Clash by Night (1952)

It's hard to say, "I do," to marriage after watching this film.


Intimidation, separation, infidelity, squabbles, regret and unwanted children are the highpoints of tying the knot in director Fritz Lang's 1952 effort.

I DO . . . NOT WANT TO GET MARRIED

Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck) returns to a fishing town after a 10-year absence. Her brother, Joe (Keith Andes), wonders what happened to her grand plans of marrying a rich fella.


"Big ideas, small results," she replies.


There's a suggestion she had an affair and things with the man's family turned ugly when he died and his estate was divvied up. Mae didn't land much of a cash send-off.

"Home is where you come when you're out of places," she says.

Jerry D'Amato (Paul Douglas, Panic in the Streets (Fox Film Noir)) remembers Mae. The single skipper of a fishing boat appears to have kept a torch burning for her return. He starts to call on her and falls fast.

MAE MIGHT NOT BE A GREAT CATCH

Mae's upfront with the nice, but dim, Jerry. She warns him her kind of woman is not a great catch. Pain is sure to result if they become an item.


"Don't be so eager to make a mistake," Mae warns him in one of many sharp lines of dialogue in this 105-minute release.


Jerry doesn't take the bait and keeps fishing. They marry. All is well for the first year of marriage. Randy Earl Pfeiffer (Robert Ryan), now divorced from his burlesque dancing wife, tried to entice Mae before she married. He seduces her again -- and nabs the woman he loves.


Jerry doesn't think anything of his buddy, Earl, spending time with Mae. It's his conniving Uncle Vince (J. Carrol Naish) who finally reels in the truth for Jerry to see.


There's a suggestion early in the film that Jerry is a nice guy, but can do some damage with his fists if he wanted.


With Uncle Vince pumping him up, Jerry flips and wants blood.


The ending seems a bit of a tall tale given what's happened before. Decide for yourself.

Clash by Night marks another role for Marilyn Monroe before she hit the big time in the early 1950s.


Here, she's Peggy, Joe's girlfriend. Peggy is feisty and takes a shine to Mae's independent ways. But, she's repeatedly intimidated, or threatened with violence, if she doesn't follow Joe's wishes.


Clash by Night earns its aggressive title. There ain't a whole lot of happiness here.

RATING: 7/10

FUN FACTS: Keith Andes appeared in The Apple, an original Star Trek episode, in 1967.

Pop singer Tony Martin performs I Hear a Rhapsody. According to Internet Movie Database, Martin is still alive. He turns 100 in 2012. Happy birthday, Tony!

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

This drama delivers.


Email would make the premise of this film obsolete, so let's hear it for the storytelling merits of the United States postal system.


Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell) and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern) have a few key factors in common.


TROUBLE IN PARADISE?


They're all friends and get together regularly with their husbands to socialize at a country club.


Each has boarded a ferry to help chaperone a picnic for a whack of youngsters on the same Saturday morning.


All their husbands have more than passing interest in Addie Ross (Celeste Holm), described but never seen as a ravishing woman with a solid head on her shoulders.


Just before the ferry is about to leave, the three ladies get a letter from Addie herself. When you come back later today, she says, I will have left town with one of your husbands.


How's that for hitting an iceberg before even leaving dock?


JUMPING SHIP

As we learn through flashbacks, each woman has reason to worry it's her husband who's jumped ship.


Deborah's the farm girl who grew up in a cash-strapped family. She's finding it hard to adjust to the upper-middle class circle her husband Brad (Jeffrey Lynn) calls home. The confidence she experienced in the navy during the Second World War, serving alongside other women in the same boat, is gone now that she's rubbing shoulders with the well-to-do of this unnamed American town.


Rita writes scripts for radio shows. She's so busy with her career she forgets about the birthday of her husband, George (Kirk Douglas). But, Addie remembered. She even sent him an album of one of his favourite classical recordings. George isn't keen about the dreck Rita writes to pay the bills. Rita's a little upset at the suggestive comment Addie penned in her card to her better half. There's some tension over her salary being bigger than his.


