Mark Stevens

THE STREET WITH NO NAME (1948)

The Street With No Name 1948

Fresh off his Oscar nomination for Kiss of Death, Richard Widmark was scooped up as a contract player for Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox. While Tommy Udo was a pure sadist through and through, Widmark’s villainous character in The Street With No Name is a much more likable snake. The film is an unofficial sequel to House on 92nd Street and was one of many procedurals backed by the feds, who gave director William Keighley and the rest of his crew access to their offices, crime labs, and training facilities. While most of these J. Edgar Hoover handjobs can be pretty drab, as their main goal is to hype up the FBI and make all their agents look like golden boys, The Street With No Name is a fairly gritty film, anchored with strong performances by Widmark and Mark Stevens (The Dark Corner).

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THE DARK CORNER (1946)

The Dark Corner

A year before Henry Hathaway directed Kiss of Death (launching Richard Widmark into stardom), he backed Mark Stevens into The Dark Corner. Stevens plays hapless private eye Bradford Galt, a man framed for murder in this grim, mean little noir. Driven by strong casting, including Lucille Ball and Clifton Webb (Laura), The Dark Corner explores just what the title suggests: the darkest corners of the human psyche, the aspects that can steer a man to murder. The title also reflects the insane amount of darkness visually in the film. The whole shindig is one dark affair, dig?

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