Tom Brown's School Days (1940)

Dr. Thomas Arnold (Cedric Hardwicke) is working as a private tutor when he is appointed by the board of governors of Rugby School to serve as headmaster.  There he takes a hard line on disruptive behavior, expelling many students who will not respond to any other measures.  His new approach appalls the masters, the public and most of the school's governors, but one of these, Squire Brown, assures him of his unqualified support, and as proof, sends his own son, Tom (Jimmy Lydon) to Rugby as a student.  At Rugby, Tom quickly learns the ropes from fellow student East (Freddie Bartholomew).  He also learns to look up to sixth-former Brooke, the decent and upright head of the house, to revere the strict but benevolent Doctor, and to dread the cruel bully Flashman (Billy Halop), who treats him to a tossing in a blanket and also to a "roasting" -- exposing his backside before the fire.  Brown recovers from the roasting but honors the students' code of silence by not telling on Flashman, and with East leads a rebellion against bullying by the other students, culminating in a fist-fight that brings both Brown and Flashman up to the Doctor's study.  Both are disciplined for fighting, but Flashman is expelled for the roasting, and the other students believe mistakenly that Brown is the one who tattled, and he is ostracized by the students, most of all his close friend East.

Tom Brown's School Days was published in 1857 by lawyer, parliamentarian and social reformer Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), inspired by his own experience at Rugby during Thomas Arnold's headmastership, and the novel had a profound and long-lived influence on juvenile literature and popular fiction.  The success of the novel inspired a whole genre of fiction set in boarding schools, from novels such as Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co. to the very popular "school stories" serialized in boys' penny papers in the 20th century (George Orwell writes about them in his essay "Boys' Weeklies") to American prep-school novels such as J. D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye and John Knowles' A Separate Peace.  Hughes' warm, sympathetic voice and the loose, episodic structure of his story broke with the heavy-handed moralizing of most literature aimed at young people while subtly showing his young hero's development into a young man with a sense of moral responsibility and duty.  In the introduction to his follow-up, Tom Brown At Oxford (1861), Hughes steadfastly denied that the Tom Brown character was autobiographical, but like Tom in the novel and like others of his generation who attended Rugby during Arnold's tenure, he had been deeply impressed with Arnold's gravity and moral uprightness and held him in awe all his life.  So influenced was he by his period at Rugby that his most grandiose social reform project -- a utopian settlement in the American state of Tennessee -- was named Rugby.  Flashman, the bully who is expelled for his behavior, went on to have an interesting career in a series of novels by George MacDonald Fraser relating his roguish adventures in the far-flung corners of the British Empire.

Thomas Arnold himself (1795-1842) is known to modern readers not only through his reverent depiction in Hughes' book but also through a more sardonic portrait in Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians.  A historian, an Anglican churchman, and a man of religious zeal and staunch conservatism, father to poet and critic Matthew Arnold and great-grandfather to biologist Julian Huxley and novelist Aldous Huxley, he became renowned as an educational reformer for his changes to the system at Rugby and their subsequent influence on schooling in nineteenth-century Britain.  By our standards, his changes to the curriculum were slight: to the Greek and Latin classics that formed the basis of the syllabus, he added history, modern languages and mathematics (but not the physical sciences).  In fact few if any of his reforms were institutional or systemic in nature, and if they were effective at all, it was mainly due to the force of Arnold's own personality.  His main interest was in character-building and in instilling the Christian values he felt were missing from society at large.  He did not disturb the practice of corporal punishment for which English schools were notorious; in fact he considered it beneficial and Biblical and delegated its use to the sixth form, that class of oldest and most advanced students which he designated as an intermediate authority.  Nor did he abolish the peculiar instititution known as "fagging", in which junior students were employed by sixth formers as servants for tasks such as cleaning and errands.

Under Arnold's influence, the English public school (the term is a misnomer -- these were, and are, private, élite, fee-charging institutions catering to the sons of Britain's wealthy and high-born) became a sort of character-factory, impressing young men of wealth and privilege with the values needed to ensure the power and prestige of Britain at the height of its imperial age: loyalty to sovereign and country, adherence to the established religion, and a standard of personal rectitude commensurate with social expectations -- "brave, truth-telling English gentlemen", as Squire Brown says in the novel (and in that day and age, the word "gentleman" still carried a connotation of class status -- a working-class man was, by definition, not a gentleman).  In practice this meant that public-school boys learned, in the school environment, the necessity of social hierarchy, the importance of fitting into that hierarchy, and the responsibilities that came with class privilege.  In spite of the classical basis of the curriculum, the public school was not primarily intended to cultivate the intellect or to advance scholarship, still less was it meant to foster the arts and sciences or to provide occupational skills, but to provide the empire with its owners, statesmen, churchmen and officers.  The system quickly came to be closely associated with other things as well: corporal punishment, bullying, abuse of authority, situational homosexuality and sexual abuse, wealth and class snobbery, and neglect of health and safety.

