
More from THE GOLD RUSH very soon.
On Christmas day we watched the Cukor-Garland-Mason A STAR IS BORN, which I don’t think I’d ever seen all the way through. Brilliant stuff. And with a Christmas scene! So that warrants further discussion.
We also watched two seasonal thrillers. CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY is obviously the greatest entry in the tinsel noir micro-sub-genre, but I had been unaware of the existence of MR. SOFT TOUCH (Gordon Douglas & Henry Levin, 1949 — not sure what mishap necessitated two journeyman directors) and COVER UP (Alfred E.Green, same year). Both are OK.

In the first, Glenn Ford is a sympathetic crook, Joe Miracle — back from the war, he’s found the mob have taken over his nightclub and killed his partner. He rips off the joint and hides out in a homeless shelter, where he uses his stack of 100Gs and his underworld acumen to help the indigents and romance Evelyn Keyes. Patterned very much on the JOHNNY O’CLOCK model, it suffers from an awkward, inconclusive ending (happy or sad?) and startling tonal shifts — Ford doing good deeds, and also smashing Roman Bohnen’s knuckles with a crank. Like they couldn’t decide if it was Damon Runyon or THE BIG HEAT.


It has the world’s most beautiful office safe, though. And I’m an Olin Howland completist so it was good seeing him as a skinny Santa (he also turned up in the Cukor).

COVER UP has nifty dialogue — banter between smart insurance man Dennis O’Keefe and smalltown cop William Bendix — as our hero tries to prove murder in a case earmarked by a whole town as suicide. O’Keefe worked on this as writer, under a pseudonym and with a small army of helpers. It has everything but an ending, wrapping up with an anticlimactic discussion which hauls it back from the brink of being an expose of small town corruption — it becomes a sympathetic cover up, in which we get to agree that the reputations of great citizens who commit the odd homicide should be protected for the general good. This rather lets it out of being a proper film noir, which is a shame.





Barbara Britton is very winning, and the very welcome appearance of Hank Worden gives a suggestion of the Twin Peaksian territory it COULD have explored…

MR. SOFT TOUCH stars Dave the Dude; Suellen – Their Daughter; Cherry Valance; Mrs. Bailey; Pa Kettle; Auntie Em; Willy Garzah; Stanislaus ‘Duke’ Covelske; Candy; Kane’s father; Mrs. Hudson; Mrs. Leuchtag – Carl’s Immigrating Friend (uncredited); and Wilbur Strong.
COVER UP stars Buzz Wanchek; Montague L. ‘Monty’ Brewster; Cynthy Waters; President Harry S. Truman; Ceinwen; Inmate, Wilma Lentz; First Lady of the Land (uncredited); Lilith’s Friend in Spode Room (uncredited); and Mose Harper.