Noir City Special: We Crash Dashiell Hammett's Apartment

So, more than once I mentioned that Jenifer had lined up something highly unusual for my visit to San Francisco that was going to be a real topper for the trip out.

She told me ahead of time that she'd gotten this set up, but it didn't make any sense at the time.  After having spent a few days with Jenifer, I now get that she's just one of those people who has the near-magical ability to make things work.

Its also worth mentioning that Jenifer figured out from looking at pictures that she lives across the street from the recently renovated former apartment of pulp hero, Dashiell Hammett.

The story around the apartment itself is kind of amazing, and involves sleuthing on the part of his truest fans.  Its true Hammett lived in multiple buildings, but by looking at return addresses on envelopes from letters, descriptions of Sam Spade's apartment in The Maltese Falcon and a few other contextual clues, they've narrowed it down and figured out that this was the apartment Hammett resided at for a few years in San Francisco, and when he wrote The Maltese Falcon.

I'm still not entirely clear on how Jenifer made the contact, but this morning we met up with one of the organizers of Noir City, who had been one of those investigators and who had lived in the apartment himself and did a lot of renovations.  I won't go into specifics, but basically the apartment is now a very weird spot.  Nobody lives there, and its a residential building, so there are no tours.  Essentially its supported by a philanthropist who pays the rent and maintenance and the place sits empty most days except for an occasional tour like ours or a walking tour.

Jenifer models next to the plaque talking about Hammett outside the security door.

The building is down the street from my hotel, as well.  And one thing I've learned in my short stay is that behind a lot of these facades, there's something going on or some crazy history in a lot of these buildings you wouldn't guess walking by, be it a famous author's former residence, or a secret stash of vintage cars or swimming pools by big doors.

Just inside the doorway

It doesn't seem that anybody was really aware of the building's history until the last 20 years, and so the apartment had to be basically re-done to match the original decor.  The building went up in 1917, and so Hammett would have lived there about 10 years after it opened.  Since that time, landlords had removed doors, painted over glass, added a hundred layers of paint, etc...

Dedicated folks pieced together the apartment from fixtures in apartments from the building that were original, found items that matched the book, etc...

Its a fairly small place.  A bedroom/ living room with a murphy bed, a small bath (with the original clawfoot tub and toilet, so you can stand where Hammett stood as he showered, I suppose), a small kitchen, etc..   So this was not from a period in Hammett's life where the money was just rolling in.  Its a modest living space in a part of town with a lot of character now and then.

I did take more pictures, and when I upload them to Google, I'll post a link.

Oh, the Falcon on the desk?  I'm not sure what that's about.

No, this was not Hammett's chair, but its a nice chair, right?

Of a very special, very noir weekend, this was an unbelievable bit of history that put a near surreal spin on things.

Thanks to Jenifer for arranging the tour (and so much more during my stay), to Bill who was more host that tour guide, and Doug, who was... there, I guess.

More pics when I get home and get them off my phone.

Noir Watch (Noir City Edition): Dark Passage and The House on Telegraph Hill

Friday evening I attended the opening night of the tenth edition of the Noir City film festival, hosted by Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir.

We attended the reception ahead of the show, which was a real kick.  Lots of folks in approximations of period attire.  You can see myself and J__Swift below.  

a very vintagey reception at The Castro

I had seen Dark Passage (1947) twice before, and hadn't particularly loved it the first time, liked it much more on the second, and loved it on the big screen on this go round.  The movie takes the risk of starting from the protagonist's POV, literally, and that part of the movie goes on for a bit, which is why I think I was a bit turned off the first time I watched the movie.  It seemed like a stunt, but on the big screen versus the 27" TV I watched it on the first time, it really, really works.

A Noiry Night

Noir City X is in full swing. The Festival opened this evening with the video below, a loving clip show of some great movies.



Great stuff.

This evening I met the great Eddie Muller and got to see two fantastic movies, Dark Passage and The House on Telegraph Hill. More on those later, I suppose.

