Since Brian's mother worked nights every weekend, a bunch of us would get together and stay the night at his house every Saturday. On this particular night, after everybody was tired out from the numerous games of Stop Thief, Brian and I turned the TV on while everyone else went to sleep. It was around one in the morning, and we were flipping through the channels until we saw something that marked me for life. A woman was tearing a shed apart, looking for something  in the dark. Suddenly a man opened the door and punched her in the face, knocking her out cold. He knelt down beside her, recognized her, got back up, got himself a beer from a bucket that was floating in the water under his shed, opened the beer, took a drink, and smirked while he woke the woman up by pouring beer on her face. We watched the rest of this movie in complete silence and utter amazement. I had never seen a movie so dark and shadowy and cold in my life. Nor had I seen anybody nearly as cool as that guy who I later learned was Richard Widmark, in Pickup On South Street. He laughed in everyone's faces. Every time somebody tried to bust him, he got away, smirking. The police meant nothing to him. He was our idol.

After the movie was over, Brian and I decided that we were going to find every single movie that Richard Widmark was in, since he was the only person that mattered anymore. We didn't have a whole lot of luck, since there was no Internet and maybe two video stores in the area at the time, but somehow we came across Kiss Of Death...and that one did it for us. After seeing Tommy Udo in action, giggling hysterically and generally acting psychotic, we decided that we would both become Richard Widmark.

My mother drove us to every thrift shop in the area, and we bought some old suits and "those old hats that guys wore back in the 40's". We got rid of our parachute pants and Air Jordans, since Widmark would never have been seen in anything like that. So, with our Fedoras, patent leather (shined) shoes, and dark blue suits (with jackets that hung down to our knees), we were ready to go back to school, far cooler than anybody else.

Needless to say, our "Widmark Period" didn't last very long. It wasn't the ridicules from our classmates either, it was the three weeks of detention that I got for snickering at the assistant principal after I was sent to his office for calling my Math teacher "sugar" and her helper a "dirty Commie red". 

Anyway, years passed...but we never forgot about our idol. Every time one of us would stumble across one of his movies, we'd let each other know about it. During my first year of college, I took an Intro To Film class, and every week was a different theme; Western, Expressionism, Silents, Early Sound, etc. One of the weeks was designated  "Film Noir", which was something I had never heard of. After watching Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon that week, I noticed that they both had the same look and feel as the Richard Widmark movies I had seen. I asked the professor about this and she said "Oh yeah, those are noirs too...Widmark was in a ton of them."

Then, of course, I had to track down every title related to film noir that I could find, and I've been hooked ever since. Oddly enough, I hadn't seen Brian in a year since he went to a different college on the other side of the state, but he called me out of the blue one night not long after that and asked, "Hey, have you heard of film noir?"

Now, what's a film noir and what isn't? To me, the keys are the psychological tone of the movie, the nature of the characters and their inter-actions, and how the story deals with them philosophically.  Noir is not simply photography, because we can find many dark films like The Black Hand that do not seem noir. It's not the contemporary city by itself because a film like Dragonwyck is very noir. In that one, Vincent Price plays an addict in a period movie. He's hot for Gene Tierney and really acts up. Must the film focus on ordinary people rather than police? Not always. If the policeman hero is entrapped in the noir world, or utilizes it thoroughly,  the film has a noir character.

I blame genetics and environment - plain and simple. I am the granddaughter of a long-since-gone janitor at Columbia Pictures and the daughter of a walking movie encyclopedia in size 5 shoes.

My mother grew up in Hollywood in the forties and fifties. She shared with me not only her love of movies but several of her father's stories from working in Hollywood. One of my favorite stories comes from the filming of "Lady from Shanghai." According to my grandfather it was customary for Orson Wells to show up on the lot in chauffeur driven car. His chauffeur was Rita Hayworth. She sat in front, driving, and he always sat in back giving orders. (This may give us a clue as to why that romance didn't work out!)

The truth is I have always loved movies. I can't help it. I went to High School a block up from Hollywood Boulevard. I graduated from high school at the Hollywood Bowl. My mother worked in the city hall building seen in so many noir films. I drive down the streets described by Chandler and Hammett. All of these things put film noir in my blood.

But if there is one defining moment that made me a permanent resident of Dark City, it was the first time I saw "The Third Man." In my second year of college I took my very first film class. The first movie we screened was "The Third Man." Now, I have a lot of great memories attached to movies: birthdays, friends, and even a marriage proposal, but the first time I saw "The Third Man" made me feel like I had never really seen a movie before.

I was mesmerized by the dialogue, the atmosphere, and the sense of humor. Like so many other film noir classics, "The Third Man" leaves you with that conflicted feeling of wanting to root for the bad guy and at the same time wanting to see him go down.  From the moment Harry Lime's face comes out of the shadows and the cat scampers down the street, I was sold. Ever since then I have given little pieces of my heart to Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, and John Garfield to name a few. I wouldn't want it any other way.

