John Villiers Farrow, CBE (10 February 1904 – 27 January 1963) was an Australian, later American, film director, producer and screenwriter. In 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Writing / Best Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days and in 1942 he was nominated as Best Director for Wake Island.
Farrow was born in Sydney, Australia, the son of Lucy Villiers (née Savage), a dressmaker, and Joseph Farrow, a tailor’s trimmer. Farrow began writing while working as a sailor in the 1920s. He moved to Hollywood to work in films as a marine technical advisor and stayed on as a screenwriter. He wrote for films between 1927 and 1959, and also directed between 1934 and 1959. Farrow was also a writer of short stories and plays (Laughter Ends), as well as non-fiction (Pageant of the Popes, and biographies of St Thomas More and Father Damien).
He was married to actress Maureen O’Sullivan from 12 September 1936 until his death. He fathered four daughters: actresses Mia, Prudence… read more
The son of famed animator Max Fleischer (Popeye, Betty Boop et. al.), Richard O. Fleischer was a psychology student at Brown University when he dropped out in favor of the Yale Drama Department. At age 21, Fleischer organized a campus theatrical troupe called the Arena Players. In 1942, he went to work for RKO-Pathe in New York, editing the company’s weekly newsreels before producing and directing his own short-subject projects, including the March of Time-like This is America and a series of gagged-up silent-film vignettes titled Flicker Flashbacks. In 1946, he headed to Hollywood, there to direct feature films for Pathe’s parent studio, RKO Radio; his last short-subject effort was the Oscar-winning Design for Death (1948). At first limited to “B” pictures, Fleischer gained a loyal critical following with such topnotch films as Follow Me Quietly (1949) and The Narrow Margin (1952).
Perhaps sensing that RKO was on its last legs, Fleischer moved on to MGM, then to Walt Disney… read more
Terribly plodding first hour saved by one of my favorite Vincent Price performances in the second plus a very bizarre whipping scene of Mitchum on a steamboat. Strange fun.
Here's why this works: Mitchum plays Mitchum, Price plays Price. Together it makes no real sense, but that provides half the fun.
What a weird film this is. It's as though two directors were making the film, one thought it was a noir and the other thought it was a camp Boy's Own comedy. It's only in the cutting room some poor sod had to try and stitch it all together. And the result is an omelette. I loved the idea of the Nazi plastic surgeon who took 2 minutes to find a vein... Amusing film, but over-long.
