If you think being on the wrong side of the tracks is bad, trying being right in the middle of them.
This poster was made for Railroaded!, which is a competent b-noir about a gangster managing to steer cops into arresting a patsy for murder. These cops are damn easy to steer, and later they're really not at all concerned that they might have the wrong man. In fact, they're downright eager to usher this guy into the gas chamber. It's only because Ed Kelly as the innocent man sticks so doggedly to his story that the police start to have doubts. At that point the patsy's sister takes the reins and starts to steer the highly influenceable cops in the right direction, which brings gangster danger to her door. But the benefit of leading cops by the nose is that they tend to linger about.
On the whole, this is a surprisingly tidy little thriller. John Ireland is the gangster/puppetmaster, Hugh Beaumont, later of Leave It to Beaver, is one of the cops, and Sheila Ryan plays the sister of never-wavering faith. All of them are good. Railroaded man Ed Kelly is fine too, but he basically acted in only this movie. True, he appeared uncredited in a film in 1950, and had a bit part in 1970, but those barely count. We don't know why he vanished, but wherever he went we imagine he was pretty satisfied to have starred in what is generally remembered as a pretty good low budget crime thriller. Railroaded! (with an exclamation mark in its official title, though it doesn't appear on this poster) premiered in the U.S. today in 1947.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 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.
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