 Reports of her retirement were greatly exaggerated. 
Here’s an interesting little item we found on an auction site. It’s a copy of the Argentine film magazine Mundo Argentino with Lauren Bacall, née Betty Joan Perske on the cover. The inset text reads, “Lauren Bacall says goodbye forever to Hollywood,” and while she did disappear from films for four years, she returned in 1963 and has continued acting all the way up until 2012 so far. This cover appeared today in 1959.
 For a good time, Bacall. 
Above, a 1945 promo shot of a midriff baring Lauren Bacall looking ready to make some mischief. The photo was made for the film To Have and Have Not, from the same sessions that produced these images. Lorenz curves, by the way, describe inequality in wealth or size. We think Bacall is inequitably beautiful here.
 Sometimes a kiss is not just a kiss. 
The above promo shot was made for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s 1944 thriller To Have and Have Not, in which he played a cynical boat captain and she played a tough girl with a heart ready to be given to the right man. It was set in French Martinique, and it’s one of our favorite old movies. Certainly not in the same league as Casablanca, which is the phenomenon it was trying to recreate, yet it was faster, funnier, and far less grandiose, all of which work in its favor. Haven’t seen it? Rent it. Or better yet—in the spirit of Bogart’s rum running character Capt. Harry Morgan—pirate it. Arrr.  
 Only the good go to sleep at night. 
The French coined the term film noir, so it seems only fitting to feature a collection of French posters celebrating the genre. Above and below are fifteen examples promoting films noir from France, Britain, and the U.S., representing some of the best ever produced within the art form, as well as some less celebrated examples that we happen to love. Of those, we highly recommend seeing Le salaire de la peur, for which you see the poster above, and Ride the Pink Horse, below, which played as Et tournent les chevaux de bois in France. Just a word about those films (and feel free to skip ahead to the art, because really, who has time these days to listen to a couple of anonymous internet scribes ramble on about old movies?). 1953’s Le salaire de la peur is about a group of men stranded in an oil company town in the mountains of South America. In order to earn the wages to get out, four of them agree to drive two trucks filled with nitroglycerine over many miles of dangerous terrain. The idea is to use the chemicals to put out a raging oil well fire that is consuming company profits by the second, but of course the film is really about whether the men can even get there alive. Le salaire de la peur was critically praised when released in Europe, but in the U.S., political factions raised their ugly heads and got censors to crudely re-edit the prints so as to reduce the movie’s anti-capitalist (and by extension anti-American) subtext. The movie was later remade by Hollywood twice—once in 1958 as Hell’s Highway, and again in 1977 as Sorcerer. The original is by far the best.
1947’s Ride the Pink Horse is an obscure noir, but a quintessential one, in our opinion. If many noirs feature embittered World War II vets as their anti-heroes, Robert Montgomery’s Lucky Gagin is the bitterest of them all. He arrives in a New Mexico border town on a quest to avenge the death of a friend. The plot is thin—or perhaps stripped down would be a better description—but Robert Montgomery’s atmospheric direction makes up for that. Like a lot of mid-century films featuring ethnic characters, the most important one is played by a white actor (Wanda Hendrix, in a coating of what looks like brown shoe polish). It's racist, for sure, but within the universe of the film Lucky Gagin sees everyone around him only as obstacles or allies—i.e., equals within his own distinct worldview. So that makes up for it. Or maybe not. In any case, we think Ride the Pink Horse is worth a look. Fourteen more posters below. France, Le Salaire de la peur, Le crime était presque parfait, Dial M. for Murder, L’Etreinte du passé, Out of the Past, Le corbeau, Les filles du service secret, Et tournent les chevaux de bois, Ride the Pink Horse, Les forbans de la nuit, Night and the City, Gilda, Singapour, Singapore, Un condamné a mort s’est échappé, Nous sommes tous des assassins, À 23 pas du mystère, 23 Paces to Baker Street, Le coup de l’escalier, Key Largo, 13 Rue de Madelaine, John Huston, Andre Cayatte, Alfred Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Robert Bresson, Ava Gardner, Fred MacMurray, Van Johnson, Vera Miles, Harry Belafonte, Shelley Winters, Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Yves Montand, Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, poster art, film noir, cinema
 Dark Passage is the least thrilling of Bogie and Bacall’s three collaborations, but it’s still a worthy film noir.  
