Noirvember 2022

Glad to hear Claire Trevor was so engaging in Born To Kill. I have the movie I just need to find time to watch it.

Yeah, Born to Kill is a great noir. To me the most stunning facet of the picture is Lawrence Tierney, who always portrayed the nastiest of the bad guy leads in noir. He was also a badass in real life, frequently getting into fistfights in bars. In this film he really was a psychopath. Great stuff.

It cracked me up that, after Tarantino hired Tierney for a role in '91s Reservoir Dogs, he ended up in a brawl with Tierney which resulted in his firing. Tierney though QT was a punk...

I also enjoyed my man Elisha Cook, Jr. in the picture. He and Tierney became life-long friends. And Tierney never once tried to kill him...

Oh okay. Yeah it's worth watching. I hope you enjoy it.

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I destroyed the dastardly dairy dame! I made mad milk maid mulch!

I don't know if getting into fistfights is "badass" (it sounds more like poor judgment) but that's interesting. He did a great job as the bad guy. I don't know that he's a psychopath so much as just mentally off. Kind of like he has a thirteen-year old brain in a big adult's body.

I just now realized as I read your post that the Lawrence in Born to Kill isn't Laurence Harvey. All this time I thought Born To Kill was another Laurence Harvey film....So I just looked up Lawrence Tierney and he played Cyrus Redblock, a Sydney Greentstreet type on Star Trek the Next Generation in a holodeck simulation of 1940s detective Dixon Hill's office...he was good too!

Yeah, Tierney was actually a pretty good actor. I read where he complained that he was always used as a bad guy, and so became type cast. He claimed that he didn't like playing bad guys.

The only non bad guy role I recall seeing him in was in The Greatest Show On Earth (1952). Our gal Gloria was in that one too.. He was also in Prizzi's Honor (1985), but I can't remember his part. And of course Reservoir Dogs (1992). QT fired him but kept his scenes..

I don't remember him in The Greatest Show On Earth (1952) but I've only seen it once. A good film too and I can't believe Gloria Grahame actually did the stunt where she lays on the ground and a trained elephant places its foot on her head. It's actually scary to watch, when you think of what could've went wrong.

I watched Woman on the Run (1950) I loved Ann Sheridan's character especially her dialogue when being questioned by the police inspector. She was quite surly, which reminded me of Bogart in Maltese Falcon when he's being questioned about a murder. I read that Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe wrote much of their own dialogue. It was quite snappy. Great film with a unique story telling, thanks for recommending it.