Word: heston
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Dark City (Paramount) is a snail-paced thriller about three tin horn gamblers pursued by an avenging psychopath. It also introduces to the screen a sullen, Bogart-style newcomer from television, Charlton Heston...
...first picture, Heston is cast as a Cornell alumnus with a blemished war record (while a pilot in England he took time off between bombing runs to murder his wife's lover). This tragedy has somehow reduced him to running a Chicago handbook that is always being raided by the police. In desperation, Heston turns card sharper and, with two cronies, fleeces a sucker of $5,000. The sucker commits suicide, leaving behind a wife and child as well as a maniacal brother who sets out to eliminate the gamblers. He throttles two of them and has a lethal...
Producer Hal Wallis has decked out this contrived story with standard melodramatic props: dark shadows, windblown curtains, the strangler's poised hands. Ed Begley has a nice bit part as a gambler with ulcers. Heston is appropriately tough with Nightclub Singer Lizabeth Scott and predictably sentimental with Widow Viveca Lindfors...
Studio One (Mon. 10 p.m., CBS-TV) Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, with Lisa Kirk and Charlton Heston...
...authors establish the situation and character relationships. After the first act, it picks up a good deal of speed and dramatic power. The same is true of the acting. Ralph Clanton is convincing, often frighteningly so, as the Earl, a man of almost demoniac evil. Martha Scott and Charlton Heston give rounded, creditable performances as Margaret and John Clitherow. Miss Scott's portrayal of the heroine is not inspiring, but she does an extremely competent job in a part that calls for straightforward acting...