Born on this day – Jeff Donnell:

Jeff Donnell

Actress

July 10, 1921 – April 11, 1988

On this day in movie history - Sweet Smell of Success (1957):

Sweet Smell of Success

directed by Alexander Mackendrick,

written by Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman and Alexander Mackendrick,

was released in the United States on June 27, 1957.
Based on the novelette Tell Me About It Tomorrow! by Ernest Lehman, originally published in Cosmopolitan (1950).
Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast:

Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene, Barbara Nichols, Jeff Donnell, Joe Frisco, Emile Meyer, Edith Atwater, David White, Chico Hamilton, Fred Katz.

On this day in movie history - In a Lonely Place (1950 movie & novel):

In a Lonely Place

directed by Nicholas Ray,

written by Andrew P. Solt and Edmund H. North,

based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes,

was released in the United States on May 17, 1950.
Music by George Antheil.

Cast:

Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Martha Stewart, Jeff Donnell, Robert Warwick, Morris Ankrum, William Ching, Steven Geray, Hadda Brooks, Jack Reynolds.

Recommended reading:

In a Lonely Place

By Dorothy B. Hughes.

Filmed as In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray.

Published by NYRB Classics.

First published 1947.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1681371472

ISBN-13: 978-1681371474

Description:

Los Angeles in the late 1940s is a city of promise and prosperity, but not for former fighter pilot Dix Steele. To his mind nothing has come close to matching “that feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky.” He prowls the foggy city night – bus stops and stretches of darkened beaches and movie houses just emptying out – seeking solitary young women. His funds are running out and his frustrations are growing. Where is the good life he was promised? Why does he always get a raw deal? Then he hooks up with his old Air Corps buddy Brub, now working for the LAPD, who just happens to be on the trail of the strangler who’s been terrorizing the women of the city for months...

Written with controlled elegance, Dorothy B. Hughes’s tense novel is at once an early indictment of a truly toxic masculinity and a twisty page-turner with a surprisingly feminist resolution. A classic of golden age noir, In a Lonely Place also inspired Nicholas Ray’s 1950 film of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart.