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Shockproof
''Shockproof'' is a 1949 American crime film noir directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Patricia Knight and Cornel Wilde. Wilde and Knight were husband and wife during filming. They divorced in 1951. Plot Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde), is a parole officer who falls in love with a parolee, Jenny Marsh ( Patricia Knight). Marsh had gone to prison in order to protect Harry Wesson (John Baragrey) a gambler with whom she was having an affair. Warned to steer clear of Harry permanently, Jenny disobeys, still feeling loyal to him. A raid on Harry's bookie joint while Jenny is there costs her the job Griff has found for her. Out of concern for her welfare, Griff hires Jenny as a caretaker for his blind mother (Esther Minciotti). Griff has political ambitions that Harry would like to ruin, so, knowing it is against regulations for the parolee and parole officer to be involved, Harry encourages Jenny to accept Griff's romantic advances. Jenny knows the regulations too, but realizes she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornel Wilde
Cornel Wilde (born Kornél Lajos Weisz; October 13, 1912 – October 16, 1989) was a Hungarian-American actor and filmmaker. Wilde's acting career began in 1935, when he made his debut on Broadway. In 1936 he began making small, uncredited appearances in films. By the 1940s he had signed a contract with 20th Century Fox, and by the mid-1940s he was a major leading man. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in 1945's '' A Song to Remember''. In the 1950s he moved to writing, producing and directing films, and still continued his career as an actor. He also went into songwriting during his career. Early life Wilde was born in 1912United States Census 1930; Manhattan, New York; Roll: 1576; Page: 9B; Enumeration District: 1009; Image: 1057.0. This record dated April 9, 1930, gives Wilde's birthplace as Austrian-Hungarian Empire and his birth year as approximately 1912. Furthermore, it indicates his emigration to the United States as a first clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Fuller
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and actor. He was known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made outside the conventional studio system. After work as a reporter and a pulp novelist, Fuller wrote his first screenplay for '' Hats Off'' in 1936, and made his directorial debut with the Western '' I Shot Jesse James'' (1949). He continued to direct several other Westerns and war film throughout the 1950s. He shifted genres in the 1960s with his low-budget thriller '' Shock Corridor'' in 1963, followed by the neo-noir '' The Naked Kiss'' (1964). Fuller was inactive in filmmaking for most of the 1970s, before writing and directing the semi-autobiographical war epic '' The Big Red One'' (1980), and the drama '' White Dog'' (1982), whose screenplay he co-wrote with Curtis Hanson. Several of his films influenced French New Wave filmmakers, notably Je ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Bates (actor)
Charles Edward Perry Jr. (October 22, 1934 – May 2023), better known as Charles Bates was an American child actor. Bates appeared in over 40 films between 1935 and 1952, mostly in small roles. He is probably best known as young Roger Newton in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller ''Shadow of a Doubt'' (1943). Other notable roles include '' The North Star'' (1943), ''San Diego, I Love You'' (1944), '' Pursued'' (1947) and '' Shockproof'' (1949). His last film was '' The Snows of Kilimanjaro'', where he played Gregory Peck's character as a 17-year-old. Bates went on to study electrical engineering, and retired from the State of California in 1996 as a senior electrical engineer. After retirement, he lived in the Pacific Northwest. Bates died in Spokane, Washington in May 2023, at the age of 88. Filmography * '' Tall, Dark and Handsome'' (1941) – Boy (uncredited) * ''Blossoms in the Dust'' (1941) – (uncredited) * ''The Mexican Spitfire's Baby'' (1941) – Little Boy (uncredited) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patricia Knight
Patricia Knight (born Marjorie Heinzen; April 28, 1915 – October 26, 2004) was an American actress who appeared in a few movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Career In 1949, Knight and her husband, Cornel Wilde, acted at Cape Playhouse in a production of ''Western Wind''. The same year they costarred in the Sam Fuller written and Douglas Sirk directed film noir ''Shockproof'' for Columbia. Personal life After meeting actor Cornel Wilde at a producer's office in 1936, the couple married in Elkton, Maryland, on September 1, 1937. They had one daughter, Wendy, and divorced on August 30, 1951. The family lived at Country House on Deep Canyon Road, Los Angeles. She married Danish businessman Niels Larson on October 24, 1954, and moved with him to Europe. She and Larson returned to the United States in 1969. Larson died in 1971. She later married building adviser David Wright, and moved with him to Hemet, California, where he died on May 22, 1996. Patricia Knight died in Hem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; 26 April 1897 – 14 January 1987) was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood (film industry), Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. However, he also directed comedies, westerns, and war films. Sirk started his career in Weimar Republic, Germany as a stage and screen director, but he left for Hollywood in 1937 after his Jewish wife was persecuted by the Nazis. In the 1950s, he achieved his greatest commercial success with Melodrama (film genre), film melodramas ''Magnificent Obsession (1954 film), Magnificent Obsession'', ''All That Heaven Allows'', ''Written on the Wind'', ''A Time to Love and a Time to Die'', and ''Imitation of Life (1959 film), Imitation of Life''. While those films were initially panned by critics as sentimental women's pictures, they are today widely regarded by film directors, critics, and scholars as masterpieces. His work is seen as a "critique of the bourgeoisie in general and of 1950s America in p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esther Minciotti
