ICE ESCAPADES

Proceed carefully—ice may occur at major plot points.


The thriller Suspense featured the unusual promo poster you see above, which we think really captures the visual feel of film noir in a way posters more typical of the genre do not. Those posters are amazing, but this one is a nice change of pace. The movie stars Olympic ice skater and sometime magazine model Belita, alongside Barry Sullivan, an incredibly prolific actor who appeared in scores of films. Sullivan plays a hustler who weasels his way up from lowly peanut vendor to fast living impresario at a wildly popular Los Angeles ice skating extravaganza. The catalyst for his ascent is his radical suggestion that Belita leap through a circle of swords. Only in old movies, right? “Hey, that circle of swords gag was a great idea! How’d you like to manage the joint!”

Belita’s ice skater is a riff on the standard film noir chanteuse, except instead of doing a few a nightclub numbers she does a few skate routines. She’s as good as advertised, too. But the success of any film romance hinges on the chemistry between the boy and girl and here it feels contrived. Both Belita and Sullivan are decent actors, but he’s a little too charisma challenged, in our view, to attract someone whose life is going as skatingly as Belita’s. But it’s in the script, so okay, she likes the schlub. What Suspense does well, though, is visuals. For instance, if you check out the film watch what director Frank Tuttle does near the end when the shadow of the aforementioned sword contraption appears outside Sullivan’s office. Beautiful work, suggesting that karma may indeed be a circle.

It occurred to us that on the whole, Suspense uses ice the same way Die Hard uses a skyscraper. The entire film is improved above the norm by the freshness of the unusual backdrop. Add expensive production values and visuals worthy of study in a film school and you have a noir whose many plusses cancel out its few minuses. We recommend it.
 
As a side note, the ice show is staged in the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, one of the most breathtaking art deco structures ever built, which was of course eventually demolished because that’s what they do in Los Angeles. Actually, a fire gutted it before a wrecking ball was brought in to finish the job, but the building had been abandoned for seventeen years, which would not have happened if anyone important in the city cared about historically significant architecture. Suspense brings the Pan-Pacific, just above, back to life, and that’s another reason to watch it. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1946.

I’m going to stand right here in your personal space and repeat myself until you say yes.

We’re supposed to do a screen kiss, but I’m totally gonna slip you some tongue.

Wow, these are razor sharp, but you’ll be fine. Unrelated question—how’s your insurance coverage?

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Parker Brothers Buys Monopoly

The board game company Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie, who had designed the game (originally called The Landlord’s Game) to demonstrate the economic ill effects of land monopolism and the use of land value tax as a remedy for them. Parker Brothers quickly turns Monopoly into the biggest selling board game in America.

1991—Gene Tierney Passes Away

American actress Gene Tierney, one of the great beauties in Hollywood history and star of the seminal film noir Laura, dies in Houston, Texas of emphysema. Tierney had begun smoking while young as a way to help lower her high voice, and was hooked on cigarettes the rest of her life.

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.

1957—Soviets Launch Dog into Space

The Soviet Union launches the first ever living creature into the cosmos when it blasts a stray dog named Laika into orbit aboard the capsule Sputnik II. Laika is fitted with various monitoring devices that provide information about the effects of launch and weightlessness on a living creature. Urban myth has it that Laika starved to death after a few days in space, but she actually died of heat stress just a few hours into the journey.

Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.
T’as triché marquise by George Maxwell, published in 1953 with art by Jacques Thibésart, also known as Nik.

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