Alan Curtis

High Sierra

by
Roy and a bruised Marie eye each other

1941’s High Sierra was the last time Humphrey Bogart took second billing to anybody. It’s clearly his film yet Ida Lupino got top billing, playing a gangster’s moll. Neither the star nor the moll has very much to do and it’s pretty clear that Lupino’s part has been pumped up a bit to justify her position on the credits. As said, Bogart’s film, and it’s his character’s story too, the noirish, fatalistic tale of a life-serving criminal who is pardoned in the film’s opening moments. Which seems remarkable until we learn that a very big Mr Big in the criminal underworld wants Roy Earle (Bogart) on the outside so he can supervise a … Read more

Phantom Lady

by
Thomas Gomez, Ella Raines and Franchot Tone

A man with a spare ticket to a show invites a random woman to go with him. He’s been stood up, he explains and this is a geniune “shame to waste it” offer. She, wary of this stranger but distraught about something and needing distraction, half-heartedly agrees. No introductions, she insists, no names. To emphasise that this is no prelude to a pick-up, or beginning of a relationship, or anything of that sort. It’ll just be an evening of fun at a show. And so it is. They take a cab from the bar where they met to the Chica-Boom-Boom musical revue, where the revue’s drummer gives the mystery lady the glad eye. … Read more