As the empire declined and dissolved and the public-school system grew more anachronistic, these and other criticisms began to appear in English culture, illustrated by some random examples.  Orwell, who as a boy attended a small preparatory academy called St. Cyprian's in order to qualify for a scholarship to Eton, wrote in the 1940s the essay, "Such, Such Were The Joys", that described his experiences at that school: a context-free, cram-school approach to learning, bullying by students and by teachers, neglect, underfeeding, preferential treatment for the wealthier boys, and a gradually-internalized sense of inadequacy and helplessness characterized his account of the school, which he renamed "Crossgates" in the piece.  Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film If... allegorically attacked Britain's class system and empty traditions as a group of underclassmen, fed up with their treatment at the hands of the sixth-formers, find a cache of arms and open fire at a Founders' Day gathering, in a dreamlike fantasy of revenge and rebellion (and a clear reference to Jean Vigo's 1933 Zéro de Conduite).  In the 1970s, the debut episode of Michael Palin and Terry Jones' comedy series Ripping Yarns, called "Tomkinson's Schooldays", was more a Monty Python-style lampoon of the clichés of the school-story than social criticism, but even here the brutality, the indifference to the well-being of students, the empty and mindless traditions, and the experience of the school as a molder of conformity rather than a means of physical, intellectual and emotional development, generated the typically surreal and irreverent treatment (a foppish, elegant School Bully who even intimidates the headmaster, the "school leopard" that catches boys who try to escape, junior boys chained to stakes to watch a football match, and the compulsory fight with the grizzly bear).

Today, period films, due to their expense, are almost always considered "prestige" films: Tom Brown's School Days is a relic of the time when in-period and costume films were a staple of the American film-goer's diet.  They were more vivid than realistic, and attenuated as far as any qualities, attitudes or language which might alienate or mystify the American filmgoer.  Dialects were often inconsistent or simply not used at all, unless they were used by actors to whom the accents came naturally.  The only exterior shooting notable in this film is a football match, the rest being done on soundstages in that highly stylized but effective use of artifice that was the trademark of the golden-age Hollywood period film, with sets and costumes which could have served as well in a Dickens adaptation (and at some point probably did).  A quartet of screenwriters, including producer Gene Towne, with additional dialogue by director Robert Stevenson, supplied dialogue that betrayed a very American sense of quick timing and wit under a thin veneer of Englishness.  In fact, only Cedric Hardwicke and co-star Freddie Bartholomew, whose career as a child actor consisted mainly of roles that exploited his delicate features and (carefully cultivated) English diction, seem quite at home in an 1830s English school; while sandy-haired, snub-nosed Jimmy Lydon seems more like an American farm boy finding himself unaccountably a scion of English country gentry, and Billy Halop is quite unable to shake his Dead End Kids inner-city image.  The plotline is considerably tightened in comparison to the novel, with a development of conflict between Brown and East that is missing from the original, but which plays well in the film.

Director Robert Stevenson (1905-1986) began to direct in British film in 1932 after two years as a screenwriter.  He came to Hollywood in 1939, where he directed at various studios while under contract to David O. Selznick, then contracted to RKO in the late forties.  The lion's share of his career was spent at Disney, where he directed many of the studio's live-action features, such as Old Yeller (1957), Son of Flubber (1964), Mary Poppins (1965), The Love Bug (1968), Bedknobs And Broomsticks (1971), and The Shaggy D. A. (1976).

Cedric Hardwicke (1893-1964) distiguished himself on the English stage and was given a knighthood in 1934 by George V.  He began to appear in American stage productions and films after 1936 and permanently emigrated to the United States in 1948.  His voice and polished demeanor made him a favorite character actor in films such as Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) and in the Biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956).

