LURED - "Killer Bait" (1947)

 

Tonight's Saturday Night Special is a fun and very interesting film from 1947 that features Lucille Ball in a non-comedic film noir, with an all-star cast!

 

"Lured" was directed by Douglas (Written On The Wind) Sirk, and that in itself should be enough to make you want to see it, and I seriously doubt you will be disappointed when you do!

Lucy is an American named Sandra Carpenter who has come to London searching for a better life. She works as a hostess in a dance club full of lonely men willing to pay anything just to dance with a woman.

She doesn't really like her job, but then, who does? One of her fellow dancers has just become a victim of a weird serial killer who meets his victims through the personal columns, and then sends the police cryptic Baudelaire styled poems before each murder happens, just to mess with them!

 

So Sandra is enlisted as bait to try and flush out the killer. She is to be watched all the time by members of the force to guarantee her safety.

Sandra has to meet all kinds of strange men under strange circumstances in strange locations.

One of her first encounters is with a very odd old dude named Charles van Druten as played by Boris Karloff. I've seen a lot of films with Boris Karloff in them, and I'll tell you one thing........

............I think this is one of the most bizarre roles Boris has ever had!

Charles is a fashion designer, and this is an outfit from one of his finest hours!

He has a mini-theater set up in his flat with a dog and a mannequin as his audience.

Sandra decides that Charles is off his nut a little, but is not a serial killer by any means!

The mood changes quickly, and it appears that Charles night be a little more than just eccentric!

Sandra is saved by a stranger who has a big tussle with Charles who then falls down some stairs and we never see or hear from him again!

Sandra is then shuffled off into a car with another weirdo in it!

The weirdo turns out to be George Zucco as Police Officer H.R. Barrett, who was also the one who saved her from Charles. It was really refreshing to see George Zucco in the role of a quasi-comedic crossword-puzzle-junkie police officer instead of some dour and menacing villain!

After that, every one of the gentlemen that Sandra meets has the potential to be the killer, and if they are not that guy, they are usually into something equally against the law, or just losers in general.

Alan (Terror By Night) Mowbray is the creepy butler Lyle Maxwell who is up to his elbows in graft, but he's not a serial killer!

Sandra is sent a note and a ticket to a concert by an admirer called Music Lover, and in a pretty funny scene she waits for the seat next to her to fill up. When this guy sits down she slyly tries to find out if he's the guy, but it turns out he's in the wrong seat!

 

I should be showing you shots of some of the other great actors in this film like Charles (Around The World In 80 Days) Coburn as Inspector Harley Temple, and the star of the film, George (Village Of The Damned) Sanders as Robert Fleming, and Sir Cedric (Uncle Simon, The Forms Of Things Unknown) Hardwicke as Julian Wilde, but there's not room for everything, and I just really like this shot of Lucy and George better! It's such an odd pairing!

Joseph (Touch Of Evil) Calleia as Dr. Nicholas Moryani is an extremely likely suspect, but despite all the nefarious activities he's into, he's not a serial killer! Joseph was in two very cool gorilla movies, "The Monster And The Girl," and "The Gorilla."

It's very mysterious that Lucy was 5' 7½" but Sandra's I.D. card shows that she was only five foot six.

Sandra is just about to get married to Peter Fleming when she finds this photo of her dead friend who had been abducted in the drawer of her future husband's desk, so they finally have a suspect. Too bad he's not the serial killer either! Tanis (Spook Busters) Chandler had the role of Lucy Barnard.

In the end, the serial killer makes a move on Sandra Carpenter, but Police Officer Barrett is there too, and the case is finally solved, the murderer is revealed, and Lucille Ball gets to go on to entertain us for years in "I Love Lucy!"

BEANY AND CECIL / "There Goes A Good Squid" - 1963

Here's a little Beany and Cecil cartoon near the end of their run. In this one, DJ the Dirty Guy tries to spoil the guy's fun on their way to the Seattle World's Fair, err, I mean.. The Sea Atoll World's Square...

