Fugitives for a Night (1938).

Frank Albertson in
Fugitives for a Night

An actor is suspected of murdering a producer in this film scripted by famous blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (whose 110th birthday falls on December 9).

See the trailer.

Podcasts on mystery films, Warner Archive.

The latest episode of the Warner Archive Collection podcast discusses the release of Bill Elliott Detective Mysteries (1955–57), a DVD of films with Elliott as a detective working in the LA sheriff's office:

• Calling Homicide (a police officer's death is connected to the murder of a head of a modeling school)

• Chain of Evidence (man with amnesia faces murder charges)

• Dial Red-O (disturbed veteran is accused of killing his wife)

• Footsteps in the Night (Elliott on the trail of a strangler)

• Sudden Danger (son seeks his father's murderer)

Other podcast episodes include:

• Episode on Terror on a Train (1953, with Glenn Ford) and The Decks Ran Red (1958, with James Mason and Dorothy Dandridge)

• Interview with Eddie Muller on the noir film Gun Crazy (1950)

• Episode on The Mask of Dimitrios (1944, from the novel by Eric Ambler), A Dangerous Profession (1949), Duffy of San Quentin (1954), The Fall Guy (1947, from Cornell Woolrich's "Cocaine"/"C-Jag"), FBI Code 98 (1963), and Loophole (1954)

• Episode on the Hildegarde Withers Mystery Collection that features the spinster detective created by Stuart Palmer and popularized by Edna May Oliver

The Brothers Rico (1957).

In The Brothers Rico, a former Mob accountant (Richard Conte) finds himself entangled with his ex-employers when his brothers (James Darren, Paul Picerni) fail to go along with Mafia plans. The film, based on the novella Les Frères Rico by Georges Simenon and featuring screenplay work by Dalton Trumbo, also stars Kathryn Grant (aka Mrs. Bing Crosby).

Today in 1967: Raymond Burr as Ironside.

The Paley Center for Media recalls that today in 1967 Raymond Burr debuted as San Francisco detective Robert Ironside, left a paraplegic after a murder attempt. Writers for the series included Stephen J. Cannell, Davis Dresser (aka Brett Halliday), and Christopher Trumbo (son of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo).

"The Grave Grass Quivers," by MacKinlay Kantor (1931).

I had the strange notion that Doctor George Martindale, after unloading the sad story of his youth, had taken two days in going deliberately and completely insane.

—MacKinlay Kantor, "The Grave Grass Quivers" (Omnibus 184)

In "The Grave Grass Quivers," a country doctor suspects that his father and brother were murdered years ago, but thinks he can finally prove it with the assistance of a younger colleague. The story resonates today as the doctor conveys the anguish of himself and his family in not knowing what has happened to their loved ones.

MacKinlay Kantor (1904–77) is probably best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Andersonville (1955) and Glory for Me (1945; the basis for the film The Best Years of Our Lives), but he also wrote pulp stories and the story and screenplay (the latter with Dalton Trumbo) for the film Gun Crazy (1950). "The Grave Grass Quivers" was first published in the Elks Magazine in 1931 (repr. The Third Omnibus of Crime, ed. Dorothy L. Sayers, 1935; EQMM, Mar 1949; and It's About Crime, 1960). 

MacKinlay Kantor plays the guitar.
July 1950. Photo: State Library
and Archives of Florida

Happy birthday, Dalton Trumbo.

Peggy Cummins in Gun
Crazy (1950; dir. Joseph
H. Lewis)

Screenwriter and author Dalton Trumbo, a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist, was born today in Montrose, CO, in 1905. He won Oscars for Roman Holiday and The Brave One, and the National Book Award for the war protest novel Johnny Got His Gun. He was the screenwriter on such notable films as Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Exodus, and Spartacus. His crime-related work includes Fugitives for a Night (1938; studio employee is accused of murder), Half a Sinner (1940; schoolteacher gets mixed up in murder), Jealousy (1945; wife is suspected in husband's murder), and Gun Crazy (1950, cowritten with MacKinlay Kantor; a couple embarks on a robbery spree). He died in 1976.