FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

Elizabeth Taylor realizes marriage to a multi-millionaire isn't all it's cracked up to be, although if watching movies from the 1950's, she'd know it's always a bad decision: In fact, two years later, Taylor would  play another independent, strong-willed woman ending up with another stubborn man with a ton of land, but in Texas, not ELEPHANT WALK, Ceylon... but that's a tale we've covered ...

As Dana Andrews prepares to build-up fledgling advertising agency owner Eleanor Parker in MADISON AVENUE, he thinks twice about the time it'll take to smoke a cigarette and the job he needs getting done: in one of Dana's best performances of the 1960's, and with his old energy back. Cool boat painting too!

RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP didn't star Dana Andrews, but HOT RODS FROM HELL did, and in that movie his daughter, Laurie Mock , was the good teenage girl, while the bad girl was Mimsy Farmer with her bad guy friend Gene Kirkwood : All three changing places in RIOT as Mimsy plays the good girl daughter of another veteran actor, Aldo Ray, while this time it's Laurie Mock and again, Gene Kirkwood as the rebels. Not only that, but while HOT RODS featured Mickey Rooney Jr.'s band during the third act, the young cast of RIOT is rounded out with Mickey's other son, Tim Rooney.

Eyes faced down upon and away from each other at her uncle's funeral, Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummins begin a spooked relationship in NIGHT OF THE DEMON, the British Version of what America called CURSE OF THE DEMON. The two Noir actors plus director Jacques Tourneur make this a kind of Horror Noir, and both versions are fantastic. 

Gene Kirkwood, who'd one day produce ROCKY, with Paul Bertoya and cult actress Mimsy Farmer, soon to adorn a personal favorite Pink Floyd album, the soundtrack for the movie MORE in which she stars as a different kind of hippie girl than the loony instigator in HOT RODS TO HELL, making Dana Andrews' life a living... just that.

As the lyric goes, "'Cause I just can't seem to drink it off my mind," and it takes a great actor to convincingly fall in love with a portrait, so by the time Gene Tierney's LAURA comes back to life, Dana Andrews as Detective Mark McPherson has already been through a ringer, or two.

Dana Andrews plays a slick lawyer in DAISY KENYON, and the movie's not about the law, say, like BOOMERANG, but is a romantic triangle melodrama where Dana, who calls everyone "baby" or "honey bunch," either male or female, remains cool and manly: and you might just be rooting for him despite the fact you're not supposed to.

Alice Faye stares down Dana Andrews as he paces the room of the newly married home: About to be thrust from a con man Noir to a Wrong Man Noir in Otto Preminger's FALLEN ANGEL.

In FALLEN ANGEL, bad boy Dana Andrews takes good girl Alice Faye on a date, and ditches the movie before it's finished... The title NORTH WINDS, made up especially for the movie: this movie.

"He drank it, let him pay for it," Linda Darnell tells one of several mad crushes, the diner owner in FALLEN ANGEL where, soon enough, Dana Andrews ALSO falls into her trap,  and is soon wrapped-up in her moonlit murder in this Otto Preminger directed con-man Noir. 

Dana Andrews was often billed second, third or even fourth in movies where he's the main character; he lands third in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES where Dana's Fred Derry sets the stage: At an airport, having just returned from World War II, he goes up against soft tyranny from a man committing two of Hollywood's biggest sins: Using a black man to carry his bag, and that bag being for the maligned game of golf. And you thought the "Japs" were tough!

The expression of Dana Andrews in the "bad cop" Film Noir WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS speaks volumes, and is probably the best performance in his career. Although he also played a determined, serious cop in his first Otto Preminger collaboration, LAURA, this, his third, made some consider Dana "the face of Noir."

"I must say, for a charming, intelligent girl you certainly surrounded yourself with a remarkable collection of dopes," Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, tells LAURA : Which isn't in this scene, but the dopes are present: Vincent Price as flaky playboy Shelby Carpenter and deserved Oscar-winning and scene-stealer Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker: Both making Mark and Gene Tierney's title character that much more of a perfect couple.

"Insider Trading, honey bunch?" No, not that Martha Stewart. The actress. And here she is as Joan Crawford's magazine ad-layout model in DAISY KENYON, the third of five features with director Otto Preminger and second of three with Henry Fonda.

"You put it there, didn't you?" Dana Andrews asks Vincent Price about a key in LAURA, and it seems quite unnatural for everyone who knows Price's later horror films that here, he's anything but... a playboy womanizer named Shelby Carpenter, both guilty and innocent in the Otto Preminger's Film Noir classic.

Dana Andrews as title character JOHNNY RENO, a U.S. Marshall taking Joe Connors, played by Tom Drake, in for whatever lawful justice is necessary, but the small town, blaming him for an Indian's death which could  bring savagery and revenge, wants what happens or almost happens in all Westerns starring Dana Andrews... a kangaroo court trial and hanging.

Rhonda Fleming had been around since OUT OF THE PAST, directed by Dana Andrews's CANYON PASSAGE and future CURSE OF THE DEMON and THE FEARMAKERS collaborator Jacques Tourneur, so thirteen-years later in Joseph Pevney's THE CROWDED SKY, she got second-billing under star Andrews despite only sharing a few scenes with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who wants to keep daughter Karen Green safe from her trampy mother.

Dianne Foster plays feisty redhead Chris Palmer in THREE HOURS TO KILL, a vengeance Western starring Dana Andrews as a falsely-accused man who returns to his hometown to find the real killer. Meanwhile, Chris wants his investigation to end for them to run off together. And doesn't take rejection lightly.

Dana Andrews' character has found out he has only a few days to live, and within the space of walking from one room to another, must change his countenance from grave to assertive as he orders the nuclear missile into the Earth's core, for hopeful environmental reasons but that inevitably causes a CRACK IN THE WORLD.

British beauty Janette Scott played Dana Andrews' wife in 1965: Seven-years earlier, Andrews had a co-star in musician Mel Tormé from THE FEARMAKERS: an office geek who doesn't get the girl: But in real life, Janette Scott would be married to Tormé not long after playing Dana's trophy in CRACK IN THE WORLD. 

Not a movie more aesthetically prickly and scratchy and woody and reedy than SWAMP WATER directed by Jean Renoir, his first American film, and with Dana Andrews fourth billed, he's the true lead as Tom Regan, who finds a friendly, falsely-accused renegade while searching for his dog, Trouble, who lives up to his name.

Marilee Earle discusses an 11th hour plan in THE FEARMAKERS, a Washington D.C. set Film Noir sparsely directed Dana Andrews's collaborator Jacques Tourneur. And this is our first post with Marilee, a personal favorite Dana dame. That face! 

Three-time Dana Andrews' dame, only this time she's not his daughter (SATAN BUG) or his stewardess (THE CROWDED SKY) but his wife... but not an adoring one, in BRAINSTORM.

Dana Andrews and a smitten Dianne Foster discuss his having been away after the town attempted a lynching for a murder he didn't commit, and now he's got THREE HOURS TO KILL. And Foster, not on the list, wants him to run off again... but not alone.

At the STATE FAIR, two girls pass Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain, and one, played by Jo-Carroll Dennison, had recognized the handsome reporter, "How you doing, honey?" she says, and he, while eating a candy apple with Crain, replies, " Quiet , you."

One of the hottest Dana Andrews Cinema dames, Janette Scott, looking on before her husband pushes the button... with inevitable CRACK IN THE WORLD results. And in real life, this princess would not only kiss, but would marry a frog .

Jeanne Crain at her youngest and absolute loveliest in STATE FAIR, rounding out a Valentine's Day weekend of this underrated cinema couple in their most well-known collaboration. 

