Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Alan Ladd in publicity still for This Gun for Hire (1942, dir. Frank Tuttle) “Murder didn’t mean much to Philip Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful. You had to use your brains. It was not a question of hatred.” -Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale

Alan Ladd in publicity still for This Gun for Hire (1942, dir. Frank Tuttle)

“Murder didn’t mean much to Philip Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful. You had to use your brains. It was not a question of hatred.”

-Graham Greene, A Gun for Sale

William Wyler, Humphrey Bogart, & Claire Trevor on the set of Dead End (1937, dir. William Wyler) “What we remember is the gangster, the man who in a sentimental moment returns to the old home. He wants to see his mother and his girl: sentiment is mixed with pride -he’s travelled places; he shows his shirtsleeve - ‘Look - silk, twenty bucks.’ And in two memorable scenes sentimentality turns savage in him. His mother slaps his face (‘just stay away and leave us alone and die’), his girl is diseased and on the streets. This is the finest performance Bogart has ever given - the ruthless sentimentalist who has melodramatized himself from the start up against the truth, and the fine flexible direction supplies a background of beetle-ridden staircases and mud and mist.” -Graham Greene, Night and Day (1937)

William Wyler, Humphrey Bogart, & Claire Trevor on the set of Dead End (1937, dir. William Wyler)

“What we remember is the gangster, the man who in a sentimental moment returns to the old home. He wants to see his mother and his girl: sentiment is mixed with pride -he’s travelled places; he shows his shirtsleeve - ‘Look - silk, twenty bucks.’ And in two memorable scenes sentimentality turns savage in him. His mother slaps his face (‘just stay away and leave us alone and die’), his girl is diseased and on the streets.

This is the finest performance Bogart has ever given - the ruthless sentimentalist who has melodramatized himself from the start up against the truth, and the fine flexible direction supplies a background of beetle-ridden staircases and mud and mist.”

-Graham Greene, Night and Day (1937)