#dianne foster

[gatutor]

Dana Andrews-Dianne Foster "Tres horas para vivir" (Three hours to kill) 1954, de Alfred L. Werker.

[historical-hollywood]

Dianne Foster as Judith Wilkison in The Violent Men (1955).

[fantastictyphoonpeanut]

Swingin' 60s meets Roaring 20s: Dianne Foster and Diana Dors on the set of the 1961 film 'King of the Roaring 20's: The Big Bankroll'. (FTP)

[gatutor]

Jack Hawkins-Dianne Foster "Un crimen por hora" (Gideon of Scotland Yard) 1958, de John Ford.

[ghassanrassam]

1958 Alan Ladd is navy officer but also a Quaker who is against violence but somehow finds a way of reconciling his religious beliefs with military service

[ofimaginarybeings]

Drive a Crooked Road (Richard Quine, 1954)

Mickey Rooney and Dianne Foster in Drive a Crooked Road 

Cast: Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, Jack Kelly, Harry Landers, Paul Picerni, Dick Crockett. Screenplay: Blake Edwards, Richard Quine, based on a story by James Benson Nablo.  Cinematography: Charles Lawton Jr. Art direction: Walter Holscher.  Film editing: Jerome Thoms. Music: George Duning.

Mickey Rooney, usually the most ebullient, not to say overbearing, of actors, gives a subtle, reined-in performance in Drive a Crooked Road as a shy, quiet auto mechanic and amateur race-car driver who is seduced into becoming the getaway driver for bank robbers. But the film is also subtextually about sex in that repressed decade, the 1950s. Rooney’s Eddie Shannon works in a repair shop where the fellow mechanics gather at the windows and hoot lasciviously at any passing “dame.” One mechanic even slobbers on the plate glass. They poke fun at Eddie, whom they call “Shorty” for obvious reasons, because he doesn’t follow suit, questioning him on his sex life. The pack behavior suggests that any male who doesn’t behave the way they do must be queer. And then one day a beautiful woman named Barbara Mathews (Dianne Foster) shows up at the auto shop wanting her car checked out and asks for Eddie by name. She flirts with him, and though he responds with shy embarrassment, she calls on him again the next day, after he has repaired her car, to say that she can’t start it. So he pays Barbara a visit at her apartment, fixes the connection that had somehow come loose, and gets flirted with a bit more. Gradually, she breaks through his reticence and, though even at the height of their relationship he’s still so awkward that he doesn’t even kiss her good night, he’s hooked. We know by now that she’s up to something, and we find out that her real boyfriend, Steve Norris (Kevin McCarthy), who had seen Eddie in an auto race, needs a driver who can negotiate the backroads between Palm Springs and the highway to Los Angeles, so he and his friend Harold (Jack Kelly) can rob a bank and make their getaway before the police have time to set up a roadblock. Barbara has grown ashamed of deceiving Eddie, but she’s forced to go through with the plan of persuading him to take part in the job. This can’t end well for anyone, and surprisingly for a Hollywood film of the era, it doesn’t.  Drive a Crooked Road lags a bit in its storytelling and doesn’t build the suspense it should, but the performances are good. And the sexual subtext is what makes the film fascinating. In the depiction of Eddie’s repressed sexuality, there’s a suggestion that he may be afraid that he really is gay, just as there are suggestions that Steve and Harold may be more than just friends. The rampant machismo of the garage mechanics is also present in Steve’s treatment of Barbara, whom he expects to do his bidding come what may. Sometimes hindsight makes a film more interesting than it was when it was released.

[hellooldsmelly]

[hellooldsmelly]