 The clock strikes trouble in Dick Powell crime thriller. 
Above is a beautiful poster for the vintage film noir Johnny O'Clock, which starred Dick Powell at the height of his fame, and was probably greenlighted due only to his presence. The plot and script could be better, but Powell and his co-stars Evelyn Keyes, Thomas Gomez, Ellen Drew, and Nina Foch are all excellent, and the result is a twisty little noir that starts with power games inside a casino operation, but evolves into the suicide of a casino hatcheck girl, and an investigation by a cop working from a mistaken set of assumptions. Keyes plays the showgirl sister of the unfortunate suicide who jets into town, her arrival nudging casino manager Powell from indifference to curiosity about the death. Not that Powell has much of a choice in the end—the cops become extremely interested in him when the suicide turns out to be murder, his main rival turns up dead, and he's suspected of both crimes.
So the movie eventually falls into the familiar pattern—Powell needs to uncover the truth even as the cops are trying to put him behind bars; Keyes has the hots for a gangster though she's presumably old enough and smart enough to know better; Powell has gotten along fine without a conscience for years, but now Keyes is pressuring him to make the right choices; and finally there's that old film noir obstacle jealousy, ultimately the deciding factor in so much. But familiar as these ingredients may be, Johnny O'Clock manages to mix them into a decent movie. It isn't the best from the film noir cycle, but it's worth the time to watch it. As a side note, you know those old cartoons where a gangster flips a coin over and over, flipping it and catching it with the same hand? This is probably the movie where it originated. Powell is a master with that coin. And he's a master of film noir too. Johnny O'Clock premiered today in 1947.                  
 If she were architecture she'd be streamline moderne. 
Above, a Columbia Pictures promo image of Dutch actress Nina Foch made for her 1949 drama Johnny Allegro. She looks like she's getting her gloves on for some shady activity or other, which fits, since in the movie she plays a woman with a very mysterious background. We may revisit the subject later. In the meantime you can see another Foch photo here.
 For Foch's sake won't someone please listen? 
This poster was made to promote My Name Is Julia Ross, a tidy little film noir only sixty-five minutes in length, which makes it an economical expenditure of time. Dutch beauty Nina Foch is hired to be a live-in secretary but finds herself stuck in a house where everyone seems to think she's someone she isn't. She has a husband, a doting mother-in-law, and other people in her life, none of whom she's ever met before. What sort of plot is afoot here? Well, we quickly learn Foch was chosen to be an unwilling double for the former mistress of the house, who's dead, murdered by her husband actually—a fact unknown to the proper authorities. You can probably figure out the rest. Just think: inheritance. Realizing she's being set up to be murdered, she tries to tell everyone from the police to her doctor she's not the dead wife, but nobody will listen. Is everyone blind to the truth? Or is it that everyone is in on the plot? Either way she better figure out something quick. My Name Is Julia Ross isn't a perfect movie, but it's pretty good, and since it's barely longer than a television show we have to recommend it. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1945.
 Thou shalt not mispronounce her name. 
When your name is Nina Foch you probably get used to introducing yourself only to have people say, “You need a what?” Not us, though. We’d never be that juvenile. Film buffs will remember this Dutch actress as Bithiah, the woman who in 1956’s oft-broadcast spectacle The Ten Commandments finds Moses and raises him as her son, but she also played in pulpier fare such as The Return of the Vampire and Escape in the Fog, and important noirs like Johnny O’Clock and My Name Is Julia Ross. This shot was made in 1944 as a promo for her role in Cry of the Werewolf.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
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