensed with a semi-documentary style utilizing the usual noir voice-over to aid in the storytelling as Howard Duff’s character narrates the action as he goes undercover as Mike Doyle.
Scripted by Robert L. Richards (Act of Violence 1948) is based on a story by Henry Jordan. Using stock music by an uncredited Miklós Rózsa.
With cinematography by Maury Gertsman (Blond Alibi ’46, The Brute Man ’46, Ma and Pa Kettle ’49, The Glass Web ’53, The Creature Walks Among Us ’56). The moody visuals are courtesy of filming on location in San Francisco and Tucson. The old-style pier scenes with the opening shoot-out in the warehouse to the customs check with rows of cars at the Mexican border in Tucson give the picture the comfortable feel of added realism of 1949.
beautiful exterior shots of the Tucson sky.
A young sailor gets off a ship carrying a sack. He’s meeting up with a hood named Carter. They’re trafficking heroine from the Orient.Federal Agents Morton and Harrison are in pursuit.
“Get your hands up and stay where you are.”
The young man is shot by his accomplice. Agent Morton looks at his wallet to id him.Morton (Howard Duff) goes on to narrate from here-“Someone in Shanghai told him a way to make an easy buck and he believed him. All he needed was luck. And so one night on a Shanghai dock they slipped something into his hand that looked like an ordinary can of tobacco. Only it wasn’t and John Whalen wasn’t lucky.”it certainly wasn’t an ordinary can of tobacco
With a fantastic cast as follows-Â Shelley Winters, Howard Duff, Dan Duryea who made 3 other noir classics that year in 1949 (Manhandled, Criss Cross, & Too Late for Tears), and co-stars Tony Curtis, John McIntire, Barry Kelley, and Leif Erickson.
photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot.
Duryea is marvelous as always, playing the quintessential sneering oily voiced cynic who’s a sympathetic slick, and snickering ‘bad guy’ that you just have to like.
Dan Duryea as Johnny Evans photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot.photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot
Howard Duff plays it straight as George Morton a federal narcotics agent who goes undercover to infiltrate a syndicate of criminal heroin smugglers. He enlists the help of childhood pal now convict, Johnny Evans (Dan Duryea) a hoodlum he’s sent to Alcatraz for life. Now getting him sprung so Johnny can help him sneak inside the big drug operation and bust it wide open. Naturally, Johnny hates cops but his wife has just died from an overdose which Morton uses to convince Johnny to help him catch these dangerous drug runners.
Of course, there’s conflict between these two men, as Morton’s on a mission and Johnny’s vowed revenge. Johnny Evans helps Morton get a new identity as they infiltrate the powerful gang of drug dealers.
photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot
Morton now using the name of Mike Doyle, Johnny go to Vancouver where McCandles the drug lord uses his floozie blonde Terry to keep an eye on the pair. Like any good gritty and sexy charged thriller Johnny Evans falls for Terry who only only seems to have eyes for Morton. Ah, the eternal triangle lives on as they travel to Tuscon where the dangerous drug deal is about to go down at the Mexican border crossing.
Gangly but wily rancher Nick Avery (John McIntire) doesn’t trust these two from the get-go. The team must be loyal to each other if they want to remain above suspicion. It’s great grist for the noir narrative mill as we must wait and see whether Johnny will sell Morton out to this gang of thugs.
Johnny Stool Pigeon also features a first-time role for a young Tony Curtis who plays a mute pretty boy hired killer who can’t seem to place Morton/Mike Doyle’s face but it’s lurking in his memory from the time they chased Carter and Joey spots them in the hallway. He’d just killed Carter, having been sent there to kill their San Francisco connection so he wouldn’t squeal.
Uncredited bit player Tony Curtis’ only spent a few seconds on screen doing the rumba with Yvonne DeCarlo in Robert Siodmak’sCriss Cross ’49, That little spark of sexy flare made Universal realize that they had a star on their hands.
doing the rumba with Yvonne DeCarlo in Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross ’49.
