Tag: Loretta Young

Noirs We Love: Cause for Alarm!

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You’ll want to set your DVRs to record TCM this Friday, January 15, at 2:45 p.m. ET to catch a relatively lesser-known noir that we really like: Cause for Alarm! (1951), which has the unusual twist of featuring a female protagonist, rather than the typical male, who’s fallen into a whirlpool of trouble.

Loretta Young plays a well-intentioned wife whose invalid, delusional and, worst of all, jealous husband (Barry Sullivan) writes a letter that threatens to put her in serious legal jeopardy. We’ll say no more than that, but take our word for it: This is an entertaining, if admittedly minor, example of the domestic noir genre (as far as we know, we just coined that term, but feel free to use it going forward) that is well worth your time.

Noirs We Love: Cause for Alarm

Dickie Moore Takes His Final Bow

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Some years ago, we were lucky enough to attend a special event at NYC’s Film Forum: A Q&A with actors Jane Powell and her husband, Dickie Moore (he went by Dick in his post-Hollywood professional life, but we’ll always think of him as Dickie).

Powell, of course, achieved renown for her work in musicals for MGM, while Moore … well, Moore’s career is not so easily characterized. He started working at the age of 11 months in a 1927 silent picture called Our Beloved Rogue opposite John Barrymore, and he was featured in the Our Gang series in 1932–1933.

He also had the distinct honor of planting her first on-screen smooch on Shirley Temple in a feature called Miss Annie Rooney (1942). And at the age of 21, he played a deaf-mute young man opposite Robert Mitchum in one of the greatest of films noir, Out of the Past.

It was a delight to see these two Hollywood veterans in tandem that night. They couldn’t have been more charming, and their mutual respect and affection was readily apparent—in short, they were darned cute together—as they delighted those assembled with insider tales of Hollywood’s glory days.

So it with sadness that we share news of Mr. Moore’s passing on Thursday, just two days short of his 90th birthday.

Dickie Moore was perhaps the busiest of child actors (we can’t think of a more prolific one), and he acted opposite the greatest names of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including Warren William, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Lionel Barrymore, Mae Clarke, Ann Harding, Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young, Glenda Farrell, Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck and so many more.

In his memoir, Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, Dickie Moore bemoaned the struggles that so many child actors experience not only when they’re working steadily, but also as they grow older and their careers wane. We dearly hope and trust that Moore’s own post-Hollywood path was a bit smoother and that he experienced no regrets about his years in Hollywood. He certainly gave movie buffs from the 1930s through today much to be thankful for.

Rest in peace, Mr. Moore, and thanks.

Dickie Moore quote

Ninety-nine years Young

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Today marks Loretta Young’s 99th birthday.

She enjoyed a long, fruitful career that began in the era of silent movies (she appeared in two pictures in 1917, when she was all of four years old) and ended in 1994, when she was 81, and she certainly made many memorable movies, The Bishop’s Wife and The Farmer’s Daughter among them. But our favorites among her oeuvre include the noir-ish 1951 thriller Cause for Alarm! and, especially, the many pictures she made in the late 1920s and early ’30s.

Surely few women have ever appeared more beautiful on-screen than Young did in those pre-code days.

Here’s more on Young’s life and career.

Watching the stars come out

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We have a grand time when we visit Los Angeles (pronounce it “Angle-eez,” with the hard G, if you please). As movie buffs, we get a kick out of just driving around the various neighborhoods and imagining who once lived in the bungalows we’re passing. Lucille Ball, f’rinstance.

Then there are the more substantial residences that the familiar stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood moved into, once they’d hit it big.

In our several trips to Tinsel Town, we’ve never taken one of the commercial tours of the stars’ homes, but we suspect they tend to focus on the abodes of contemporary stars—Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Justin Bieber—at the expense of the former residences of your Humphrey Bogarts, your Bette Davises, your Una Merkels. And who can blame them? It’s always good policy to give the people what they want, and we who are more interested in seeing where and how the stars of yesteryear lived are undeniably in the minority.