Jimmy Lydon (b. 1923) first distinguished himself as a juvenile actor in the 1930s on the Broadway stage, moving on to films for Paramount and RKO, becoming best known for his work in the Henry Aldrich series, based on the popular radio comedy.  He moved on to television in the early 1950s and finally to a career in television and film production.  He was especially memorable in Strange Illusion (1944), a Poverty Row noir drected by Edgar Ulmer (Detour) with a plot derived from Hamlet.

Born in Dublin and raised in England by an aunt, Freddie Bartholomew (1924-1992), had had London stage experience and appeared in two British films before accepting a role in MGM's David Copperfield (1935).  His earnest mien, English accent and dimpled good looks soon made him the second highest-paid child star in Hollywood after Shirley Temple and he appeared in such films as Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and Captains Courageous (1937).  As an adult he worked mainly in advertising, the wealth he had accrued in his childhood having been spent in lawsuits, particularly one highly publicized fight between his aunt and his birth mother over the right to his earnings.  The experience embittered him and he gave no interviews about his early career until shortly before his death.

Billy Halop (1920-1976) began his acting career in radio and then on the stage.  His appearance in the Broadway play Dead End paved his way to Hollywood when Samuel Goldwyn brought the play to the screen, and he worked on many installments of the ensemble-oriented Dead End Kids/East Side Kids films for Paramount and Monogram.  He was less successful as a solo actor and eventually worked in the 1950s as a salesman and in the sixties as a registered nurse.  He did have a recurring role in television's All In The Family where he played Munson, the owner of the cab company where Archie Bunker worked part-time.

I viewed Tom Brown's School Days on a DVD release from Alpha Video Distributors, whose large selection of budget-priced video releases of classic black-and-white "late show" film offerings have unfortunately disappeared from most existing retail video outlets in my area over the past several years, along with many of the outlets themselves.  As with most of Alpha's releases, this does not include anything in the way of supplementary material and is not a "remastered" version, but made from a 16mm print of the type you used to see in late-night television screenings of old films.

She Shoulda Said No! (aka Wild Weed) (1949)

On Sept. 1st 1948, police raided the home of actress Lila Leeds and arrested four people, including Leeds herself and film actor Robert Mitchum, both of whom were charged with possession of marijuana, then a felony in the state of California, after which followed an agreeably scandalous and highly publicized trial. Mitchum was still in the initial stages of his career, but a hot property, with a number of film roles under his belt (Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Nevada, West of the Pecos, Crossfire), and a lot of potential. Leeds was a relatively unknown starlet, who before beginning in films, had as a teenager run away from her rural Kansas upbringing to become a dancer in St. Louis, and in LA met, married and was annulled from a bandleader who was already married. Twenty-one years old at the time of the bust, Leeds' filmography consisted of a handful of bit roles and walk-ons, often uncredited. Both were eventually convicted -- Mitchum of conspiracy to possess, Leeds of possession -- and served prison sentences. After serving his time, Mitchum picked up the thread of his film career with scarcely a murmur (Rachel And The Stranger, The Red Pony, The Big Steal, Where Danger Lives): his public image as a nonchalant bad-boy was even burnished by his recent brush with the law, and his conviction was eventually overturned in 1951. But Leeds' career, such as it was, ended with her arrest. Job offers simply stopped, except for an offer from producer Richard Kay to appear in a film called Wild Weed, written to capitalize on her recent arrest. The film's publicity made much of her desire to inform others her age of the dangers of illicit drug use, but as she confessed to a magazine in the fifties, she took the job because it was the only offer available, and she was broke.

Leeds played Ann Lester, a chorus girl in a nightclub who is working to put her younger brother Bob (David Holt) through college. Through friend and fellow chorine Rita (Mary Ellen Popel), she meets Markey (Alan Baxter), who proves to be a peddler of marijuana. Rita and Markey pressure Ann to try the drug at an impromptu gathering, and she soon becomes hooked. Reefer parties with Rita and her marijuana-smoking friends, as well as a dependent relationship with Markey take up most of her energy, and her work suffers, leading to the loss of her job. But Ann is soon working for Markey, helping him peddle dope to new customers. Finally Bob discovers the secret of Ann's new, sordid lifestyle, and commits suicide, after which she is arrested as a drug addict and sentenced to sixty days in prison. Ann is defiant and unwilling to divulge Markey's name to the cops when she enters prison, but she is soon plagued with guilt over her brother's death and has a nervous breakdown (or a drug withdrawal) in her cell. She leaves prison clean, reformed and determined to cooperate with Lieutenants Mason and Tyne (Robert Kent and Don C. Harvey) of the narcotics squad, and their superior, Captain Hayes (Lyle Talbot) to apprehend Markey and his boss, Treanor (Michael Whalen), by luring them into a phony deal with a big supplier.

