Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s pulpy film-noir concerns a couple of newly weds; played by John Dall and Peggy Cummins, they’re just doin’ what newly weds do. They’re livin’, lovin’, and workin’ … and they’re shootin’. It’s a match made in hell — just a couple of good old-fashioned American gun nuts. Teaming up, they detach with ease from the conventional path. Soon they’re on the lam. They rob banks and payroll departments; in the process, they pop a few unlucky losers who get in their way (he regrets this, she can justify it). Then they screech their way across rural America in stolen getaway cars.

(Sound familiar? Yes, a clear precursor to Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde.”)

I watched “Gun Crazy” from the relative safe haven of the Egyptian Theatre balcony; descending the staircase after the film, I felt queasy, messed up … freaked out.

“Gun Crazy”‘s violent tour swings through the nation’s middle swathe and ends up ~ where else ~ on the Santa Monica pier. Then comes a desperate foot chase in the wilds of northern California. Argh, it’s a hard-boiled finish. California basically does them in.

Ramping up the film”s heat is a hugely visceral and instinctual performance by the then-18-year old Peggy Cummins, a British actress first brought to Hollywood by Daryl Zanuck in 1945. Cummins was in person at TCM Fest yesterday. That alone is a miracle.

Film noir expert and curator of TCM’s film noir department, Eddie Muller, interviewed the actress. Calling “Gun Crazy” “hugely influential,” Muller noted that neither Godard’s “Breathless” nor Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” would have existed without it. Muller (who knows his stuff) called Cummins’s performance in the film “the signature female performance in a film noir,” then, going further, “the most ferocious female performance in American cinema.”

High praise. Explained Cummins:

“I came to America, it was 1945. I left in 1950, and haven’t been back since. It’s lovely to be here.

“It was all such a long time ago. Darryl Zanuck gave me a contract with Fox. I came to play in “Forever Amber.” But I didn’t. They didn’t think I was sexy enough.

“I have made films with Ronald Coleman, Edward G. Robinson, Victor Mature, Vincent Price, and yet this, “Gun Crazy” is the one that stood out.

“Fox made a big splash for me when I came over. I weighed 98 pounds and had an 18″ waist.

“I went to Zanuck’s party [at his home.] All these people were there, Lubitsch, Tyrone Power, Joan Crawford. I said ‘Hello,’ as though I knew them. It was awesome. They were stars; I was an actress.”

“The tendency, if you were a bit short, blonde and rather pretty, was for a conventional role, but this was quite a meaty part. An actor wants to play against type.”

Cummins recalled the iconic bank robbery sequence, the footage for which filmed by a crew, cinema-verité style, in the back seat of the getaway car, all in one take, with improvised dialogue. “They [director Lewis, the d.p., and sound man] designed a car, I was driving the car. Behind me was the camera, the crew, the sound, they were breathing down my neck. They told me, You’ve got to park the car, John Dall gets out and make up your own dialogue. A policeman walked up. I get out of the car, saying, hello, I’m just waiting for somebody. That’s a nice gun you’ve got, he says to me, and then all hell breaks loose. John Dall gets out of the bank and he jumps in the car. It was all in a single take, about four minutes long. It was quite something.”

_{Peggy Cummins discussing Gun Crazy on Saturday at the 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, California. 4/14/12 Photographer: Jason Merritt}

This year the the festival returns to the Egyptian Theatre, where it all began, with a super lineup of films ranging from pre-Code proto-noir (OKAY, AMERICA and AFRAID TO TALK) to perennial festival favorites (T-MEN, THE WINDOW, CAGED) to rediscovered rarities (NAKED ALIBI, SHIELD FOR MURDER, JOHNNY ALLEGRO, MANHANDLED, THREE STRANGERS, Alan Ladd’s 1949 THE GREAT GATSBY). 

I’m all for F. Scott Fitzgerald, so I’ll go to the opening night Alan Ladd double-bill,

• THE GREAT GATSBY (1949)
  Universal, 91 min, USA, Dir: Elliott Nugent

  Resurrected at last is this Golden Age version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, unseen for decades. Thanks to our friends at Universal Pictures, Alan Ladd’s noir-tinged take on the timeless tale of shady success and lost love can be seen again, in a brand-new print made exclusively for Noir City! Screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum, based on the novel and a play by Owen Davis. Directed by Elliott Nugent. An intriguing take on an American classic. NOT ON DVD

• THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942)
  Universal, 81 min, USA, Dir: Frank Tuttle

  Alan Ladd skyrocketed to stardom playing vengeful assassin Philip Raven in this stylish adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic novel of espionage, transposed to the California coast. Veronica Lake sizzles in her first of seven onscreen pairings with Ladd, and noir favorites Laird Cregar and Marc Lawrence lend memorable support. Directed by Frank Tuttle, from a screenplay by W.R. Burnett (THE ASPHALT JUNGLE) and Albert Maltz (NAKED CITY)

_{Thank you, American Cinematheque, for text.
Photo, Alan Ladd in “Gatsby”}

 Noir City: Hollywood | Egyptian Theatre | opens Friday April 20 | full sked here

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“He got pegged as being short, 5’2″. But he was actually 5’6″ or 5’7″,” said actor/producer David Ladd, himself a very tall man and one of actor Alan Ladd‘s four offspring to work in the film industry.

