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It only explains her up to a point -- there's a lot we'll never know. But thanks for contributing your reminiscence. That's a very interesting memory to have.
Sally Yarnell
There are all kinds of reasons why ending up as an extra isn't the worst thing that can happen to an actor. For instance, in the space of a couple of minutes in His Kind of Woman (1951), a 35-year-old extra called Sally Yarnell gets to share the screen with two legends of American cinema. First, ...
Hi Ed - thanks for writing, and for pointing out those stupid errors! I appreciate your help. Thanks again!
John Ince
This post was written as part of the late-film blogathon, an event created by David Cairns, proprietor of Shadowplay, the internet's finest film blog, to encourage greater consideration of the often-neglected later works of cinema's greatest directors, producers, writers and actors. I don't have...
Thanks, Lance. There will be more Unsung Joes, no doubt, from time to time. There seems to be no end to sad tales of stillborn dreams and thwarted hopes in the golden age of Hollywood. What a heartbreaking place it was...
Ralph Dunn
It’s been quite some time since my last Unsung Joe post. That’s because I’ve been spending all my free time over at Small Town Noir, where I post weekly stories about the lives of people in mug shots that were taken in New Castle, Pennsylvania, between 1930 and 1960—yes, characters even more obs...
Well done, Phil! If you get a chance, could you upload a screenshot to a website, or e-mail me a copy? I'd love to put it on my page of pictures of Irving. Thanks!
Diarmid (the guy who writes this website)
Irving Cohen
Sitting in a Brooklyn jail cell, Abraham "Pretty" Levine, a low-level gangster on the fringes of the contract-killing syndicate that became known as Murder, Inc, maintained a loyal silence for most of March 1940. When he finally broke, as the cops had always known he would, he spilled everything ...
Thanks Betty. The newspapers didn't record where she was buried, but I found this on a genealogy site:
"In an ancestry database I found the following cemetery listing: Wunders Cemetery, Chicago, IL. Dickinson, Faith Bacon. b: 1910 d: 1956"
Those are her birth and death years, so I guess that's the right cemetery.
Faith Bacon
We're in an empty nightclub, it's late afternoon. The club is owned by a gangster called Frankie Terris, who runs the town's numbers rackets and is only a few scenes away from being sent to Alcatraz for murder. No one's around, except for a young dancer, Maxine, rehearsing for that evening's sho...
Thanks, Tom. Glad you like it!
Ralph Dunn
It’s been quite some time since my last Unsung Joe post. That’s because I’ve been spending all my free time over at Small Town Noir, where I post weekly stories about the lives of people in mug shots that were taken in New Castle, Pennsylvania, between 1930 and 1960—yes, characters even more obs...
I'm very glad to have been of service, Hal. Thanks very much!
Beverly Wills
Two motorcycle cops at a road block listen to a message from headquarters. Behind them, a line of traffic waits to be checked. Somewhere back there is a stolen car driven by an armed and dangerous prison escapee, Joe Sullivan, the double-crossed hero of Raw Deal (1948). A 14-year-old girl can be...
Thanks very much indeed. It's good to know this stuff hits its mark, however occasionally!
Beverly Wills
Two motorcycle cops at a road block listen to a message from headquarters. Behind them, a line of traffic waits to be checked. Somewhere back there is a stolen car driven by an armed and dangerous prison escapee, Joe Sullivan, the double-crossed hero of Raw Deal (1948). A 14-year-old girl can be...
Thanks very much indeed - I'll go and read all about the Moore brothers now...
John Ince
This post was written as part of the late-film blogathon, an event created by David Cairns, proprietor of Shadowplay, the internet's finest film blog, to encourage greater consideration of the often-neglected later works of cinema's greatest directors, producers, writers and actors. I don't have...
I will almost certainly take you up on that offer - thanks!
Ralph Dunn
It’s been quite some time since my last Unsung Joe post. That’s because I’ve been spending all my free time over at Small Town Noir, where I post weekly stories about the lives of people in mug shots that were taken in New Castle, Pennsylvania, between 1930 and 1960—yes, characters even more obs...