Esther Cunico Minciotti (born March 18, 1888, in Turin, Italy – died April 15, 1962, in New York, United States) was an Italian actress. des "Gens du Cinéma". Biography Esther Cunico and her husband – Silvio Minciotti (1882–1961), also an actor of Italian origin – emigrated to the United States and settled in New York. There, she played on Broadway in two plays, the first from November 1949 to January 1950, the second (alongside her husband) in October 1956 (see the "Theatre" section below). In the cinema, she collaborated in only eight American films (see the complete filmo ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Deutsch
Helen Deutsch (March 21, 1906 – March 15, 1992) was an American screenwriter, journalist, and songwriter. Biography Deutsch was born in New York City and graduated from Barnard College. She began her career by managing the Provincetown Players. She then wrote theater reviews for '' The New York Herald-Tribune'' and ''The New York Times'', as well as working in the press department of the Theatre Guild. Her first screenplay was for '' The Seventh Cross'' (1944), based on Anna Seghers's 1942 novel of the same name. She adapted Enid Bagnold's novel, '' National Velvet'' into a screenplay that became a famous film (1944) starring Elizabeth Taylor. After writing a few films ('' Golden Earrings'' (1947), '' The Loves of Carmen'' (1948) and '' Shockproof'' (1949) ) for Paramount and Columbia Pictures, she spent the greater part of her career working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There, she wrote the screenplays for such films as ''King Solomon's Mines'' (1950), '' Kim'' (1950), ''It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Space
Charles Arthur Space (October 12, 1908 – January 13, 1983) was an American film, television and stage actor. Today's audiences know him as the eccentric inventor opposite Laurel and Hardy in '' The Big Noise'' (1944), and as veterinarian Doc Weaver in 39 episodes of the CBS television series '' Lassie''. Early years Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Space first delved into acting at Douglass College. Career Space began his career in summer stock theater and eventually began appearing on Broadway. His Broadway credits include ''Three Men on a Horse'' and ''Awake and Sing''. Producer Edward Finney cast Space as an urbane hoodlum in the 1941 crime drama ''Riot Squad'', starring Richard Cromwell and released by PRC. He jumped from the PRC company to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. Under contract to MGM, Space appeared alongside Abbott and Costello in '' Rio Rita'', and had roles in '' Tortilla Flat'', '' Grand Central Murder'', '' Andy Hardy's Double Life'', and others. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russell Collins
Russell Collins (born Russell Henry Collins; October 11, 1897 – November 14, 1965) was an American actor whose 43-year career included hundreds of performances on stage, in feature films, and on television. Early life Born in 1897 in Indianapolis, Indiana, Russell Collins was the middle child of Emma (''née'' Hughes) and Martin F. Collins' five children. He had a younger brother and sister, Raymond and Maxina, as well as an older brother and sister, Oren and Irene."The Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910" enumeration date April 25, 1910, Center Township "Part of Precinct" f Indianapolis Marion County, Indiana. FamilySearch. Retrieved August 23, 2017. By 1910, R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Straffen
John Thomas Straffen (27 February 1930 – 19 November 2007) was an English serial killer who committed the murder of three preadolescence, prepubescent girls between the ages of five and nine in the counties of Somerset and Berkshire, England, between 1951 and 1952. All three of Straffen's victims were murdered by Strangling, strangulation. His first two victims were murdered in Bath, Somerset, in the summer of 1951. Arrested shortly after the murder of his second victim, Straffen denied any Sexual desire, sexual or Sadistic personality disorder, sadistic Motive (law), motive for the murders, which he insisted he had committed to simply "annoy" the police, whom he blamed for most of his problems. Tried before Roland Oliver (judge), Mr. Justice Oliver at Taunton Assizes in October 1951, Straffen was found unfit to plead on the grounds of diminished responsibility and committed to indefinite detention within Broadmoor Hospital. He briefly escaped from this facility in April 1952 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Baragrey
John Baragrey (April 15, 1918 – August 4, 1975) was an American film, television, and stage actor who appeared in virtually every dramatic television series of the 1950s and early 1960s. Early years Baragrey was born in Haleyville, Alabama, the son of John Baragrey Sr. and Norma Baragrey. He wanted to be an actor from boyhood. After he graduated from Haleyville High School, his family would not allow him to go to New York, so he worked in a cafe in Russellville, Alabama, for eight months. After his father died in an accident, Baragrey studied at Massey Business College in Birmingham, Alabama, then took a job as typist and file clerk for Southern Pacific Railroad, a position that he held for three years. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1939. Baragrey used his savings to go to New York in 1940. He lived in a small furnished room and initially supported himself by doing typing jobs at night. Later he worked as a waiter at a Schrafft's (restaurant chain), Schra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Duning
George Duning (February 25, 1908 – February 27, 2000) was an American musician and film composer. He was born in Richmond, Indiana, and educated in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where his mentor was Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Early career In the 1940s, Duning played trumpet and piano for the Kay Kyser band, later arranging most of the music for Kyser's radio program, ''Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge''. It was during the Kyser band's appearance in ''Carolina Blues'' (1944) that Duning's work was noticed, leading to a contract with Columbia Pictures. Duning joined the Navy in 1942 and served as a conductor and arranger with Armed Forces Radio. Film and TV career Morris Stoloff signed Duning to Columbia Pictures in 1946, where he worked almost exclusively through the early 1960s, collaborating most often with director Richard Quine. Prominent Duning scores are two of the best examples of western genre – the original '' 3:10 to Yuma'', a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
