Film Noir Screenings

Arlene Dahl

"With enthusiasm, anything is possible," claims Arlene Dahl, a pink and white screen beauty who has made a successful post-film career as a popular columnist on the art of beauty. She arrived at MGM in the retrenchment days of 1947 and from the start was utilized a pure adornment from middling studio products, including three Red Skelton films. Louella Parsons wrote at the time: "The only three totally natural beauties in Hollywood who could step in front of the camera without one spot of makeup are Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner and Arlene Dahl." After leaving Metro in the mid-1950's were a trio of bad girl parts that contained her best screen work. In RKO's Slightly Scarlet (1956) she revealed unusual dimension as the mentally unbalanced sister of Rhonda Fleming, In Wicked As They Come (1957) she played the scheming vixen who using men as stepping stones to wealth and power. Finally, in another British-made film She Played With Fire (1958) she was an arsonist who leads insurance investigator Jack Hawkins down the wrong path.


	*Danger & Despair's*

	*Thursday Night Screenings*
	*on 16mm film*

	'THE TANGLED WEB OF DECEIT'
	with Marc Kagan

		CAUTION: ADULTS AT PLAY!
		Marc Kagan hosts four films focusing on a charming group of misguided individuals who are old enough to know better, ... but DO IT ANYWAY! Café Noir’ gears up again in August with the noir cinema of dead-end duplicity and a new series begging the question “Can three nasty men possibly be as bad as 'a one woman wreaking crew ' named Arlene Dahl in "WICKED AS THEY COME?” See for yourself on Thursday Nights in August!

	Phil Carey & Arlene Dahl in 'Wicked as They Come'' - 1956

	Downtown San Francisco - Free Admission
	For the location, reserve seats now at screenings@hotmail.com

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	RARE TITLE!
	Thursday August 3rd 8:00 pm
	' WICKED AS THEY COME ' - 1956 Columbia Pictures
	w/ Arlene Dahl, Richard Carlson & Herbert Marshall

		What she wanted out of life. . . she got out of men!
		Men had made her what she was. . .
		And every man she met would pay for it!

	Kathy Allen wants a lot of things in life so she uses men as stepping stones to greater and greater fortune and power but in the end when she has it (and has destroyed all the men she's known) is it enough?

	Arlene Dahl "With enthusiasm, anything is possible," claims Arlene Dahl, a pink and white screen beauty who has made a successful post-film career as a popular columnist on the art of beauty. She arrived at MGM in the retrenchment days of 1947 and from the start was utilized a pure adornment from middling studio products, including three Red Skelton films. Louella Parsons wrote at the time: "The only three totally natural beauties in Hollywood who could step in front of the camera without one spot of makeup are Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner and Arlene Dahl." After leaving Metro in the mid-1950's were a trio of bad girl parts that contained her best screen work. In RKO's Slightly Scarlet (1956) she revealed unusual dimension as the mentally unbalanced sister of Rhonda Fleming, In Wicked As They Come (1957) she played the scheming vixen who using men as stepping stones to wealth and power. Finally, in another British-made film She Played With Fire (1958) she was an arsonist who leads insurance investigator Jack Hawkins down the wrong path.




	Thursday August 10th 8:00 pm
	' DEATH OF A SCROUNDREL ' - 1956 Charles Mann / RKO
	w/ Yvonne De Carlo, George Sanders, Tom Conway & Zsa Zsa Gabor
		- Photography by James Hong Howe

		Men, Women. . .he used them all, ruined them on his
		fantastic march to self-destruction.

	When Clementi Suborin is found murdered, his secretary recounts to the police the story of his rise from Czech refugee to ultra-rich New Yorker. The tale of betrayal, womanizing and fraud confirms that almost everyone who knew him wanted him dead.