Anyway, a terrific night out with J__Swift and her pal, Morgan. Hope things are well with you.

Dark Vacation

Well, on Thursday I am off to San Francisco for the 2012 Noir City Fest.  I'll be in San Francisco from Thursday afternoon until Monday morning.

I expect if you want to see me whilst I am in the Bay Area, you'll know how to track me down.

The schedule is pretty packed, but I do plan to write up all the movies one way or another as part of Movie Watch 2012.


Thursday night I'm actually headed for Riff-Trax Live with Dug, K and J__Swift.  Possibly MikeF and Rus.  We'll see.


Despite living in the town with the Austin Film Festival, SXSW, Fantastic Fest and more, I've never bothered with a film festival, so this is all new to me.  Mostly I wonder about how well my back can handle sitting in movie-theater seats this many hours.

between you and me, I hope this doesn't happen to me while I'm there

Jenifer (our J__Swift) has arranged a special EXTREMELY AWESOME/ SUPER NOIR event for me on Sunday that I'm keeping under my hat until I can post photos.

I got some hints on FaceBook about places to eat, etc...  we'll see if I can pull that off given our crammed schedule, but I appreciate the hints.

So, no idea what the next few days will hold, blog-wise.

Movie Watch: Horse Feathers & Niagara (and one day I will learn to spell "Niagara")

I am going to mention every single movie I watch this year.  I'm sort of curious.

Horse Feathers (1932) - The Marx Brothers.  Nothing will beat Duck Soup for me, but I'd definitely watch it again.  "Where's the seal?" won for best visual gag, but it had stiff competition.  I'm a sucker for any Marx Bros. flick, and this was a better way to spend 1.25 hours than whatever else was on TV.

Also, who doesn't like a movie about college football that includes cigar smoking on the field?

The movie co-stars the lovely Thelma Todd, who has a pretty chilling Bio page on IMDB.

Niagara (1953)  - For something so amazingly noir, this was one bright, colorful movie.  As I understand it, this was one of the movies that catapulted Marilyn Monroe to stardom, and its not hard to see why.  We forget sometimes that she's not just a still shot, she was an actress, and a pretty good one.  Not as good as Jean Peters (also an extraordinarily lovely woman), who is also in the movie playing a woman caught up in the noir story going on in the next bungalow over, but Monroe just fills a frame like few others, even when you know she's coming.  Also stars the always terrific Joseph Cotten as Monroe's anxiety-ridden husband on the path to Dark City.  And you will want to strangle Max Showalter (who would go on to play goofy Grandpa Fred in Sixteen Candles) for his corn-fed dorkiness.

And starring Jean Peters!  Who, yeah...  on the poster?  Is she one of those silhouettes on the bridge?  No?

San Fran in Jan(uary)

Heads up, Bay Area folks.

So, in January I'm headed for San Francisco.

I arrive on the 19th.  I had originally planned to run around the city and whatnot the first night, but it turns out that its the first night of the San Francisco SketchFest.  As part of the Sketchfest, the crew from RiffTrax is performing on night 1 of the SketchFest.  So, while this means I may have a problem with the Alpha Plan of @#$%in' &%#@ up in San Francisco on the 19th, it does mean I get to go to SketchFest see the guys from RiffTrax do a bunch of shorts.  And that is awesome!  (and, no doubt, means extra time hangin' with The Dug and a more likely scenario of seeing MikeF and others)

Oddly, the event is at the Castro, where I will also be the following few days.

The schedule and tickets are now available for Noir City X, the tenth installment of the Eddie Muller-helmed Film Noir Fest.

I'm in and out of town fairly quickly as a man can only afford to stay in one place too long, and the fact that every time I leave work for a few days, some disaster is awaiting me on the other side.

I'm pretty darned excited.  The line-up for both before and after I'm there features some great films I've seen and a long list of films I haven't seen.  If you live in the area, take advantage.

