Classic Films in Focus: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)

Singin' in the Rain (1952) might be the most popular of Gene Kelly's musical films, but An American in Paris (1951) proved his biggest Oscar success. The Best Picture Winner, directed by Vincente Minnelli, took home six Academy Awards in all, including wins for Best Musical Score and Best Color Cinematography. Although it lacks the more robust, developed narratives of Singin' in the Rain and On the Town (1949), An American in Paris offers plenty of Kelly's energetic artistry as a dancer, with a memorable performance from Oscar Levant and a charming debut by Leslie Caron. Songs from George and Ira Gershwin, as well as a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, make this picture particularly popular with musical types, while the climactic ballet is a highlight for those devoted to the art of dance.

Kelly plays aspiring American painter Jerry Mulligan, who stays on in Paris after World War II to practice his art. There he catches the attention of the wealthy Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), who offers to sponsor Jerry but also has designs of a more romantic kind. When Jerry falls for a young French girl named Lise (Leslie Caron), Milo becomes jealous, but Jerry doesn't know that Lise is already engaged to Henri (Georges Guetary), a popular singer who took her in during the war.

Kelly's charisma carries the lightweight narrative, although he's in a more sentimental mood here than in his other best known roles. The funniest scenes pair him with Oscar Levant's character, the perpetual scholarship musician Adam Cook, who provides a link between Jerry and his unknown romantic rival, Henri. Jerry and Henri form a lovers' triangle with Lise, while Jerry finds himself in a second triangle with Lise and Milo. The two parallel situations reveal the double standard for men's and women's behavior, since Jerry pursues Lise with relentless attention but balks when Milo treats him the same way. Of course, Jerry will get what he wants eventually, but the story cuts Milo out of its ending, leaving us to wonder how Jerry's influential sponsor reacts to his defection. Leslie Caron is much too young, at nineteen, to be a credible love interest, but she shines in the dances and looks especially lovely at the artists' ball, where she appears like a fairy princess with stars in her hair and a white ballet gown.

Ultimately, it's not the story that really matters in An American in Paris. This is a musical with the emphasis firmly on its song and dance. Jerry's performance of "I Got Rhythm" with a group of French children is an entertaining highlight early in the picture, and the "By Strauss" number features a great combination of the distinct talents of Kelly, Levant, and Georges Guetary. The most important sequence, however, is the American in Paris ballet, which puts Leslie Caron's skill as a ballerina to particularly good use. The long musical piece transports viewers through a romantic fantasy of Paris and its art, including some memorable recreations of paintings by Manet, Utrillo, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Caron even appears in costume as Jane Avril, the can-can dancer who inspired Toulouse-Lautrec's most iconic work. Kelly also adopts a number of striking costumes for this sequence, most notably a very fitted white outfit that highlights his muscular dancer's physique. The ballet dominates the final segment of the film, with no dialogue and only a single concluding scene to bring us back to the narrative frame, but for those who most value Gene Kelly as a dancer it's the quintessential moment of his screen career. 

For more musicals from Vincente Minnelli, try Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi (1958), for which he won an Oscar for Best Director. Gene Kelly also stars in Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), and Brigadoon (1954). Leslie Caron is best remembered for Gigi, but you'll also find her in Lili (1953), Daddy Long Legs (1955), and Father Goose (1964). See Oscar Levant in Romance on the High Seas (1948), The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), and The Band Wagon (1953), and catch Nina Foch in Executive Suite (1954), The Ten Commandments (1956), and Spartacus (1960).

Classic Films in Focus: BORN TO KILL (1947)

The illustrious Robert Wise directs Born to Kill (1947), a sharp, smart noir drama that showcases the considerable talents of Claire Trevor as its morally ambivalent protagonist. It's an early foray into the genre for Wise, who would go on to direct The Set-Up (1949) and The House on Telegraph Hill (1951) before moving to Oscar winning projects like West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). Unlike those more famous musicals, Born to Kill allows Wise to explore some truly dark territory, and it provides interesting gender reversals of several noir tropes, with Trevor's character in the sway of Lawrence Tierney's menacing homme fatal. Memorable supporting performances from Walter Slezak, Elisha Cook, Jr., and Esther Howard also make this taut crime story worth seeking out, with Isabel Jewell making a brief but pivotal appearance as the good-time girl whose bad behavior sets the plot in motion.

