They Live...

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT-1949- is an incredible film noir by Nicolas Ray.

It stars Farley Granger (who had just been in ROPE and would go on to co-star in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN for Hitchcock) and Cathy O'Donnell as doomed lovers involved in robbery, deception and killing.

Director Ray creates an undercurrent of doom in this film that is unbelievable. You know things can never work out. You just watch and wait for it to fall apart. Ray would go on to make REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, JOHNNY GUITAR and KING OF KINGS but he never really made another one like this.

Howard Da Silva (who was later blacklisted) and Jay C Flippen ( a veteran character actor later in Kubrick's THE KILLING and THE WILD ONE) are the guys who lead Granger's character astray. O'Donnell was headed for stardom until she incurred the wrath of Samuel Goldwyn. She made sporadic film appearances after that (her last film was BEN-HUR in 1959). She died of cancer in 1970 at the age of 45.

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT also includes in it's cast Will Wright, Ian Wolfe, William Phipps and my favorite character of all time Byron Foulger!

Granger (still alive at the time of this writing) would later on star in SENSO for Luchino Visconti but wound up playing in mostly low budget films in Europe and America....

Thanks for reading!!