After the rollercoaster, Dana Andrews explains to Jeanne Crain about why a big city newspaperman needs to write about housewives with gorgeous daughters. Which is already pretty obvious!

Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain ride a rollercoaster in STATE FAIR, their first (and most well-known) of four collaborations that ends with HOT RODS TO HELL . 

In the disaster film CRACK IN THE WORLD, British beauty Janette Scott is stuck between chief scientist husband Dana Andrews and her DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS co-star Kieron Moore.

"We also have Chopin in Paris," Elizabeth Taylor tells Dana Andrews in ELEPHANT WALK, bearing many similarities to GIANT two-years later: A down-to-earth girl marries a prideful and stubborn millionaire (Peter Finch) already married to his land that's made him a fortune. So Dana's the original James Dean. And back to how he started: The secondary male lead i.e. the guy who doesn't get the girl. Which isn't for a lack of trying. And in this case, deserving.

Here's a better Valentine's Day post, and anyone from Long Beach, California would know this location used in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES with Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright.

On this Valentine's Day we pay tribute to four-time cinema couple Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain, obviously loving each other here in HOT RODS TO HELL.

Before being captured and tortured by Korean communists in THE FEARMAKERS it was Hungarian communists in the news media espionage thriller, ASSIGNMENT PARIS.

From DUEL IN THE JUNGLE, this one with Dana Andrews as a dapper New York insurance adjuster adjusting to an England to Africa safari adventure... while courting a rich man's wife ...

Dana Andrews in CRACK IN THE WORLD, going over footage of the titular earthquake he himself caused. It's a cool photo just seeing the veteran actor looking into a movie camera lens after so many years of being captured inside of it.

Vincent Price pays the price of police brutality in LAURA: And the audience is behind Dana Andrews, about to let us in on who killed LAURA... or, you know, that other woman... And the following year, Vincent Price would love Gene Tierney again in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN co-starring Dana's beautiful multi-collaborator, Jeanne Crain with Cornel Wilde in his place...

Dana Andrews in one of the first cold war thrillers, THE IRON CURTAIN, as an imported Russian code-breaker who winds up trying to defect in Canada.

Dana Andrews in an early role, and the buried lead in Jean Renoir's swampy adventure melodrama SWAMP WATER here with fickle, antagonistic ingenue Virginia Gilmore.

Dana Andrews and Kieron Moore don't see eye to eye in this natural disaster flick meets doomsday nuclear cautionary tale: one's young and fears the worst; the other, dying and impatient, is about to cause a CRACK IN THE WORLD despite having the best intentions to replace world electricity with molten lava, sending a warhead into the earth's core to bring it up. Bad choice, and all Dana's. 

Dana Andrews and James Westerfield in THREE HOURS TO KILL, another of a handful of Westerns starring Dana featuring the hangman's noose: In this picture, he's almost strung-up, survives, escapes, and returns to town to find out who killed the man he was accused of killing in the first place. This handsome Western, directed by Alfred Werker, happens mostly in flashback.

Dana Andrews in Otto Preminger's LAURA, with a glib, sly grin after looking at the pretentious tribal masks owned by his first suspect, Waldo Lydecker played by Clifton Webb. Ironic that Webb resembles Robert Keith from The Masks TWILIGHT ZONE episode (two decades later). Dana's strong, silent Mike McPherson knew to stay clear, anyway, before strolling to Waldo's bathtub. Thankless job, that.

Dana Andrews sensing something is off in CURSE OF THE DEMON back to, twelve years earlier in LAURA, knowing something's off: he spent over a decade sneaking through shadows, from genres thriller to horror.

Let's continue to celebrate the New Year with Dana Andrews taking a shot in a Chuck Norris flick, GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK. Dana's the human McGuffin providing an 11th hour expository monologue about... just about everything Chuck (with Anne Archer, who had mentioned Dana's character earlier) had been fighting for and against.