DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchived.blogspot.com The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) were the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II. It was a component of the United States Army, divided functionally by executive order in 1942 into three autonomous forces: the Army Ground Forces, the Services of Supply (which in 1943 became the Army Service Forces), and the AAF. Each of these forces had a commanding general who reported directly to the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The AAF controlled all parts of military aviation formerly distributed among the Air Corps, General Headquarters Air Force, and ground forces corps area commanders, and thus became the first air organization of the US Army to control its own installations. The direct precursor to the United States Air Force, its peak size was over 2.4 million men and women in service and nearly 80000 aircraft in 1944, and 783 domestic bases in December 1943. By VE Day it had 1.25 million men stationed overseas and operated from more than 1600 airfields worldwide. The Air Corps became the Army Air Forces in June 1941 to provide the air arm a greater autonomy in which to expand more efficiently, and to provide a structure for the additional command echelons required by a vastly increased force. Although other nations already had separate air forces independent of the army or navy (such as the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe), the USAAF ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org Lady of Burlesque (also known as The G-String Murders and in the UK, Striptease Lady) is a 1943 American mystery film starring Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea, based on the novel The G-String Murders written by famous strip tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee (with ghost-writing assistance from mystery writer Craig Rice). The plot concerns the murder of two strippers, backstage of a New York burlesque theatre and the detection of the killer. The film is a faithful, if sanitized due to the censorship of the time, adaptation of the original novel, although Gypsy Rose Lee, who appears as a character in her own book, is here renamed "Dixie Daisy" (Stanwyck). Michael O'Shea plays her romantic interest, comedian Biff Brannigan, and Iris Adrian portrays a showgirl. Pinky Lee, a burlesque comic in real life, is another notable supporting player, as is Gerald Mohr as villain Louie Grindero. The film depicted as much as the censors would allow with respect to the precise nature of "bumps" and "grinds", and the slapdash nature of burlesque shows. Songs include "Take it off the E string, play it on the G string", rendered by Stanwyck. Barbara Stanwyck (July 16, 1907 -- January 20, 1990) was an American actress. A film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra. After a short but ...

thefilmarchive.org DVD: www.amazon.com November 6, 1963 As marriage seemingly draws nearer, Jethro discovers a deal-breaking secret about Chickadee: she can't cook. In 1964, Tate made a screen test for Sam Peckinpah opposite Steve McQueen for the film The Cincinnati Kid. Ransohoff and Peckinpah agreed that Tate's timidity and lack of experience would cause her to flounder in such a large part, and she was rejected in favor of Tuesday Weld. She continued to gain experience with minor television appearances, and after she auditioned unsuccessfully for the role of Liesl in the film version of The Sound of Music, Ransohoff gave Tate walk-on roles in two motion pictures in which he was producer: The Americanization of Emily and The Sandpiper. In late 1965, Ransohoff finally gave Tate her first major role in a motion picture in the film Eye of the Devil, co-starring David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Donald Pleasence, and David Hemmings. Tate and Sebring traveled to London to prepare for filming, where she met the Alexandrian Wiccan High Priest and High Priestess Alex and Maxine Sanders, the former of whom duly initiated her into Wicca. Meanwhile, as part of Ransohoff's promotion of Tate, he arranged the production of a short documentary called All Eyes on Sharon Tate, to be released at the same time as Eye of the Devil. It included an interview with Eye of the Devil director J. Lee Thompson, who expressed his initial doubts about Tate's potential with the comment "We even agreed that ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org Detour (1945) is a film noir thriller that stars Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake and Edmund MacDonald. The movie was adapted by Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney (uncredited) from Goldsmith's novel and was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. The 68-minute film was released by the Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), one of the so-called "poverty row" film studios in mid-twentieth century Hollywood. Although made on a small budget with bare sets and straightforward camera work, Detour has gathered much praise through the years and is held in high regard. Al (Tom Neal) is a piano player who sets off hitchhiking his way to California to be with his fiancee. Along the way a convertible driven by Charles Haskell Jr. stops to pick him up. Al is driving while Haskell sleeps when a rainstorm begins and Al pulls over to put up the top. However, Haskell does not wake up and falls out onto the pavement, dead. Al dumps the body in a gully, takes Haskell's money, clothes and ID, then drives off in Haskell's expensive car. In voiceover, Al tells the audience that he did not kill Haskell. After spending the night in a motel, Al picks up another hitchhiker. As it happens, Vera (Ann Savage, playing a femme fatale) had earlier ridden with Haskell and blackmails Al by threatening to turn him in for murder unless he gives her all the money. In Hollywood they rent an apartment and while trying to sell the car, learn from a newspaper that Haskell was about ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchived.blogspot.com Directed by Charles Lamont Produced by Alexander Golitzen (associate producer) Walter Wanger (producer) Written by Michael J. Phillips (story) Laurence Stallings (writer) Starring See below Music by Edward Ward Cinematography W. Howard Greene Hal Mohr Editing by Russell F. Schoengarth Distributed by Universal Studios Release date(s) 1945 Running time 90 minutes Country USA Language English Cast * Yvonne De Carlo as Anna Marie * Rod Cameron as Jim Steed * David Bruce as Cleve Blunt * Walter Slezak as Col. Ivan Dimitrioff * Albert Dekker as Count Erik Von Bohlen * Marjorie Rambeau as Madam Europe * J. Edward Bromberg as Prof. Max * Abner Biberman as Dr. Ling * John Litel as General Robert E. Lee Charles Lamont (5 May 1895 -- 12 September 1993) was a prolific film director of over 200 titles, and the producer and writer of many others. He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and died in Los Angeles, California, USA. Yvonne De Carlo (September 1, 1922 -- January 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American actress of film and television. