Tag: Charles Halton

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

The Shop Around the Corner (1940). 99 minutes. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Margaret Sullavan (as Klara Novak), James Stewart (as Alfred Kralik), Frank Morgan (as Hugo Matuschek), Joseph Schildkraut (as Ferencz Vadas), Sara Haden (as Flora Kaczek), Felix Bressart (as Pirovitch), William Tracy (as Pepi Katona), Inez Courtney (as Ilona Novotny), Charles Halton (as detective), and Charles Smith (as Rudy). Written by Samuel Raphaelson.

Ernst Lubitsch’s wonderful The Shop Around the Corner centers on a high-end Hungarian boutique at Christmastime, but the movie is about so much more than business during the holidays. In that store, two clerks, Alfred and Klara, write to pen pals that they fall in love with—not realizing that they are writing to each other. In contrast to the way they feel about their pen pals, in everyday life they loathe each other and bicker constantly, and therefore, as we know, they must eventually come to love each other outside of the letter writing. It … Read the rest

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

To Be or Not to Be (1942). 99 minutes. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Carole Lombard (as Maria Tura), Jack Benny (as Joseph Tura), Robert Stack (as Lt. Stanislav Sobinski), Felix Bressart (as Greenberg), Lionel Atwill (as Rawich), Stanley Ridges (as Professor Alexander Siletsky), Sig Ruman (as Col. Erhardt), Tom Dugan (as Bronski), Charles Halton (as Dubosh), and Henry Victor (as Capt. Schultz).

In To Be or Not to Be, Jack Benny plays Joseph Tura, a Polish actor in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who thinks highly of himself even though few others do. At one point, disguised as a Gestapo agent to further the Polish cause, he asks the German Col. Erhardt if he has heard of this actor Joseph Tura, apparently fishing for compliments even while conducting dangerous espionage. Col. Erhardt, to Tura’s surprise, has heard of the actor. “Oh yes,”the Nazi says, “I saw him in Hamlet once. What he did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland.”… Read the rest

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). 64 minutes. Directed by Boris Ingster. Starring Peter Lorre (as the Stranger), John McGuire (as Michael Ward), Margaret Tallichet (as Jane), Charles Halton (as Albert Meng), and Elisha Cook, Jr. (as Joe Briggs).

Stranger on the Third Floor is a noir curiosity from 1940, cited by many as the first entry in the genre’s classic period, which spanned roughly from 1940 to 1959. I would say that it stars Peter Lorre, except that he barely appears or even talks in the movie until three quarters have elapsed—and yet Lorre was such an impressive actor at the time that he received top billing nevertheless.

Lorre is the reason to see this movie. He plays the weird and enigmatic Stranger, a curious fellow whom protagonist Michael Ward suspects of murdering a neighbor.  Lorre’s early silent appearances as the Stranger—lurking on the front stoop of Ward’s building, peeking out of a door on Ward’s apartment landing, peering … Read the rest