Claire Trevor stars as the newly divorced Helen, who concludes her stay in Reno by discovering a pair of corpses and then skipping town without informing the police. On the train back to San Francisco, she meets the attractive but overbearing Sam (Lawrence Tierney), who makes overtures to Helen but then rapidly marries her wealthy foster sister, Georgia (Audrey Long). Neither Helen's engagement to Fred (Phillip Terry) nor Sam's marriage can cool their lust for each other, even though Helen begins to suspect that Sam is the murderer who left those bodies behind. Meanwhile, a private detective (Walter Slezak) hired by a friend of the dead woman arrives in San Francisco to investigate Sam's involvement in the crime, and Helen is torn between betraying Sam and keeping his dangerous secrets.

Trevor's Helen takes the place of the usual noir anti-hero; like Walter Neff or Frank Chambers, she has a sliver of conscience to struggle against the dark impulses that dictate her fate. Ironically, of course, one of her few generous actions, that of returning a little dog to its home, leads her to find the bodies and make the far less laudable decision to leave town without telling the police. Helen doesn't want to get involved, but soon she's involved so deeply that she can't get out. She knows perfectly well what kind of man Sam is, but she can't resist him, even after he marries her innocent sister. Tierney's male seducer is more brutal than a classic femme fatale; he's always just a breath away from losing his temper and killing someone, although his friend, Marty (Elisha Cook, Jr.), tries to keep him under control. Noir fans will instantly see the irony of having Cook, so often cast as the unhinged type himself,  play the sane one of the pair, while Tierney is really terrifying in his role, and it's clear that he's the inspiration for the picture's title. Moreover, we understand that Helen is a fool to think she can manage him or even survive her entanglement in this compulsive killer's web.

Cook is probably the most familiar of the supporting players, thanks to his many noir roles, but Born to Kill offers several other performances worth noting. Walter Slezak, sounding just a little sketchy with his Austrian accent, plays the detective, Arnett, a slippery philosopher who might or might not have any morals at the bottom of his corpulent soul. Isabel Jewell vanishes too soon as Laury, the girl whose infidelity first pushes Sam over the edge, but she gives the character enough life to highlight Helen's cold self-interest and Mrs. Kraft's devotion. It's Esther Howard as the older woman who proves the scene-stealer of the picture; as the tragicomic Mrs. Kraft, she's brassy and worn, but probably the most deeply sympathetic character in the whole story. Her confrontation with Cook's murderous Marty turns up the tension to an almost unbearable degree, first by forcing us to watch her walk right into a trap and then by making her fight for her life with desperate courage. She's funny, crass, loyal, and utterly heartbreaking in her grief over Laury's untimely death, a perfect foil to Helen's pitiless refinement.

Be sure to note Tommy Noonan in an uncredited role as the bellboy who knows that Mrs. Kraft cheats at cards and Ellen Corby of The Waltons as one of the household maids. For more of Robert Wise's films from the 1940s, try The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945), both made under the oversight of horror maestro Val Lewton. Claire Trevor won a much-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Key Largo (1948), but you'll also find her in Stagecoach (1939), Murder, My Sweet (1944), and Raw Deal (1948). Lawrence Tierney plays bad guys like the title outlaw in Dillinger (1945) and Jesse James in Badman's Territory (1946) and Best of the Badmen (1951). Don't miss Walter Slezak in the Hitchcock thriller, Lifeboat (1944), in which he puts that accent to especially unnerving use. Esther Howard turns up regularly in Preston Sturges comedies, as well as Murder, My Sweet and Champion (1949). You might recognize Isabel Jewell from her role as Emmy Slattery in Gone with the Wind (1939), but she also appears in Marked Woman (1937), Lost Horizon (1937), and The Leopard Man (1943).