Gang moll blonde Terry is played by Universal’s new voluptuous Shelley Winters. Who begins her long career starting out as a whiny, trashy yet outre charismatic sex pot.
I’ve got a special feature waiting at the Last Drive In’s snack bar all about Shelley Winters and her impressive contribution to film.
Duryea’s character keeps us guessing as to whether he’s going to betray Morton and turn into a ‘stool pigeon’. It’s a great little match-up of the likable Duff and Duryea as they play the eternal unwilling partners in conflict as they journey from San Francisco to Vancouver and then to a luxury ranch in Tucson run by the slimy Nick Avery, as amiable as a snake in the grass.
the ruthless head of the pick pocket ringCould this be Martin Milner as Benjamen Rush a fake ghost?13-ghosts Margret Hamilton she just looks mean all the time…a naughty up to mischief kind of ghost in The Spirit is WillingKitchen ghosts and chef ghost in 13 GhostsThe Parmiter Bug ’75 they are excellent spellersMrs. Slydes House on Haunted HillSkeleton or Annabelle you decide!Bad clown, bad bad clown Emmett Kelly in The Fat Man 1950Hayden Rorke just looks ominous in The Night WalkerJean Arless has a serious identity crisis in Homicidal 1961Murderous Steve Marak (John Ireland) in I Saw What You Did ’65House of Evil- episode of Circle of Fear television series. Melvyn Douglas as the bad grandpa and the evil muffin peopleJoan Crawford wielding an axe in Strait- JacketGuy Rolfe as Mr. Sardonicus 1961oscar homolka Sardonicus’ leech loving sadistRuth Gordon as good neighbor Minnie CastavetVincent Price’s neck tie- The Tingler
THE VICTIMS
Audrey Dalton as Mr Sardonicus’ wife/victimThe eternally screaming Nora… oh shut it already will ya…so she glidesDan Duryea as small time hood sent up for life Johnny ‘Stool Pigeon’ EvansEdward Stillwell (Paul E. Burns)Mysterious Intruder ’46
But you are Helga You are in that chairHelga- you just couldn’t stop tapping that damn door knob- in HomicidalJanette Scott and Tom Poston at the mercy of the Femm Family in The Old Dark HouseJill Townsend, Barry Gordon and Sid Caesar in The Spirit is Willing ’67 menaced by merciless ghostsJoan Crawford is too demanding of John Ireland in I Saw What You DidKim Hunter When Strangers Marry 1944Ellen Corby as Poor Miss Kushins – her little lamb is missing
Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor in The Night WalkerVincent Price experiments with fear and finds it himself in The TinglerScott Brady is framed ex-con Tony Reagen in Undertow ’49Mia Farrow is Rosemary looking at a face only a mother could lovethe guy in the chicken coup is gonna get it… wonder if he’s a leg or breast man?
The projectionist is feeling all Tingly….
Nora, will you just shut up already….you’re hysterical
IT’S DAY ONE OF THE WILLIAM CASTLE BLOGATHON– I FEEL SOMETHING EERIE AND YET PLEASANT CRAWLING UP MY SPINE! I THINK IT’S EXCITEMENTSO SCREAM, SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!! HAPPY 54TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE TINGLER
Here at The Last Drive In -We’re kicking off the celebration with some very spine tingling, toe tapping tales in celebration of the great William Castle.
Aurora over at Once upon a screen… is hiding under the sheets as she talks about The Night Walker (1964) starring Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor and Lloyd Bochner.
So don’t be afraid my fearless friends- head over to the dungeon and see Terri’s cheeky tribute to the July 29, 1959 54th anniversary nod to our little pal… The Tingler plus…her fun with gifs!-you won’t be able to take your eyes off ’em
Terri atGoregirl’s Dungeonwill be hosting folks at her lair with bars on the windows and vats of boiling acid; so go there and be thrilled to your bones!
