Virginia Mayo

Quote:
This is one of those hard-to-find drive in movies of the 70s which is worth seeking out. The basic story concerns a young woman (Fontaine) who comes to the French Quarter, badly in need of work and ends up dreaming that she is back in another century, or is she in fact an 19th century woman dreaming that she is in the future? The other characters around Fontaine are played by the same actors from the contemporary story. The sets, costumes and ambiance are incredibly detailed (it was shot on location).Read More »

Burt Lancaster’s megawatt grin and acrobatic athleticism light up this grandly entertaining swashbuckler. He tumbles, vaults, and swings his way through the role of a Robin Hood-esque rogue who executes dazzling feats of derring-do as he and his rough-and-ready band of mountain men launch a rebellion against the occupying German gentry in 12th-century Italy. The filmmaker’s powers as an aesthetician are on full display in the exquisite Technicolor compositions, including one particularly striking moment of Tourneurian shadow play: a climactic duel in the dark wrought in finely shaded chiaroscuro.Read More »

Film Society of Lincoln Center Writes:
Tourneur’s moral and aesthetic complexity elevates this dark, anti-heroic western. Set on the brink of the Civil War, the deceptively titled Great Day in the Morning stars Robert Stack as a smooth-talking, opportunistic Southerner who drifts into Denver, his presence inflaming the already heated tensions between the Yankees and Confederates—and between two women he caddishly pursues, played by Virginia Mayo and Ruth Roman. As the film circles around themes of greed, jealousy, and violence, its increasingly sinister tone is mirrored by Tourneur’s intricate mise en scène, which begins in soft pastel hues and ends in noir shadows.Read More »

Synopsis:
Nick Cherney, in prison for embezzling from Torno Freight Co., sees a chance to get back at Johnny Torno through his young priest brother Jess. He pays fellow prisoner Rocky, who gets out a week before Nick, to murder Jess…who, dying, tells revenge-minded Johnny that he’d written a clue “in the Bible.” Frustrated, Johnny obsessively searches for the missing Gideon Bible from Jess’s hotel room. Meanwhile, Nick himself gets out with murder still in his heart. But another factor is in play that none of them (except the murdered Jess) had planned on.Read More »

A fast-paced western with a romantic twist, this was one of the last films pairing director Budd Boetticher and popular cowboy hero Randolph Scott before Scott’s retirement. John Hayes – Scott – left the Civil War behind him when he took on the job of managing the Overland Stage Lines out of a small Colorado town. Clay Putnam has not forgotten that the Confederacy lost and he plans on robbing Hayes Overland Stage of one of its gold shipments from California to the North. He wants the gold to stay in the South to revive the Confederate cause. Meanwhile, his wife Norma -Virginia Mayo – complicates matters since she was Hayes’ old flame, and Putnam’s cronies want the gold for themselves.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
James Thurber wasn’t too happy with the Sam Goldwyn film adaptation of his 1939 short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but the Technicolor musical comedy proved to be a cash cow at the box office. Danny Kaye stars as Walter, a milquetoast proofreader for a magazine publishing firm. Walter is constitutionally incapable of standing up for himself, which is why his mother (Fay Bainter) has been able to arrange a frightful marriage between her son and the beautiful but overbearing Gertrude Griswold (Ann Rutherford). As he muses over the lurid covers of the magazines put out by his firm, Walter retreats into his fantasy world, where he is heroic, poised, self-assured, and the master of his fate. Glancing at the cover of a western periodical, Walter fancies himself the two-gun “Perth Amboy Kid”; a war magazine prompts Walter to envision himself as a fearless RAF pilot; and so on. Read More »