FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

By 1954, while struggling with alcoholism, Dana Andrews was back to playing the secondary male lead, who almost gets the girl but ultimately doesn't, here in ELEPHANT WALK opposite Elizabeth Taylor, wife of aloof multi-millionaire tea-plantation owner Peter Finch, in what's a cross between Alfred Hitchcock's REBECCA and, ironically, Taylor's following year epic GIANT.

The seventies' Western TAKE A HARD RIDE seemed to have several sub-genres at play, and yet, despite a small yet important role, Dana Andrews is the best representation since it's not a Blaxploitation despite stars Jim Brown (as Dana's friend), Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly, nor a Spaghetti Western with Lee Van Cleef on their trial, but more a modernized version of the kind of classic rough-and-tumble cowboy picture that Dana himself was a veteran of, from CANYON PASSAGE to THREE HOURS TO KILL, and before and beyond, including his last starring roles, TOWN TAMER and JOHNNY RENO.

In 1946, Dana Andrews was almost the son-in-law via Susan Hayward of an open-minded Robert Keith, whose equally open-minded son Brian Keith's Bill Davis from a 1969 FAMILY AFFAIR episode THE SINGS OF AN ANGEL let old friend Dana's Harv Mullen into his home... until the kids and Mr. French thumb their noses at an ex-con living under their fancy roof, while Sissy gives Harv a progressive school interview about prison-life, all ultimately driving Dana's character batty enough to leave, that is, before the 11th hour sit-com lecture resolution... and this right before Dana had his own soap opera BRIGHT FUTURE, which he remained on for an entire year of afternoon melodrama.  

Jim Brown, the football hero turned movie hero, who played the friend of Dana Andrews in the 1970's blaxploitation western TAKE A HARD RIDE, died yesterday, just a few hours ago.

Happy New Years birthday of DANA ANDREWS, here in THE CROWDED SKY from 1960, the first movie after the first time he'd taken a one-year break (from Broadway) from movies, and he was almost on the sober path, leading into a string of roles, most that had him in a new position: that of character actors, and with that distinctive voice, mainly villains...

Birthday of two important directors for Dana Andrews: first and foremost being OTTO PREMINGER, and both shared a game-changing noir as directed instead of just producing the film noir LAURA while making Dana's cop character more tough and classy than the usual grungy gumshoe sleazeball; later he'd direct LAURA stars Dana and Gene Tierney in an edgier noir of the "bad cop" nature, WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS and between is their best, FALLEN ANGEL followed by DAISY KENYON...  Otto's film noirs covered 1944 to 1950 when another European director, Fritz Lang, during the late 1950's piloted a few starring Dana; the news-desk/serial-killer-thriller WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS and the courtroom drama BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT... 

Dana Andrews's second year playing a mad scientist after CRACK IN THE WORLD where he was more an impatient scientist; here in THE FROZEN DEAD he's a German scientist who separates his beloved niece's friend's noggin... and poor Katherine Breck has very little to say about it.

Miscast partners Dana Andrews and Don Dubbins in the limp adventure ENCHANTED ISLAND that did have nice colors to it.

The third and final Dana Andrews and director Jacques Tourneur collaboration, and for which this blog got its title, THE FEARMAKERS, a cold-war, desk-set noir thriller from 1958, is finally out on Blu Ray...

Birthday Ruth Donnelly, who plays the spunky and experienced owner (or perhaps just managing waitress) of the Italian restaurant that Dana's edgy cop frequents in WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS. 

Dana Andrews in WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS, after killing future PETER GUNN Craig Stevens, standing in front of an awesome dog... or rather, dogs... picture... that in a nicer hotel they'd be jumping over something, or something. 

Dana Andrews as a strangely-named priest, Roth... Father Roth... in Mark Robson's Catholic Noir EDGE OF DOOM the same year he'd play a tough cop in WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS. Now THAT is versatile.

Birthday Otto Preminger, who was to Dana Andrews what Alfred Hitchcock was to James Stewart or Cary Grant, only better: from LAURA to FALLEN ANGEL to WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS and then a reunion for IN HARM'S WAY.

Twilight Time's SWAMP WATER is one of several Dana Andrews movies given their limited edition Blu Ray treatment, and now prices over seventy bucks: Directed by French import Jean Renoir (escaped from Nazi occupied France) sans a few studio inserts, it's pretty entertaining, taking place in a rural town nearby a dangerous southern swamp, where nothing survives but escaped convict Walter Brennan, taking in Dana... the stubborn but kindhearted son of equally stubborn Walter Huston... who eventually realizes his future FALLEN ANGEL cohort John Carradine holds all the cards.

  The 19th of November always rolls around and is the birthday of both Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney in the Film Noir classic LAURA starring Dana Andrews, trying to get the titular starlet away from her friends, shady and flaky both.

Dana Andrews shakes hands with James Bond veteran villain Donald Pleasence in the Bond clone INNOCENT BYSTANDERS with once Bond contender Stanley Baker, who both the American and British corporate baddies (Andrews and Pleaseance respectively) manipulate from the sidelines.

Villains from THE FEARMAKERS include Dick Foran (looking very Ben Johnson) and his thug Kelly Thorsden.

  Dana Andrews as a bitter blind pianist lights a smoke in John Cromwell's melodrama NIGHT SONG.

Capture of Dana Andrews from the trailer for SPY IN YOUR EYE , one of eight films he starred in during his busiest year, 1965.

Dana Andrews with GUNSMOKE actor Milburn Stone, the same year in fact he'd play Doc on that series here in SMOKE SIGNAL.

Dana Andrews with George Saunders in the Cold War Thriller ASSIGNMENT: PARIS where Dana plays a newspaper reporter like he'd done in BERLIN CORRESPONDENT and would in WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS.

Dana Andrews dines with Donald Pleasence in the espionage action flick INNOCENT BYSTANDERS starring Stanley Baker, with Dana basically a Bond-villain type here.

From Woody Allen's RADIO DAYS: A group of boys, including Seth Green as young Woody Allen, basically, are talking about their favorite starlets. "I like Rita Hayworth." "I like Betty Grable." "I like Dana Andrews." "Are you kidding, Dana Andrews is a man... Haven't you seen Crash Dive?" "A man... with a name like Dana?"

Watching BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III where Christopher Lloyd, back in a simpler time in a rural small town, falls for a seemingly doomed school teacher, brought Dana Andrews's NO TIME LIKE THE PAST to mind: a time-traveler who falls for doomed school teacher Patricia Breslin.

It's bad quality from YouTube but either way, DeForest Kelley let his friend Michael Landon, who was hot on BONANZA before STAR TREK even started, do his dirty work, stunt-doubling a fight with Dana Andrews in TOWN TAMER. 

Anne Baxter (who'd also appear with Dana Andrews in THE NORTH STAR) desperately holds the last of a bagful of kittens in Jean Renoir's SWAMP WATER, where they're about to be thrown into by Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams and Ward Bond, the dicks. 

Dana Andrews gets his classy hat back from, at this point, two time (following STATE FAIR and later, eventually four time) co-star, Jeanne Crain, in George Marshall's British production, DUEL IN THE JUNGLE.

Charles Bickford to Dana Andrews, Fallen Angel: "You're an expert, Mr. Stanton... You know the exact value of a man's word against facts."

Today we open a bottle of Black Pony (with Dorothy Adams, not ashamed to be a domestic) for the birthday of Dana Andrews's most important collaborator/director, Otto Preminger: the classic Film Noir LAURA game-changed both their careers.

Today is the same birthday for LAURA stars GENE TIERNEY and CLIFTON WEBB, the beauty and the brain that muscular (and smart) cop Dana Andrews fights in-between. "You seem to be completely disregarding something more important than your career: my lunch."  

Rest in Peace to RHONDA FLEMING, dead at 97, who appeared in two Dana Andrews' movies as cheating wives in both, but sharing no scenes with Dana in either: unfaithful to Dana's LAURA co-star Vincent Price in WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, then to a jet fighter plane pilot in THE CROWDED SKY, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., crashing into Dana's big plane and who'd pay the favor back, in reverse, in AIRPORT 1975.

Juxtaposition of Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain starting in STATE FAIR screaming on a rollercoaster then demoted to HOT RODS TO HELL screaming on the highway.

Dana Andrews, who was Elia Kazan's leading man in BOOMERANG decades earlier, shares a scene with Kazan's new lead Robert De Niro in THE LAST TYCOON.

Another film with Dana Andrews and Farley Granger, right after EDGE OF DOOM is the cold war/anti war for it's time, I WANT YOU, about young men being called to the Korean War, reluctantly.

Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward in MY FOOLISH HEART directed by Mark Robson, who worked for producer Val Lewton along with Jacques Tourneur, who directed the previous Andrews/Hayward collaboration, CANYON PASSAGE.

Kirk Douglas took no credit for executive producing the breezy romance SPRING REUNION starring two too-old-for-the-role grownups Betty Hutton and Dana Andrews... So then, a decade later, Dana would scold Kirk in IN HARM'S WAY — but without mentioning that high school reunion!

Though many are back-projected, here's an ELEPHANT WALK scene with Dana Andrews as Dick Carver (while Dana's real name is Carver Dana Andrews) with real fields and workers behind him: he's about to turn and bark orders, taking over for a wounded Peter Finch while wanting his wife, Elizabeth Taylor... who wouldn't?

Dana Andrews about to lose his dog Trouble (till he finds him later) on a gator hunt in SWAMP WATER with father Walter Huston by his side, and bullfrog-voiced Eugene Pallette rowing from behind.

Virginia Gilmore, credited before Dana Andrews in the World War II thriller BERLIN CORRESPONDENT, played his spurned girlfriend in SWAMP WATER the year before: ironically she's good here despite working for Nazis, and bad there as an All-American Girl.

Second entry of Doris Fesette, the blonde who Dana Andrews buys a drink for at the Filibuster Bar in MADISON AVENUE. 

Peter Whitney, the shady bartender from THE BIG HEAT, was also an eclectic Dana Andrews actor, playing a clumsy banker in CANYON PASSAGE and then a formidable guard in THE IRON CURTAIN, motioning for Dana to turn around... how demeaning!