Interesting. I seem to remember not being sure where the Tough Jews author had got his information about the killing, because it didn't fit with what was reported at Irving's trial or in Burton Turkus's book. To be fair, I think that Mafia stories are always unreliable - people like to embroider the truth and make things more dangerous or glamorous than they were. It's very hard to get to the bottom of these things...
Irving Cohen
Sitting in a Brooklyn jail cell, Abraham "Pretty" Levine, a low-level gangster on the fringes of the contract-killing syndicate that became known as Murder, Inc, maintained a loyal silence for most of March 1940. When he finally broke, as the cops had always known he would, he spilled everything ...
I'm sorry, but I haven't come across any mention of anything like that in connection with Faith Bacon. I'd love to see it, though. I haven't seen that poster, for sure. Sounds like it could be quite valuable. You should take it to a print workshop and see if they can use it to print from. Let me know if you do...
Faith Bacon
We're in an empty nightclub, it's late afternoon. The club is owned by a gangster called Frankie Terris, who runs the town's numbers rackets and is only a few scenes away from being sent to Alcatraz for murder. No one's around, except for a young dancer, Maxine, rehearsing for that evening's sho...
Now I feel guilty for not posting more often! But thanks, Kliph.
Ralph Dunn
It’s been quite some time since my last Unsung Joe post. That’s because I’ve been spending all my free time over at Small Town Noir, where I post weekly stories about the lives of people in mug shots that were taken in New Castle, Pennsylvania, between 1930 and 1960—yes, characters even more obs...
Good point! Thanks for writing. I'm glad you enjoyed the article. (And don't feel too bad that you're not Dr Doolittle...)
Koko the Raven
George Bailey’s Uncle Billy has a pet raven, which appears several times in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Its presence usually serves to highlight Uncle Billy’s simple, childlike nature or his addled, confused mind, as in the scene in which it hops onto the panic-stricken old man’s arm as he sea...
Hi Jacque, and thanks for writing. Please let me know if you ever find out anything at all - I mean anything!
June DeLong - Part 2
Read Part 1 here. Since the beginning of the trial, June DeLong had been living with Marjorie Fairchild, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, who had not let June out of her sight. However, on the morning of July 14, the day June was due in court for cross-examination, Fairchild...
Hi Barry. Thanks for writing. I'm glad you found the site! I'm afraid that the only things I was able to find out about him are all in this short piece. I'm not sure where you'd be able to find out more. I'll e-mail you a pdf of the newspaper page that features the only interview with him that I came across - I hope it's useful!
Sol Simon
It’s the first time millionairess Ellen Andrews has ever travelled by bus, but she’s running away from her millionaire father (who disapproves of her millionaire fiancé) and it’s the only form of transport on which she can be sure that her father’s detectives won’t think of looking for her. Ever...
That's very interesting news, Steve. I'll see if I can track down a copy. Thanks for the tip.
Colleen Alpaugh
William Bendix's horrible thuggish villain in The Dark Corner (1946) can't get a break. Not only does his complex criminal scheme require him to wear a white suit, which is impossible to keep clean, but every time he goes to the payphone in his incredibly depressing boarding house he's plagued...
Thanks for writing, Gina! Very glad to hear that Colleen's doing well!
Colleen Alpaugh
William Bendix's horrible thuggish villain in The Dark Corner (1946) can't get a break. Not only does his complex criminal scheme require him to wear a white suit, which is impossible to keep clean, but every time he goes to the payphone in his incredibly depressing boarding house he's plagued...
Thanks for writing, Charles.
You're right - In retrospect, I feel I shouldn't have been as critical of her as I was. I could have been nicer, and I'm sorry for causing you any sadness. I really appreciate what you wrote about her, and I'm sure she would, too.
Lynn Baggett
Of the dozens of waitresses employed in the busy little restaurant in Mildred Pierce (1945), there’s one who shines out from the rest -- a tall, elegant young woman who flits gracefully back and forth across the screen once or twice every few shots. She’s so beautiful, it’s hard to believe no on...