Classic Films in Focus: BATHING BEAUTY (1944)

Although she makes appearances in two earlier feature films, Bathing Beauty (1944) marks the debut of Esther Williams as a fully realized Hollywood star, with plenty of opportunities to show off her attractive figure and her signature swimming skills. This light, frothy comedy from director George Sidney is typical of the wartime Technicolor musicals released to buoy public morale and entertain the troops overseas; it doesn't take itself very seriously, and its thin plot is as much an excuse for a series of musical set pieces as anything else. In spite of that, Bathing Beauty provides plenty of entertainment for those who enjoy its particular kind of musical comedy, with Williams looking lovely and quite game for her romantic high jinks with costar Red Skelton. Musical performances from Xavier Cugat, Harry James, and Ethel Smith also make this a fun film for fans of the era's big band sound.

Williams stars as Caroline Brooks, a swimming teacher at a women's college who falls in love with song writer Steve Elliot (Red Skelton) during a trip to California. When Steve's friend and employer, George (Basil Rathbone), breaks up the couple's wedding with a phony bigamy claim, Caroline goes back to her job at the school, and Steve enrolls there as a student in order to convince her of his innocence. The faculty conspire to get Steve expelled, while his musician friends and new college classmates work equally hard to help him out.

As slight as its plot is, there are moments when Bathing Beauty falters, mostly in the bizarre waste of Basil Rathbone as the cause of Steve's marital woes. Williams occasionally shows her inexperience, as well, but she has a natural charm that quickly wins the audience over. She's an all-American beauty, tall, athletic, but utterly feminine, and she's especially flirtatious in her underwater scenes. The movie originally belonged to Red Skelton, with the title Mr. Co-Ed, but Williams usurped him and caused the focus of the picture to be altered. In spite of being knocked to second place, Skelton still has all of the movie's funniest scenes, and his character remains the most interesting and developed figure in the story. His ballet sequence, complete with pink tutu, is a scream, but he's also a lot of fun in his musical number, "I'll Take the High Note," performed with the adorably spunky Jean Porter. Skelton, whose mentor at MGM was Buster Keaton, excels at an expressive, physical comedy that recalls the silent era; he has the sweetness of a classic clown rather than the brash bravado of a Pre-Code comedian or more verbal comedic leads like Jack Carson. There's something sincere and vulnerable about Skelton's character that causes us to root for him even in the most ridiculous circumstances, like the scene when his romantic rival's huge dog keeps him trapped in Caroline's house, and he resorts to wearing her clothes in order to fool the beast.

Musical sequences fill as much of the film's running time as the narrative itself, offering audiences across the country a chance to enjoy the performances of the era's biggest acts. Although they play themselves, the musical stars also contribute to the story line by interacting with the protagonists and trying to help Steve, but they're really there to show off their stuff. Band leader Xavier Cugat and his orchestra open the picture with a poolside performance, assisted by Carlos Ramirez singing "Magic is the Moonlight." Harry James and his orchestra also perform, with James tearing it up on the trumpet. More unusual is the appearance of organist Ethel Smith as one of the college's music teachers; her numbers, which emphasize her footwork and sense of fun, are especially entertaining. Disney fans might recognize Smith from her "Blame It on the Samba" segment in Melody Time (1948), and she turns up again in the 1946 Williams picture, Easy to Wed.

Be sure to note familiar character actor Donald Meek in a brief but significant role; he gives Steve the idea to enroll at Victoria College. For more from George Sidney, see Anchors Aweigh (1945), The Harvey Girls (1946), and Kiss Me Kate (1953); Sidney directs Williams again in Jupiter's Darling (1955). Esther Williams and Red Skelton both appear in Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Neptune's Daughter (1949), and Texas Carnival (1951). See Williams with different leading men in Easy to Wed (1946), Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949), and Dangerous When Wet (1953). Skelton had a long television career, for which he is best remembered today, but you can see his earlier work in films like Ship Ahoy (1942), Panama Hattie (1942), and Du Barry Was a Lady (1943).

An Ode to Film Noir

Where will you find the asphalt jungle?
In a lonely place,
Where danger lives -
There they drive by night,
gun crazy,
Lured by brute force
and the sweet smell of success.

Between night and the city,
Somewhere past Sunset Blvd.
You'll find the lady from Shanghai.
"Kiss me deadly," she moans.
Suddenly, in the moonrise,
You see her fallen angel face
And know that it's too late for tears.
"Besides," she says, "the damned don't cry."

