Following WWII, ex-G.I. Stan opened up a drive-in restaurant. His girlfriend, Joanie, is one of the car hops. They want to get married someday, but the less-than-stellar business the restaurant takes in puts a hold on that plan. One day, Joanie's ne’er-do-well brother Frank blows into town with a money-making scheme. She's against it, but Stan - an inveterate gambler - finds the promise of riches too seductive to resist…
11-30-1955
1h 17m
THIS
HELLA
Doesn't have an image right now... sorry!has no image... sorry!
Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Nathan Juran
Writer:
Lou Breslow
Production:
Clover Productions, Columbia Pictures
Key Crew
Producer:
Sam Katzman
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Frank Lovejoy
Frank Andrew Lovejoy Jr. (March 28, 1912 – October 2, 1962) was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He is perhaps best remembered for appearing in the film noir The Hitch-Hiker and for starring in the radio drama Night Beat.
Lovejoy was born in the Bronx, New York City, and grew up in New Jersey. He worked on Wall Street as a teenager, but the Great Depression of 1929 cost him his job. He then turned to acting, appearing in touring companies throughout the Northeast. He made his Broadway debut in 1934 in the play They Knew What They Wanted.
Lovejoy began his radio career in the early 1940s, appearing on such shows as Gang Busters and This Is Your FBI. He also starred in the radio drama Night Beat, which ran from 1949 to 1955.
Lovejoy made his film debut in 1948 in the film Black Bart. He went on to appear in over 50 films, including In a Lonely Place (1950), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Strategic Air Command (1955), and Goodbye, My Fancy (1956).
Lovejoy also had a successful television career. He starred in the series Man Against Crime (1956-1957) and Meet McGraw (1957-1962).
Lovejoy died of a heart attack in New York City in 1962, at the age of 50. He was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Petite, attractive Mari Blanchard rarely managed to get the lucky breaks. The daughter of an oil tycoon and a psychotherapist, she suffered from severe poliomyelitis from the age of nine, which denied her a hoped-for dancing career. For several years, she worked hard to rehabilitate her limbs from paralysis, swimming and later even performing on the trapeze at Cole Brothers Circus. At the urging of her parents, she then attended the University of Southern California, where she studied international law before dropping out nine units short of a degree. Her university studies did not lead to a career either. Sometime in the late 1940s, she joined the Conover Agency as an advertising model and, at the same time, was promoted by famed cartoonist and writer Al Capp, becoming the inspiration for one of his Li'l Abner characters.
As the result of an advertisement on the back page of the Hollywood Reporter, Mari was signed to a contract with Paramount. However, her early experience in the movie business proved an unhappy one, most of her roles being walk-ons and bit parts. Ten Tall Men (1951), for example, limited her to a token stroll down a street, twirling a parasol and smiling seductively at members of the Foreign Legion. It wasn't until Mari joined Universal that her fortunes improved somewhat, with a co-starring role (opposite Victor Mature) in The Veils of Bagdad (1953). After that, it was all downhill again. Burt Lancaster, co-producer and star (with Gary Cooper of the excellent A-grade western Vera Cruz (1954), had requested Mari as his leading lady, but Universal refused her release to United Artists and forbade her to accept the lucrative role (Denise Darcel ended up getting the part). Mari then lost the lead in a much lesser picture,Saskatchewan (1954), to Shelley Winters. Instead, she was cast as Venusian Queen Allura in one of the least exciting outings by Universal's leading comic duo, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953).
Mari did end up with a respectable starring role in the western Destry (1954) opposite Audie Murphy. A remake of the classic Destry Rides Again (1939), she was cast in the Marlene Dietrich part and took great pains to affect a totally different look, darkening her hair so as not to be compared to the great star. Even the name of her character was changed from 'Frenchy' to 'Brandy'. "Destry" was not all smooth sailing. There was tension between her and director George Marshall (who had also directed the original version) and Mari suffered a facial injury as the result of a fight scene. The film was critically well received, but unfortunately Universal failed to renew its contract with Miss Blanchard, and her career then went into free fall.
Freelancing for lesser studios, she played a TB victim injected with a serum turning her into a Mr. Hyde-like killer in the lurid She Devil (1957) (during filming she nearly died of acute appendicitis). Mari then appeared for Republic in the eminently forgettable No Place to Land (1958) before briefly starring in her own short-lived adventure series Klondike (1960). Her last role of note was as the cheerful and likeable town madam in the rollicking John Wayne western comedy McLintock! (1963). Sometime that year, Mari Blanchard developed the cancer which was to claim her life in 1970 at the age of just 47.
Richard Denning (March 27, 1914 – October 11, 1998) was an American actor who starred in such movies as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and An Affair to Remember (1957), and on radio with Lucille Ball as her husband George Cooper in My Favorite Husband (1948–1951), the forerunner of television's I Love Lucy, for which Denning was replaced by Ball's real-life husband, Desi Arnaz.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Denning, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
American character actor specializing in villainous roles. Born in White Plains, New York to Herman E. and Franceska Lauter, he was raised in Denver, Colorado. Although it has been suggested that he appeared briefly in a couple of films during the Thirties, his real movie career began in 1946. He came to be a familiar presence in low-budget films, serials, and television programs in the 1950s, though he only once really came close to stardom, as one of the leads in the television series "Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955)". Most of his career was spent as a serviceable second lead or heavy, though he continued to play bit parts in larger pictures. The son of an artist, he devoted much of his energy late in life to his own painting and running an art gallery. He died in 1990.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vince Barnett (July 4, 1902 – August 10, 1977) was an American film and television actor. He appeared on stage originally.
