Laraine Day

The Woman on Pier 13

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Bad girl Christine with reformed communist Brad

Imagine that, the man who directed Mary Poppins also directed 1948’s Cold War thriller I Married a Communist aka The Woman on Pier 13. Though, when all is said and done, both are about infiltration and indoctrination when you come to think of it. One, of course, was madly successful and the other was such a clanger that they had to change its title (which is where Pier 13 came in). Whereupon it flopped all over again. It’s not hard to see why. This is anti-communist propaganda so flagrant it’s hard to swallow, in which the capitalists are the good guys – how they strive to improve the lot of the working man! … Read more

The Locket

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Laraine Day and Robert Mitchum head to head

A locket opens once, to reveal what’s within. The 1946 movie The Locket, on the other hand, keeps on opening. Flashback follows flashback, with more information delivered each time the hinge creaks ajar. What’s inside is sort of special, sort of irritating. This is a film whose most difficult bits are quite easy to follow. It’s the rest of it that gets a touch troublesome. That flashback-within-flashback structure is the film’s USP. Otherwise it’s a mid-1940s aberrant-psychology drama focusing on one Nancy Patton (Laraine Day). As the curtain rises Nancy is about to get married to big swell John Willis (Gene Raymond) at a society wedding. But then Dr Blair (Brian Aherne) sits … Read more