I am a bit down that I'll miss Naked Alibi on Thursday, which features both Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame (and I've been trying to track it down for a while), and it seems this year they've moved the party to the second weekend, so I'm missing that.  But they did add Angie Dickinson to talk Point Blank, which is a great movie, so I'll get to see her in person.

But I also will be looking to fill days while I'm around, so if you have helpful touristy hints for me that don't involve wandering The Tenderloin in a Batman costume, I'd like to hear them.

and then there was the time I found out my favorite movie was "heavily borrowing" from another movie

This evening I finally watched the 1942 film The Glass Key, a movie I've been trying to see since I first watched (and thoroughly enjoyed) the pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire.  Ms. Lake would have been 92 today, and so TCM was showing some of her films.

all movie posters are better when they feature William Bendix playing a little chin music

At age 15 I rented Miller's Crossing from my local video store. I had just seen The Godfather for the first time the previous summer thanks to my uncle's remarkably good movie selection (he also showed me Das Boot) and I was young, impressionable and learning about both gangster flicks and cinema. And so when Miller's Crossing landed in my VCR, I simply had never seen anything like it.  My entire world of gangster movies came from Godfather I & II and maybe The Untouchables.  I was utterly unfamiliar with the topsy, turvy world of the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, etc...

Books, Comics, Personal and Movies - Come read a round-up, won't you?

I'm not really feeling like doing some big, hefty posts at the moment.  Perhaps all the DCNu has worn me down.

Books:  On my quest to get to books I haven't read yet that you're supposed to read, I'm currently listening to The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.  It's read by actor Dylan Baker, who I've always thought to be really good, no matter the project he's in.  And he's doing an awesome job thus far with this book.

Comics:  I just read Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader from Vertigo Comics' Vertigo Crime line (my first dip in).  Its a pretty good detective story in the classic vein, but with a lot of modern sensibility despite its 1953 time-setting.  The protagonist/ narrator is very deeply in the closet, but its really the post-Chinatown content that keeps the 50's a setting rather than being truly evocative of the period.  Still, a good, brisk read.  And now that these books are in paperback and the price dropped, a lot better deal.  Feels a lot more like the dimestore novel this book emulates in spirit.

Personal:  My folks are off the Las Vegas for the first time.  It cracks me up.  They've been all over the planet, but I wasn't sure how to prepare them for the most ridiculous place I've ever been.  "Go to the Bellagio!" I said, unsure of what else to tell them.  What am I supposed to do?  Recommend The Gun Store to The Karebear?

Movies:  For some reason the 1984 film Streets of Fire kept coming up, so this evening I made Jamie watch the Michael Pare vehicle.  The entire movie makes so much more sense when you realize Jim Steinman, the brains behind Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II wrote some of the movie's music, and no matter what they tell you, this should have been a Meatloaf musical.  It also stars all kinds of folks you know from other projects from Rick Moranis to Robert Townsend to Willem DaFoe and a very, very young Diane Lane.

Dude, I can only wish that "what it meant to be young" for me had included shotguns, cool cars and Diane Lane.

The dialog is pretty goofy in that way tough-guy dialog from the 1980's just absolutely doesn't work at all anymore (and not because of dated slang, etc...  It was like they were just learning how to use swears back then).  And frankly, I'm not sure anybody is very good in this movie, but its absolutely interesting.

Signal Watch Watches: Drive

By this time you've likely read a good review or two of the recently released Drive.  Don't expect me to contradict those reviews.  Of our party, I believe four out of four participants (all of varying movie tastes) seemed to agree that Drive was a pretty darn good film.

I make jokes about certain movies being to my taste, and, yes, I am more likely to go see movies about superheroes, etc...  But I also like well thought-out, taught crime movies, and Drive is most certainly one of these.  

