Star Pick with Kurt Angle

Comedic war-tinged movies were all the rage in Hollywood during World War II... a way to ease the tension while keeping morale up. Think Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), Abbott and Costello’s quasi trilogy of Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep `Em Flying (all of which were released in 1941), Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), as well as today’s feature, the Sidney Lanfield directed, Bob Hope starring My Favorite Blonde (also 1942). A wartime crime caper woven within a Bob Hope vehicle, Karen Bentley (Madeleine Carroll – The 39 Steps), is a British secret agent who is given the unenviable task of delivering a cipher after her partner is murdered by a ruthless group of German spies led by Madame Stephanie Runick (Gale Sondergaard – who was also in The Cat and the Canary, Never Say Die, and Road to Rio with Bob Hope).

If you’ve ever seen anything from the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, you’ll know that it is rather rare to find anyone who will take up the screen as much as good old funny man Lou... that is, unless he’s paired with comedienne Martha Raye – there’s a reason she’s known as “The Big Mouth”. In Keep `Em Flying (1941), they would share the silver screen for the first and only time... but Lou had his work cut out for him, as she plays twins. The team’s fourth starring movie released in just ten months (and the third military movie to keep spirits high during World War II), all four were manned by Arthur Lubin (their next film, Ride `Em Cowboy would be his last with the duo), a steady hand that helped keep the boys in line.

A Pre-Code romantic crime drama from Columbia Pictures, 1932's Virtue, directed by Edward Buzzell, got off to a bit of a bumpy start... for when star Carole Lombard (on loan from Paramount) met studio president Harry Cohn (known to be blunt, opinionated, and rather colourful with his language), he told her that her hair was too white – making her look like ‘a whore’. Lombard, no shrinking violet, promptly responded with: “if anyone would know a whore it would be you”. Though the two would soon earn each other’s respect (something that would last for the rest of their lives), this really is a perfect story that exemplifies the edgy themes and style found in these Pre-Code movies. Opening with a black screen that hides the visuals of a criminal sentence, a Judge rather kindly orders several prostitutes to vacate the city, but if they return, they shall be punished to the full extent of the law.

With working titles such as Woman Confidential, Pleasure Girl, and The Blonde in 402, each should give you a decent idea about what 1959's Vice Raid is all about. A B-movie with some bite, director Edward L. Cahn brings scandal, racketeering, and corruption to the forefront of this late era film noir crime feature. Meet Sgt. Whitey Brandon (Richard Coogan), an officer that is akin to a dog on a bone. Desperate to get to the root of a massive prostitution ring run by best dressed mobster Vince Malone (Brad Dexter), he and partner Ben Dunton (Joseph Sullivan) seem to constantly get ohsoclose, yet so very far from getting a true lead.

A triumvirate of friends – bosom buddies, longtime pals... and hardcore criminals – though we all know the idiom ‘as thick as thieves’, that is not always the case, for especially in film noir, friend can quickly become foe, and femme can often become fatale. Case in point – Hell’s Half Acre (1954), directed by John H. Auer. Meet Chet Chester (Wendell Corey – Rear Window), supposedly dead at Pearl Harbor, the criminal used the event to change his name (he was originally Randy Williams) and make it rich in the racketeering underworld in Hawaii (with his two buddies). Now the owner of a swank nightclub and transformed into an amateur songwriter, his past soon comes knocking when he is confronted by sketchy eyed business partner Slim Novak (Robert Costa), who is looking for another payout... and he’s not afraid to shoot for it. The problem is, Chet’s protectively dangerous dame, Sally Lee (Nancy Gates), has a just as itchy trigger finger, offing his former buddy quite quickly.

Almost as if designed to be a scripted crime version of a PSA for the greatness of armoured trucks, Guns Girls and Gangsters (1959), directed by Edward L. Cahn, is a late era film noir that still has some bite. Voice-over narrated by the above quoted Chuck Wheeler (Gerald Mohr), he’s the hardened criminal with the plan. With a dead-eye shot that can blow out a moving tire from fifty yards and a mug to match said blown out rubber, he plans on knocking off an armoured truck carrying two million dollars.