Pulp International - Out+of+the+Past

Aug 29 2022

They're not really going anywhere but they look mighty good doing it.

What's a period drama without a fake driving scene? Nearly all such sequences were shot in movie studios using two techniques—rear projection, which was standard for daytime driving, and both rear projection and lighting effects for simulating night driving. Many movie studios made production images of those scenes. For example, above you see Jane Greer and Lizabeth Scott, neither looking happy, going for a fake spin around Los Angeles in 1951's The Company She Keeps. We decided to make a collection of similar shots, so below we have more than twenty other examples (plus a couple of high quality screen grabs) with top stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Mitchum, and Raquel Welch. We've only scratched the surface of this theme, which means you can probably expect a second collection somewhere down the road. Incidentally, if you want to see Bogart at his coolest behind the wheel look here, and just because it's such a wonderful shot, look here for Elke Sommer as a passenger. Enjoy today's rides.

Humphrey Bogart tries to fake drive with Ida Lupino in his ear in 1941's High Sierra.

Dorothy Malone, Rock Hudson, and a rear projection of Long Beach, in 1956's Written on the Wind.

Ann-Margret and John Forsythe in Kitten with a Whip. We think they were parked at this point, but that's fine.

Two shots from 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice with John Garfield and Lana Turner, followed by of shot of them with soon-to-be murdered Cecil Kellaway.

Jean Hagen and Sterling Hayden in 1950's The Asphalt Jungle.

Shelley Winters, looking quite lovely here, fawns over dapper William Powell during a night drive in 1949's Take One False Step.

William Talman, James Flavin, and Adele Jergens share a tense ride in 1950's Armored Car Robbery.

William Bendix rages in 1949's The Big Steal.

Frank Sinatra drives contemplatively in Young at Heart, from 1954.

George Sanders drives Ingrid Bergman through Italy, and she returns the favor, in 1954's Viaggio in Italia.

Harold Huber, Lyle Talbot, Barbara Stanwyck and her little dog too, from 1933's Ladies They Talk About.

Virginia Huston tells Robert Mitchum his profile should be cast in bronze in 1947's Out of the Past.

Ann Sheridan hangs onto to an intense George Raft in 1940's They Drive by Night.

Peggy Cummins and John Dall suddenly realize they're wearing each other's glasses in 1950's Gun Crazy, a film that famously featured a real driving sequence, though not the one above.

John Ireland and Mercedes McCambridge in 1951's The Scarf.

James Mason drives an unconscious Henry O'Neill in 1949's The Reckless Moment. Hopefully they're headed to an emergency room.

Marcello Mastroianni driving Walter Santesso, Mary Janes, and an unknown in 1960's La dolce vita.

Tony Curtis thrills Piper Laurie with his convertible in 1954's Johnny Dark.

Janet Leigh drives distracted by worries, with no idea she should be thinking less about traffic and cops than cross-dressing psychos in 1960's Psycho.

We're not sure who the passengers are in this one (the shot is from 1960's On the Double, and deals with Danny Kaye impersonating Wilfrid Hyde-White) but the driver is Diana Dors.

Kirk Douglas scares the bejesus out of Raquel Welch in 1962's Two Weeks in Another Town. We're familiar with her reaction, which is why we're glad the Pulp Intl. girlfriends don't need to drive here in Europe.

Robert Mitchum again, this time in the passenger seat, with Jane Greer driving (and William Bendix tailing them—already seen in panel ten), in 1949's The Big Steal. The film is notable for its many real driving scenes.

James Mason keeps cool as Jack Elam threatens him as Märta Torén watches from the passenger seat in 1950's One Way Street.

And finally, to take a new perspective on the subject, here's Bogart and Lizabeth Scott in 1947's Dead Reckoning.

Femmes Fatales

Apr 19 2022

It doesn't show on my face but I'm enjoying this immensely.