The movie doesn't just know exactly what it is, its hyper-aware of its roots both narratively and stylistically in the late-70's, early-80's and works both within and marginally outside the framework of those movies.  Perhaps suggesting there are no new stories, it also reaches back to certain elements that those 70's and 80's movies could trace back to Noir, and crime movies like The Big Heat or 1947's Kiss of Death (edit:  upon reflection, I'd be remiss to not mention This Gun for Hire as a sort of primordial influence), wherein the manipulations of criminals and the needs of those outside their worlds get crossed.

Yeah, the driving in the movie is pretty great, but I think its the storyline and performances that sell it.  Its an oddly understated movie for the first half, actually giving you a reason to care - something movies like Too Fast, Too Furious couldn't begin to wrap their mutton heads around, or that the average Jason Statham vehicle misses by a country mile.  

When the violence does erupt, director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn't shy away from the brutality of what's happening.  There's no romanticized "ballet of violence" as we've become accustomed to in most American movies over the last 15 years (nor the "kids playing guns" approach of the Schwarzenegger era).  It could be said to play for shock value if every act of violence didn't just up the stakes of the story and push our lead, played by Gosling, further and further into a corner.

Refn's vision is complete in a way I don't see out of many younger directors these days, with everything from the color of traffic lights telling part of the story to the choice of titles and musical selections winding throughout the film.

The movie clearly cost nowhere near what a Transformers film or even a Fast & Furious franchise installment would set back the studio.  I'm not naive enough to think studios will take note of the narrative success of the film, or to think the marketers have done enough to get the word out that this isn't a standard actioner.  It likely won't kill at the box office.  But you can hope for the best.

The cast is very good, of course.  Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks, Christina Hendricks, Oscar Isaac, and both Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling (whom I'd never seen) were pretty great.

Anyhow, I'm recommending those of you who can deal with some blood in your movies check this one out while its still at the theater. 

Some movies I should have commented upon

A Kiss Before Dying - Its hard to watch this movie without thinking how its been emulated a 1000 times over since this movie was released.  Its not a bad movie, and it features Robert "Yeah, totally THAT guy" Wagner as our heavy.

The Red Shoes - People had kittens when this move was restored, and that was the first time I think I'd heard of it.  I missed its theatrical release but caught the movie on cable this week.  A movie that I was expecting to be "good" turned out to be truly a great movie.  Just masterfully handled.

yes, its a movie about ballet, but... uh... yeah, its a tough guy movie with, uh aliens and helicopters and stuff, too.  Totally my usual thing.

Kiss Me Deadly - Man, this is the strangest damned movie I've seen in a long, long time.  50% detective, 25% celebration of sociopath, 20% noir and 5% sci-fi, of all the damned things.  I have very mixed feelings on this movie, but its really hard to ignore.

In a Lonely Place - Bogart and Gloria Grahame, directed by Nicolas Ray.  Its filed under noir, and I think I can see why, but its a great thriller/ character study and gets past the veneer of most noir and can feel almost awkward in parts as the characters tumble into distrust and their own miscommunications.

Signal Watch Reads: Brubaker and Phillip's "Last of the Innocent" - pure noir on the rocks

Holy smokes.  This week saw the release of another issue of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phllips' creator-owned but published by Marvel title Criminal.  Criminal is an ongoing series, but Brubaker tells different stories every few issues with new characters, etc...  in short, its not an ongoing series following a single character.

I picked up the first issue or two and about that time i was changing comic shops, etc... and lost track of the title.  With issue 1 of the recent story, Last of the Innocent, I decided to pick up the comic again.  And I'm absolutely pleased I did so.

As someone who enjoys his crime fiction as much as his heroic fiction, Last of the Innocent hits all of the noir criteria, following stand-ins for the Riverdale High gang of Archie comics in familiar faces such as Archie, Jughead, Veronica, Betty, Moose, Reggie and others.  But to see Jughead's gluttony explained as part of an addictive personality, Veronica's rich-girl self-centeredness taken to the logical extreme, etc... by the character's 30's sets up the perfect noir scenario.

