The Apartment is a 1960 American romantic comedy-drama film directed and produced by Billy Wilder from a screenplay he co-wrote with I. A. L. Diamond. It stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Willard Waterman, David White, Hope Holiday and Edie Adams.
Bonnie and Clyde is a 1967 American biographical neo-noir crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the title characters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. The film also features Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, and Estelle Parsons. The screenplay is by David Newman and Robert Benton. Robert Towne and Beatty provided uncredited contributions to the script; Beatty produced the film. The music is by Charles Strouse.
Knute Rockne, All American is a 1940 American biographical film that tells the story of Knute Rockne, Notre Dame's legendary football coach. It stars Pat O'Brien as Rockne and Ronald Reagan as player George Gipp, as well as Gale Page, Donald Crisp, Albert Bassermann, Owen Davis Jr., Nick Lukats, Kane Richmond, William Marshall and William Byrne. The film also includes cameos by legendary football coaches "Pop" Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, William H. Spaulding and Howard Jones, playing themselves.
The Lady Eve is a 1941 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.
Road to Morocco is a 1942 American comedy film starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, and featuring Anthony Quinn and Dona Drake. Written by Frank Butler and Don Hartman and directed by David Butler, it’s the third of the "Road to …" films. It was preceded by Road to Zanzibar (1941) and followed by Road to Utopia (1946). The story is about two fast-talking guys cast away on a desert shore and sold into slavery to a princess.
Cat Ballou is a 1965 American western comedy film starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual role. The story involves a woman who hires a notorious gunman to protect her father's ranch, and later to avenge his murder, only to find that the gunman is not what she expected. The supporting cast features Tom Nardini, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman, and Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, who together perform the film's theme song, and who appear throughout the film in the form of travelling minstrels or troubadours as a kind of musical Greek chorus and framing device.
Robert Rossen was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer whose film career spanned almost three decades.
Body and Soul is a 1947 American film noir sports drama directed by Robert Rossen and starring John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, and William Conrad. The screenplay by Abraham Polonsky is partly based on the 1939 film Golden Boy. With cinematography by James Wong Howe, the film is considered by some to be one of the best films about boxing. It is also a cautionary tale about the lure of money—and how it can derail even a strong common man in his pursuit of success. The film uses the song Body and Soul for the main musical theme and underscoring throughout.
The Big Heat is a 1953 American film noir crime film directed by Fritz Lang starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, and Jocelyn Brando about a cop who takes on the crime syndicate that controls his city.
Abraham Lincoln Polonsky was an American film director, screenwriter, essayist and novelist. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Body and Soul but in the early 1950s was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios, after refusing to testify at congressional hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, in the midst of the McCarthy era.
Born Yesterday is a 1950 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor, based on the 1946 stage play of the same name by Garson Kanin. The screenplay was credited to Albert Mannheimer. According to Kanin's autobiography, Cukor did not like Mannheimer's work, believing it lacked much of the play's value, so he approached Kanin about adapting a screenplay from his own play. Because of legal entanglements, Kanin did not receive screen credit.
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews were sometimes regarded as unnecessarily harsh. Crowther was an advocate of foreign-language films in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly those of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini.
Nobody Lives Forever is a 1946 American crime film noir directed by Jean Negulesco and based on the novel I Wasn't Born Yesterday by W. R. Burnett. It stars John Garfield and Geraldine Fitzgerald and features Walter Brennan, Faye Emerson, George Coulouris and George Tobias.
Billy Wilder (1906–2002) was an Austrian filmmaker. Wilder initially pursued a career in journalism after being inspired by an American newsreel. He worked for the Austrian magazine Die Bühne and the newspaper Die Stunde in Vienna, and later for the German newspapers Berliner Nachtausgabe, and Berliner Börsen-Courier in Berlin. His first screenplay was for the German silent thriller The Daredevil Reporter (1929). Wilder fled to Paris in 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party, where he co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay of French drama Mauvaise Graine (1934). In the same year, Wilder left France on board the RMS Aquitania to work in Hollywood despite having little knowledge of English.
The Phenix City Story is a 1955 American film noir crime film directed by Phil Karlson for Allied Artists, written by Daniel Mainwaring and Crane Wilbur and starring John McIntire, Richard Kiley, and Kathryn Grant. It had an unusual "triple premiere" held on July 19, 1955 in Phenix City, Alabama, Columbus, Georgia, and Chicago, Illinois.
White Heat is a 1949 American film noir directed by Raoul Walsh and starring James Cagney, Virginia Mayo and Edmond O'Brien.
Out of the Fog is a 1941 American film noir crime drama directed by Anatole Litvak, starring John Garfield, Ida Lupino and Thomas Mitchell. The film was based on the play The Gentle People by Irwin Shaw.
Little Caesar is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film distributed by Warner Brothers, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The film tells the story of a hoodlum who ascends the ranks of organized crime until he reaches its upper echelons. The storyline, based on real life Mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano, was adapted from the novel of the same name by William R. Burnett. Little Caesar was Robinson's breakthrough role and immediately made him a major film star. The film is often listed as one of the first fully-fledged gangster films and continues to be well received by critics.
Ira Wolfert was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and a fiction and non-fiction writer.
Irish Eyes Are Smiling is a 1944 United States musical film that chronicles the life of popular Irish song composer Ernest R. Ball. The screenplay by Earl Baldwin and John Tucker Battle is based on a story by E. A. Ellington. The film was directed by Gregory Ratoff and produced by Damon Runyon for 20th Century Fox. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1944.