Hi Tod! Yes, I'm still here but, as you can tell, The Unsung Joe is on some sort of extended break. It'll come back at some point, but for the next while, I'll be busy with my other blog, Small Town Noir, which tells the stories behind old mug shots from New Castle, Pennsylvania. It's very similar to The Unsung Joe, in a way, as it's concerned with people no one's ever heard of, but it takes its tone from everyday small-town life in the decades around world war two instead of the glamour of Hollywood. Check it out, and let me know what you think! http://smalltownnoir.wordpress.com/
Eddie Hall
In this clip from The Blue Dahlia (1946), Alan Ladd picks up a suitcase and walks off screen, leaving the foreground of the shot clear for only a second before a villainous henchman enters from the left. In those few clear frames, half a dozen extras do their bits. At the right of the frame, a b...
Hi Marc. I assume your dad was either Marcel Bessette or Roger Bessette (I googled Bessette and Hollywood Wlves, and that's who came up). I searched for them in the usual places that might mention either of them in connection with any film work they might have had, but the search came up blank. I would at least have hoped that a sports page article might have noted a bit of movie extra work in passing - but no. I'll keep my eye out for any Bessettes, though. You never know...
Eddie Hall
In this clip from The Blue Dahlia (1946), Alan Ladd picks up a suitcase and walks off screen, leaving the foreground of the shot clear for only a second before a villainous henchman enters from the left. In those few clear frames, half a dozen extras do their bits. At the right of the frame, a b...
Thanks very much, people!
And Fabián - yes, it's strange to come across someone like Parry who does what you and I (and certain others) do all the time. The funny thing is, he has a real reason for looking for a bit-part actor. I'm not sure we have the same excuse...
Eddie Hall
In this clip from The Blue Dahlia (1946), Alan Ladd picks up a suitcase and walks off screen, leaving the foreground of the shot clear for only a second before a villainous henchman enters from the left. In those few clear frames, half a dozen extras do their bits. At the right of the frame, a b...
Everything I know about Faith came from old newspapers that I looked up on newspaperarchive.com, a pay site that has thousands of old papers scanned in. There were so many articles about her that I had to leave a lot of stuff out because it wouldn't fit in the sort of piece I was writing about her. For instance, she was really into genealogy, and had traced her lineage back to Francis Bacon, the English renaissance philosopher; Peregrine White, the first child born on the Mayflower; Grover Cleveland; and various high-class California and Missouri families. Or so she claimed. Also, in 1945, she told the press that she had been awarded ownership of a set of nine-ton marble statues that had been donated to the University of California by a 19th century relative of hers. (I find that story a little hard to believe, but there were some nice pictures of the statues in the article.)
I just checked out your burlesque film. It looks great! I'd love to see it, and I'll keep an eye out for it appearing in one of the superior cinemas in town.
Faith Bacon
We're in an empty nightclub, it's late afternoon. The club is owned by a gangster called Frankie Terris, who runs the town's numbers rackets and is only a few scenes away from being sent to Alcatraz for murder. No one's around, except for a young dancer, Maxine, rehearsing for that evening's sho...
Hi, David - long time no hear! I'll check out baskervilleoldface.com and e-mail you.
Julia Graham
The third time Julia Graham tried to kill herself, she was in Ben Reynolds’ bedroom, and to make sure she got it right this time, she used one of his guns. No one knows for sure when Julia met Reynolds, but it might have been in the summer of 1933, which Reynolds spent touring America as part o...
I'm sure she was telling something close to the truth about Dave Allen's treatment of female extras and the scene that went down in her apartment, but I'm also sure that the extras were trying to blackmail Dave Allen. The only thing I don't understand about the blackmail angle is why they wouldn't have photographed the wild party. Were they really that inept as blackmailers?
June DeLong - Part 2
Read Part 1 here. Since the beginning of the trial, June DeLong had been living with Marjorie Fairchild, an investigator with the district attorney’s office, who had not let June out of her sight. However, on the morning of July 14, the day June was due in court for cross-examination, Fairchild...
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