Of course, we have more fun when Eddie and Anne Hockens try to operate on the fly as masters of noir minutiae--an effort that is fraught with as much peril (or is that distress?) as one will find in whatever flavor of noir you're sampling.
Case in point: a question about the Anthony Mann retro-noir THE TALL TARGET (1951), where Dick Powell plays a policeman named John Kennedy who is instrumental in foiling a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln prior to his initial inauguration as 16th president. Eddie knows the Kennedy detail, but he embellishes it by claiming that the name of the character is John F. Kennedy, a la the 35th president (one of three other Presidents who were assassinated in addition to Lincoln).
Eddie has a couple of things wrong--the New York police superintendent who uncovered the plot was not actually involved in the effort to foil the attempted assassination in Baltimore (known as "the Baltimore plot" for obvious reasons). He relayed the information to authorities and to the Pinkerton detectives traveling with Lincoln. His full name: John Alexander Kennedy.
So that's the history flub. The "noir wonk" flub was something that Anne and Eddie both made when they tried to name the cinematographer of THE TALL TARGET. Anne went with John Alton, which is a logical guess given the fabled association between Alton and Anthony Mann. However, the two men parted company after DEVIL's DOORWAY.
Eddie, not keeping his studios straight, suggested that Mann was working with George Diskant, long-time RKO cameraman and later cinematographer who was teamed with Mann for 1947's DESPERATE, one of only two films that Mann made while with RKO. Mann worked next for Eagle-Lion and Edward Small, which produced three of his great collaborations with Alton: HE WALKED BY NIGHT, T-MEN and RAW DEAL, and the off-beat, highly entertaining period noir REIGN OF TERROR.
Mann then moved onto MGM, where he stayed with Alton for BORDER INCIDENT and DEVIL's DOORWAY, but when it came time to make his last film at MGM, he was assigned long-time MGM photographer Paul Vogel.
Vogel had worked his way up from the MGM shorts department and shot his first noir for MGM in 1942 (KID GLOVE KILLER). After the war, he shot LADY IN THE LAKE (1947), HIGH WALL (1947), SCENE OF THE CRIME (!949), A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT (1950) and DIAL 1119 (1950) before being teamed with Mann for THE TALL TARGET.
Paul Vogel at work on LADY IN THE LAKE with Robert Montgomery (seated)
Vogel's noir output declined markedly after that as MGM pretty much abandoned noir in the early 50s (his last noir in that time frame was 1952's THE SELLOUT), but he remained an A-list cameraman into the sixties and at the very tail end of the classic noir cycle, he lensed two more highly divergent crime thrillers: SIGNPOST FOR MURDER (1964), set in England, and THE MONEY TRAP (1966), sometimes referred to as "the last classic American noir."
So--work those brain cells a bit harder, Ye Olde Czar of Noir! Paul Vogel is clearly not in the calibre of John Alton; and maybe George Diskant also inches ahead of him in terms of the noirs he lensed; but you need to find a place to keep him stored in your synapses. After all, he did win an Academy Award for best cinematography...you can get some "wonk points" of your own if you can tell us which film it is without looking it up!!
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