Author: womo

1958 CHARLES BRONSON FILM, B/W GANSTER MOVIE

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Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra) is released from prison with a set of drums and a new outlook on life, and returns to his run-down neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago. A drug addict (the drug is never named, but heroin is strongly implied), Frankie became clean in prison. On the outside, he greets friends and acquaintances. Sparrow (Arnold Stang), who runs a con selling homeless dogs, clings to him like a young brother, but Schwiefka (Robert Strauss), whom Frankie used to deal for in his illegal card game, has more sinister reasons for welcoming him back, as does Louie (Darren McGavin), Machine’s former drug dealer.

Frankie returns home to his wife Zosh (Eleanor Parker), who is supposedly wheelchair-bound after a car crash some years earlier that was caused by Frankie driving drunk. Zosh is secretly fully recovered, but pretends to be unable to walk in order to keep making Frankie feel guilty so he will stay with her. Frankie comments on the whistle she wears around her neck, a device she used in Frankie’s absence to summon a neighbor, Vi (Doro Merande), when needed. With Frankie home, Zosh smothers her husband in their small tenement apartment and hinders his attempt to make something of himself. He thinks he has what it takes to play drums for a big band. While calling to make an appointment, he bumps into an old flame, Molly (Kim Novak) who works in a local strip joint as a hostess and lives in the apartment below Frankie’s. Unlike Zosh, Molly encourages his dream of becoming a drummer.

Frankie soon gets himself a tryout and asks Sparrow to get him a new suit, but the suit is a stolen one and he ends up back in a cell at a local Chicago Police Precinct. Schwiefka offers to pay the bail. Frankie refuses, but soon changes his mind when the sight of a drug addict on the edge becomes too much for him. Now, to repay the debt, he must deal cards for Schwiefka again. Louie is trying to hook him on drugs again, and with no job and Zosh to please, pressure is building from all directions.

Soon Frankie succumbs and is back on drugs and dealing marathon, all-night, card games for Schwiefka. Molly sees he is using drugs again and runs away from him. He gets a tryout as a drummer, but spends 24 hours straight dealing a poker game. Desperately needing a fix, Frankie follows Louie home, attacks him, and ransacks his house, but can’t find his drug stash. At the audition, with withdrawal coming on, Frankie can’t keep the beat and ruins his chance of landing the drumming job. When Louie goes to see Zosh to try to find Frankie, Louie discovers that Zosh has been faking her paralysis and can walk. Zosh, scared of being found out, pushes Louie over the railing of the stairwell to his death, but things backfire when Frankie is sought for Louie’s murder….

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Directed ans produced by Otto Preminger, screenplay by Walter Newman, Lewis Meltzer and Ben Hecht (uncredited), based on the 1949 novel “The Man with the Golden Arm” by Nelson Algren, starring Frank Sinatra as Frankie “Dealer” Machine, Eleanor Parker as Zosh, Kim Novak as Molly Novotny, Arnold Stang as Sparrow, Darren McGavin as “Nifty Louie” Fomorowski, Robert Strauss as Zero Schwiefka, John Conte as Drunkie John, Doro Merande as Vi, George E. Stone as Sam Markette, George Mathews as Williams, Leonid Kinskey as Dominowski, Emile Meyer as Captain Bednar, Chicago Police Department, Shorty Rogers as himself (bandleader at audition) and Shelly Manne as himself (drummer at audition)

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Source: “The Man with the Golden Arm” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 18 November 2016. Web. 24 December 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_with_the_Golden_Arm

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All My Sons is a 1948 American film drama directed by Irving Reis and based on Arthur Miller’s play of the same name. It features Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Louisa Horton and Mady Christians.

Joe Keller is sorry to hear son Chris plans to wed Ann Deever and move to Chicago, for he hoped Chris would someday take over the manufacturing business Joe built from the ground up.
Joe’s business partner used to be Ann’s father Herb, but when both men were charged with shipping defective airplane parts that resulted in wartime crashes and deaths, only Herb was convicted and sent to prison.
Another son of the Kellers is in the Army air corps, missing in action and presumed dead. Ann used to be engaged to him and her engagement to his brother upsets Kate Keller, who hasn’t yet accepted that son Larry is gone for good.

Language English
Collection opensource_media

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The Gallant Hours 1960 Drama/History -by Classical

As he retires from the U.S. Navy, Admiral William J. Halsey (James Cagney) recalls the most daunting challenge in his career: the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942. Ordered to replace a close friend as fleet admiral, Halsey faces a wily and fierce adversary in Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto, and spends the grueling months of the campaign confounding expectations of both the enemy and his own staff. Pained by the losses he knows they will endure, Halsey pushes his forces to the brink.

A semi-documentary dramatization of five weeks in the life of Vice Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey, Jr., from his assignment to command the U.S. naval operations in the South Pacific to the Allied victory at Guadalcanal.

Director: Robert Montgomery
Writers: Beirne Lay Jr., Frank D. Gilroy
Stars: James Cagney, Dennis Weaver, Ward Costello
Classical, Public Domain Movie

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This 1936 film is in black and white and is a drama based on events in the American Civil War and starts with citizens choosing loyalty to the Confederate States of America or to the Union in the first days of the crisis. Early scenes show the burning of the USS Merrimack by its Union crew to prevent it from falling into Confederate hands. However, the Merrimack, which had been burnt down to the waterline, was later rebuilt by the Confederacy, as an ironclad, and was renamed the CSS Virginia.

The film shows that, during the war, the Union built its own ironclad, the USS Monitor. When the Virginia emerged on its sortie in the Battle of Hampton Roads it inflicted major damage on the Union fleet in the harbor. Subsequent scenes show the arrival of the Monitor and its battle with the Virginia.

Scenes of the battle are dramatic and appear to have been done with actual sailing ships, not models.

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Directed by Lew Ayres, produced by Nat Levine (producer) and Herman Schlom (executive producer), written by Written by Karl Brown (writer), Olive Cooper (writer), Wallace MacDonald (story) and Bernard Schubert (writer), starring James Dunn as Lieutenant Kenneth Reynolds, Mae Clarke as Constance Jordan, David Manners as Raymond Jordan, Charlotte Henry as Julie Buchanan, Henry B. Walthall as Captain Buchanan, Fritz Leiber, Sr. as Captain John Ericsson, George Irving as Commodore Jordan, Irving Pichel as Secretary of War Sumner Gideon Welles, J.M. Kerrigan as Paddy Callahan, Frank McGlynn Sr. as Abraham Lincoln, Ben Alexander as Eggleston, Oscar Apfel as Captain Gilman, Clay Clement as Lieutenant Worden, Edward Gargan as ‘Mac’ McPherson, Russell Hicks as Senator Pillsbury, George “Gabby” Hayes as Ezra, Douglas Wood as Commodore David G. Farragut, Bodil Rosing as Mrs. Adams, Erville Alderson as Jefferson Davis, John Hyams as Bushnell
Etta McDaniel as Mammy, Warner Richmond as Bucko and Lloyd Ingraham as Timekeeper.

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Source: “Hearts in Bondage” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 28 March 2016. Web. 17 December 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_in_Bondage

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