I was at Fort Lewis in 1968 and spent many hours in Seattle at the World's Fair, loved all the shops at the underground mall, they even had a Wild Mouse ride!

No, we're going here, to an island in the middle of the ocean.

Everything's cool, Beany plays a record on his cap and Cecil sings "Ragg Mopp" as they sail along in the Leakin' Lena.

The boys are being followed by Dishonest John in his mechanical squid, there's no way he's going to let them get away with having fun!

DJ fills Cecil full of cannon balls for an appetizer...

Then he brings out the big guns in the form of a killer submarine.

That sparks some good old American patriotism (which exists no more) and Crowy bonks himself on the noggin for the stars on the flag and signals all hands on deck!

Cecil impersonates Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt to put some fear into DJ.

And sure enough, DJ turns into a yellow chicken, a double-doobie.

Cecil flings the big squid and it knocks around like a pinball.

Cecil takes a palm tree and beats the crap out of DJ with it.

Then he grabs the squid and bangs it against the ground a number of times.

He flings it around so fast that it stretches way out...

And becomes a space needle with a restaurant on top!

Everyone wants to eat in the restaurant and the line is long.

And DJ gets to wash all the dishes! Make sure and tune in tomorrow!

THE THREE STOOGES - "Three Little Pigskins" (1934)

Tonight's Wacky Wednesday feature is a short by The Three Stooges from 1934 called "Three Little Pigskins." If you want to have a wacky time, it's always easier when you have somebody like Lucille Ball around!

 

Lucille Ball was only twenty-three when "Three Little Pigskins" was made. I thought she was in more than one Stooges short, but I guess not.

Lucille Ball is gun moll Daisy Simms. Lucy was a natural brunette, but in these early days, she was a beautiful blonde, before becoming the krazy redhead that everybody knows and loves today. Lucille Ball is the most beloved TV actress of all time followed by Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett. and Oprah Winfrey, and for good reason.

The woman behind her is Phyllis Crane as Molly Gray! Phyllis was in many film comedic shorts in the 1930's, and many of them were Three Stooges episodes. Walter Long is the mobster Boss who is worried his football team is going to lose. Walter has 207 credits, many in roles as a Henchman, a Bandit, a Gang Leader, a Convict, or a Chain Gang Member. He played a guy called The Tiger in three or four Laurel and Hardy shorts!

 

The boys are obnoxious street hustlers doing anything they can to make a dime!

This guy offers them ten bucks to walk around with these signs to advertise the big game coming up!

Of course they can't even do this simple task without screwing it up!

Gertie Green as Lulu Banks thinks they're real football players. Really? Look at Moe's helmet. I don't think Lulu's the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Lulu goes back and tells the other girls that she found the famous "Three Horsemen of Boulder Dam" to fill in the Boss's roster on his football team.

 

Larry and Lucy! What a pair!!

Moe's got his hands full with Lulu, he smacks her just like she was one of the guys, and she hits him right back, but harder!

The guys look a little too comfortable in these outfits!

Time to break out the seltzer bottles!

Lucy was 5'7" tall and kind of towers over Gertie and Phyllis who both stood about 5'2"

Now it's time for everybody to get into the act!

I could be wrong, but it really does look like they are enjoying themselves and having a good time!

The Three Stoogettes!

Next this game of Blind Man's Bluff goes awry! 

Sorry Moe, wrong woman!

The rest of this tale is about the woes of the boys trying to play football. They are clueless! You gotta love their jersey numbers though!

The Stooges are such idiots, they don't even have a rudimentary knowledge of the game, and this is not going to go well for them.

Moral of the story.................Don't mess with mobsters!!

I'll be back on Saturday with the second part of my little mini-tribute to Lucille Ball, and a full length film noir that starred Lucy. She really was one gorgeous and amazing gal!