The Big Knife (1955)

Hollywood has a penchant for making movies about itself. And the painfully obvious message in most of them is--SPOILER ALERT: It's a not very nice place filled with awful people! Duh, right? But if you can get past that plain fact, some of these pictures, like this very good entry from director Robert Aldrich, have much to recommend themselves. This one starts with an outstanding cast where everyone is giving it all they've got. Jack Palance plays one of his rare non-villain roles as a sensitive leading man, a big star who's put his career playing rote rolls in sub-par (but successful) westerns and boxing movies ahead of his family life and suffering wife, Ida Lupino. She and his obsequious manager (Everett Sloane) are the only two people in his corner. The rest of the cast are all out for a piece of his flesh. The slimy studio chief, a howling and teeth gnashing Rod Steiger, and his fixer, low-keyed and lethal Wendall Corey. Ilka Chase is a nasty Hedda Hopper-like gossip columnist who only wants some salacious copy and Jean Hagen and Shelley Winters are two Hollywood bimbos who both hold some secrets on Palance that could wreck his career. At times talky and overwrought, this adaptation of Cifford Odets play still delivers the goods because, well, don't we love to seeing all those rich and beautiful people suffer just a little for all the good fortune they've been given? You betcha.

"I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)

In the 1950's Susan Hayward was the queen of the biopics. This is her portrayal of the largely forgotten actress Lillian Roth. Back then there was no People magazine, no E! News, no Oprah. So when Roth published her tell-all autobiography about her quick rise to fame and fortune at a young age, and then the inevitable downward spiral into booze and the poor house, it was a media sensation.  The movie adaption was a lock. Hayward plays to the bleachers here with a performance that pulls no punches. She throws herself into one ugly drunken binge scene after another until, yes, she does end up literally blotto, stumbling into a gutter. Lucky for her there's kindly Eddie Albert as her AA coach to lift her back to sobriety and a noble ending. Jo Van Fleet is on hand as Roth's domineering and scary stage mother as well as a creepy turn by Richard Conte as a wife-beating husband. But it's Hayward's picture all the way, doing a more than admirable job at several big musical numbers showcasing Roth's big pop hits like "Sing You Sinners" and "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along."

"Deception" (1946)

Passion, lies, murder...and classical music. Like Warner Brothers' "Mildred Pierce" with Joan Crawford the year before, this women's picture slash film noir, is a star turn for that other grand dame of the cinema, Bette Davis. She's the protege and former lover of an internationally famous composer played to the hammy hilt by Claude Rains. When the cellist lover she had assumed died in the War (Paul Heinreid) turns stateside and they rekindle their old flame, she decides not to tell him about her svengali ex, he's been through too much turmoil. And that's only deception #1. Davis' titular lies keep piling up like the shoulder pads on her '40s evening gowns. At times chatty and borderline campy, it's worth seeing if only for Davis' New York loft apartment, so ahead of it's time it could be on the cover of ELLE Decor next month. The several concert sequences are first rate, the black and white cinematography lensed by Ernest Haller is lush, and for an extra hoot, check out how they filmed Heinreid playing the cello: not one but two real instrumentalists slip their arms thru his jacket and 'double' for his fiddlin' arms! Sublime kookiness.

"Stage Fright" (1950)

For years afterward, Alfred Hitchcock would give this fine little film of his short shrift, saying he'd made a structural plot mistake that adversely affected the viewer's following of the story. He felt he didn't play fair with the audience. Yes...and no. I think the plot device he's referencing doesn't make or break one's appreciation for the film at all. There are too many other delightful ingredients in the mix here to dismiss it out of hand. Jane Wyman is an aspiring actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She's got a crush on another actor (Richard Todd) who the police believe has murdered the husband of London's biggest musical theatre star, Marlene Dietrich. Wyman turns into an amateur Nancy Drew trying to get the goods on Dietrich by going undercover as her maid to prove the diva did it. She even enlists the help of her doting father, the good-natured Alistair Sim, while she gets romantically involved with the dashing detective working on the case, a very likable Michael Wilding. There are lots of comic bits and scenes in the ambling plot, all infused with a light British sense of underplayed humor. But undoubtably the reason to see the picture is La Dietrich playing the prima donna role to the hilt. She's sly, sexy, suspicious, and irresistible to watch, stealing the picture right out from under everybody. Cole Porter even wrote a big number for her ("The Laziest Gal in Town") that would later become one of her signature concert staples. Who can resist her purring a number like that in a Dior original? It's obvious Hitchcock couldn't, he films her throughout in the most flattering closeups imaginable.