I kind of fell into Film Noir. Back in 1972 when I was 15, I purchased my first Movie Book: The MGM Stock Company by James Robert Parish. I started to read all about the famous Movie Stars of Hollywood's Golden Age and became obsessed with seeing all their movies.  

Since this was 1972 and there were no VCRs this is what I would do: I would set my alarm to wake me up say at 2 A.M. or 3 A.M. or whenever the film began. I would get up and sneak down to the living room to the old films. Sometimes one of my parents would get up to go to the bathroom and I would have to shut off the television in order not to get caught. So sometimes I would get to see the whole movie and sometimes I would miss the end or the middle. This was in the New York Metro area so we had The Late, Late Show. As I started to watch, I became even more obsessed with these dark moody films in which the people dressed great, drove great cars, lived in modern houses and spoke the toughest dialogue I'd ever heard.

I still love classic films but my favorite genre of films are the Film Noirs.

The first movie that really hit me was the Niven Bush classic 'Pursued'.  I had paid my academic debt to society at the UCLA slammer, and had taken a few courses in Philosophy.  When I saw 'Pursued' , it hit me hard. I had never seen a film so intense. It dawned on me that what was going on with this movie, was a existentialist vision placed onto a sagebrush melodrama. I began calling this "an existential western".  I tried to talk about this with my local literary buddies but they thought I was f**king crazy. I invited several beat poets, including Gregory Corso & Bob Kaufman, to come over and watch 'Pursued', for some feedback'.  All I got from them was an empty refrigerator and a bar left completely dry. Kaufman would unroll all my toilet paper and stuff it into his pocket to scribble his next masterpiece on.  So 'Pursued' had turned me on to Robert Mitchum and I began highlighting the TV Guide for his upcoming movies. Next, I came across 'Out Of The Past'. Again the same mood and syndrome as the western but this time a detective movie. Then 'Night Of The Hunter' and 'Macao'. I got a chance to revisit a film that I had seen before but failed understand, 'Double Indemnity'. To myself, I called these films existential dramas.  

By 1979 I began dating a lovely hippie chick, who had a genius IQ and when I began explaining these films to her, she laughed and told me about Film Noir. We went to the public library and checked out some books on film and I haven't looked back since. To this day you'll never hear me say a bad word about the ol' Late - Late shows or hippie chicks.!

More than twenty years ago, I moved to a secluded part of Long Island and found time to read. I discovered pulp fiction and the hard-boiled novelists. I read all of Chandler and Hammett and alot of Cain and Woolrich. I discovered Paul Cain, David Goodis, and Harry Whittington. I also got cable tv then and began to see some of the key noirs: Touch of Evil, The Asphalt Jungle (still one of my favorites), The Big Combo, Lady From Shanghai. I knew that I loved the cinematography, the stories, and the acting. I also saw Raw Deal and T-Men on the big screen at a college and may have heard the term film noir then. Alot of it came together for me from two books: Hardboiled America by Geoffrey O'Brien and the Encyclopedia of Film Noir by Alain Silver (First edition) Reading them pointed out the connection and flow from the hardboiled novel to the film noir and much of the imagery on vintage paperbacks echoed what I was seeing in the films (and vice-versa) The Encyclopedia was important too in the body of knowledge it offered and the sheer number of film noirs that I had never heard of before. The stills they used were very intriguing also.

From then on, I was hooked. I taped alot of noirs off the TV and began searching out others in video stores and dealers around the country. I continued to delve into the fiction, as well as other great books on film noir, many of which have been mentioned on the message board or in your web-site.

My all-time favorite film noir? Definitely Out of the Past. I watch it at least once a year (and have seen it once on the big screen in a Greenwich village theater) and never ceased to be amazed at the atmosphere, the slow unfolding of the story, and Mitchum's performance. The Asphalt Jungle is probably my number two and Raw Deal my number three.

One other story I will share with an idea. I think a great book would be photos of film noir locations and places, both from the films and the circumstances surrounding the films. An example: About ten years ago, I had a number of business trips to San Francisco. When I was done with work, I walked all over the city, just digging the neighborhoods, really fell in love with it. I had the book: The Dashiell Hammett Tour by Don Herron and visited every Dashiell Hammett site. One night, I walked up Telegraph Hill towards Coit Tower and to my surprise and delight, I discovered Lauren Bacall's apartment house from Dark Passage. It had the elevator, the hallway, and the art deco glass work just as I had seen it so many times in the movie. I was in the building so long it's lucky I didn't get arrested! To the rear and side of the building was a long stairwell leading to the Embarcadero. I believe that was the same stairwell Bogie struggles to climb in the movie after his plastic surgery. A real mind-blower. A real noirhead's dream!

By the way, on Telegraph Hill is a restaurant called Julius' Castle, which is featured in one of Hammett's Sam Spade short stories.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Thanks for the opportunity to share it.

Dig it, Jeremy Burwell; Long Island, New York