Tag Archives: allied artists

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

The second picture I did was for Allied Artists and was titled Unwed Mother, a very provocative title for the late fifties. It starred Timothy Carey, an actor who had scored in Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory alongside Kirk Douglas. In our picture, Timothy played the role of an abortionist (also pretty frisky stuff for that time). When he arrived on the set to do his scene, dressed appropriately in a cheap dark suit, he opened his black medical bag and from it brought out some of the ugliest, vilest-looking knives, tools, hammers, and sundry stuff you’d likely see only in some triple-X horror movie. This bag had not been furnished by the prop department, nor was a bag of that kind mentioned in the script. It was all Timothy’s idea, and he had to be talked out of using it in his scene by the director [Walter Doniger], who threatened to have him fired and, if possible, kicked out of the Screen Actors Guild. He finally did acquiesce, and I heard very little about or from him since then.*

*Marisa’s note: I guess he forgot about the Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode he and Timothy did together.

Unwed Mother

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

CHAIN OF EVIDENCE (1956). Want to know if you should watch this one? Two words: Timothy Carey. Really, what more inducement do you need? Mind you, Carey has a minor role here, playing a thug who beats affable parolee Jimmy Lydon (erstwhile star of Paramount’s Henry Aldrich films) so badly that Lydon develops amnesia and goes off to work as an auto mechanic in Saugus. Yeah, Saugus … These detective movies have an almost fetishistic devotion to geography, as if the writers were working with open copies of The Thomas Guide. Whereas a lot of Hollywood crime movies of this vintage were shot in LA but rarely got site specific, these films name-drop streets, intersections, and such outlying municipalities as Saugus (long since incorporated into Santa Clarita), Ventura, and Imperial Valley, which adds to the verisimilitude. CHAIN OF EVIDENCE (these titles are fairly interchangeable and have little relevance to the actual plots) is an odd mash-up of Arthur Lubin’s IMPACT (1949) and Tay Garnett’s THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946), as the amnesiac is hired as a handyman by a rich guy (THE WILD ONE‘s Hugh Sanders) and winds up the fall guy in a murder plot hatched by the millionaire’s avaricious wife (Tina Carver, later the heroine of FROM HELL IT CAME) and her lover (Ross Elliott). Directed by Paul Landres (who went from this to the Allied Artists shockers THE VAMPIRE and THE RETURN OF DRACULA), CHAIN OF EVIDENCE is just peppy enough and well cast (Dabbs Greer turns up as a sympathetic doctor) to keep the middling plot moving to another sitcom-like finish. Poor John Close is knocked down the cast roster even further this time out, playing a state trooper with about twenty seconds of screen time. Timothy Carey gets three scenes and stamps through each one of them like his feet are on fire.

– Richard Harland Smith, “The Bill: Warner Archives’ Bill Elliott Detective Mysteries reviewed!”; Movie Morlocks (June 13, 2014)

Chain of Evidence

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

Finger Man (1955) Allied Artists. 81m. (B&W) […]

CAST: Frank Lovejoy, Forrest Tucker, Peggie Castle, Timothy Carey […]

Ex-convict Lovejoy is caught by the feds heisting a truck shipment; to keep from gong back to the slams, he works undercover to nail syndicate head Tucker. Lovejoy’s ex-girlfriend and gangster’s moll Castle throws in with Lovejoy and gets murdered by Tucker’s henchman, Carey. In the end, after nearly being killed himself, Lovejoy brings down Tucker’s gang and is allowed to go on his way.

Lovejoy, who played in other noir films such as Try and Get Me, The Hitch-Hiker, and I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. turns in his usual steady, low-key performance. Carey, playing – as usual – a psychotic killer, is as convincingly weird in this film as he was in every other film he ever played, leading one to wonder what he was like in real life.

– Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir (Da Capo Press, 2000)

Finger Man

Quote of the Week

Posted by Marisa on

When you line up Carey’s noir work, it’s clear that the idiosyncratic touches he gives his minor characters truly set them apart. In the undervalued Allied Artists cheapie Finger Man (1955), Carey gets quite a bit more screen time… and steals the film from stars Frank Lovejoy and Forrest Tucker as crime boss Tucker’s right-hand goon Lou Terpe. (You have to wonder, did Carey think up his own character names, too?)

In this one, Tim’s still toking the smokes to great effect, but he also incorporates obsessive knuckle-cracking and seems a lot more sinister. He delights in groping women, rearranging their faces in back rooms, even killing them and stuffing them in trunks, as he eventually does to Lovejoy’s squeeze. But just when you’re convinced he’s the ultimate thug, Lovejoy surprises him in an alley and only has to whack him a few times to reduce him to a simpering boob. It’s classic Tim Carey, offering up an unanticipated left turn that stamps his performance as unforgettable.

– Carl Steward, “Timothy Carey: Noir’s Wildest Card,” Noir City Annual #2: The Best of the 2009 Noir City Sentinel (Film Noir Foundation, 2010)

Finger Man

Pic of the Day: “Convicts 4” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Our pic of the day is another promotional still from Convicts 4 (1962) (aka Reprieve), the prison drama written and directed by Millard Kaufman. The big cake-eating scene is about to begin.

The notation on the back is worth quoting:

27. PRISON PARTY—Roland LaStarza, Tom Gilson, Ben Gazzara, and Timothy Carey on Dannemora Prison’s “hill of courts” in this scene of Allied Artists’ “Reprieve.” Gazzara plays John Resko, famed “prison Rembrandt.”

Notable trivia: Kaufman was the co-creator of Mr. Magoo! LaStarza was a professional heavyweight boxer for many years. He gave Rocky Marciano quite a run for his money in 1953 (I always thought Tim should have played a boxer at some point). This was Gilson’s last feature film; he was shot in self-defense by his estranged wife, model and actress Saundra Edwards, during a domestic dispute.

Pic of the Day: “Convicts 4” revisited

Posted by Marisa on

Our pic of the day (and you remember about clicking for embiggening) is a nice promotional portrait of Timothy from Convicts 4, aka Reprieve (1962), one of my latest eBay finds. I’m still not sure if that’s a hearing aid or a transistor radio he has there. He used a similar device in House of Numbers (1957), also while portraying a prisoner. Hmm.

The typewritten notation on the back of the photo is worth sharing:

84, 85. TIMOTHY CAREY, remembered for his hit performance in “Revolt in the Big House” a few years ago, plays a convict ringleader in Millard Kaufman and Ronald Lubin’s “Reprieve,” Allied Artists production starring Ben Gazzara, Stuart Whitman, Ray Walston, and guest-starring Vincent Price, Rod Steiger, Broderick Crawford, Dodie Stevens, Jack Kruschen, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Carey is currently being hailed for his independently made “new wave” film, “The World’s Greatest Sinner.”