Wild Weed (the original title -- others included The Devil's Weed, Marijuana: the Devil's Weed, and most unwieldy, The Story of Lila Leeds And Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket) shared at least two personnel with a film hailed as the definitive "dope movie," and for many, the definitive "cult film" as well, 1936's Reefer Madness (aka Tell Your Children) -- story writer Arthur Hoerl (the screenplay was written by Richard H. Landau) and cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh. That film focused on high-school students being enticed into moral ruin and lives of crime as a result of exposure to the weed; while this film opens with a prologue that serves to introduce Markey -- he sells four teenagers some marijuana and they promptly crash their car in a stoned joy-ride, leaving one legless and comatose survivor -- the film otherwise dispenses with the teenage-maltshop angle and instead leavens its moralism with noir-esque situations, visuals and dialogue.

Shot on a six-day schedule, directed by Sherman Scott aka Sam Newfield, and marketed through independent distributor Eureka Productions, the film did poorly until the distribution rights were picked up by veteran showman and exploitation pioneer Kroger Babb, who showed the film "roadshow" style, booking venues for short dates and touring the film from town to town, bringing along Leeds to appear personally and even to lecture. Though figures are not available, this tactic was reportedly quite successful, as Babb could build up hype for the film and then blow for the next town before word-of-mouth and local reviews could depress attendance.

As was generally the case for Production Code-era "dope movies," She Shoulda Said No! was silly regarding the subject of marijuana and its effects and dangers. The drug is referred to in the film as "tomatoes" because it is shipped -- already rolled -- in labeled tomato cans. Smoking the short brown cigarettes leads to uncontrollable giggling, manic behavior, delusions, hallucinations, and utter indifference to the distress of others. One of the guests of Ann's tea parties (Rudolf Friml, Jr.), sits at the small upright piano and immediately imagines himself giving a recital at the Hollywood Bowl, playing virtuosic Romantic themes, only to show him picking out "Chopsticks" with two fingers. Brother Bob finally discovers what has been happening one morning after one of these get-togethers, when he finds the living room of their neat little house, left to them by their deceased parents, an utter wreck, as a strange man awakes and groggily rasps, "You got a stick?"

But ultimately the point of these films was not to give a realistic portrayal of marijuana use any more than they were sincerely motivated by public service or moral uplift: these existed to give viewers a spicy, vicarious experience of sin and thrills denied them in mainstream Hollywood films. She Shoulda Said No! more or less closed the era of the "dope movie" until Frank Sinatra appeared in the serious-minded mainstream production The Man With The Golden Arm (1955) and made drug addiction a more palatable subject in American film, but the legacy of the old dope movies lived on in sexploitation from the mid-sixties onward, in movies in which the device of portraying illicit drugs as magical substances that turned chilly or timid good girls into exciting, up-for-anything bad girls resurfaced in films such as Alice In Acidland, Smoke And Flesh, The Brick Dollhouse, The Acid Eaters, and Aphrodisiac: The Sexual Secrets of Marijuana, films that made the suggestive innuendo of the earlier era a little more explicit.

To this end, She Shoulda Said No! exploits Lila Leeds' looks as well as her story. Many user reviews on the IMDB have commented on Leeds' resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, but this resemblance was superficial at best. The same age and, before her arrest, at roughly the same stage in her film career, Leeds shared with Marilyn a similar starlet packaging: shiny blonde bobbed hairdo, plucked and pencilled arched eyebrows, and catlike eye make-up. But Leeds was thinner and more angular than the voluptuous Marilyn, and she had none of the naive sensuality or childlike vulnerability that became key to Marilyn's persona. In every way, she looked the very image of the "bad girl," as though she had stepped off of a pulp-novel cover painting.

