FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

Dana Andrews's return with director Otto Preminger after fifteen years brought him into the Pearl Harbor drama IN HARM'S WAY that included Kirk Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Brandon DeWilde and Patrick O'Neal. Like happens with former leading men, Dana would often play bad guys, but his Admiral Broderick is more an unqualified leader whom the characters talk about more than talk to.

A personal favorite scene on a personal favorite movie, and this blog's namesake, THE FEARMAKERS, when Dana Andrews tells Mel Torme how to take surveys the right and honest way.

Dana Andrews worked again with director Otto Preminger, fifteen-years after WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS; as Admiral Broderick in IN HARM'S WAY that also features Dana and Otto's DAISY KENYON actor Henry Fonda. Dana's character, pictured with Franchot Tone, is a despised Pearl Harbor admiral showing up again in a scene with Kirk Douglas, and then Kirk and John Wayne.

Katharine Smith is the daughter of Dana Andrews, and among others she grew up knowing her dad's friend and collaborator Jacques Tourneur, one of the all-time great directors, bringing perfection to Val Lewton now-iconic b-horrors and collaborating with Dana in the Western CANYON PASSAGE, CURSE OF THE DEMON and THE FEARMAKERS, and here they are on a sailing trip to Mexico. Thank you Katharine for this photograph. It's legendary. 

It's never clear what the perturbed customer was talking about in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, forcing (birthday of) Harold Russell to snap off a shirt pin with his hook-hand and Dana Andrews to hop from behind his soda jerk fountain and pummel the jerk into glass, but it's most likely the fella abhors Communists more than Nazis.

When Ronald Reagan was in The White House, his ex-wife Jane Wyman played a villainous winemaker on the nighttime soap FALCON CREST, butting heads with Robert Foxworth, who uses Dana Andrews as a senator for some kind of dramatic twist: He appeared on the series twice during the first and second season. 

In the same year, Dana Andrews plays characters whose sudden heart attacks moved the story forward. Here in TAKE A HARD RIDE it sends partner Jim Brown the titular trek, and the death in AIRPORT 1975 causes Dana's small plane to crash into Efrem Zimbelist Jr's large one: the opposite of THE CROWDED SKY.

Venturing into the New Year named after perfect vision, here's a cabin-fevered Vincent Prince questioned by Dana Andrews, who socks him in the gut later on, knowing Gene Tierney's title character is much too good for the flaky loser in LAURA.

Happy birthday to Dana Andrews, born 1909 on New Years Day, January 1rst, and here he's with Jeanne Crain in STATE FAIR, one of four total together.