Barnett's initial involvement with Hollywood was as a screenwriter, writing screenplays for the two-reeler movies of the late 1920s. He began appearing in films in 1930, playing hundreds of comedy bits and supporting parts. One of his more sizable screen roles was the moronic, illiterate gangster "secretary" in Scarface (1932). Among his best-regarded early roles, apart from Scarface, were The Big Cage (1933), Thirty Day Princess (1934) and Princess O'Hara (1935).
In later years, Barnett played straight character parts, often as careworn little men, undertakers, janitors, bartenders and drunks in pictures ranging from films noir (The Killers, 1946) to westerns (Springfield Rifle, 1952). He was a welcome presence in "B" comedies and mysteries: as Runyonesque gangsters in Petticoat Larceny (1943), Little Miss Broadway (1947), and Gas House Kids Go West (1947), and notably as Tom Conway's enthusiastic sidekick in The Falcon's Alibi (1946).
After World War II, with the Hollywood studios making fewer films, Barnett became a familiar face on television.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Cisar (July 28, 1912 — June 13, 1979) was an American actor who performed in more than one hundred roles in two decades as a character actor in film and television, often in prominent Hollywood productions. He frequently played background parts such as policemen or bartenders.
In 1949, Cisar co-starred with a young Mike Wallace in the short-lived police drama Stand By for Crime. Among Cisar's more frequent roles was from 1960 to 1963 as Sgt. Theodore Mooney in thirty-one episodes of CBS's Dennis the Menace. Oddly, series co-star Gale Gordon took the name "Theodore Mooney" and added the middle initial "J." for his character, Theodore J. Mooney, a tough-minded banker on Lucille Ball's second sitcom, The Lucy Show.[1]
Cisar portrayed character Donald Hollinger's father in That Girl, the Marlo Thomas sitcom which aired on ABC, and Cyrus Tankersley on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show and its sequel Mayberry, R.F.D.
Unbilled in his first film, 1948's Call Northside 777, he was credited at the bottom of the cast list in his next feature, 1949's Johnny Holiday. His final film appearance, also near the end of the list, was as Joe the barber in the 1970 Southern racial drama, ...tick...tick...tick....
Nine years later, Cisar died in Los Angeles, at the age of 66 CLR
John Lewis Hart, also credited as John Hilton was an American film and television actor. In his early career, Hart appeared mostly in Westerns. Although Hart played mostly minor roles in some fairly well known films, he was probably best known for having replaced Clayton Moore in 1952 in the television series, The Lone Ranger for one season from 1952 until 1953.
Hart began his screen career in 1937 with a bit part in Daughter of Shanghai. He continued in a variety of B pictures such as Prison Farm and King of Alcatraz before appearing in two of Cecil B. DeMille's films The Buccaneer and North West Mounted Police. In 1941, Hart's acting career was interrupted when he was drafted into the United States Army. He rose to the rank of first sergeant in the Coast Artillery and eventually served in the Philippines. Following his military service, Hart worked frequently for Sam Katzman; he was given the lead role in the Jack Armstrong film serial. Hart did stunt work and acted in numerous Westerns
Hart was eventually offered the opportunity to replace Clayton Moore on The Lone Ranger television series. Based on the assumption that the masked character, rather than the actor, was the true star of The Lone Ranger, the program's producers fired Moore (presumably over salary differences) and replaced him with Hart, who was of a similar build and had a comparable background in Westerns. However, the public never truly accepted Hart as the Lone Ranger, and by 1954 the producers returned Moore to the role. According to Clayton Moore's autobiography I Was That Masked Man, Moore never knew why he was replaced by Hart, and also stated that he had not sought a pay increase. Hart acted in minor roles in two episodes of The Lone Ranger before being asked to replace Clayton Moore for the entire third season. The episodes were "Rifles and Renegades" (#34) and "Sheriff at Gunstock" (#46).
Hart continued to act in films for more than two decades, appearing in films of several genres, almost always in supporting roles. Hart appeared twice in on the TV series I Love Lucy as Lucy's old boyfriend and again in the Hollywood episodes as a lifeguard at the hotel pool. In 1955, Hart starred in The Adventures of Captain Africa, which was originally intended to be a new movie about famous comic book hero The Phantom. However, licensing issues forced Columbia Pictures re-film the entire serial and re-christen the hero "Captain Africa." Hart also had numerous supporting roles in the Highway Patrol TV series. In 1965 Hart made two brief appearances on the TV series Perry Mason, including the role of title character and murder victim Jamison Selff in "The Case of the Wrathful Wraith." In the 1970 film The Phynx, Hart played the Lone Ranger alongside Jay Silverheels as Tonto, spoofing their characters. Hart's last theatrical film appearance was in 1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger in which he appeared as a newspaper editor. He appeared in the television series Happy Days as the Lone Ranger in the episode "Hi Yo, Fonzie Away". In this episode Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, meets his childhood hero, the Lone Ranger, for his birthday. Hart's other major late appearance was in an episode of The Greatest American Hero, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, where Hart gives the title character an inspiring speech about heroism.