Furious Cinema, Lindsey at The Motion Pictures, Forgotten Films, Barry at Cinematic Catharsis
And me at The Last Drive In, showing some love to my favorite Castle fun house fright ride- House on Haunted Hill (1959). Good old Mrs Slydes still scares the hell out of my cat… okay maybe me…. when she glides through the dark wine cellar.
Disembodied screams, rattling chains, and ghoulish groans amidst creaking doors- all a delicious mixture of frightful sounds that emanate from a jet-black screen.
Suddenly Watson Pritchard’s floating head narrates the evening’s spooky tale…
“The ghosts are moving tonight, restless… hungry. May I introduce myself? I’m Watson Pritchard. In just a moment I’ll show you the only really haunted house in the world. Since it was built a century ago, seven people including my brother have been murdered in it, since then, I own the house. I’ve only spent one night there and when they found me in the morning, I… I was almost dead.” -Watson Pritchard
The marvelously dashing face of Vincent Price or for the film’s purposes, Frederick Loren’s head sporting a plucky mustache and highbrow tone introduces himself in front of the imposing Modern-Ancient structure.
“I’m Frederick Loren and I’ve rented the house on haunted hill tonight so my wife can give a party. A haunted house party"¦ She’s so amusing. There’ll be food and drink and ghosts and perhaps even a few murders. You’re all invited. If any of you will spend the next twelve hours in this house, I’ll give you each $10,000. Or your next of kin in case you don’t survive. Ah, but here come our other guests…”“It was my wife’s idea to have our guests come in funeral cars… She’s so amusing. Her sense of humor is shall we say, original. I dreamt up the hearse. It’s empty now but after a night in the house on haunted hill"¦ who knows.”“Lance Schroeder a test pilot, no doubt a brave man but don’t you think you can be much braver if you’re paid for it?”“Ruth Bridges the newspaper columnist. She says the reason for her coming to the party is to write a feature article on ghosts. She’s also desperate for money. Gambling.”“Watson Pritchard a man living in mortal fear of a house and yet he’s risking his life to spend another night here"¦ I wonder why? He says for money.”“Dr. David Trent a psychiatrist. He claims that my ghost will help his work on hysteria. But don’t you see a little touch of greed there around the mouth and eyes?”“This is Nora Manning- I picked her from the thousands of people who work for me because she needed the 10,000 more than most. Supports her whole family… Isn’t she pretty?”“The parties’ starting now and you have until midnight to find the house on haunted hill.”
Von Dexter’s music, a mixture of solemn strings, and a sustained and queasy Hammond organ & Theremin greet us with an eerie funeral dirge while the shiny black gimmicky funeral cars pull up in front of the quite sinister post-modern structure.
And this is just the opening fanfare of William Castle’sclassic House on Haunted Hill!
White’s story is quirky and wonderfully macabre as it works at a jolting pace delivering some of the most memorable moments of offbeat suspense in this classic B&W B-Horror morsel from the 50s!
The success of the film inspired Alfred Hitchcock to go out and make his own low-budget horror picture- Psycho 1960.
Much of the style and atmosphere can be attributed to the unorthodox detail by art director Dave Milton and set designer Morris Hoffman. The exterior of the house is actually The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, built in 1924, and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
There’s a pervasive sense of dread in House on Haunted Hill, that makes the house itself a ‘spook.’
Whether the house is haunted or not, its forbidding presence tells us that it just doesn’t matter. The history of the house itself, its violent past is enough to give one chills. While not in the classic sense like that of RobertWise’s diseased and imposing Hill House, William Castle does a fabulous job of inventing a parameter to tell a very cheeky and pleasurable little scare story. As David J Skal puts it succinctly “The real, if unintentional spook in House on Haunted Hill is postwar affluence.”
The narrative is fueled by the creepy atmosphere of the house itself. Not using a claustrophobic Old Dark House trope but rather a modern Gothic construction that swallows you up with odd motifs and a sense of malignancy within the fortress walls. The starkness of the wine cellar and it’s empty minuscule dark grey rooms with sliding panels is almost more creepy than black shadowy corners with cobwebs and clutter. Director of Photography Carl E Guthrie  (Caged 1950) offers some stunning and odd perspective camera angles and low lighting which aid in the disjointed feeling of the sinister house’s magnetism.
The constant explorations into the viscera of the house by the guests is almost as titillating as the criminal set-up and conspiracy that is afoot propelled by Von Dexter’s tantalizingly eerie musical score with deep piano notes and eerie wispy soprano glossolalia.
House on Haunted Hill works wonderfully, partly due to the presence of the urbane master of chills and thrills, the great Vincent Price who plays millionaire playboy Frederick Loren. Vincent Price was a versatile actor who should not be pigeonholed as merely a titan of terror, given his too numerous layered performances in great films like Otto Preminger’sLaura ’44, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’sDragonwyck ’46, etc. Vincent Price did however make his mark on the horror genre with House on Haunted Hill. The New York Herald-Tribune praised Price’s performance as having “waggish style and bon-vivant skepticism.”
As David J Skal puts it in his, The Monster Show {Vincent Price} “Could bring an arch elegance to the most insipid goings-on…“
The omnipresent Elisha Cook Jr. is superb as Watson Pritchard, the neurotic sot who is riddled with fear, spouting anecdotes about the house’s grisly history.
I adore Elisha Cook, from his cameo in Rosemary’s Baby, his performance as George Peatty in Kubrick’s masterpiece The Killing ’56 to his very uniquely intense role as Cliff the sexually jazzed up drummer in Phantom Lady ’44.
Elisha Cook Jr as the doomed George Peatty in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing ’56.
The strikingly beautiful Carol Ohmart plays Loren’s treacherously seductive wife Annabelle who is sick of her husband’s irrational jealousy. Has she already tried to poison him once but failed? The story alludes to as much. Annabelle wouldn’t be happy with a million-dollar divorce settlement, she wants ALL her husband’s money! Annabelle is Loren’s fourth wife, the first wife simply disappeared.
Hope to see you there for all the thrills and chills and creepy haunted houses up on a hill…There’s willing spirits, crank calling teenage girls, axe murderesses with crazed eyebrows, whistlers and crime doctors, old dark houses, frightened girls, a slew of restless ghosts, homicidal gender benders, spine tingling lobster-esque fiends, mysterious intruders, macabre and sardonic night walkers, stool pigeons and gunslingers, small guys with big hearts, devilish babies, fire breathing beetles, slaves of babylon… and so much more!
In Johnny Stool Pigeon- Dan Duryea plays a sneering tough guy with a gun and Howard Duff looking all dismayed… and Shelley Winters looking all pouty and cheap. Something you can always count on with these three to do- and what a hoot to watch thanks to William Castle!
Dan Duryea courtesy of http://danduryeacentral.blogspot.com/Howard Duff Shelley Winters
I’ll be covering Johnny Stool Pigeon on July 31st!!! And there are so many incredible bloggers lined up to fill your week with all the William Castle chills and thrills you could ever imagine!
Dan Duryea, Howard Duff and Shelley Winters in William Castle’s noir crime thriller Johnny Stool Pigeon
In Edward Dmytryk’sWalk on the Wild SideBarbara Stanwyck is no ordinary ‘Jo’
Stanwyck was the epitome of independence and determination. She had a streak of non-conformity, toughness, and resilience.
Stanwyck was born Ruby Stevens in Brooklyn, July 16th 1907. A New Yorker like me and a fellow Cancerian. Her mother died and her father disappeared when she was 4, leaving her and her brother in the care of her older sister Mildred and foster homes where she’d often run away. At age 9 Ruby toured with her dancer sister, a John Cort Showgirl practicing the routines back stage. Watching her idol Pearl White on the big screen inspired her to go into showbiz. She quitt school at age 14, followed her sister’s lead and became a Ziegfeld Follies girl.
