Word: widmark
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...United Artists) confirms the Hollywood truism that one scrappy Yank is more than a match for three brutal Nazis. Richard Widmark, an ex-war correspondent, big-game hunter and bestselling novelist, is tracked down in Mexico by Girl Reporter Jane Greer, whose assignment is to discover why he has stopped writing. Soon Widmark sobs out the terrible truth (while he was shooting lions in Africa, his wife and best friend were making beautiful music together). Jane is so moved that she starts back for Manhattan without her story. Aloft in Widmark's personal plane, the two of them crash...
...this minor skirmish grows an increasing uproar that causes the ruin of Dr. Charles Boyer, titular head of the clinic, disrupts the budding romance between Widmark and Bacall, drives most of the inmates into an all-night binge, and sends hysterical John Kerr off to the river, bent on suicide. By this time, moviegoers have difficulty distinguishing the sane from the unbalanced...
...Cobweb (MGM) shows how a well-run psychiatric clinic turns into a bedlam simply because good, greying Dr. Richard Widmark is indifferent to his pouting wife, Gloria Grahame. The fireworks start over a set of new draperies for the patients library. Gloria, embarked on a rare good deed to impress her husband, decides to buy some expensive new ones. This upsets crotchety Lillian Gish, business manager of the clinic, who has her irascible eye fixed on some bargain cotton. Even worse, the clinic therapist, Lauren Bacall, has already promised Problem-Patient John Kerr that he can design the new draperies...
Though failing in its overall effect, Cobweb has in its favor some sharply etched scenes, e.g., the dramatic clash of wills between Patient Kerr and Dr. Widmark during an analytic session. Veteran Lillian Gish, as a wig-wearing termagant determined to be on the winning side in any quarrel, gives the most stylish performance in the film...
Most of the pictures seem to favor the sea as their excuse for swearing. Richard Widmark drove his submaraine to Hell and High Water, while Allan Ladd was frozen in Hell Below Zero. Currently, some Italians have been renamed Hell Raiders of the Deep (an earlier, more ingenuous Widmark was content with the term "frogman" in the same line of work). Ida Lupino has also released a bit of whimsy called, for little reason, Private Hell 36. These are not good films...