The postman always rings twice 1946 - Garfield and Turner are terrific

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: Tay Garnett
Main Cast: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames

"A classic 1940s film noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice is shot through with an overwhelming sense of the inevitability of fate. In the tradition of Greek tragedy, characters who appear to be in control of their fates turn out to be trapped and compelled by urges beyond their control. They are attractive but flawed, and corrupt at a level so basic that no amount of absolution can cleanse them of their sins. Lana Turner is so magnetically attractive that it is easy to see why John Garfield's character is so quick to fall under her charms and into her arms. Garfield does a capable job of portraying his character's basic moral neutrality: he will do what has to be done, not because it is right or wrong, but simply because it is what must be done. The Macbeth-like plotting of the lovers leads to the predictable recriminations and double-crosses. Even in noir, evil is punished. Eventually. Sort of. The passions that drive the couple to murder are the same fates that manipulated Macbeth, but, in both cases, the characters must pay a price for their weaknesses. The relentless intensity of the Turner-Garfield relationship has rarely been matched on screen. The taut script by Harry Ruskin was based on the novel by noir-meister James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce), and director Tay Garnett carefully evokes all the conventions of the genre without expanding them." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

They won't forget 1937 - An emotionally gripping piece of American history

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Main Cast: Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, Edward Norris, Otto Kruger, Allyn Joslyn, Lana Turner

"This hard-hitting Warner Bros. courtroom drama begins with the usual 'Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental' disclaimer. Filmgoers with long memories, however, recognized Robert Rossen and Aben Kandel's screenplay as a blow-by-blow recreation of the Leo Frank-Mary Phagan case of 1915. Phagan, a 14-year-old employee in a Marietta, GA pencil factory, was found murdered. The bulk of the evidence pointed to a black janitor (who actually confessed to the crime years after the fact), but race-baiting Atlanta newspaper publisher Tom Watson decided to go after Leo Frank, the Northern Jew who owned the factory where Mary worked. 'We can lynch a nigger any time', the politically ambitious Watson is alleged to have said, 'but when do we get a chance to hang a Yankee Jew?' Thanks largely to Watson's 'guilt by headline' campaign, and to Fulton County's cooperative solicitor general, Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death. Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, who all along smelled something fishy in the case, commuted Frank's case to life imprisonment (and was ruined politically as a result). En route to prison, Frank was abducted by a mob and lynched, an incident that boosted the prestige of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan.
Aben Kandel dramatized this appalling miscarriage of justice in his novel Death in the Deep South, which served as the basis for They Won't Forget. In Mervyn LeRoy's film version, Lana Turner (in a star-making turn) plays Mary Clay, a teen-aged typing school student who dresses garishly and flirts with every man she meets. Mary is later found murdered; the last person to see her alive was her teacher, recently arrived Northerner Robert Hale (Edward Norris). Once more, a black janitor (played as a superstitious moron by Clinton Rosemond) is the most likely suspect, but the ambitious district attorney (Claude Rains) seems sincere in his belief that Hale is guilty. Once Hale is sentenced to death, the governor, played by Paul Everton, commutes his sentence, serene in the belief that, once his career is finished, he'll be able to retire peacefully (real-life governor Slaton did not go down so benignly).
Except for the removal of the original case's anti-Semitic elements, They Won't Forget is stark, powerhouse filmmaking, one of the best of Warners' 'social protest' films of the 1930s. 25 years would pass before Hollywood would return to Southern racism with To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. Viewed outside its historical context, They Won't Forget succeeds as a motion picture due to the passion of its director Mervyn LeRoy, and the fine performances of Claude Rains, Edward Norris, and Lana Turner. The film's socially conscious screenwriters, Robert Rossen and Abel Kandel, were hardly rewarded for their efforts: Rossen was among the first people blacklisted in the 1950s, while Kandel spent much of that era writing low-budget horror films under a pseudonym.
It was remade as the 1987 TV movie The Murder of Mary Phagan starring Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, and Charles S. Dutton (as well as as the unsuccessful 1998 Broadway musical Parade)." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Love finds Andy Hardy 1938 - The third one of the series with the singing talents of Judy Garland

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030386/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,9

Director: George B. Seitz
Main Cast: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Lewis Stone, Fay Holden, Cecilia Parker, Lana Turner, Ann Rutherford

"Considered by many to be the best of the Andy Hardy series, Love Finds Andy Hardy certainly boasts a solid guest-star cast, with the likes of Judy Garland and Lana Turner on hand to add, each in her own special way, spice. This being before The Wizard of Oz, a young Garland hadn't really broken into the big time yet, but you'd never know it from her performance here. She's given three songs (while, surprisingly, star Mickey Rooney gets none); none of the songs are remotely above average, but Garland sells them with an ability that goes far beyond her teenaged years. Her voice is youthful and lovely, but it's her phrasing that's so remarkable; the way in which she handles lines both melodic and lyric is amazing, particularly for one so young. For her part, Turner looks totally delicious. The script calls for the viewer to believe that Rooney has to be coaxed into dating her and then complains because she doesn't like to swim and just wants to kiss. This gives huge credibility problems to the story, but credibility isn't what Love is about, anyway. It's about honor and dignity and small-town virtues and listening to your father. It's also about Rooney, and one's fondness for his specific brand of 'gee whiz' acting and never-ending energy will likely affect one's enjoyment of Love." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/love-finds-andy-hardy-v30291/

DVD links: