Virginia Gilmore

  • Jack Donohue – Close-Up (1948)

    1931-1940CrimeJack DonohueThrillerUSA

    Two newsreel reporters doing an outdoor fashion shoot accidentally film a
    Nazi criminal. The Nazi is aided by clever Joe the gangster (an ex-actor gone bad!)
    who uses a variety of methods to retrieve the film before it is used to identify the Nazi.
    Ironically, if left unpursued, the film would have been destroyed. A few predictable but
    well-placed plot twists and double-crosses round out the film.
    One is left wondering how Joe would know to employ a romantic couple to run
    interference for the Nazi as he exited a bank. Joe also surprises by hamming it up
    with drunken nostalgia for his acting days, and whipping people with his belt.Read More »

  • Alfred L. Werker – Walk East On Beacon (1952)

    Drama1951-1960Alfred L. WerkerThrillerUSA

    Louis de Rochemont, former March of Time producer whose docudrama films proved so popular in the 1940s, offers more of the same in Walk East on Beacon. Based on an article written – or ghostwritten – by J. Edgar Hoover, the film concerns the efforts by the FBI to plug up a dangerous security leak. Federal agent Belden – George Murphy- is assigned to locate the communist mastermind behind the leak, and to trace all avenues of informational access utilized by the Bad Guys. Finlay Currie co-stars as an Einstein-like scientist who is being blackmailed by the Reds into cooperating with them, while Karel Stepanek is slime personified as the top Eastern-Bloc spy. Largely filmed on location in New York, Walk East on Beacon makes good use of several Manhattan-based actors, few of whom were seen in films either before or since.Read More »

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