Lora Mae spends most of her time bickering with her husband, successful businessman Porter (Paul Douglas, Panic in the Streets (Fox Film Noir)). Funny how he never found the time to move Addie's portrait from his living room. Porter is convinced Lora Mae married him for his cash, not love.


YOU'LL LAUGH, YOU'LL CRY


A Letter to Three Wives doesn't get caught up in just hand-wringing among the three women. There are plenty of laughs too.


Thelma Ritter is a delight as Sadie Dugan, maid to the Phipps and best friend of Lora Mae's mother. Her wisecracks are a hoot.


George does a slow burn as he's forced to listen to cruddy radio show after cruddy radio show when his wife invites a powerful industry type over for dinner. Hold on when said power magnet asks him for his impression of the shows he's just suffered through.


Joseph Mankiewicz won two Oscars, direction and screenplay, for A Letter to Three Wives. The 103-minute black-and-white drama was also nominated for best picture.

This, folks, is a film well-worth seeing. Highly recommended.


RATING: 9/10


FUN FACTS: Jeffrey Lynn appeared alongside James Cagney in The Roaring Twenties.

Barbara Lawrence, who appears as Lora Mae's younger sister, is still alive. Her other credits include the original Unfaithfully Yours and Oklahoma!

Wow, Carl Switzer (Alfalfa in the Our Gang shorts) has a small role in this film. Did you know he was murdered in 1959 over an argument about $50?


Celeste Holm appeared in the Oscar winner for best picture, Gentleman's Agreement

Panic in the Streets (1950)

Here's an interesting twist.

The original title of Panic in the Streets (Fox Film Noir) was Outbreak.

FOR BETTER FILM, SEE OUTBREAK

Sadly, the 1995 thriller of the same name by director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot - The Director's Cut) and stars Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman, is a more suspenseful take on the same subject, a plague that can kill.

Still, there are some interesting reasons to watch this 1950 effort from director Elia Kazan (East of Eden, On the Waterfront).

This film noir is definitely more entertaining than his 1947 release, Gentleman's Agreement, which Reel Popcorn Junkie reviewed earlier in 2011.

WELCOME TO THE MOVIES, JACK PALANCE

A big plus is some fine work, in his big screen debut, by Jack Palance (Shane). Palance's Blackie is a violent hoodlum with a permanently itchy finger on his handgun.

Blackie demands his cash back after a recent illegal immigrant to New Orleans, feeling ill, decides to leave a card game early. "I want that money," is Palance's first line. What follows, a nearly silent chase scene along railway tracks and warehouses, is another highlight of this film.

Health inspector Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) is called in after an autopsy of the now-dead card player. A couple of bullets might have felled him, but something else was well on its way to killing him. Plague.

Reed warns authorities only have 48 hours to find others who had contact with the deceased or the city, and country, risks being overwhelmed by the deadly disease.

Blackie is convinced police interest in the dead man means he brought something valuable into the country. He wants to find the supposed treasure.

Police Capt. Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) isn't so sure of Reed's prognosis. The two clash over how the investigation should be handled. That kind of tension is standard in a thriller. While Douglas gets most of the film's best wisecracks, what makes Reed's character neat to watch is the other job-related pressures he is facing.

THIS DOC HAS SOME PROBLEMS

He's overworked, underpaid and a stranger to his wife, Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes) and young son. Warren has watched colleagues leave for better-paying jobs with less stress and is starting to wonder if he should follow.

Panic in the Streets doesn't come close to living up to its name. There's a pesky reporter, Neff (Dan Ross), who gets wind of what's happening, but the Big Easy's residents don't have a clue about how close they are to getting wiped out. Neff is locked up by police for fear of inciting panic. Debate the merits of that police action while popping your next batch of popcorn.

Instead, there's just a small number of people working desperately to track down everyone who is infected with the plague.

The ailing include Raymond Fitch (Zero Mostel), a sniveling member of Blackie's posse.

Panic in the Streets features a strong cast and some interesting camera work, but fails to generate much tension about a potentially lethal incident.

RATING: 7/10

FUN FACT: Richard Widmark was nominated for a best supporting Oscar for his debut performance in Kiss of Death.