Jack Greenhalgh's camera focuses on Leeds' face in tight closeups throughout the film, whether dolled-up, molled-up, tortured or touseled (there is one scene, in fact, when she is awakened by her as-yet unaware brother the morning after one of her nights of tea-smoking, and her disordered hair, un-made-up face and eyes still puffy with sleep make her knock-down sexy in a way that her usual pancake-and lipsticked looks couldn't approach); the effect is almost a perverse, Poverty Row version of the wrenching closeups of Renée Falconetti in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. The intent, again, of the close scrutiny was to get the most out of Leeds' looks, but the cumulative effect is one of pathos, even empathy, especially if one is aware of the basic outline of Leeds' biography. She reminds me of one or two women I have befriended by chance over the years who could be labeled real-life "bad girls," women whose impulsiveness, poor decision-making or simple circumstances have sometimes led to hardship or even tragedy; they are often judged harshly and unfairly by others, but they also have a lust for life, testify to humans' resilience, strength and persistence in the face of adversity, and number among the most genuine people I have known. In between the limitations of She Shoulda Said No!'s script and Leeds' own limitations as an actress, Greenhalgh's closeups give you the sense that you can read her checkered past in her youthful, pretty, yet already careworn features.

With her aura of tarnished virtue, Leeds was clearly one of those actresses who would not have gone very far in mainstream Hollywood as a youthful ingenue in that repressive time. Given some maturity and some more acting chops, she might have made a good character actress in cynical-dame roles, a flair for which the third act of the film, in which she poses as a hard-bitten jailbird in order to trap Markey and Treanor, definitely shows. Born a few years later, she might have also been a natural for juvenile-delinquent films. As she was, she might have been a fixture in exploitation films, where being a "bad girl" was a more marketable asset than in the mainstream.

We have already mentioned the use of noir-style situations, visuals, and dialogue that make She Shoulda Said No! a more enjoyable film than Reefer Madness: the film also benefits greatly from a good supporting cast, who while not always A-list talent, were quite good at their jobs and kept the film on something like a solid foundation. Alan Baxter (1908-1976) was a busy lead in B-pictures and supporting actor in A-pictures in the thirties and forties, transitioning to television in the fifties and sixties, equally good at tough-guy leads or heavies. We met Lyle Talbot a while back in connection with his role in Ed Wood's Glen Or Glenda, and this movie is also notable for the debut appearance of Jack Elam (1918-2003), memorable in such noir classics as D. O. A. and Kansas City Confidential, as well as in westerns such as Rawhide and Gunfight at the O. K. Corral, and who later appeared in the opening scenes of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West.

Lila Leeds herself appeared -- uncredited -- in one more film, The House Across The Street, her tenth film appearance, before leaving LA and films for good. She continued as an entertainer in the Midwest, working mainly in nightclubs, married and divorced twice, and reportedly began to use heroin at one point. In later years she developed a religious commitment, moved back to LA, and volunteered at various local missions. She passed away in 1999 at the age of 71.

A number of DVD releases exist of She Shoulda Said No!; I viewed the film on Passport Video's 5-disc, 24-film budget compilation, Girls Gone Bad: The Delinquent Dames Collection.

Laura (1944)

Police detective Lt. Mark Macpherson (Dana Andrews) is in charge of the investigation of the murder of advertising executive and socialite Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), whose body, face obliterated by a shotgun blast, has been found at the door of her posh New York apartment. He talks to the people closest to Laura: columnist and man-about-town Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who took Laura under his wing when she was a budding career girl and molded her into a social and business success, wealthy aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), and her sometime fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), an impoverished Southern aristocrat whose genteel poverty was relieved by frequent gifts from Ann Treadwell before he was hired by Laura's firm. Confused by his suspicions of the three, he is also disturbed by his growing obsessive attraction to Laura herself. Alone in her apartment and preoccupied with thoughts of her, he is shocked to see Laura herself, very much alive and unaware of the events of the past few days, arrive at the apartment. Now he must determine who was actually murdered, who murdered her and why.

