Key Largo - 1948

Key Largo, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Lauren Bacall, 1948 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor
Director: John Huston

An intelligent, exciting, theatrical, but moody, downbeat crime drama/thriller (and melodramatic film noir) about a bullying, fugitive gangster Johnny Rocco (Robinson), who is on-the-run with fellow mobsters and his alcoholic lush moll and ex-nightclub singer, Gaye Dawn (Trevor). In a Florida Keys hotel in the off-season during a violent, tropical hurricane, the snarling Rocco waits for counterfeit money, prepares to flee to Cuba, and holds the various residents hostage: Frank McCloud (Bogart), a disillusioned, returning war-scarred veteran who is visiting the newly-widowed Nora Temple (Bacall) and her wheelchair-bound father-in-law and hotel manager James Temple (Barrymore) - the father of his friend that died under his WWII command in Italy. Adapted from Maxwell Anderson's stage play by director Huston and Richard Brooks, the plot resembles Bogart's earlier film The Petrified Forest (1936).

Bogart and Bacall would never star together again on the big screen, after having previously worked together in the classic films To Have and Have Not (1942) (which Key Largo resembled in its dark tone), The Big Sleep (1946), Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), and Dark Passage (1947). Huston also directed Bogart in, among other films, The Maltese Falcon (1942), The African Queen (1951) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

Murder My Sweet - 1944

Murder, My Sweet, Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, 1944 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Mounted


Original release titled Farewell, My Lovely - the second screen adaptation of Raymond Chandler's second novel of the same name, a 1940 hard-boiled tale that was a superb, complex, shadowy film noir of murder, corruption, blackmail, double-cross and double identity, with witty dialogue and cynical voice-over narration. The film opens in wartime Los Angeles, where tough yet vulnerable, blindfolded/bandaged gumshoe detective Philip Marlowe (played by 30s musical crooner Powell in a dramatic role switch) is grilled under a bright light by police interrogators.

In flashback, he tells a convoluted, bewildering tale. He was hired by recently-released, brutish, urgent ex-con Moose Malloy (Mazurki) to search for his missing ex-girlfriend/lover Velma Valento (Trevor) who sold him out eight years earlier. And then he was also commissioned as a bodyguard to accompany an effeminate gigolo Lindsay Marriott (Walton) (associated with underworld Jules Amthor (Kruger)) during a ransom payoff for stolen jewels. When Marriott is killed and Marlowe is blackjacked unconscious ("a black pool opened up"), he becomes the prime suspect for the murder. Millionaire's daughter Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley) reveals her interest in the case, which brings Marlowe for a visit to the Grayle mansion in Brentwood where he meets Mr. Grayle (Miles Mander) and his much younger wife Helen (Trevor again).

During his investigation, Marlowe is drugged and experiences drug-induced hallucinations and nightmares ("a crazy, coked-up dream") when pursued through a series of identical doors by a man with a giant hypodermic needle (filled with truth serum), after being roughed up by master-crook Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger). Amthor is a blackmailer, involved in setting up rich women as targets for Marriott. The owner of the jewels - mysterious, flirtatious and slinky Helen Grayle, also hires the detective to locate the stolen jade necklace (which she later reveals is not actually stolen). Marlowe navigates through a perilous world, becoming further entangled with and threatened by despicable high- and low-class criminals.

The final showdown occurs at the Grayles' beach house, where Helen is killed by her husband. [The final shoot-out revealed that mysterious, flirtatious, gold-digging double-identity Mrs. Helen Grayle - also known as Velma Valento, had set up numerous individuals over the theft of jade jewelry, and was indeed a murderous femme fatale.] Both Moose and Mr. Grayle also shoot and kill each other. (It is also revealed that Moose had murdered Amthor). A witness to all the killings, Ann Grayle is able to clear temporarily-blinded Marlowe of all charges - and accompanies him home in the back seat of a taxi - where they share a kiss.

Stagecoach - 1939

Stagecoach Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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Stagecoach (1939) is a classic Western from film auteur John Ford. This film - his first sound Western - was a return to his most-acclaimed film genre after a thirteen year absence following Fox's Three Bad Men (1926) (and The Iron Horse (1924)). In the meantime, he had produced the superb, Oscar-winning drama about Irish republicanism, RKO's The Informer (1935).

This film debuted John Ford's favorite setting - the majestic Monument Valley of the Southwest - the first of seven films he made in the famed western valley, followed by My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Searchers (1956), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

Ford's reputation was elevated considerably by this film - it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Film Editing, and won two awards for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Score (for its compilation of 17 American folk tunes of the 1880s). This Ford Western paved the way for all his other memorable Westerns, including My Darling Clementine (1946), his "Cavalry" trilogy, The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). An inferior, Technicolor remake was attempted by Gordon Douglas in the 60s, Stagecoach (1966) with Bing Crosby, Ann-Margret, Robert Cummings, Stefanie Powers, and Red Buttons.