The Postman Always Rings Twice - 1946

Lana Turner, 1952 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.

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An adaptation of James M. Cain's torrid crime melodrama - one of the best film noirs. Handsome drifter Frank Chambers (Garfield) is hired at the California roadside Twin Oaks diner/restaurant as a handyman by kindly, middle-aged proprietor Nick Smith (Kellaway) after one look at his sizzling, lustfully hot (and unhappy), platinum-blonde waitress wife Cora (Turner). The slow-burning fuse of sexual passion between Frank and Cora leads to their plot to 'accidentally' kill her husband. After the murderous couple's plot is executed following a failed first attempt, they betray each other and are undone by their own uncontrollable, calculating natures, even as Cora admits before her death in an automobile crash: "When we get home, Frank, then there'll be kisses, kisses with dreams in them. Kisses that come from life, not death."

A Place in the Sun - 1951

Place in the Sun, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, 1951 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.

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An adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy - a star-crossed melodramatic romance. Low-born, ambitious George Eastman (Clift) hitches a ride to his distant uncle's place, where he is given an assembly-line bathing-suit factory job. The poor boy is entranced and infatuated by the snobbish, beautiful, well-bred rich girl Angela Vickers (Taylor) and they fall in starry-eyed love, but he also dates and impregnates poor, lower-class co-worker Alice Tripp (Winters). On Labor Day weekend at the Vickers' lakeside home, during a rowboat ride with Alice on a lake, George contemplates and wills (if not actually commits) the murder of his fiancee when she accidentally falls in and drowns - he falls from his 'place in the sun' when convicted and executed. Academy Award Nominations: 9, including Best Picture, Best Actor--Montgomery Clift, Best Actress--Shelley Winters.

In A Lonely Place - 1950

In a Lonely Place, Gloria Grahame, in a Gown by Jean Louis, 1950 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.

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A mature, bleak and dramatic 1950 film noir from maverick director Nicholas Ray - from a complex script by Andrew Solt. World-weary, acerbic, self-destructive, hot-tempered, depression-plagued Hollywood screenwriter and laconic anti-hero Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), while planning to adapt a trashy best-selling romance novel, becomes the prime suspect in a murder case of a night-club hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart). After he invites her to his apartment to discuss the book that he hasn't read, she is found brutally murdered the next morning. His romantic relationship with a lovely neighbor/would-be starlet Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) in the housing complex grows stronger when she confirms his alibi, but ultimately is put to the test as she becomes increasingly suspicious of his disintegrating self.

The Bad and the Beautiful - 1952

The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana Turner, 1952 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.

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A scathing melodrama and dark expose of sordid backstage Hollywood, with memorable performances by both Turner and Douglas. An ambitious, cruel, driven, amoral, egotistical producer Jonathan Shields (Douglas), begins as a maker of low-budget westerns and horror films. His manipulative and ruthless victimization of others is seen, in flashback, from the viewpoints of three former associates that he betrayed, double-crossed, and caused emotional pain - a star actress and ex-lover Georgia Lorrison (Turner), award-winning screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Powell) and his faithless, southern belle wife Rosemary (Grahame), and director Fred Amiel (Sullivan). Now that they have furthered their careers, they tell their stories to film studio executive Harry Pebbel (Pidgeon), who has been asked to convince the individuals to join the despised Shields on his next project - they all disown him and hope that he will fail. In the final scene, the three listen - with a phone to their ear - when the exiled Shields calls from Europe.

A Star Is Born - 1954

Actress Judy Garland, in Scene from Film "A Star Is Born" with Actor James Mason Premium Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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A Star is Born is the superb 1954 musical, acclaimed by many as the greatest Hollywood musical ever made. Judy Garland's intense performance as the main character, probably the finest of her entire career, illuminates the film based upon Moss Hart's screenplay. It is a remake of William Wellman's original 1937 film by the same name that starred Janet Gaynor. The third version was a poorly made A Star is Born (1976) with Barbra Streisand as a pop singer named Esther Hoffman and Kris Kristofferson as John Norman Howard - a rock star.

The film's director, George Cukor, had also directed the film What Price Hollywood? (1932) that is considered the source of all three film versions. Cukor ironically commented upon Hollywood and how it only cared for its own by strategically positioning three official Hollywood ceremonies at the beginning, middle, and end of the film. Each one chronicled the downfall of a talented, but alcoholic Hollywood movie star (James Mason). [Actors who rejected the role included Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant (who accepted but then declined), Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, and Montgomery Clift.]

The emotionally-intense film also hinted at the real-life troubles and problems (five marriages) in the career of its female star - a victim of the Hollywood studio system - during the film's making. Garland's realistic performance reflected the upheavals in her own personal life that led to her death from a drug overdose - and ironically, this film's co-star James Mason delivered her funeral's eulogy in New York in 1969. Predicted to win the Best Actress Oscar, Garland was devastated by the loss to Grace Kelly in an lesser role in The Country Girl.

Red River - 1948

Red River, John Wayne, 1948 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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Red River is a 1948 Western film directed by Howard Hawks, giving a fictional account of the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. The dramatic tension stems from a growing feud over the management of the drive, between the Texas rancher who initiated it (John Wayne) and his adopted adult son (Montgomery Clift).

The film also starred Joanne Dru, Walter Brennan, Coleen Gray, Harry Carey, John Ireland, Hank Worden, Noah Beery Jr. and Harry Carey, Jr. Borden Chase wrote the script with Charles Schnee, based on Chase's story, "The Chisholm Trail."