What is her name, that phantom lady?
Is it Gilda, Laura, Mildred Pierce?
Out of the past she comes,
From the place where the sidewalk ends.
She's a bad blonde, a black angel,
Born to kill with a touch of evil.
She leaves you spellbound, possessed.
This woman is dangerous.

In the end it's the kiss of death,
the set-up,
You find yourself in the dark corner,
Facing the long goodbye
on dangerous ground.
Farewell, my lovely.
By the time the big clock chimes
you'll be D.O.A.

You're past the turning point.
There's no way out.
You've been a witness to murder

in the naked city.
Sleep, my love, and
Kiss tomorrow goodbye.

Classic Films in Focus: THE BLACK CASTLE (1952)

Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr., only have supporting roles in The Black Castle (1952), but their presence adds genre credibility to this minor period thriller directed by Nathan Juran, here making his directorial debut. Richard Greene, Stephen McNally, and Paula Corday are the real stars of the picture, playing a deadly game of deception in a Black Forest castle crowded with spies and Gothic atmosphere. Although it's by no means an essential example of its type, The Black Castle succeeds at providing a round of interesting performances and some modest chills, with Greene in fine heroic mode and Karloff amusingly inscrutable as the castle's secretive physician.

Richard Greene plays the Englishman Sir Ronald Burton, who comes to the Black Forest looking for the vengeful count (Stephen McNally) who killed his friends. Under an assumed name, Sir Ronald gains admission to Count Karl von Bruno's castle as a guest, but his investigation is complicated by his attraction to the count's beautiful wife, Elga (Paula Corday, also known as Rita Corday). When the count discovers the truth about Sir Ronald and Elga, their lives are in peril, but the sympathetic Dr. Meissen (Boris Karloff) offers them a dangerous chance to escape.

Greene, best remembered for playing Robin Hood in a 1960 TV series, makes a charming and likable protagonist, with an early sword fight scene establishing his heroic character. He looks good in his eighteenth-century costume, as well, so we understand why Elga might be attracted to the gallant Englishman instead of her sadistic spouse. Stephen McNally keeps his villain's rage more or less under control until the last quarter of the picture, but Karl still gives us plenty of warning that he's a very dangerous man, and when he finally cuts loose we see the real brute beneath the civilized facade. Corday is lovely as the forcibly wed Elga, although early on she doesn't act as though she understands the extent of her husband's cruelty, and shouldn't she know better than anyone? We get the strange idea that theirs is a chaste marriage, which might make The Black Castle more suitable for the matinee kiddies but doesn't at all address the horror of being married to a psychotic egomaniac.

The tame sexuality is a sign that The Black Castle isn't really a horror film at all, in spite of Karloff and Chaney lurking around the castle's dark corridors. The opening is the most horrific scene in the whole movie, with Sir Ronald and Elga about to be buried alive after taking a powerful drug to evade Karl's evil plans. The story then flashes back to show us how they ended up in such jeopardy. Karloff's Dr. Meissen wavers between good intentions and cowardice as he tries to help the pair escape from Karl, but he's mostly there to advance the plot, and Karloff has to make the most of what he gets. Chaney gets even less to do as the mute henchman Gargon; almost anyone could have lumbered around and grunted in the few scenes where he appears, looking like a cross between Igor and Quasimodo. The more interesting henchman roles go to John Hoyt and Michael Pate as Karl's fellow counts, Steiken and Ernst, with Pate basically reprising his role from The Strange Door (1951).

Be sure to note character actor Henry Corden in the role of Fender; he's best remembered today as the voice of Fred Flintstone. Nathan Juran went on to direct 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and, as Nathan Hertz, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958). See Karloff give Count Karl a more sinister role model in The Black Cat (1934), and catch Chaney in a more talkative mood in Inner Sanctum Mysteries like Weird Woman (1944) and The Frozen Ghost (1945). You'll find Richard Greene in The Little Princess (1939), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), and Forever Amber (1947). Stephen McNally, who started his career as Horace McNally, was a regular in Westerns; look for him in Winchester '73 (1950), The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), and Tribute to a Bad Man (1956).

