#frank lovejoy

[esqueletosgays]

HOUSE OF WAX (1953)

Director: Andre De Toth Cinematography: Bert Glennon & Peverell Marley

[hannahwatcheshorror]

HOUSE OF WAX (1953)

This classic horror has more of a cohesive story that is incredibly strong from start to finish than its 2005 remake of the same name. A very captivating story with really rather stunning wax sculptures (again, especially compared to the 2005 remake by the same name). The acting is lovely, the music is grand, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by the twist (I gasped out loud, alone). Truly a fun and compelling watch!

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

The wax figures in this movie are top notch, I mean, hotdog! I’m looking at these and I’m not sitting here thinking that the prop guys just coated a mannequin in wax, they actually did the damn thing and made ART. I feel like I can usually tell in horror movies when they use a body double instead of just the actor pretending to be dead but these wax figures pretending to be the dead bodies pretending to be wax sculptures… I’m getting ahead of myself, we aren’t there yet. Right now, they are just wax sculptures. Or are they? Yes they are. (For now.)

We find out our resident artist Jarrod von Mustache is not very well liked by his financier (which, if you don’t like art, don’t fund art), so even after Jarrod and his Mustache show how passionate they are about the sculptures, moneybags burns down the studio and all the wax folk. My heart ACHED when everything was burning (That and I will never understand risking someone's life for money). When Jarrod said he would rather die than say goodbye to his art (or his mustache) he meant it, or at least that someone would die, because big boss took a trip down an elevator shaft.

Suddenly a man with a suspiciously burn-scarred face is running around murdering folks (and these folks just happen to disappear from the morgue, but who cares, right?) but it’s not Jarrod because he still has his mustache and is crippled now. Mystery! Sue is our brunette babe who Jarrod sees a muse in (yikes) so thus begins the hunt. Sue spots the murderer and deftly avoids him twice! Even realizes that her friend with the annoying laugh is in the House of Wax as Joan of Arc. Sue is smart! She also knocks off Jarrod's incredibly realistic mask of his own face to reveal the burn scars! (Phantom of the Opera vibes like crazy but not as romantic.)

It was Jarrod all along! He had help from his little art henchmen, but he had a super realistic wax mask on. What a clever twist. I gasped so loudly when she shattered his mask off. I really had no idea it was him after they had shown his face being untouched previously! Now one of the little art henchmen begs the cops to stop Jarrod in a scene that I think really shows off how much alcoholism is a disease but I digress. Next is lots of fighting and the police are actually really helpful. I feel like if the movie happened in any other time period the police would sit around and not be that helpful because of protocol but these guys just rushed right in which is what Sue needed at that exact moment or else she was going to become a candle.

[of-fear-and-love]

Outfits from In a Lonely Place (1950)

Art Direction by Robert Peterson Set Decoration by William Kiernan Costume Design by Jean Louis (gowns) Makeup artist Clay Campbell Hair stylist Helen Hunt

[citizenscreen]

Frank Lovely, Carl Benton Reid, Gloria Grahame, and Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray’s IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)

[kwebtv]

From the Golden Age of Television

Series Pilot

Meet McGraw - CBS - February 25, 1954

A presentation of Four Star Playhouse Season 2 Episode 23

Crime Drama

Running Time: 30 minutes

Written by Gwen Bagni  and John Bagni

Produced by George Haight

Directed by Frank McDonald

Stars:

Frank Lovejoy as McGraw

Audrey Totter as Lila Lamont

Ellen Corby as Martha

Paul Picerni as Eddie

Peter Whitney as Gus

Steve Darrell as Lt. Smith

Percy Helton as Clerk

[ghassanrassam]

1955 Stewart is à base aller called back to duty as commander of a b52

[weirdlookindog]

House of Wax (1953) - Australian poster

[oldshowbiz]

Meet Lovejoy

[byneddiedingo]

Lloyd Bridges and Frank Lovejoy in Try and Get Me! (aka The Sound of Fury) (Cy Endfield, 1950)

Cast: Frank Lovejoy, Kathleen Ryan, Lloyd Bridges, Richard Carlson, Katherine Locke, Adele Jergens, Art Smith, Renzo Cesano, Irene Vernon, Cliff Clark, Harry Shannon, Donald Doss, Joe E. Ross. Screenplay: Jo Pagano, based on his novel. Cinematography: Guy Roe. Production design: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: George Amy. Music: Hugo Friedhofer. 