	Yvonne De Carlo: Startling beauty and an enormous will to succeed have rarely been sufficient assets to insure a woman's onscreen success in Hollywood. If young Peggy Yvonne Middleton from Vancouver, British Columbia, had only these admirable assets to recommend her. she might have continued her quest for cinema fame over a much longer time than she did and still not have achieved her ambitious goal. But this teenage lovely profited from a four-year struggle (1937-1944) to win a film player's contract. She replaced her original naivete with a toughened realization of life, refined her figure and facial appearance, improved her singing, dancing, and stage presence, and made a modest inroad into the California social scene. But, most of all, she learned the career-saving device of bending with the wind, altering her screen image to suit the times.




	RARE TITLE!
	Thursday August 17th 8:00 pm
	' SO EVIL, MY LOVE ' - 1948 Paramount Pictures
	w/ Ray Milland, Ann Todd, Geraldine Fitzgerald & Leo G. Carroll
	Photography Max Green (The Green Cockatoo '37 & Night and the City '50)

		She hated what she became only to realize there was
		no way out except in betrayal and murder.

	Olivia Harwood a missionary's widow, meets charming Mark Bellis, artist and rogue, on the ship taking them both back to 1890s London. When Olivia opens a lodging house Mark becomes her lodger, then her lover. Olivia falls so completely under amoral Mark's spell that he's able to overcome her
	scruples, and soon she's his willing tool in an ambitious scheme of theft and blackmail. . . maybe too ambitious.
	Ray Milland: One of the staples of the old days was the featured leading man--the actor who was never quite starred: he was the hero's brother, the hero's rival or the Other Man, and sometimes--in comedies--the hero's friend. There were dozens of them: John Carroll, John Loder, John Sutton, often Ralph Bellamy. Ray Milland spent a good ten years in such parts before making his mark as a light comedian, cheery and good-natured, and he went on from there to be a highly competent actor and would win his Oscar for a tour-de-force performance as a drunk in The Lost Weekend.



	Thursday August 24th CLOSED NO FILM



	Thursday August 31th 8:00 pm
	' WITNESS TO MURDER ' - 1954 Chester Erskine / Allied Artists
	w/ Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders, Gary Merrill & Jessie White
	- Photography by John Alton

		Only the murderer believed her story...
		will she be his next victim?

	Cheryl Draper sees a murder through her bedroom window, but no one will believe her. She is stalked by the suave killer who first takes steps to convince police she is crazy, but she has an ally in a sympathetic detective.

	Barbara Stanwyck Barbara Stanwyck remains a one-of-a-kind breed. As did superstar Joan Crawford, Barbara learned that successful show business survival required adapting with the times. During her decades on the screen, she altered her image to suit changing public tastes. But bursting through it all has been her engrossing individuality. Reliable Stanwyck made her movie reputation in the Thirties as the self-sufficient miss who by hook or crook came out ahead in the game of life. Reliable Stanwyck made her movie reputation in the Thirties as the self-sufficient miss who by hook or crook came out ahead in the game of life. If anything supercharged Barbara's career in the late Thirties,
	it was her romance and marriage to MGM's handsome screen idol Robert Taylor. It demonstrated to moviegoers that the off-screen actress had a definite sexuality and desirability about her, qualities which frequently eluded the camera in her movie roles.
	The Forties brought Stanwyck into her neurotic roles with her machine-gun delivery of vituperative dialogue, which her insolent character would deliver with relish and extreme credibility. But, there was also Stanwyck the facile comedienne, who could shine in Preston Sturges' witty The Lady Eve or radiate as an amusing broad in Ball Of Fire and Lady Of Burlesque. And what of the romantic Stanwyck, the heroine of Remember The Night, Christmas In Connecticut, and My Reputation.
	In the Fifties, when movie roles became fewer or non-existent for mature stars of Barbara's magnitude, she readily accepted assignments in lesser films. she capered through a series of Westerns a genre she preferred since her early days and once again she demonstrated how integrity of performance, uniqueness of manner (her lioness like, prowling walk; her snarling delivery of dialogue), and expert stunting ability could even make the least plausible quickie Western film interesting to the viewer.


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