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as of Anna Marie in Salome Where She Danced (1945); Anna in Criss Cross (1949); Sephora the wife of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), starring Charlton Heston; and Amantha Starr in Band of Angels (1957) with Clark Gable. In the early 1960s, De Carlo accepted ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps (in German Konzentrationslager, or KZ) throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime. The term was borrowed from the British concentration camps of the Second Anglo-Boer War. The number of camps quadrupled between 1939 and 1942, as slave-laborers from across Europe, Jews, political prisoners, criminals, homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally ill and others were incarcerated, generally without judicial process. Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps, which were established by the Nazis for the industrial-scale mass murder of the predominantly Jewish ghetto and concentration camp populations. After September 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps became places where millions of ordinary people were enslaved as part of the war effort, often starved, tortured and killed. During the War, new Nazi concentration camps for "undesirables" spread throughout the continent. According to statistics by the German Ministry of Justice, about 1200 camps and subcamps were run in countries occupied by Nazi Germany, while the Jewish Virtual Library estimates that the number of Nazis camps was closer to 15000 in all of occupied Europe and that many of these ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular comedy teams of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema. Composed of thin, English-born Stan Laurel (1890--1965) and heavy, American-born Oliver Hardy (1892--1957) they became well known during the late 1920s to the mid-1940s for their work in motion pictures; the team also appeared on stage throughout America and Europe. The two comedians first worked together on the film The Lucky Dog. After a period appearing separately in several short films for the Hal Roach studio during the 1920s, they began appearing in movie shorts together in 1926. Laurel and Hardy officially became a team the following year, and soon became Hal Roach's most lucrative stars. Among their most popular and successful films were the features Sons of the Desert (1933), Way Out West (1937), and Block-Heads (1938) and the shorts Big Business (1929), Liberty (1929), and their Academy Award-winning short, The Music Box (1932). The pair left the Roach studio in 1940, then appeared in eight "B" comedies for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1941 to 1945. Disappointed in the films in which they had little creative control, from 1946 to 1950 the team did not appear on film and concentrated on their stage show, embarking on a musical hall tour of England, Ireland and Scotland. They made Atoll K, a French/Italian co-production and their last film, in 1950/1951, before retiring from the screen. In total ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org Hercules (Italian: Le fatiche di Ercole) is a 1958 Italian epic fantasy feature film based upon the Hercules myths and the Quest for the Golden Fleece. The film stars Steve Reeves as the titular hero and Sylva Koscina as his love interest Princess Iole. Hercules was directed by Pietro Francisci and produced by Federico Teti. The film spawned a sequel, Hercules Unchained (Italian: Ercole e la Regina di Lidia), that also starred Reeves and Koscina. Hercules made Reeves an international film star and effectively paved the way for the dozens of 1960s sword and sandal flicks featuring oily bodybuilders as mythological heroes and gladiators battling monsters, despots, and evil queens. Hercules has been broadcast on American television, is in the public domain, and is available in both VHS and DVD formats. In 1993 the film was lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film's Italian title means "The Labors of Hercules". The film's screenplay is loosely based upon the myths of Hercules and the Greek epic poem Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. In both myths and epic poem, Hercules' role in the Quest for the Golden Fleece is marginal; he abandons the expedition early-on when Hylas, his armor-bearer and eromenos (Greek: ἐρώμενος), is lost on an island while searching for water. With Hylas conveniently absent in the film, Hercules' role is greatly expanded: he remains with the expedition for its duration, saves the Argo from destruction ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org Raquel Welch (born September 5, 1940) is an American actress, author and sex symbol. In 1959, Welch played the title role in The Ramona Pageant, a yearly outdoor play at Hemet, California, which is based on the novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson and Bob Biloe. She became a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. Because of her heavy schedule, she decided to leave her studies at San Diego State University (then known as San Diego State College). Her first marriage broke up and she moved with her two children, Damon and Latanne, to Dallas, Texas, where she modeled for Neiman Marcus and worked as a cocktail hostess, intending to move on to New York City from there. Instead, Welch moved back to California, found a place in Los Angeles and started making the rounds of the movie studios. She was cast in bit parts in two films and in the television shows Bewitched, McHale's Navy, and The Virginian, as well as on the weekly variety series The Hollywood Palace as a billboard girl and presenter of acts. Welch's first featured role came in the beach film A Swingin' Summer, which led to a contract with 20th Century Fox. She was subsequently cast in a leading role in the sci-fi hit Fantastic Voyage (1966), which made her a star. She was the last star created under the studio system. On loan out to Hammer Studios in Britain, Welch starred in the remake of One Million Years BC striking an iconic pose in a prehistoric ...

DVD: www.amazon.com thefilmarchive.org A Farewell to Arms is a 1932 American drama film directed by Frank Borzage. The screenplay by Oliver HP Garrett and Benjamin Glazer is based on the 1929 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Europe during World War I, the plot focuses on the tragic romance between Frederick Henry (Gary Cooper), an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian Army, and English Red Cross nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes). Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou) envies their relationship and has Catherine transferred to Milan. When Frederick is wounded in battle, he finds himself in the hospital where Catherine works. They continue their affair until he returns to battle. Now-pregnant Catherine settles in Switzerland, and when her many letters to Henry remain unanswered because his responses are held up by the censors, she assumes he has abandoned her. As the Armistice nears, Frederick journeys to Switzerland to find Catherine, who dies in childbirth with him at her side. In his review in the New York Times, Mordaunt Hall said, "There is too much sentiment and not enough strength in the pictorial conception of Ernest Hemingway's novel . . . the film account skips too quickly from one episode to another and the hardships and other experiences of Lieutenant Henry are passed over too abruptly, being suggested rather than told . . . Gary Cooper gives an earnest and splendid portrayal [and] Helen Hayes is admirable as ...