Climaxing in a vividly filmed and edited scene of a mob storming a city jail, Try and Get Me! is the second film based on a lynching that took place in San Jose in 1933. The first, Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney, is better-known and better acted, but Cy Enfield's version of the story, scripted by Jo Pagano from his fictionalized account of the incident, is equally gripping. What it lacks in its cast, it makes up for in sheer momentum. Frank Lovejoy plays Howard Tyler, an out-of-work man with a wife and child, whose desperation at providing for his family causes him to fall for the blandishments of Jerry Slocum, a sleazy thief played (not to say overplayed) by Lloyd Bridges. When Jerry murders a rich man's son during a kidnapping plot, Howard is trapped in a situation beyond his control. Public opinion is stirred up by newspaper columnist Gil Stanton (the bland and miscast Richard Carlson), who succumbs to his editor's sensationalism. The movie is mostly uncompromising in its hard-nosed treatment of the story, with only a few lapses into sentimentality in its portrayal of Howard's wife and son. Under the original title, The Sound of Fury (a probably intentional echo of Lang's film as well as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury), it was a box office failure, leading producer Robert Stillman to re-release it under the title Try and Get Me! But it failed to find an audience until it was restored by the Film Noir Foundation in 2020.

[lonelinessfollowsme]

Noirvember 7: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

"You guys are soft. You know what makes you that way? You're up to your neck in IOU's. You're suckers! You're scared to get out on your own. You've always had it good, so you're soft. Well, not me! Nobody ever gave me anything, so I don't owe nobody! . . . My folks were tough. When I was born, they took one look at this puss of mine and told me to get lost."

Beware the thumb. Two pals pick up a hitch-hiker and regretfully learn that he's a sadistic killer with a need to taunt his prey.

[movieassholes]

When you get the know-how and a few bucks in your pocket, you can buy anything, or anybody. Especially if you got 'em at the point of a gun.

Emmett Myers - The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

[gatutor]

Joan Weldon-Frank Lovejoy "The system" 1953, de Lewis Seiler.

[garm-wars]

Some may be interested in reading the script of "Night Beat" program number 57, a presumed lost episode of the old time radio series which I proudly digitized. The program starred Frank Lovejoy and was written by Herb Purdum. It is available as an OCRed searchable B+W photocopy PDF on Old Time Radio Researchers, and in multiple formats including a digital facsimile preservation PDF on Internet Archive.

[contentabnormal]

This week on Content Abnormal we present Frank Lovejoy & William Johnstone in Escape's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Typhoon"!

[therileyandkimmyshow]

Podcast 3756

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Julie

“So, how did you spend your evening, Frank?”

“I watched Doris Day smoke and land a plane.”

“At the same time?”

“No, but maybe a nice cigarette would have helped.”

If you’re a connoisseur of whacky movies, you’ll know I just watched Andrew L. Stone’s JULIE (1956, TCM), a film that opens crazy and closes crazier. I have no problems with films or plays that start “in medias res.” Getting thrown into the middle of something can be a fun challenge with the right story. But this picture starts so abruptly you may think you missed the first few chapters of a serial. It would, in fact, make a great serial, as newlywed Day discovers her second husband (Louis Jourdan) killed her first husband and is so insanely jealous he’ll take her out if she looks at another man. As the film starts, they’re arguing about his jealousy while driving along the Pacific shore. We don’t see what set him off. We don’t really learn who they are. We just see her driving as he loses it and puts his foot over hers on the accelerator. Then he apologizes, and she takes him back, and no, it’s not a film about masochism. It just seems that way. Eventually she gets away and he stalks her onto a flight (halfway through we learn she used to be a flight attendant), where he takes out the pilot and co-pilot leaving her to land the plane. This is all done very seriously, and to her credit, Day jacks up the tension quite convincingly. Also on the plus side, Fred Jackman, Jr.’s photography of the Carmel area is quite good, Stone and his wife, Virginia Stone, are great editors, and Jourdan gives an impressively understated performance as Day’s deranged husband. You also get Barry Sullivan as a sympathetic friend, Frank Lovejoy as a sympathetic homicide detective. a very pretty young Jack Kelly as the co-pilot, Ann Robinson as Day’s fellow stewardess and Mae Marsh as an hysterical passenger. Special credit also goes to Barney Phillips as the doctor tending Kelly in the cockpit (we should all be so lucky). Day may be the star, but his performance adds believably to the tension of the final scene. If you’re into drinking games, you could take a swig every time one of the men calls Day “honey” as she’s manning the controls at the end, though you might need medical attention afterwards. BTW, this is the last time Day smoked on screen (she did in a few of her films). She had a cancer scare during the shoot that led her to quit smoking.