Classic Films in Focus: FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)

Atomic age hysteria fuels the British low-budget shocker, Fiend without a Face (1958), in which invisible vampire brain monsters rampage through a Canadian village near a U.S. Air Force base. The title of this picture seriously understates the glorious weirdness of its killer creatures, who lack limbs, heads, and bodies as well as faces, even after they stop being invisible. The best known human associated with the movie is American actor Marshall Thompson, who takes the lead as the heroic major fighting to stop the bizarre beings, but the chief attractions in Fiend without a Face are definitely its monsters and the mayhem they inflict. If you're a fan of 1950s creature features like The Blob (1958) or even Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), then Fiend without a Face is just the sort of guilty pleasure you'll love to indulge.

Thompson plays Major Jeff Cummings, who works at the U.S. Air Force base just outside the bucolic Canadian town of Winthrop, where the locals are none too happy about the constant noise of planes and potential radiation generated by the military's atomic reactors. When villagers start dying under strange circumstances, the Canadians immediately blame the Americans, and Jeff tries to make peace with Barbara (Kim Parker), the attractive but understandably angry sister of the first victim. Jeff soon becomes convinced that Barbara's employer, Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), is somehow connected to the deaths, but he's not prepared for the truth about the deadly creatures that Walgate's research has unleashed.

The acting in Fiend without a Face is better than that found in most pictures of its era and genre, although a lot of characters are only introduced in order to be killed off by the invisible monsters. The character types represented are familiar, including the practical soldier hero, the smart but feminine love interest, and the overreaching scientist, blinded to the consequences of his actions by his own ambition. Marshall Thompson and Kim Parker play their parts seriously but not woodenly, and they have a nice little romance brewing with moments of humor and humanity. Kynaston Reeves has some good scenes, too, as the aged professor slowly realizes his responsibility for the disaster and struggles to make things right. If the plot is frankly outrageous, and the monsters utterly impossible, the actors are at least good enough to keep the audience invested in the story and not overly conscious of the supremely nutty premise that drives the action forward.

Monster movies live and die, however, on the strength of their real protagonists, the creatures themselves, and Fiend without a Face offers some of the weirdest, most disturbing freaks of psychic science one could possibly imagine. For the first half of the movie they remain invisible, leaving us to deduce their natures from the clues they leave behind after each new attack. Special effects and some energetic acting from the victims offer hints about what the creatures are like and how they kill their prey; a farm couple is strangled, and an autopsy reveals that their brains and spinal cords have been sucked out through small holes in their heads. Later incidents provide new evidence, until the creatures get enough power to make themselves visible and horrify us with the full extent of their monstrosity. Thanks to Professor Walgate's imagination, they look like giant brains with spinal cords attached, and they move like sentient slugs, using tentacles to propel themselves and locate their targets. They ooze grotesquely when shot, and the finale turns into a brain slug bloodbath, with the surviving humans holed up in a house and surrounded by the persistent fiends. Their attack on the house prefigures the violent determination of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968), but the vampire brains know how to cut the phone lines, which makes them even scarier. The brain slugs combine the grossest and most disturbing aspects of several different horror movie creatures, but it's hard to think of anything else quite like them in the genre's history. Where else are you going to get invisible atomic vampire brain slugs that leap on their victims to suck out their spinal cords?

Arthur Crabtree, who directed Fiend without a Face, started as a cinematographer; his other directorial efforts include Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) and a dozen episodes of the 1950s Ivanhoe TV series starring Roger Moore. Marshall Thompson starred on the TV series, Daktari, and also appeared in films like Battleground (1949), To Hell and Back (1955), and It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). Look for character actor Kynaston Reeves in Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and School for Scoundrels (1960). For more atomic monsters, try The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Them! (1954), and Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (1955).

Classic Films in Focus: WHERE DANGER LIVES (1950)

Robert Mitchum takes another dive into darkness in Where Danger Lives (1950), and once again he plays an easy mark for a dangerous dame, this time embodied by the sultry Faith Domergue. An icon of film noir, Mitchum made more celebrated forays into the genre both before and after this outing, but Where Danger Lives has much to offer in its 82 minutes of twisted flight, thanks to expert direction from John Farrow and gripping performances from Mitchum, Domergue, and the perpetually brilliant Claude Rains. Like many noir films, Where Danger Lives depicts people's lives crashing into ruin in spectacular fashion, but the peculiarly bent nature of Domergue's femme fatale gives this story an extra shot of the strange and perverse.

