FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

Another Happy Birthday and Happy New Years both for DANA ANDREWS, born on Jan 1, 1909, a long time ago, but his movies carry on, as his minimalist style of acting seems brand new... here in THE FEARMAKERS (colorized photo) directed by Dana's CURSE OF THE DEMON and CANYON PASSAGE auteur Jacques Tourneur. 

Dana Andrews did three movies total with Anne Francis. Here in THE SATAN BUG, he played her father. The same year, 1965, in BRAINSTORM, they're husband and wife. Five years earlier she's his stewardess to his airline pilot in THE CROWDED SKY. Also pictured is future LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE henpecked husband Richard Bull.

Another year celebrating the double-birthdays of two great characters from LAURA including Laura herself, Gene Tierney, and her obsessed would-be suitor Clifton Webb as Waldo, questioned by Dana Andrews in the Otto Preminger classic featuring towering womanizing buffoon Vincent Price.

Director Jerry Hopper's Western adventure SMOKE SIGNAL, finally streaming in hi-definition, starring Dana Andrews as an Indian-friendly trapper helping an American troop escape angry Indians by way of white-water-rafting... Ironically, the same year, Dana's former directorial collaborator Otto Preminger had another white-water-western in theaters, the more suitably titled RIVER OF NO RETURN... Shown here are William Talman and Rex Reason. 

Dana Andrews' uncredited brother Steve Forrest plays a Nazi soldier, without lines, about to get a knife in SEALED CARGO... so the brothers never actually share screen-time, but it's the first and only time they're in the same movie.

Ushering in 2025, it's the yearly Happy New Year/Birthday for Dana Andrews, and it's also the birth date of his FALLEN ANGEL retired-cop nemesis Charles Bickford.

Birthday for two important directors involving Dana Andrews: Otto Preminger the most important as LAURA made he and Dana famous, followed up by the film noirs FALLEN ANGEL, DAISY KENYON and WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (and years later, the war film IN HARM'S WAY) while in-between Dana worked with Fritz Lang in the 1950's double-noirs WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS and BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, each involving crime and punishment.

Not long after the double-birthdays of LAURA actors Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb is musician and actor Hoagy Carmichael, who appeared in three films with Dana Andrews, including Jacques Tourneur's character-driven western CANYON PASSAGE (pictured with Lloyd Bridges and Andy Devine), the post-war classic THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and their true collaborating combination as fellow musicians in the melodrama NIGHT SONG.

It's that time of the year, for the double-birthday of the killer dame and the killer journalist, Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb, from Otto Preminger's LAURA: with only alpha male cop Dana Andrews in-between.

Birthday of Golden Age singer and actress ALICE FAYE, the good girl in Otto Preminger's underrated film noir FALLEN ANGEL with Dana Andrews... and since Linda Darnell's femme fatale character got so much attention while some of Alice's scenes were cut... in Hollywood, Alice didn't live there anymore... until a 1960's TV-version of STATE FAIR, which Dana starred in the best known theatrical released the same year as this movie, 1945.

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.