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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1945: THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET & SALTY O’ROURKE
There's Sometimes a Buggy
English - December 01, 2023 05:02 - 54 minutes - 33.1 MB - ★★★★ - 14 ratingsTV & Film Society & Culture Philosophy memory timetravel amnesia continuum identity paradox romance thefuture thepast timeline Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
For this Paramount 1945 episode, we look at a couple of male melodramas: The Man in Half Moon Street, a Gothic B-movie starring Nils Asther, "the most beautiful man who ever lived," according to Elise, as a scientist who becomes unscrupulous in his pursuit of eternal youth, and Salty O'Rourke, a Raoul Walsh-directed hit starring Alan Ladd as a racetrack gambler who manipulates an unruly young jockey. The movies also boast fairly substantial love interest parts for Helen Walker as a socialite who sympathizes with Asther's Ubermensch impulses and Gail Russell as a schoolteacher who's caught up in Ladd's schemes. We dive into the question of how to create audience sympathy for a villain-protagonist and the curious nature of the Ladd phenomenon.
Time Codes:
0h 00m 45s: THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET [dir. Ralph Murphy]
0h 31m 53s: SALTY O’ROURKE [dir. Raoul Walsh]
Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames
Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler
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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.
* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!
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