Jane Greer and guns. There are quite a few photos of her armed. This one was made when she was filming Out of the Past, but it doesn't depict the iconic moment when she shot Steve Brodie. She shot him from the front door. Here she's by the fireplace, about where Brodie was when she ventilated him. So we guess RKO Radio Pictures made an entire set of Greer with a gun, complete with wardrobe changes. She looks good in all of them. See her armed and dangerous in three production photos—two from Out of the Past and one from The Big Steal—here, here, and here.

RKO Radio Pictures Out of the Past Jane Greer film noir

Femmes Fatales

Mar 11 2021

But she's about to solve it permanently.

This photo of U.S. actress Virginia Huston was made when she was filming her debut feature, 1946's Nocturne. From that auspicious beginning she went on to appear in Out of the Past, Flamingo Road, The Racket, and Sudden Fear. Her online bios are contradictory. Wikipedia notes that she broke her back in a car accident, and her career slowed afterward. That isn't true. Her accident was in 1950, and though she was convalescing for a year, most of her film roles came afterward. Meanwhile IMDB says she pretty much retied after marrying in 1952. That's probably closer to the truth, though without more sources we can't say if she stepped away from cinema by choice, or if her moment was simply over. Whatever the case, this is a cool photo.

Nocturne Out of the Past Flamingo Road Sudden Fear The Racket Virginia Huston film noir

Vintage Pulp

Oct 15 2019

No need to be nervous. To a doctor your body is nothing more than a soft, seductive, infinitely pleasurable biological wonder.

More for the doctor sleaze bin, Roy Benard Sparkia's Doctors & Sinners, from 1960 for Pyramid Books. Sparkia was prolific in this genre, but he also wrote Build My Gallows High, which was the basis of one of the great films of the 1940s, the film noir Out of the Past, which starred Robert Mitchum.

Pyramid Books Out of the Past Roy Sparkia Roy Benard Sparkia cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Apr 28 2016

Like Shakespeare wrote, what's past is prologue.

This unusual poster was made to promote the Spanish run of Retorno al pasado, a movie better known as Out of the Past. The title says it all. A man who thinks he's left his sordid past behind sees it rear its ugly head and threaten to ruin the good future he's planned for himself. Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas, this is one of the top noir thrillers, in our opinion. Certainly it's one of the most beautifully shot, thanks to director Jacques Tourneur and cinematographer Nicholas Mesuraca. Like the poster art by Macario Gomez, the film is richly textured and lushly black, which makes for a nice sense of gathering danger, especially in the pivotal fight sequence about forty minutes in. Plus it has the always compelling Mexico connection used by many excellent noirs, as well as nice location shooting around Lake Tahoe and Reno. Highly recommended, this one. After opening in the U.S. in November 1947 it had its Spanish premiere in Madrid today in 1948.

Spain Mexico Madrid Lake Tahoe Reno Retorno al pasado Out of the Past Robert Mitchum Jane Greer Kirk Douglas Rhonda Fleming Jacques Tourneur Nicholas Mesuraca Macario Gomez poster art cinema film noir movie review

Femmes Fatales

Jan 29 2016

Nothing to fear but Greer herself.

This awesome promo photo comes from Jacques Tourneur’s iconic 1947 film noir Out of the Past, in which Jane Greer plays Kathie Moffat, one of history’s greatest femmes fatales. Here she watches Robert Mitchum and Steve Brodie in a fistfight, planning all along to decide the situation with a bullet.

Out of the Past Jane Greer Robert Mitchum Steve Brodie Jacques Tourneur cinema film noir

Femmes Fatales

Oct 25 2012

She's coming from the red end of the spectrum.

Renowned redhead Rhonda Fleming is one of the few actresses who can claim Hollywood as her home town. She was born there in 1923, and is still involved in Southern California charities. Among her many notable films were Spellbound, The Spiral Staircase, and the must-see noir Out of the Past. This great shot is undated, but it's most likely from around 1955.

Hollywood Spellbound The Spiral Staircase Out of the Past Rhonda Fleming cinema

Vintage Pulp

May 29 2012

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 Latin 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 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. Thirteen more posters below.