FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

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ANOTHER 11/19 BIRTHDAY CLIFTON WEBB & GENE TIERNEY

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.

INNOCENT BYSTANDERS (1972)

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.

THE FEARMAKERS (1958)

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

NIGHT SONG (1947)

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

SPY IN YOUR EYE (1965)

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

SMOKE SIGNAL (1955)

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

ASSIGNMENT: PARIS (1952)

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.

INNOCENT BYSTANDERS (1972)

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

WOODY ALLEN'S RADIO DAYS (1987)

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?"

THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1963)

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.

TOWN TAMER (1965)

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.

SWAMP WATER (1941)

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.

DUEL IN THE JUNGLE (1954)

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.

FALLEN ANGEL (1945)

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."

LAURA (1944)

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.

LAURA (1944)

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."

THE CROWDED SKY (1960)

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.

HOT RODS TO HELL (1967)

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.

THE LAST TYCOON (1976)

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.

I WANT YOU (1951)

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.

MY FOOLISH HEART (1949)

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.

SPRING REUNION (1956)

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!

ELEPHANT WALK (1954)

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?

SWAMP WATER (1942)

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.

BERLIN CORRESPENDENT (1942)

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.

MADISON AVENUE (1961)

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

THE IRON CURTAIN (1948)

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!

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1946)

As mentioned in the Cult Film Freak review , Dana Andrews's performance in WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS is breezy, on cruise-control, making his best scenes with lawmen Howard Duff since Dana, as a classy award winning newscaster, can partake in some of his most natural kind of roles: of the hard-boiled investigatory nature.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

In both THE CROWDED SKY and before that, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, Rhonda Fleming plays a cheating wife, but not of Dana Andrews: In both, she and Dana never share a single scene, and yet they're first and second in the credits: And here she is in the latter, warming up to Dana's LAURA foe, Vincent Price.

LAURA (1944)

The famous portrait from LAURA of Gene Tierney's title character that Dana Andrews initially thinks is "not bad" to Clifton Webb's snooty chagrin: particularly protesting the word "dame" for Laura, to whom he provided a personal Pygmalion transition.

THE CROWDED SKY (1960)

Dana Andrews in THE CROWDED SKY: a poker game moment leading to a very quick fist fight and, with Dana's usual brooding glare, it's one of many flashbacks that takes up about half a film that juggles past melodrama with present time airline disaster.

THE FEARMAKERS (1958)

Here to note the strange, screwy times we're living and dying in as Dana Andrews enters a home that's not so quaint while we're stuck in our own particular cages during a pandemic, on Easter, and the news media is our very own version of THE FEARMAKERS.

THE CROWDED SKY (1960)

A lobby card for THE CROWDED SKY from a deleted scene showing what looks like the wedding party of Rhonda Fleming and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., which makes no sense since their marriage was supposed to be kept secret except for their friend Caesar (Ed Kemmer).

LAURA (1944)

Dana Andrews questions Gene Tierney's title character in LAURA, before he realizes "dames are always pulling a switch on you."

THE CROWDED SKY (1960)

By far the best lobby card from THE CROWDED SKY, showing John Kerr punching Dana Andrews, co-pilot socking pilot, isn't in the film since the moment is more close-up and at an angle, so this must have come from a still photographer as Dana recovers below.

CANYON PASSAGE (1946)

Another screen capture from the opening of CANYON PASSAGE showing Dana Andrews riding in soaking wet from the Northwestern rain into Oregon, where the movie's both filmed and takes place.

CANYON PASSAGE (1946)

Our second capture from the Kino Lorber Blu Ray of Jacques Tourneur's gorgeous Western CANYON PASSAGE has Dana Andrews riding into town in the rain at the film's opening.

CANYON PASSAGE (1946)

Dana Andrews stands firm all though CANYON RIVER, and here's the first shot from the Kino Lorber Blu Ray that just came out on Tuesday, and is worth the time and purchase.

CANYON PASSAGE (1946)

Finally, Dana Andrews's greatest Western, CANYON PASSAGE, directed by his future CURSE OF THE DEMON and THE FEARMAKERS collaborator Jacques Tourneur, fresh from horror b-pictures for Val Lewton, is on Blu Ray... for a while only available on DVD with another Western, or a Spanish Blu Ray import that was good, but this will be better: although not the cover, which, as proven below, are always superior when foreign.