Laura had a long, tortured evolution from original story idea to finished film. Author Vera Caspary conceived the story initially as a stage play and, finding herself unable to finish the play, turned it instead into a fairly successful novel, Ring Twice For Laura, which was first published as a magazine serial and then published in book form. Still wanting to see her idea performed on stage -- particularly before any film was made -- Caspary spent a number of months attempting to adapt it for Broadway and again came up against a creative block. This time she used collaborators to help her, one of whom was Otto Preminger, who had recently left 20th Century Fox and decided to focus on Broadway stage productions. Tired of the project on which she by this point spent a number of years on, she washed her hands of it and sold the film rights to Fox, where Jay Dratler would begin to draft a script that was later redrafted with Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhardt. Preminger decided to go back to Fox and sold the project to studio head Darryl Zanuck, who attached Rouben Mamoulian to the film as director. Hedy Lamarr and Jennifer Jones were considered for the part of Laura Hunt before Zanuck okayed Gene Tierney for the part, breaking her out of a career that exploited her dark, exotic good looks by casting her in supporting roles as ethnics and half-castes -- a Polynesian, an Arab, a Eurasian, a Chinese woman. Laird Cregar was considered for the role of Waldo Lydecker before Zanuck reluctantly (because of Webb's homosexuality) agreed to the casting of stage actor, singer and dancer Clifton Webb, in his first film appearance since the silent era. Meanwhile, Preminger developed creative differences with Rouben Mamoulian and stepped in as director, reshooting all Mamoulian's footage. Even the development of the theme, which was later fitted with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and became a popular, frequently recorded pop standard, was attended by creative difficulties: composer David Raksin, frustrated over his many attempts at a satisfactory melody and distraught over the departure of his wife, propped her goodbye letter on his piano and improvised the first phrase of what would become the final version of the Laura theme.

Laura is both love story and murder mystery, a wartime film that offered a war-weary public an escape into a milieu of high society and wealth untouched by material sacrifices. Although usually filed under film noir for its murder-mystery premise and tough-guy detective hero, the film's elegant and subtle style, witty dialogue, tasteful art direction and stylish, conventional cinematography avoid noir's typical expressionist approach. Laura's consistently high level of craft and style make it a great "late-show" movie, perfect for dead-of-night viewing when in the mood for an old black-and-white picture. But what has made this film a cult classic as well as a golden-age Hollywood favorite is its underlying levels of perversity and decadence, its themes of necrophilia, impotence and moral corruption. Macpherson is a cynic about women who falls in love with Laura who is presumed dead and cannot disappoint his idealized picture of her. The relationship between Ann Treadwell and Shelby Carpenter is essentially that of a wealthy woman and her gigolo; Carpenter himself is a soft character with a weakness for womanizing (even when engaged to Laura, he takes a mistress) who takes money from women and pawns gifts. And there is Waldo Lydecker, a generous friend and mentor who guides Laura to success in business and social circles but also exerts an iron control over her personal life, disapproving of every young man she meets because he is, in essence, impotent and cannot possess her.

Further notes on the stars:

• Although Gene Tierney (1920-1991) never regarded her own performance in Laura as more than "adequate," the film did establish her as a leading actress and she was to co-star with Vincent Price again the next year in Leave Her To Heaven as an emotionally disturbed murderess. Her subsequent career was hampered by personal tragedy, marriage and relationship problems and mental illness, making her less prolific an actress than she probably would have been otherwise.

• Dana Andrews (1909-1992) first realized his potential as a leading man in Laura, but despite other memorable performances in films such as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), he remained an underrated talent, though managed to stay busy through the early eighties.

• Judith Anderson (1898-1972) had a long and distinguished career on the stage parallel with her film career. A native of Australia, she became Dame Judith Anderson when awarded a CBE in 1960.
  

• Clifton Webb (1891-1966) went on to more film work as a result of Laura, mostly typecast as an ascerbic, waspish bachelor. He created the very popular character Mr. Belvedere in Sitting Pretty (1948) and went on to play him in a number of sequels.

• Vincent Price (1911-1993) became synonymous with horror film in the fifties, sixties and seventies in a seemingly endless string of roles in films like House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), to which he brought an indefatigable sense of fun and eye-twinkling good humor. His unusually sporting attitude to what most other actors would have considered a career dead-end was undoubtedly due to his off-the-set passions for fine art and cuisine. He authored or co-authored a number of books about art and cooking, lectured on art and aesthetics, and donated a number of works in his collection to East Los Angeles College for a gallery founded in his and second wife Mary's names.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released a DVD edition of Laura as part of its Fox Film Noir series. The Laura DVD includes two commentary tracks (one by film historian Rudy Behlmer, and another by film professor Jeanine Basinger with remarks by Laura's composer David Raksin), along with English and Spanish dialogue and subtitles, theatrical trailer, and two documentary programs from A&E Network's Biography series on stars Gene Tierney and Vincent Price.

(BTW: A stage version of Laura finally debuted on Broadway in 1948.)