Saturday, June 17, 2017

See John Garfield in His Last Picture! He Ran All the Way (1951) is TCM's Film Noir of the Week; be There, or be Square!

 

 

By David in TN
Saturday, June 17, 2017 at 9:53:00 A.M. EDT

TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Sunday, June 18, at 10 a.m. ET is He Ran All the Way (1951). John Garfield plays a low-level criminal who kills a police officer in a “robbery gone wrong.” On the run, he meets a nice girl played by Shelley Winters and hides out in her family's apartment.

 

John Garfield and Shelley Winters
 

This was John Garfield's last film. He died of a heart attack (had a bad heart for a long time) at age 39.

Garfield's most famous noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), was a paradigm for the genre. His character meets the sexiest woman he's ever seen (Lana Turner) at the start of the film. At the end, he's being strapped in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

 

John Garfield and Selena Royle
 

N.S.: I never saw the original Postman. While in West Germany, I saw the remake with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. Smouldering. Her character’s name was “Cora.”

Jack Nicholson had a specialty then of playing white trash. Even his Jake Gittes in Chinatown was white trash made good.

My recollection after about 35 years is that in the re-make, the Nicholson and Lange characters beat the rap in court, but then, while they’re out driving one day, the passenger side door flies open, and Cora falls out to her death. Nicholson’s character is alive and free, but his victory is pyrrhic. Ultimately, crime does not pay.

I wonder. Was the re-make closer to the book? When the original was made, the filmmakers had to honor the Hays Code.

2 comments:

David In TN said...

TCM's Film Noir of the Week for Sunday, June 25, at 10 am ET, is High Wall (1947). Robert Taylor plays a amnesiac war veteran, a common plot device in post WW II film noir.

High Wall is a psychological thriller with noir female icon Audrey Totter as a psychiatrist treating Taylor's character.

David In TN said...

Although it's not a Film Noir Sunday special, TCM is showing the 1946 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice with John Garfield and Lana Turner at 12:30 pm ET on Wednesday, June 27.

It took several years to film the story due to concerns about the material being taboo Production Code-wise. After Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) which was also based on a James M. Cain novel with a similar plot line, it was decided to go ahead with The Postman.

Lana Turner is always dressed in white and her legs are shown frequently. A possible false note? Turner is too gorgeous to be married to a dumpy guy 30 years older than her.