Ladd spoke about his father following the absolutely fantastic screening of “The Blue Dahlia” at the Academy’s summer film noir series curated by Randy Haberkamp.

The George Marshall-directed Los Angeles crime whodunit, dating from 1946, has at its gritty core a tough-guy screenplay by crime writer Raymond Chandler. It was Chandler’s only original screenplay, his follow-up to a successful collaboration with Billy Wilder on “Double Indemnity.” There’s urban legend about Chandler finishing the script at home on a bruising, round-the-clock bender, dispatching pages to the studio by courier.

Watching “Dahlia’s” close-knit ensemble of character actors hurl Chandler’s hard-boiled lines at each other gives tingling pleasure. The director burns time and space around the words so you can take them in.

“Dahlia” is one of seven films Ladd made with co-star Veronica Lake. Ladd, junior, noted: “My parents loved each other. Veronica and my Dad did not have a real relationship outside their films,” adding, “One of his dearest friends, a life long friend, was [actor] William Bendix [who plays Buzz, a key role in "Dahlia."].”

“”Shane,” of course, was my father’s favorite film. But “The Great Gatsby,” he was most proud of. It was not successful. They [Paramount] knew they would re-do it and so they held it back [from distribution.] Howard DeSilva [also in "The Blue Dahlia"] was in it. It was set in the 1940s.”

“My father came from humble beginnings. His family came to California during the Depression; they were in Oklahoma for awhile. It was like “The Grapes of Wrath.” They lived in a tent city in Pasadena. He was malnourished. [Initially] he failed as an actor; they told him he was too short and too blond. Then he worked as a grip. So when he finally became a star, it was hard for him to believe. In Hollywood, the dreams are hard to hold onto. It’s hard to sustain.”

“When he eventually left Paramount, it was for financial gain, but it was like leaving his family.”

Alan Ladd died young, at age 51. Booze and pills were involved: “He was a tremendous athlete, he was a great diver and swimmer. But he didn’t take care of himself like people do today. He had depression problems. He had a tough time,” said his son David, with compassion.

Monday night's edition of the Academy's first-rate full-summer film series, "1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood's Dark Side," now at mid-schedule, enjoyed the tremendous pleasure of a guest appearance by actress Lizabeth Scott.

The heavy-browed, sultry-voiced Scott graced 22 movies, primarily film noirs made between 1945-57 in which she played one of the genre's most babe-o-licious troubled women.

"Gee that was a really good movie," said the still slender 87 year old after bounding to the Academy's stage following a screening of "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers. Praising herself amongst the film's stellar cast of Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, and Kirk Douglas (in his film debut), she winningly added: "I was pretty good in it too."

Scott shared with the audience her beginnings as a film actress: the way super-agent Charles K. Feldman discovered her in the New York theater, then brought her to L.A. in 1945 to test for Warner Bros and ensconced her at the Beverly Hills Hotel: "I was all alone in that beautiful hotel and no one talked to me for three weeks. I thought 'this is very odd,' and so I called Charlie Feldman's office. 'Oh,' he said to me, 'We forgot you were here.' "

"Finally they sent a script to the hotel and I stayed up all night preparing for a film test the next day. Jack Warner said, 'She'll never be a star.' As soon as I got back to New York, a man named Hal Wallis called. I tested for him in New York. "Martha Ivers" was my second film for him."

"Hal Wallis moved from Warners to Paramount and set up his production company there. I was part of his colony."

Still a long haired blonde beauty, Scott admits: "I love film. I didn't think I'd like it because I wanted to be a great stage actress like [Katharine] Cornell."

"[In "Martha Ivers"] I had only one small scene with Barbara Stanwyck. [In it,] we both desire the same man, Van Heflin. He was kind, generous, and sweet to me. As for Kirk Douglas, we got along smashingly. As for my director [Lewis Milestone], I fell in love with him, though not overtly. I fell in love with every director. Your emotions are so involved…" she remembered.

Asked about her throaty voice, Scott credited her mother, who "enrolled me in elocution lessons since I was ten years old."

The wonderful conceit of the series line-up is that it salutes screenwriters. Says Academy film programmer Randy Haberkamp: "When we looked at the [Oscar] nominations in the 1940s it became really clear that the majority of nominations were for writing. It was those snappy lines that got recognition in their day — more so than the cinematographers, directors, or actors."

"Some films get better and more relevant with every generation. For some reason, noir has a world view the new generation can relate to. In the age of digital 3-D, I love having black-and-white films reach a new audience."

The remaining schedule screens eight noir classics, all made in the 1940s, two of which are not available on dvd ("Dark Mirror" and "Black Dahlia"). Screenings are paired with the 1941 serial of "The Adventures of Captain Marvel," a cartoon, and an intro by a contemporary, noir-influenced screenwriter.

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• Film noir francais: They named it, let's see how the French do it