Category: Noirs We Love

The Noir Stylings of Mr. Jack Delano

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We don’t often share Shorpy photos because, well, they’ve got a huge online presence in their own right, so we figure plenty of you already see the images they share without us riding on their coattails.

But we couldn’t resist sharing this one. Though it was shot on the street, it looks like a still from a classic film noir that we’ve somehow not yet seen (though we’d happily line up to buy a ticket, if we could).

Here’s the info: December 1942. “Chicago, Illinois. An unusually heavy fog in the early afternoon.” Photo by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.

Nice going, Mr. Delano. Nice going, indeed.

December 1942. 'Chicago, Illinois. An unusually heavy fog in the early afternoon.' Photo by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information.

Goodbye to Another Glorious Gal: Dorothy Malone

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We were sorry to learn that Dorothy Malone had died, just days short of her 93rd birthday. She enjoyed a long career in motion pictures and television, mostly playing bad girls, but to us, she’ll always be the most memorable bookstore employee in the history of the movies, and if you doubt us on this, just watch this scene with Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep (1946).

Goodbye to Another Glorious Gal: Peggy Cummins

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We were sorry to learn Welsh-born stage and film actress Peggy Cummins died at age 92 on Friday, December 29, 2017, in London. She began as a child star and worked in the United States for only a few years, but if she’d played no other role than the sharp-shooting, bank-robbing femme fatale Annie Laurie Starr in Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950), she’d have made an indelible mark.

As noir expert Eddie Muller said of Cummins in introducing the film on Turner Classic Movies in July 2017, “Peggy’s performance, her Hollywood swan song, would galvanize the Gun Crazy production and earn her lasting fame as the tiniest, but most ferocious, femme fatale in the history of film noir.”

Peggy Cummins