I'm making this sound like something it isn't, which is an unoriginal, cutesy exploitation of the original Archie material.  Instead, the story reads much more like straight noir with flashbacks and reflections of Riley Richard's past remembered through rose colored glasses.

The series has a few more issues to go (this week saw issue 3 hit the stands), but each chapter does what a good noir does with each twist, and ratchets up the tension around Riley and the supporting characters.

The artwork, flipping between Phillips' now trademark rough-and-tumble style and a cartoony, kids'-book feel for flashbacks, is a huge pleasure.

Highly recommended.

Noir Watch: Angel Face (1952)

Angel Face was released in 1952, directed and produced by Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder, Laura) and stars Jean Simmons (Spartacus, Guys and Dolls) and Robert "I guess I'll be in it" Mitchum (oh, geez. What hasn't he been in?).

Its a tidy little movie, interesting mostly in that it makes a few choices that bust the mold for the movies of the era and for those of us who with expectations from reading Chandler or Hammett.

Noir Watch: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

For years I thought this movie was a screwball comedy based solely on the title. Eventually I figured out I was in no way correct on that score, and when I came across it in Eddie Muller's Dark City I knew I had to give it a try.  And, I kind of fell in love with the name.  Its got a real ring to it.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

dig it.

This 1946 movie stars some pretty darn big guns including Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas and Lizabeth Scott, so its got its noir bona fides.  Its written by The Hustler writer/director Robert Rossen and directed by Lewis Milestone, who handled movies as diverse as 1939's Of Mice and Men to the great war picture, Pork Chop Hill. 

Noir Watch: The Postman Always Rings Twice

Let us just get this out of the way:  Lana Turner

yup

Okay. I now feel prepared to move on.

About 12 years ago, I actually read the original James M. Cain novel of The Postman Always Rings Twice and liked it so much at the time I saw no real reason to watch the movie immediately afterward. Fortunately, I've pushed a lot of memories out of my brain in order to make room for stuff like Superman, name of my dogs' vet and Jamie's birthday, and I could no longer remember how the novel ended anymore.

I recorded the movie off TCM this week, and finally gave it a whirl.

Noir Watch: The First issue of Brubaker's "Criminal: Last of the Innocent" is great comics

Confession time:  As weird as it might seem, somehow I didn't get past the second issue of Brubaker's creator-owned series, Criminal.  I don't even remember what happened, because I don't recall having ill-feelings toward the series.  I suspect that I always planned to pick it up in TPB, and then just... didn't.  Likely because its being published by Marvel, and I don't really scour the Marvel solicits too hard these days (oddly, my Marvel purchases are limited to only a few things, including Brubaker's Captain America, so its not like I've had an embargo on his work).

Brubaker's series, as I understand it, tells a new story with new characters for each storyline.  Gien the nature of crime movies and stories, it seems really how it should be.  Different tales from the mind of a guy who knows his territory. 

Yes, if you're going to evoke pulp-noir nostalgia, start with the cover

Noir Watch: "Touch of Evil" at Paramount w/ @PlacesLost was a good/ horrible time

Man, Touch of Evil is a complicated movie.  Charlton Heston is supposedly a Mexican narco agent, Orson Welles acts and directs and looks like he's about to keel over in every shot, Marlene Dietrich shows up as a tired fortune teller/ good-time girl and looks pretty damn good, Janet Leigh gets menaced, and for some reason Zsa Zsa Gabor is in the movie for about twenty seconds.

In this film Heston plays what he does best:  Charlton Heston.  But with a mustache.

I watched Touch of Evil for the first time around 1998 or 1999, likely on VHS from "I Love Video" on Airport, and what I really recall is that I found the scene in which Janet Leigh is menaced alone in her motel room so upsetting, I turned the movie off and went and did other things for a bit and came back to finish the movie later.  I suppose as I'd seen the movie before, I knew what was coming and it was a bit easier to manage as a viewer, but its still some fairly powerful stuff.