Mitchum plays a young doctor named Jeff Cameron, who unexpectedly meets trouble when the seductive Margo Lannington (Faith Domergue) tries to commit suicide and is placed under his care. Almost immediately, Margo and Jeff begin a steamy romance, and Jeff decides to dump his steady girlfriend, Julie (Maureen O'Sullivan), in order to marry Margo. Jeff finds out too late that Margo is already married, and her husband (Claude Rains) ends up dead after an altercation with Jeff. Dizzy and disoriented from a concussion sustained in the fight, Jeff accompanies Margo on a run for the Mexican border, but her mental instability and the pair's bad luck get worse with every passing hour.

Jeff is one of Mitchum's most straight-laced and passive noir protagonists, just a normal young professional until Margo tempts him into the depths. Admittedly, his resistance is pretty weak, especially when he already has a good match in Julie, who lacks Margo's glamor but shares Jeff's professional world and is grade A wife material. Once he's in over his head, Jeff lets Margo take the lead, largely because he keeps passing out thanks to a poker blow from Margo's husband, but also because Margo constantly manipulates the situation to her own ends. Mitchum's best scenes are the woozy ones, where he doesn't really know what's going on and has to plunge ahead in spite of it, always getting himself deeper and deeper into Margo's crazy scheme. Faith Domergue, perfectly cast as the unstable siren, has her finest moments when Margo is at her worst; the wildest, most maniacal actions light a strange fire in her dark eyes, and we believe that she's capable of anything. Her scenes with Rains are electric; he has just a hint of madness about him, too, so that we understand their attraction to each other as well as their mutual hatred. Sadly, Rains' character gets killed off early in the picture, but his warnings haunt Jeff until the end. "If you take her," Lannington tells Jeff, "it's a long road. There's no turning back!" Like Edward G. Robinson's trolley car speech in Double Indemnity (1944), the admonition proves prophetic.

From the moment Jeff and Lannington have their fatal encounter, the action of the picture never lets up, but the protagonists are driven forward more by cruel quirks of fate than their own intentions. Jeff and Margo think the police are after them long before Lannington's body is actually found, which forces them to abandon their plan to fly to Mexico in favor of a more dangerous journey by car. They make rookie mistakes; neither is an experienced criminal, so they get into more jams and become more desperate with each new error. For Jeff, drifting in and out of consciousness, the trip has a nightmarish quality, reflected in the desolate landscapes and strange characters they encounter. All around them are opportunists, eager to take advantage of their obvious problems, like the car dealer who profits by swapping an antiquated clunker for their car and even gets Margo's forgotten fur coat into the bargain. There's a darkly comical element to many of their misadventures, especially the town that forces them to stop and get married because of some goofy local festival going on. In a screwball comedy it would be the start of marital bliss, but in this setting it's a perverse punishment, giving Jeff exactly what he thought he wanted at a point where he no longer wants it. When he finally realizes the extent of Margo's madness, it's too late to walk away; Jeff and Margo can only be separated by the same kind of violence that first brought them together, and the finale is an explosive confrontation on the Mexican border, a symbolic line that mirrors the film's juxtapositions of good and evil, sanity and madness, and life and death.

For more of Mitchum's noir films, see Out of the Past (1947), The Racket (1951), and Angel Face (1952); he also worked with John Farrow on His Kind of Woman (1951). Faith Domergue's career never quite came together, but you can find her in The Duel at Silver Creek (1952), Santa Fe Passage (1955), and This Island Earth (1955). Catch Claude Rains making other noir turns in Moontide (1942), Notorious (1946), and The Unsuspected (1947). John Farrow also directed Wake Island (1941), for which he won an Oscar for Best Director, Alias Nick Beal (1949), and Hondo (1953). Maureen O'Sullivan, best remembered as Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan, was married to John Farrow; the two worked together on The Big Clock (1948) as well as Where Danger Lives, but their most famous collaboration would be their actress daughter, Mia Farrow, the third of their seven children.