Discover Top Posts Tagged with #morris ankrum

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

#earth vs. the flying saucers gif #ray harryhausen #50s sci-fi #special effects #50s movies #fred f. sears #curt siodmack #morris ankrum #1950s #1956 #gif #chronoscaph gif

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) Fred F. Sears

April 4th 2026

#earth vs. the flying saucers #1956 #Fred F. Sears #hugh marlowe #Joan Taylor #Donald Curtis #Morris Ankrum #William Woodson

Beginning of the End (1957)

#beginning of the end #peter graves #peggie castle #morris ankrum #1950s horror #1950s scifi #1950s movies #1957 #bert i. gordon #bbm #movie posters

I watched The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) tonight and it was a great movie, classic film noir, yada yada yada.

What I really want to talk about is that I now headcanon that it is set in the same universe as Perry Mason (1957) and you can't convince me otherwise.

The lynch pin to this theory is this actor: Morris Ankrum.

Ankrum plays the judge in Postman, the one handing down the verdict to Lana Turner's Cora Smith.

He also appeared as a judge in 22 episodes of Perry. In both cases, he was uncredited and never given a name.

Given that Postman is also set in LA County, just a few years before Perry started, I'm choosing to believe that it's the same man. Helping support my case is the general demeanor of the DA in Postman, Leon Ames' Kyle Sackett. Sackett is very similar to Hamilton Burger and I can 100% see him being Burger's mentor in the decade before he became DA himself.

Anywho, that's my crack theory for the evening. All jokes aside, Postman is a classic for a reason and definitely worth watching, especially if you're a noir buff like myself.

#morris ankrum #the postman always rings twice #perry mason #you can pry this head canon out of my cold dead fingers #and then turn it over as evidence for hamitlon's case #i love that ankrum made a career out of playing a judge #the man has hundreds of credits on imdb #and probably a third of them are for playing a judge #rip the character actor

Now watching:

The Giant Claw (1957, dir. Fred F. Sears)

#the giant claw #fred f sears #jeff morrow #mara corday #morris ankrum

Character Actor

Morris Ankrum (born Morris Nussbaum; August 28, 1897 – September 2, 1964) Radio, television, and film character actor.

He had an extensive film career beginning in the 1930′s but by the end of 1958 Ankrum's film career had essentially ended, though he continued taking television roles. In the syndicated series Stories of the Century Ankrum played outlaw Chris Evans, who with his young associate John Sontag, played by John Smith, turned to crime to thwart the Southern Pacific Railroad, which Evans and Sontag held in contempt. Ankrum made 22 appearances on CBS's Perry Mason as one of several judges who regularly presided over the murder trials of Mason's clients from the show's first season in 1957 until his death in 1964. The show ended two years later. Ankrum appeared in western series such as The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Bronco, Maverick, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Cimarron City, Rawhide and The Rifleman.

Ankrum appeared in a number of ABC/Warner Brothers westerns. On October 15, 1957, he had a major part in the episode "Strange Land" of the series Sugarfoot, starring Will Hutchins. Ankrum played an embittered rancher named Cash Billings, who allows hired gunman Burr Fulton ( Rhodes Reason) to take over his spread, but Sugarfoot arrives to bring law and justice to the situation. Ankrum appeared again, as John Savage, in 1959 in the Sugarfoot episode "The Wild Bunch". The same year, he portrayed a zealot who abused his daughter, played by Sherry Jackson, in the episode "The Naked Gallows" of the western Maverick with Jack Kelly and Mike Connors. In 1961, he again played embittered, and this time paralyzed, rancher Cyrus Dawson in the episode "Incident at Dawson Flats" of the western series Cheyenne.

In the 1958–59 season Ankrum appeared 12 times in Richard Carlson's syndicated western series Mackenzie's Raiders. In the series set on the Rio Grande border, Carlson plays Col. Ranald Mackenzie, who faces troubles from assorted border outlaws.

At the time of his death, he was still involved with Raymond Burr's Perry Mason TV series. His final appearance on Perry Mason, in the episode "The Case of the Sleepy Slayer". (Wikipedia)

#Character Actor #TV #Morris Ankrum #Perry Mason #Mackenzie's Raiders

Impact

“Charming” isn’t a word normally associated with film noir, yet it fits Arthur Lubin’s IMPACT (1949, TCM, Tubi, Plex, Prime, YouTube). From the intricate plot in which everything falls neatly into place to the location photography in San Francisco and Larkspur, CA, to, most importantly, the not quite love scenes between Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines, it’s an ongoing delight. Wealthy industrialist Donlevy is driving to Denver for a plant opening when his wife (Helen Walker) contrives to have her lover go along for the ride and kill him. The lover is neither very good with a tire iron nor with a steering wheel and ends up dead in a fiery car crash while Donlevy, stunned to discover what the Mrs. had been doing, wanders the countryside until he winds up at war widow Raines’ filling station. Romance is as inevitable as Hollywood usually makes it. Meanwhile, police detective Charles Coburn, in one of his least fussy performances, tries to make sense out of the plot.

With lots of scenes shot on location (including the same San Francisco hotel where Kim Novak’s character stayed in VERTIGO), IMPACT is a lot sunnier than most film noirs, but the plot is so twisted and Walker such a great femme fatale it doesn’t matter. The script, by Dorothy Davenport (that’s Mrs. Wallace Reid to you) is a masterpiece of efficiency, with key facts and events planted effortlessly and events communicated through telegrams, newspaper headlines and even a radio broadcast by gossip columnist Sheilah Grahame. Raines was never distinctive enough to be a star, but she’s a darned good actress and lots better than you’d expect from a film noir good woman. Donlevy, whose leading man days were largely over by 1949, has beautiful moments as he realizes what’s going on in his life. Anna May Wong deserved a lot better than her brief role as Walker’s maid, but she delivers a solid performance in her next-to-last film. Her friend (and merkin?) Philip Ahn is on-hand in old-age makeup as her uncle. You may also spot Robert Warwick as a police captain, Clarence Kolb as chairman of Donlevy’s board, silent great Mae Marsh as Raines’ mother, Jason Robards, Sr. as a judge, Erskine Sanford as a doctor and horror film standby Morris Ankrum as Donlevy’s assistant.