Noir Watch: Detour (1945)

I'd read a bit about Detour in Eddie Muller's history of noir, Dark City,a great handbook for growing an appreciation or understanding of noir.  Detour was extremely low-budget, shot in about a week, and shows its rough edges pretty much everywhere in the film.  But after one viewing I can see why folks come back to this movie again and again.  Its not always about the professionalism of the product when you've got story and actors that make it work. 

Noir Watch: Pushover

Pushover isn't a top-flight flick, but its a nice study in building drama and tension and a chance to see Kim Novak in not just one of her first credited performances, but as a leading lady. And, of course, the always weird sight of Fred MacMurray in a noir role.

The story is a small-scale pot boiler about temptation, moral gray areas and what a great idea we can all find Kim Novak.  Novak plays the kept-girl of an on-the-lam bank robber (Lona McLane), and MacMurray a cop (Paul Sheridan) who picks her up awhen he's supposed to charm some information out of her, and see if she can tell the cops where her boyfriend is hiding out.  The two fall hard for each other, and suddenly everything is up for grabs. The two scheme a bit, and figure there's a way to hang onto the dough the boyfriend picked up in his latest robbery.  The cops are particularly hot to find him as, during the last robbery, someone got shot.

Noir Watch: Human Desire

Ah, Ms. Gloria Grahame.

Human Desire is listed as 1954, directed by the great Fritz Lang, and is sort of a Double Indemnity meets Narrow Margin meets The Postman Always Rings Twice meets...   Still, I don't think its fair to say that Human Desire is a throwaway movie just because you can see the movie wearing its influences on its sleeve.

they say the same things about Jamie

The plot is a bit convoluted (aren't they all).  Grahame plays Vicki Buckley, the wife of a railyard junior manager who has lost his job.  He asks her to look up an old family employer of money and influence, and only after Vicki returns from securing the job does her husband, Carl, realize that Vicki and Owens may have had a past.  Things get murdery on the return train, and with incriminating evidence in his pocket Carl holds Vicki's fate in his hands.  However, Jeff Warren (played by Glenn Ford) works for the train company, has a run in with Vicki on the train, and slowly begins to piece things together even as he falls for Vicki.

Lang puts his stamp on the movie, incorporating trademark play with shadows and swashes of light, and in the tradition of the movies I'd mentioned above, it fits the bill for noir with any number of checkmarks including the disintegration of the everyman at the hands of sexual desire.  And, really, that's the hook of the entire story.

strangers on a train?

If I were to pick one thing that made the movie a bit of a standout, its that somewhat like Hayworth in Gilda, Grahame's Vicki is both victim and conniver, innocent and seductress.  Even when she's using less than scrupulous means to get something, its hard not to believe that she's at least partially honest.  And its that vacillation between right and wrong surrounding Vicki, Carl and Jeff, even with a murder in between them, that makes the story a bit different from, say, Double Indemnity.  Rather than simple corruption, its a sort of moral purgatory that seems to consume the characters.

Grahame gets an unusual amount of screentime in this one, and its a welcome difference.  On a simple read, I suppose its easy enough to see Vicki as the femme fatale, but her motivations from even before the film starts are mostly standard issue desires, and its circumstance and situations beyond her control that lead to the climax of the film.  The character simply isn't as likable as her role in her other co-starring film with Glenn Ford, The Big Heat, but she makes the most of a complex character.

Ford may have never committed fully to the pit he's supposed to be sinking into, and seems content to play the hero in a role that doesn't really demand it.  Curiously, in key scenes he does seem in tune with the material, so its an interesting noir schizm to see the lead merrily getting suckered into a bad corner without the "damn the torpedoes" look that comes with chasing a woman you know is going to wind up getting somebody killed.

Did I like the film?  Absolutely.  the story was tightly told, the characters believable, the setting and types of characters a bit fresh, and as I had Gloria Grahame on the brain, the timing was excellent.  I'd like to give it another whirl to see what I missed, and I'm sure some enterprising RTF scholar could write a whole paper on trains as symbolism of some sort as Lang frames them and uses them throughout the film.