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) is a stubborn man who wants nothing more than to start up a successful cattle ranch in Texas. Shortly after he begins his journey to Texas with his trail hand, Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan), Dunson learns that his love interest (Coleen Gray), whom he had told to stay behind with the wagon train with the understanding that he would send for her later, was killed in an Indian attack. Despite this tragedy, Dunson and Groot press on, only to chance on an orphaned boy named Matthew Garth (played as an adult by Montgomery Clift), whom Dunson effectively adopts.

With only a couple head of cattle, Dunson and the boy enter Texas by crossing the Red River and Dunson proudly proclaims all the land about them as his own. Two Mexican men appear on horseback and inform Dunson that the land already belongs to their boss. Dunson dismisses this inconvenient fact, kills one of the men, and tells the other man to inform his boss that Dunson now owns the land. Dunson names his new spread the Red River D, after his chosen cattle brand for his herd. Fatefully, he promises to add M (for Matt) to the brand, once Matt has earned it.

Ninotchka - 1939

Ninotchka, Greta Garbo, 1939 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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Ninotchka (1939) was the long-awaited, classic romantic comedy, with a clever and witty script and the magnificent presence of actress Greta Garbo in her first official American comedy (in her next-to-last film). The charming film about clashing ideologies (Soviet communism vs. capitalism) begins with Garbo portrayed at first as a humorless, cold, curt, deadpan, and seriously-austere Russian envoy (in a parody of her own stiff onscreen image), who soon melts and is transformed and softened by Parisian love (and a persuasive playboy Count) into a frivolous, romantic figure and converted Communist.

The charming, sparkling screenplay that satirizes the Communist political system with sexual humor was written by Billy Wilder (before he became a director), Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. They returned to a slightly similar theme two years later in their screenplay for Ball of Fire (1941). Other spin-offs of the Ninotchka theme include MGM's Comrade X (1940) with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr (in the Soviet Union), and The Iron Petticoat (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope (in London). The storyline also became the foundation for the Broadway (Cole Porter) stage musical Silk Stockings - that was later filmed by director Rouben Mamoulian in a 1957 film version with Cyd Charisse in Garbo's role opposite Fred Astaire.

Letter From an Unknown Woman - 1948

Letter from an Unknown Woman, Joan Fontaine, 1948 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) is the classic romantic film - a lush tearjerker par excellence - of the bittersweet theme of unrequited, lost love (it's considered a quintessential "woman's picture"). Legendary European director Max Ophuls' deeply-moving, timeless film, considered his greatest and most successful American film but a film unlike most Hollywood films. [The director's name was given an alternate American spelling, OPULS, in the credits, as in his other American films of the 40s.] It demonstrates his lyrical, gliding camera movements, long tracking shots, atmospheric melancholy and romantic dialogue, the recreated flavor of turn-of-the century Vienna, and the exquisite acting talents of its delicate blonde heroine - portrayed by 31 year-old actress Joan Fontaine.
The film's literate screenplay was written by previous Academy Award winner Howard Koch (screenwriter for Casablanca (1942)), and adapted from a 1922 short story by Stefan Zweig. Fontaine's own production company produced the film. John Houseman, Orson Welles' former partner and the uncredited co-author of Citizen Kane (1941), was the film's producer, through Rampart Productions (a company owned by William Dozier and his wife, actress Joan Fontaine).

Although the film was not a commercial success upon its release and criticized as sentimental soap-opera, it has attained well-deserved status as one of the greatest films of its kind. Its cyclically-told tale of romantic yearning and pining for love is about an imaginary romance, embodied in the doomed, delusional (and illusory) relationship of the two romantic leads: a young neighbor girl's (Fontaine) steadfast, sacrificial love for a self-absorbed, frivolous dilettante concert pianist (Jourdan). A seduction leads to an unexpected pregnancy, and then to marriage to another. Both face an inextricable impasse and experience numerous missed opportunities over a span of twenty years - and ultimately fail to attain true romance. The heart-breaking tale of their relationship is communicated through flashbacks and the night-time reading of the deathbed letter written by the dying woman - she is the wife of the man the pianist must duel at the coming dawn.

The Bride of Frankenstein - 1935

Bride of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff, 1935 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.
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The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a masterpiece of classic horror films of the 1930s, appears as a series than the original prototype of Frankenstein (1931). [There are so few sequels that are superior to their predecessors - Another example would be The Godfather, Part II (1974).] Although the film was in production, it was titled The Return of Frankenstein until that it is released. The film's title is actually a misnomer - the bride "is not the Frankenstein monster's bride, but Elizabeth (played by seventeen years Valerie Hobson), wife of Dr. Frankenstein. [Mention of the film often falls on the "The" title of the film.]

The macabre, satirical film is generally regarded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time - a spectacular, bizarre, high-camp, too, humor, slapstick and surreal film. Both films were produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. Frankenstein (the head of Universal) and directed by horror master James Whale, at a time when monster movies were diminishing. The film reunites Colin Clive (as Dr. Frankenstein) with Boris Karloff as the monster, but has introduced two new characters in the foreground: Ernest Thesiger as a necromancer who has miniaturized and detained several people in glass jars, and Elsa Lanchester the Monster Bride.

Whale provided all parodies of horror with its current and future workforce, insurmountable swansong on-the-top in the genre. The next two films in the series have been second sequel to Universal's original 1931 film - Director Rowland V. Lee 's Son of Frankenstein (1939), with the third and final appearance as the Karloff monster in a feature film. It was followed by the all-star House of Frankenstein (1944), with Boris Karloff in the role of evil scientist Dr. Niemann.