WEEKEND WITHOUT A SUNRISE

Ray Milland takes a long vacation on the black sea.

The saying goes that you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning, and the drama The Lost Weekend demonstrates that truth. Hard to believe star Ray Milland is the same actor who would end up in b-movie purgatory, toiling in schlock like Frogs and The Thing with Two Heads. Here you see him in an Academy Award winning performance as a man for whom every drink leads to a binge, and for whom every binge leads to a blackout. He isn’t oblivious to his condition. He knows, even as he lies and steals to feed his sickness, that he’s just drifting farther and farther out onto a black sea. As a way to gain control, he plans to write a novel about his experiences, called just “The Bottle.” But in order to write about the bottle he has to be able to climb out of it. Some say this film hasn’t aged well, but we think it compares favorably to every movie about alcoholism we’ve seen, and it’s also a source of interesting controversy about whether it’s been unfairly left out of discussions about film noir. The Lost Weekend, with Ray Milland, Jane Wyman and the lovely Doris Dowling, premiered today in 1945.

The Lost Weekend, Academy Award, Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Doris Dowling, poster art, cinema, movie review, film noir

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 16

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanideâ€”not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juiceâ€”resulting in his death in late 1937.

February 15

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

February 14

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.