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THE HAIRY APE 1944

William Bendix, the dumb ox of dozens of pictures, had his finest role as Hank Smith, "The Hairy Ape", the proud and hulking stoker of Eugene O'Neill's raw and powerful play of the 20's. As usual, Hollywood softened up the original material, added an irrelevant romance, and changed the ending. The culprits were Jules Levey (producer), Alfred Santell (director), and Robert D. Andrews and Decla Dunning (screenwriters). Despite this, much of O'Neill's proletarian theme remained intact in this updated version. Hank Smith's life comes into question after a visit to the boiler room of his ship by a rich, haughty Mildred Douglas (Susan Hayward). He begins to lust after her, but she reviles him and uses him as a pawn. He nearly kills her, but comes to see that she is no different from the girls he has met in dock cafes around the world. Miss Hayward injected the right dose of vileness ino her role as Mildred, John Loder and Dorothy Comingore played upper-deck lovers and other passengers and crew were played by Roman Bohnen, Tom Fadden, Alan Napier, Charles Cane, Raphael Storm and Charles LaTorre. ------Excerpted from "The United Artists Story" by Ronald Bergan, Crown Publishing, New York.

WILLIAM BENDIX,SUSAN HAYWARD, JOHN LODER

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Paramount's "Among The Living" was a high point in the careers of both its principal players, now deceased, Albert Dekker and Susan Hayward. The beautiful Hayward had been cast in a couple of colorless ingenue roles during her two years at the studio, but it wasn't until this exceptional "B" that producers realized that the red-haired "Brooklyn Bombshell" was not to be denied bigger vehicles. Dekker had been relegated mostly to supporting roles since entering pictures a few years earlier; if "Among The Living" did not exactly change this caste, it did provide the burly actor with what was possibly his meatiest screen opportunity.--A low-budget bellwether in the forties trend of psychological thrillers, "Living" achieved a remarkably high standard of quality for any level of filmmaking. --Although Dekker had the showier role(s), late-entering Hayward's eager, banister-hopping incandescence almost stole the picture. She was raw talent of stunning proportions, as four Academy Award nominations plus one win (for 1958's "I Want To Live") eventualy would attest.-----"Among The Living", released in 1941, was the last "B": picture the cocoon-bursting Susan Hayward would appear in, but it was superior to  several of the "A"'s she would get as a superstar.--Only in her fifties, she died in 1975 after months of agonizing illness (brain cancer) and the light of the world grew dimmer forever. --excerpted from "The Golden Age Of B Movies" by Doug McClelland,1978, Ottenheimer Publisher.

AMONG THE LIVING 1941

Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward

Susan Hayward, Kit Guard, Albert Dekker, Frank M. Thomas, Gordon Jones, Maude Eburne(center foreground)

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"I'll see you in the funny papers."   a favorite saying of Susan's.

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