There are guidebooks that provide pointers that allow us to catch a glimpse of where Bogart, Davis, and Merkel lived, worked, and played, of course (we’re partial to Richard Alleman’s Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide: The Ultimate Insider Tour of Movie L.A.), but what if one doesn’t have the wherewithal (or accrued vacation days) to to arrange a Southern California sojorn?

In that case, one turns, as one tends to do these days, to the internet—specifically to Image-Archeology.com and their collection of vintage linen postcards that depict the residences of those performers who made our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents laugh, cry and tap their toes (though not simultaneously).

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’
home, Pickfair		 Jean Harlow’s Beverily Hills residence Claudette Colbert’s hilltop residence
in Hollywood

At this delightful site, one can gaze upon a palatial Hancock Park home while imagining Buster Keaton stepping out to pick up the morning paper, compare contrast two of Groucho Marx‘s Beverly Hills homes, and kill two birds with one stone as you assess the love nest once blissfully shared by a pair of stars who were married once upon a time, Dick Powell and Joan Blondell.

And the list goes on—Myrna Loy, Harold Lloyd, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck; one could grow breathless reciting them. All the cards, from A to Z (well, A to Y—Loretta Young is the last star on the list) are in terrific shape and lovingly presented. We encourage all our readers to experience a little California sunshine by spending some time there.

Happy birthday, Ms. Young

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image-Loretta YoungLoretta Young, as beautiful an actress as ever graced the silver screen, enjoyed an astonishingly long run, enjoying a career that spanned 77 years, from her first appearance in a silent movie in 1917 to a gig doing the narration for a television program called LIFE ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI in 1994, at the age of 81.

Young, who died in 2000, would have been 96 years old today, and TCM is paying tribute to the venerable star by airing her movies all day long.

I recommend the quartet of Pre-code offerings they’re showing starting at 8 am, and you can’t go wrong with Orson Welles’ THE STRANGER at 1:15pm. But perhaps my top recommendation would be the noir-ish thriller CAUSE FOR ALARM (1951). It’s well worth catching.

Here’s the full line-up:

6:45 a.m. — LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH (1928)
In this silent film, a circus clown falls for a young innocent in love with another. Cast: Lon Chaney, Loretta Young, Nils Asther. Dir: Herbert Brenon.

8:00 a.m. — PLAY GIRL (1932)
A young innocent falls for a compulsive gambler. Cast: Loretta Young, Winnie Lightner, Norman Foster. Dir: Ray Enright.

9:15 a.m. — LIFE BEGINS (1932)
A maternity ward becomes the focus for the patients’, doctors’ and nurses’ personal problems. Cast: Loretta Young, Eric Linden, Aline MacMahon. Dir: James Flood.

10:30 a.m. — HEROES FOR SALE (1933)
A veteran fights drug addiction to make his way in the business world. Cast: Richard Barthelmess, Aline MacMahon, Loretta Young. Dir: William A. Wellman.

12:00 p.m. — SHE HAD TO SAY YES (1933)
A secretary pads her salary by dating prospective buyers for her company. Cast: Loretta Young, Lyle Talbot, Hugh Herbert. Dir: Busby Berkeley.

1:15 p.m. — THE STRANGER (1946)
A small-town schoolteacher suspects her new husband may be an escaped Nazi war criminal. Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Loretta Young. Dir: Orson Welles.

3:00 p.m. — RACHEL AND THE STRANGER (1948)
A mail-order bride finds herself attracted to a handsome drifter. Cast: Loretta Young, William Holden, Robert Mitchum. Dir: Norman Foster.

4:30 p.m. — KEY TO THE CITY (1950)
Two mayors meet and fall in love during a convention in San Francisco. Cast: Clark Gable, Loretta Young, Frank Morgan. Dir: George Sidney.

6:12 p.m. — Short Film: Loretta Young Biography (1962)

6:30 p.m. — CAUSE FOR ALARM (1951)
A woman fights to intercept a letter in which her husband tries to prove her guilty of murder. Cast: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling. Dir: Tay Garnett.