A Netflix Movie of the Week review: VICE RAID (United Artists, 1960)

Nasty Brad Dexter lures starstruck small town girls into prostitution in Big Bad LA in Vice Raid, which comes with a smidgen of vice but no actual raid if by raid you mean cops swooping in to cart whores and johns to the slammer. This, after all, is 1959 and the word "prostitute" isn't uttered by anybody. But what else would you call Mamie van Doren, the least starstruck of the starstruck girls? Mamie, who has been around the block a couple of times, willingly sets a trap for incorruptible vice lieutenant Richard Coogan, only to turn right around and finger her boss, Dexter, when her truly naive sister (Carol Nugent) gets involved with the gang. It is that kind of film, full of innuendo and doomsday narration - Film Noir made for peanuts but directed by the capable Eddie Cahn and running smoothly to a foregone conclusion. Vice Raid was produced by veteran indie stalwart Edward Small and filmed at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

Among the cast members is charming Juli Reding, a starlet extraordinaire of the period here opening the film as one of the aforementioned small town wannabes. And out-Mamieing the real deal in her few moments on screen.  

                                             

The leading man is Richard Coogan, one of those typical bloodless 1950s screen and television heroes who seemed to blend into the scenery. Mr. Coogan is still with us at this writing, only a few months away from turning 100.

MAXINE ARDELL or MAVIS MURRAY

Who is this? The portrait below is designated Paramount starlet Mavis Murray with a date of 1947 but the very same picture appears in the 1946 Academy Players guide as Paramount starlet Maxine Ardell. Who is it, a Mavis or Maxine. Or are they in reality the same person? Both are listed among the chorus girls in the all-star Blue Skies (1946).  

                                  

Paramount starlet JUNE HARRIS

June Harris (1915-1993) was one of the Goldwyn Girls supporting Danny Kaye in Up in Arms (44). She did chorine duties in several other Paramount films before disappearing from cast lists around 1948.

                                                                        

Yesterday, I received a letter from Miss Harris' daughter, Miss Katey Lindley of San Diego, who contributed the following info,

"She was a model in New York (as was her brother….Larry Robbins). She signed with Fox Studios the same day as Marilyn Monroe. She dated Jim Stack (Robert Stacks brother) for many years until she met my dad at Jim’s house playing tennis (it was a weekly thing – cocktails and tennis). My dad was a camera man at Fox and did her test shots (Norman Lindley). They married and she left the industry. Norman Lindley is the brother of Audra Lindley (Yes, Mrs. Roper) – and son of Bert Lindley (silent film). She had wonderful stories to tell of early Hollywood….she even went out with Ronald Regan (her publicist set it up) but she was not a fan of his. Oh, and she was Miss Beverly Hills when she was 17 – so I guess that was 1942. There should be some record since it hit the headlines as she fell after she was crowned and the trophy went rolling away."

Paramount starlet JANET THOMAS

Paramount contract starlet Janet Thomas appeared in the background of the all-star Variety Girl (1947) and the Western California (1947).

(Illustration: a cropped snapshot of Janet Thomas taken on a night out in Hollywood with Howard Hughes' right hand man Johnny Meyer.) 

Vivian Austin and THE CHARGE AT FEATHER RIVER (Warner Bros., 1953)

Blink and you'll miss it. But if you don't blink, you shall witness something rarely shown in any classic Western like The Charge at Feather River: a cavalry officer returning to his quarters to find his wife apparently having an affair with a fellow officer. Will the rivals be heading out with the same search party to rescue a couple of white women (Vera Miles and Helen Westcott) held by the Cheyenne, their mutual distrust not exactly helpful for the mission? Why, yes! The two combatants are acted by genre stalwarts Frank Lovejoy and Don Brodie with the object of their rivalry played, briefly, oh, so briefly, by Vivian Austin. The Western in question, Feather River, was lensed in color and 3-D (which those fortunate enough to have witnessed claim was very effective), starred also-ran performer Guy Madison (playing a scout leader named, amusingly, Mikes Archer) and was produced on Warner Bros. sound stages with brief detours to Newhall and Santa Clarita. Mainly due to the-then brand new 3-D effects but also some quite good writing and solid performances, The Charge at Feather River became the highest grossing Western of 1953.

A busty blonde, Vivian Mason had been around for quite a few years by 1953, mostly performing chorus girl assignments. She was, for example, a Ziegfeld Girl in the eponymous 1941 MGM musical starring Garland, Tuner and LaMarr and there were many other such assignments. Her screen and television career lasted until 1955. Sadly, according to a Wikipedia entry, "Mason died of lanition (a lack of food and water) and dementia on August 24, 2009 in Seattle, Washington. She was a resident of the Ida Culver House-Broadview nursing home at the time of her death, and was cremated."

                                                                    

Joanne Gilbert in RIDE OUT FOR REVENGE (United Artists, 1957)

In Ride Out For Revenge, a rather plodding Western starring Rory Calhoun and pouty Gloria Grahame, Joanne Gilbert plays Pretty Willow, a Cheyenne maiden whose father, the chief, is brutally slain by one of nasty Lloyd Bridges' henchmen. Willow's brother, played, somewhat incongruously by Vince Edwards, swears revenge and Calhoun, the town's former marshal who is "tired of fighting," is caught between his none too secret love for Willow and the attentions of Indian-hating townswoman Grahame. The latter sneers and blames Calhoun for her misfortune while the wind blows hot air and the war drums sound. Miss Grahame has blonde highlights in her hair and Miss Gilbert is apparently one lucky Cheyenne with full access to Max Factor, but that, of course, is standard issue western, 1950s style. Meanwhile, can Calhoun overcome his disgust and save the town by killing his girlfriend's brother? Ride Out for Revenge was filmed in black and white at the Monogram Ranch in Placerita, CA, and in the Agoura Hills.

Joanne Gilbert was the daughter of songwriter Ray Gilbert and was always more famous for her long stint as singing at Los Angeles famous The Mocambo than any of her screen roles. Paramount, who had contracted her straight from her night club gig, let her go when the Western musical Red Garters, in which she supported Rosemary Clooney, went bust at the box office. She escaped into a brief union with screenwriter Danny Arnold and then did her fair share of television guest spots until retiring in the early 1960s. She now resides in Washington State.

                                   

Anne Sterling in BOWERY CHAMPS (Monogram, 1944)

Evelyn Brent as a femme fatale down on her luck (and wasn't that perfect typecasting?) and to a certain extend Thelma White as a dumb broad steal the feminine aspects of Bowery Champs, a Bowery Boys movie otherwise enlivened solely by Leo Gorcey's malapropisms. Nominal romantic interest, what there is of it, is provided by Anne Sterling, whose only other appearance of note came in Edgar Ulmer's noirish Bluebeard from the same year. Yet she still called herself a film and television actress when making less pleasant news in the following decade. Both photos below come courtesy of the Baltimore Sun and tell the story of a very troubled personality.