Humphrey Bogart rose to unparalleled heights as a mid-century movie star, but even he has a few films that could be considered underappreciated. 1947’s Dark Passage probably fits the bill. It’s a polarizing movie, long admired by critics and noir aficionados, but off-putting to casual cinema fans. The first hour is shot from first person perspective, which means we don’t see Bogart at all except when he happens to pass by a mirror. What we glimpse when he does is a head wrapped in bandages, for he has gone under the plastic surgeon’s knife in an effort to change his identity and elude the law. Assisting him in his desperate plan is Lauren Bacall, who dazzled with Bogie in To Have and Have Not and Key Largo. Unfortunately, the romantic sparks don’t quite fly between the real life spouses here the way they did in those collaborations but, as constructed, perhaps that was never the intention. Just the same, we recommend Dark Passage for its taut atmosphere and clever camera work. Plus, for the historically oriented, a bonus is a detailed look at post-WWII San Francisco, beautifully shot by director Delmer Daves and cinematographer Sidney Hickox. Above you see the movie’s French promo art, created for its release as Les passagers de la nuit today in 1948. France, San Francisco, Les passagers de la nuit, Dark Passsage, Delmer Daves, Sidney Hickox, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review
 Even southern girls get the blues. 
You know we like to share these pulp style covers certain publishing houses cooked up for reprints of serious pieces of literature. Today, it’s William Faulkner’s turn, and the subject is his 1931 novel Sanctuary, which Signet released in 1950 with this cover. Sanctuary was Faulkner’s fifth book and first success, but he wasn’t particularly fond of it, dismissing it as commercial claptrap written purely for financial reasons. If that was truly his intention, it seems like leaving out all the depravity and violence would have been a better way to go about it. In any case, critics did not consider the book lightweight in the least, and a central rape scene involving a corncob understandably generated quite a bit of controversy. When the book was adapted into a 1933 movie entitled The Story of Temple Drake starring Miriam Hopkins, the corncob was removed, but the film still caused a stir and helped bring about the introduction of the Hays Code—the censorship doctrine that predated the establishment of the MPAA. In 1961 Sanctuary was adapted again, and this time not only was the corncob removed, but a sizeable chunk of Faulkner’s original plot. Despite his professed distaste for commercialism, Faulkner had by then worked on dozens of movie projects. He wrote screenplays for To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, and also became a sought after script doctor, massaging projects like Mildred Pierce, The Southerner and Gunga Din. We have a collection of posters from some of his projects below. If you’ve neglected to see any of these films, we highly recommend them and, of course, his novels are well worth a read.     
New York City, Hays Code, MPAA, The Story of Temple Drake, Sanctuary, Mildred Pierce, The Southerner, Gunga Din, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, William Faulkner, Miriam Hopkins, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Joan Crawford, Lee Remick, cover art, poster art, film noir, cinema, literature
 Screen legend receives overdue honor. 
Screen icon Lauren Bacall, circa 1952. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave her an honorary Academy Award yesterday during a private ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. Other deserving honorees included B-movie legend Roger Corman, and cinematographer Gordon Willis.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1928—Earhart Crosses Atlantic Ocean
American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, riding as a passenger in a plane piloted by Wilmer Stutz and maintained by Lou Gordon. Earhart would four years later go on to complete a trans-Atlantic flight as a pilot, leaving from Newfoundland and landing in Ireland, accomplishing the feat solo without a co-pilot or mechanic. 1939—Eugen Weidmann Is Guillotined
In France, Eugen Weidmann is guillotined in the city of Versailles outside Saint-Pierre Prison for the crime of murder. He is the last person to be publicly beheaded in France, however executions by guillotine continue away from the public until September 10, 1977, when Hamida Djandoubi becomes the last person to receive the grisly punishment. 1972—Watergate Burglars Caught
In Washington, D.C., five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. The botched burglary was an attempt by members of the Republican Party to illegally wiretap the opposition. The resulting scandal ultimately leads to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and also results in the indictment and conviction of several administration officials. 1961—Rudolph Nureyev Defects from Soviet Union
Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev defects at Le Bourget airport in Paris. The western press reported that it was his love for Chilean heiress Clara Saint that triggered the event, but in reality Nuryev had been touring Europe with the Kirov Ballet and defected in order to avoid punishment for his continual refusal to abide by rules imposed upon the tour by Moscow. |
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