FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

Hoagy Carmichael goes cutthroat fishing with his genuinely blind musician friend Dana Andrews, his co-star in CANYON PASSAGE and then THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, and a faking-blind Merle Oberon in NIGHT SONG.

Dana Andrews in Fritz Lang's WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS as an anchorman/reporter on the trail of a killer, who saves his intensity till the end: the rest of the picture he's dead drunk and, according to some sources, he was "blasted" during the entire production.

This Fritz Lang newspaper thriller is strange and uneven, which is often the charm, and plot-wise doesn't always fit into the typical Film Noir trappings but sporadically has that inarguable look and vibe, like this shot of the cop, Howard Duff, working with the reporter, Dana Andrews, to find a serial killer who strikes at the same time the newspaper is working to find him: WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS.

Dana Andrews as a blind piano player in the post-war melodrama NIGHT SONG opposite smitten rich girl Merle Oberon, who feigns her own blindness to get close to who's one of Dana's most stubborn and angry characters, and he's play a few, but here with a reason...

Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward reunite for MY FOOLISH HEART, based on a very angry J.D. Salinger short story and directed by Val Lewton underling Mark Robson, who edited CAT PEOPLE for director Jacques Tourneur, who, after his own Lewton tenure, made CANYON PASSAGE starring this later feature's doomed couple, Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward.

Before Vincent Price was spooky, he played Shelby Carpenter, a wimpy playboy who lives in wealth but has no money, and sustains a lie through most of the Film Noir classic LAURA while Dana Andrews, as Detective Mike McPherson, keeps narrowed eyes on him.

Dana Andrews and Eleanor Parker work on MADISON AVENUE where Dana builds up fledgling advertising company owner Parker to milk magnate Eddie Albert while juggling a sporadic romance with his third-time collaborating ingenue Jeanne Crain. 

In their second of four film collaborations, Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain go to Africa, kind of: some shots, like these, are superimposed from the British studio and others, mostly wider shots, are the real deal in George Marshall's DUEL IN THE JUNGLE.

With British ingenue Peggy Cummins in the background, Dana Andrews as John Holden finds the parchment in his jacket, which means he's doomed by that CURSE OF THE DEMON, a part Horror with Noir stylings directed by Horror/Noir stylist, Jacques Tourneur, who'd direct Dana the following year in THE FEARMAKERS.

As far as villains go, Niall MacGinnis is certainly no clown, although as Doctor Karswell, head of a large Satanist Cult in England, he dresses as one called Dr. Bobo: The Magnificent, performing magic tricks for children while trying to keep Dana Andrews from publishing a disparaging article he was sent from America to write, replacing ingenue Peggy Cummins' uncle, who began the film being lethally plowed-down by the titular CURSE OF THE DEMON.

Janette Scott is one of the prettiest Dana Andrews' starlets, playing his fellow scientist wife in CRACK IN THE WORLD, in color, and in the B&W British airplane disaster NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY she's the daughter of another neurotic scientist, James Stewart. The movie harbors two more future Dana co-stars, Niall MacGinnis from CURSE OF THE DEMON (pilot on the bottom right) and Wilfrid Hyde-White from DUEL IN THE JUNGLE. Meanwhile, in a few years, Dana would begin his own airline disaster career including ZERO HOUR, THE CROWDED SKY and AIRPORT 1975.

Dana Andrews sees Jeanne Crain off their first ride that introduces the pair who'd go through a rollercoaster of three more films after STATE FAIR including a DUEL IN THE JUNGLE, a trip to MADISON AVENUE and battling HOT RODS FROM HELL.

The title for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES comes from the caustic, antagonistic hottie Virginia Mayo as Dana Andrews's shallow wife, and here's a screen capture to prove it.

Been reading from a few morons online who comment that Dana Andrews was too old to play Fred Derry in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, but he's perfect, the perfect age, and wasn't too old at all. If he were a kid, there'd be no reason for the token kid, Harold Russell, bookended by middleman Dana and token old-timer Fredric March. Some people, uh. Anyhow here's Andrew with "a drunkard's dream if I ever did see one," Teresa Wright.

A year before BERLIN CORRESPONDENT, where Dana Andrews and Virginia Gilmore played a German ingenue teamed up with, after spying on, Dana Andrews, they were boyfriend and girlfriend in a fickle relationship in SWAMP WATER.

THE IRON CURTAIN, about a Russian code-breaker defecting in Canada, and one of the first Cold War movies ever made, was directed by William A. Wellman, who gave Dana Andrews his first important role in THE OXBOW INCIDENT almost a decade earlier.

Another picture of Dana Andrews in BERLIN CORRESPONDENT which, like ASSIGNMENT PARIS a decade later, he plays an imprisoned reporter, only in different wars: One Nazi, one Cold. 

Märta Torén starred with Dana Andrews in SWORD IN THE DESERT a few years earlier, and here they are in ASSIGNMENT: PARIS as both play rival yet allied reporters during The Cold War.

One of the great villains of Dana Andrews Cinema, known as Danantagonists on the Facebook Fan Page , German actor Martin Kosleck spent World War II playing Nazi tyrants, and here in BERLIN CORRESPONDENT he all but steals the show.