Fury is a 1936 American crime film directed by Fritz Lang that tells the story of an innocent man who narrowly escapes being burned to death by a lynch mob and the revenge he then seeks. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and stars Sylvia Sidney and Tracy, with a supporting cast featuring Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis and Walter Brennan. Loosely based on the events surrounding the Brooke Hart murder in San Jose, California, the film was adapted by Bartlett Cormack and Lang from the story Mob Rule by Norman Krasna. Fury was Lang's first American film.
Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 American film noir neo-Western film directed by John Sturges with screenplay by Millard Kaufman. It stars Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan with support from Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, John Ericson, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The film is a crime drama set in 1945 that contains elements of the revisionist Western genre. In the plot, a one-armed stranger (Tracy) comes to a small desert town and uncovers an evil secret that has corrupted the entire community.
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions often ran contrary to those of her contemporaries.
Preston Sturges was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.
Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Both Mankiewicz and Welles went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film. Mankiewicz was previously a Berlin correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily, assistant theater editor at The New York Times, and the first regular drama critic at The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott said that Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York".
Frank O'Connor was an American character actor and director involved in approximately 300 productions. He was a director of several films; he also penned multiple screenplays.
William Lee Tracy was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is known foremost for his portrayals between the late 1920s and 1940s of fast-talking, wisecracking news reporters, press agents, lawyers, and salesmen. From 1949 to 1954, he was also featured in the weekly radio and television versions of the series Martin Kane: Private Eye, as well as starring as the newspaper columnist Lee Cochran in the 1958–1959 British-American crime drama New York Confidential. Later, in 1964, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the film The Best Man.
Mad Love is a 1935 American body horror film, an adaptation of Maurice Renard's novel The Hands of Orlac. It was directed by German-émigré film maker Karl Freund, and stars Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol, Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac and Colin Clive as Stephen Orlac. The plot revolves around Doctor Gogol's obsession with actress Yvonne Orlac. When Stephen Orlac's hands are destroyed in a train accident, Yvonne brings him to Gogol, who claims to be able to repair them. As Gogol becomes obsessed to the point that he will do anything to have Yvonne, Stephen finds that his new hands have made him into an expert knife thrower.
George H. Melford was an American stage and film actor and director. Often taken for granted as a director today, the stalwart Melford's name by the 1920s was, like Cecil B. DeMille's, appearing in big bold letters above the title of his films.
Chester Cooper Conklin was an early American film comedian who started at Keystone Studios as one of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops, often paired with Mack Swain. He appeared in a series of films with Mabel Normand and worked closely with Charlie Chaplin, both in silent and sound films.
Unfaithfully Yours is a 1948 American screwball black comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallée and Barbara Lawrence. The film is about a jealous symphony conductor who imagines three different ways to deal with the supposed infidelity of his beautiful wife—murder, forbearance, and a suicidal game of Russian roulette—during a concert of three inspiring pieces of classical music. At home, his attempts to bring any of his fantasies to life swiftly devolve into farce, underscored with humorous adaptations of the relevant music. Although the film, which was the first of two Sturges made for Twentieth Century-Fox, received mostly positive reviews, it was not successful at the box office.
John Farrell MacDonald was an American character actor and director. He played supporting roles and occasional leads. He appeared in over 325 films over a four-decade career from 1911 to 1951, and directed forty-four silent films from 1912 to 1917.
McQ is a 1974 American Panavision neo-noir crime action film directed by John Sturges and starring John Wayne. It costars Eddie Albert, Diana Muldaur, and Al Lettieri, and features Colleen Dewhurst, Clu Gulager, David Huddleston, Julian Christopher, Roger E. Mosley, and William Bryant in supporting roles. The film was shot in the State of Washington, making extensive use of locations in Seattle and with a sequence near the end filmed on the Pacific Coast at Moclips.
Counsellor at Law is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Elmer Rice is based on his 1931 Broadway play of the same title.
Young Tom Edison is a 1940 biographical film about the early life of inventor Thomas Edison directed by Norman Taurog and starring Mickey Rooney. The film was the first of a complementary pair of Edison biopics that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released in 1940. Edison, the Man, starring Spencer Tracy, followed two months later, completing the two-part story of Edison's life.
The Old Man and the Sea is a 1958 American adventure drama film directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy. The screenplay by Peter Viertel was based on the 1952 novella of the same name by Ernest Hemingway.
Charles R. Moore was an American actor who appeared in over 100 films in his acting career, and was sometimes credited as Charles Moore or Charlie Moore.
Million Dollar Legs is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy film starring Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields, directed by Edward F. Cline, produced by Herman J. Mankiewicz and B.P. Schulberg, co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and released by Paramount Pictures. The film was inspired by the 1932 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles, California.
"Raising Kane" is a 1971 book-length essay by American film critic Pauline Kael, in which she revived controversy over the authorship of the screenplay for the 1941 film Citizen Kane. Kael celebrated screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, first-credited co-author of the screenplay, and questioned the contributions of Orson Welles, who co-wrote, produced and directed the film, and performed the lead role. The 50,000-word essay was written for The Citizen Kane Book (1971), as an extended introduction to the shooting script by Mankiewicz and Welles. It first appeared in February 1971 in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker magazine. In the ensuing controversy, Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges. The essay and Kael's assertions were later questioned after Welles's contributions to the screenplay were documented.
