FEARMAKERS CINEMA OF DANA ANDREWS

Dames are "always pulling a switch on you" says Dana Andrews as Mark McPherson in the Otto Preminger classic LAURA after being tricked by the title character played by Gene Tierney, having a rainy rendezvous with Vincent Price's flaky playboy Shelby Carpenter.

Dana Andrews and Marilee Earle are surprised by the entrance of an office villain in an office-set Washington D.C. late noir by Jacques Tourneur, and this blog's namesake, THE FEARMAKERS.

By the 1960's Dana Andrew was either serving in big budget or reigning in low budget movies, and here he's a general behind William Holden in a pretty bad ripoff of THE DIRTY DOZEN titled THE DEVIL'S BRIGADE. Dana's b-movies were much better.

Marilee Earle welcomes Dana Andrews into his old office in THE FEARMAKERS, and like any good Film Noir dependable good-girl ingenue, has empathy right off the bat.

A scene or two before the big kiss revelation of love between former friends, Susan Hayward looks jealously over towards Dana Andrews's smoky gaze, where Patricia Roc comments on his footloose working life as Andy Devine looks on in CANYON PASSAGE.

The tough mug between Dana Andrews and Gary Merrill in WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS wound up being choreographer Tommy Tune's boyfriend and stage manager, and died of AIDS in 1994, at the age of 80: or is there another David Wolfe they're confusing this guy with? Below is Wolfe in KANSAS RAIDERS with Dana's crooked friend from CANYON PASSAGE, Brian Donlevy.

"What are your gods, Cornelius" Dana Andrews asks the shallow gold-weigher who dreams of professional banking in Jacques Tourneur's gorgeous Western CANYON PASSAGE: And this image is proof that the Spanish Import Blu Ray is worth the buy.

Dana Andrews with Milburn Stone in the Western Adventure, SMOKE SIGNAL, the same year Stone would start a twenty-year career playing Doc Adams on GUNSMOKE.

Having found the last clue, which lets him know who murdered who and how, too, Dana Andrews as Detective Mike McPherson and Gene Tierney's titular LAURA wait for the suspenseful turnout: for them and the audience in the Otto Preminger Film Noir classic.

Dana Andrews with British import Patricia Roc in CANYON PASSAGE, the only American film she'd ever take part in before returning to her homeland melodramas.

In CRASH DIVE, Dana Andrews loses the girl to Tyrone Power: which lasted until 1944 when LAURA made him a leading man but he'd lose the girl again in ELEPHANT WALK exactly ten years later: Here he's with SWAMP WATER and THE NORTH STAR ingenue Anne Baxter, before she gets stolen...

Soon after Dana Andrews cleaned up Anne Baxter in SWAMP WATER, turning her from an Okefenokee urchin to a small town cutie, she was already his steady girlfriend in the technicolor WW2 propaganda picture CRASH DIVE, where Tyrone Powers (his actual rank on the opening credits) uses his powers to steal her away.

As all Westerns starring or featuring Dana Andrews have something to do with a kangaroo court, here he's searching for the real killer of a murdered man Dana's character was not only blamed for, but he has a rope burn on his neck to prove it: and he wants answers and revenge, with only THREE HOURS TO KILL.

Jeanne Crain was gorgeous in her and Dana Andrews's first of four features, STATE FAIR, and remained so twenty-two years later in HOT RODS IN HELL: here's the picture before that one, MADISON AVENUE, where she's a love interest he's only interested in using to "build up" a client, who's female. 

"There is also a physical side to love; and some women are more demanding than others... And some automobiles are blue," slurs Dana Andrews, drunk in real life and in-character as a reporter in Fritz Lang's WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, here with Ida Lupino as the Film Noir's serial killer, John Barrymore Jr., waits in the wings.

The third of four movies starring Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain is the only where Crain plays the sort of "other woman" on the sidelines wherein Dana's MADISON AVENUE mover/shaker is building-up the career of Eleanor Parker. The scenes between Andrews and Crain, though, are the longest and last throughout the entire story.

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.

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.