Ziegfeld Girl 1924 Barbara Stanwyck.
In 1929 Stanwyck had the lead in the road company production of the Broadway hit ‘Burlesque’ which was a hit in theater. She shared the stage with Mary Tomlinson, a clergyman’s daughter who most likely ran away from home because she was a lesbian. Mary changed her name to Marjorie Main and become the quick talkin’ ‘Ma’ in the raucous Ma and Pa Kettle series from ’49-’57.
Marjorie Main as the unflappable Ma Kettle.
One of her good friends during those years was pianist Oscar Levant who said Stanwyck was “wary of sophisticates and phonies.”
Ruby became Barbara Stanwyck at age 19 while she had the lead in ‘The Noose’ on Broadway. At 21 she was introduce by Levant to Frank Fay star of Vaudeville and ten years older than she, a closet homosexual, alcoholic and abusive husband. They married and moved to Hollywood in 1929 when Stanwyck was on her way to becoming a star of the silver screen. They used her money and bought a mansion in Brentwood. That’s how she and Joan Crawford (married to Franchot Tone at the time) became neighbors and close friends.
At first Stanwyck starred in a few B movies but began getting attention for her roles in Ladies of Leisure ‘30, Illicit ’31, Night Nurse ’31, and Miracle Woman ’31.
Stanwyck in Illicit 1931.
While working with Frank Capra on Ladies of Leisure he taught her that much of acting was conveyed with the eyes and that unless the audience was drawn in, the dialogue didn’t matter. This was her breakthrough movie. Edward Bernds who worked with Capra said “That first take with Stanwyck was sacred.”
Stanwyck’s first Academy Award nomination was for the downtrodden mother Stella Dallas ’37 where her old friend Marjorie Main played her mother-in-law.
Three nominations followed for Ball of Fire ’42 with Gary Cooper,Double Indemnity ’44, and Sorry Wrong Number ’48 with Burt Lancaster.Stanwyck was now on her second marriage to another gay man, the handsome Robert Taylor. Their ’39 marriage was arranged by the studio. The couple had separate bedrooms.
Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor on the cover of Movie Life
Some assert that Stanwyck had a lifelong relationship with her publicist Helen Ferguson. It’s not for me to wager yes or no nor to be concerned with her private life one way or the other. If she wanted us to know it was her choice to share it.
In ’35 she played the rugged farm girl living in a man’s world– Annie Oakley, a masculine woman who was great with a gun.
She did a slew of romantic comedies with charismatic co-stars. Twice with Henry Fonda in the screwball The Mad Miss Manton ’38, and Preston Sturges‘ The Lady Eve ’41. Remember The Night ’40 opposite Fred MacMurray was her first film with costume designer Edith Head.
Some of my favorite films of her’s were: playing opposite co-star William Holden in Rouben Mamoulian’sGolden Boy ’39. Then Meet John Doe 1941, Lady of Burlesque, and the immortal femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in 1944 Double Indemnity, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers ’46, The Two Mrs. Carrolls ’47, Cry Wolf ’47, B. F.’s Daughter ’48, Sorry, Wrong Number ’48, in 1950 The File on Thelma Jordan, No Man of Her Own & The Furies. Fritz Lang’s tumultuous Mae Doyle opposite Robert Ryan in Clash By Night ’52, Witness to Murder ’56, There’s Always Tomorrow ’56, Crime of Passion ’57 & Forty Guns ’57.
Phyllis Dietrichson is brought to life by Barbara Stanwyck in the noir staple Double Indemnity ’44.Stanwyck and MacMurray Double Indemnity ’44.Stanwyck and Wendell Corey in The File on Thelma Jordan 1950.