I watched the film as part of a set Jamie got me for my birthday, Columbia Film Noir Classics 2.  The movie also comes with a short documentary.

Dames to Watch Out For: Gloria Grahame

Its my birthday as I begin this post, so I'm going to indulge myself and return to that old standby of "Dames In the Media the League Once Dug", which at this URL, we call "Dames to Watch Out For".

In this edition: Ms. Gloria Grahame

You may think you don't know Gloria Grahame, but if you owned a TV in the 1980's and 90's in the month of December, it means you saw It's a Wonderful Life.  Grahame played Violet Bick, the woman who seems a lot more interesting than Donna Reed who George gives some money to so that she can leave town and start a new life (its also shown she had eyes for George Bailey, and he had no idea.  We think George may have missed the boat on that one.)

see, you know this person

She also appeared in Oklahoma! as Ado Annie, a sort of naive, man-crazy problem-child.  Grahame was in her 30's by the time the movie was released, but was playing someone around 17 or 18, I'd guess.  Go figure.

If you've seen Oklahoma!, she's the crazy one who is often seen in a terrible hat.

the hat alone should warn the farmers and the cow mans that she's 10 kinds of crazy

But that's not the Grahame we're here to talk about.  Today, we want to discuss the Noir-centric Gloria Grahame.

Grahame gives Ford a couple of things to think about

In doing my research I stumbled across a great post about Grahame at Bright Lights Film Journal, and I'd recommend it as a good read.

I haven't seen all that many films with Grahame, but its hard to ignore her in either Crossfire or The Big Heat.

It seems Grahame actually received accolades for her work in Crossfire, and its not hard to see why.  Its a heartbreaking role as a taxi dancer, caught up in the murder of a Jewish US Soldier.  Ginny's role isn't the focus, although pivotal, and Grahame breathes a lot of life into the character, worn out and tired, and rightfully certain she's barely counted as a person any more.

I'll discuss Crossfire at another point.  I've seen it twice, and while somewhat dated in its approach, its still a great, tight film and uses the genre to share messages that were on the mind of America in the wake of World War II.

Also like a loaded gun?  A loaded gun.

Grahame would receive an Academy Award nomination, but it wouldn't lead to her becoming part of the Hollywood Pantheon of stars best remembered from the eras she crossed, from Hayworth to Monroe, or their later peers.

I have discussed The Big Heat, which I'll reiterate here is just a terrific movie.

this fills so many check boxes for me on a great noir scene, my brain is kind of exploding

For me, the standout role for Grahame is likely in The Big Heat, which is the source of the image above.  This is a movie about tough/ righteous police, corrupt cops and their spouses, sociopathic henchmen, ruthless mobsters, etc...  and Grahame manages to go toe-to-toe with all of them.  Including Lee Marvin.  Lee.  Marvin.

Grahame's character (a bit like descriptions I've read of Grahame herself) is a particularly bright woman who also likes to have a pretty darn good time.  She may intellectually know she's hanging out with hoodlums, but it seems to be working out pretty well for her.  The character takes a drastic turn, and Grahame handles the metamorphosis terribly well for what could have been an awkwardly melodramatic performance in lesser hands.  It may not be a femme fatale role, but its also an interesting female role from the era (as many are once you head into the world of noir).

publicity still from "The Big Heat"

Unfortunately, as with her peers such as Veronica Lake, Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, Grahame's personal life seemed fit for its own big screen treatment if it hadn't featured a lot of material that likely wouldn't have met production codes back in the day.

Grahame had her fair share of romantic entanglements and married four times (including to Nicholas Ray and, later, Ray's son, so....  yeah, there's a story there), and died at the age of only 57.

For my birthday I received a film noir box set from Jamie featuring Human Desire from 1954.  Its one of the movies up next in my queue, so expect to see more Grahame in the near future.