Clifton Webb who co-starred in Titanic 53 called her his “Favorite Hollywood Lesbian.” It’s pretty significant that Barbara had finally played her one and only screen lesbian in Walk on the Wild Side ’62. Barbara Stanwyck’s sexual orientation has been called ‘the best kept secret in the movies’ by Axel Madsen who wrote the very engaging The Sewing Circle. It’s a hell of a read!
Three years later shecreated a new image for herself as the gutsy matriarch Victoria Barkley in the television western The Big Valley. Stanwyck loved her character ‘an old broad who combines elegance with guts.’Â
Stanwyck as classy & rugged frontier woman Victoria Barkley in 60s television show The Big Valley 1968.
Walk on the Wild Side was Barbara Stanwyck’s return to the big screen since playing Cattle Queen Jessica Drummond in Sam Fuller’s sexually charged western Forty Guns 1957 which had this fantastic line, `Can I touch it?’asks Jessica referring to Griff Bonnell’s (Barry Sullivan) gun. Griff tells her, ‘It might go off in your face’Â Stanwyck was in love with the Western genre.
in 1962 the film sets this lurid lesbian melodrama and peek at the underbelly of bordello life, down in the midst of the underworld revisiting the archetypes of gays being part of the illicit subculture of society. Revisiting the ‘sexual ghetto’ in quite the same way the briefly liberated films of the early Thirties depicted them. As Vito Russo says in The Celluloid Closet,“The movies simply reflected what little they could identify of a hidden world and, in both pre-Code and post-Code times saw Homosexuals solely in sexual terms because that what had always been sold.”
For over thirty years the subject had not been talked about, so when the ban was lifted, filmmakers picked up where they had left off. The film was able to represent the whore house openly as just that, a house of prostitution.
Walk on the Wild Side is the story of a New Orleans brothel and the seductive melodrama surrounding an obsessed drifter in search of his lost love, the lugubrious courtesan who is ensnared in a tangled web of vice, decadence, and the lesbian madame who desires to possess her.
The bordello is stocked with liquor, a bartender who never quits pouring, and a full jazz ensemble who plays fabulous bluesy melodies that cater to their clients while the employees all seem to suffer from a collective languorous state of mind.
Stanwyck’s Jo Courtney’s villainous nature accepts her own lesbianism. Instead of killing herself like Shirley MacLaine’s Martha in The Children’s Hour ’61, Jo decides to declare her power by opening up a brothel and selling sexuality on her own terms.
Jo lusts after and loves her object of desire Hallie, played by model-actress Capucine. But the love that dares not speak its name finds itself disrupted once smooth-talking Texas farmer Dove Linkhorn (Laurence Harvey) comes looking for Hallie. Three years prior Hallie and Dove swam and kissed each other and danced themselves silly til Dove was hopelessly hooked on the lovely divinity that he refers to as his ‘religion.’ Dove had to wait for his ailing father to die before he could come and claim his love.
Jo bitterly resents the intrusion of Dove and feels threatened by this young buck’s presence. The camera frames his coming between Jo and Hallie.
The film was not the huge success they thought it would be despite the adult themes and stellar cast. Probably because of its screenplay which doesn’t allow Algren’s novel to freely express its most provocative and sociological themes. Nelson Algren’s book focused on the seedy underbelly of New Orleans during the Depression Era 30s. Screenwriters, Fante, Morris, and Hecht while synthesizing the essence of the story, their observations gloss over the grittier descriptiveness and atmosphere of Algren’s murky brothels filled with even more vile and violent pimps. A world that showcased fetishistic patrons and sullen whores who wade around in the muck hoping for a better life. While the film has a way of self-moralizing the plot to death at times, Algren’s novel did not show contempt for his prostitutes. It had a real strain of class-conscious angst and didn’t sermonize about the unpalatable people who lived on the fringe of society but rather focused on those in power who exploited them. In some ways the film hones in on the story making it a more intimate venture into melodrama.