The latest batch of online store additions is here, and it consists of Andrzej Wajda’s “Danton,” Jules Dassin’s “The Naked City,” and Jacques Tourneur’s “Canyon Passage.”
Of the three films Tourneur made with actor Dana Andrews, 1957’s “Curse of the Demon” is the most famous. However, eleven years earlier they’d teamed up for “Canyon Passage,” a western Tourneur directed for Universal while on loan from RKO (where he’d first made a name for himself with B picture horror films like “Cat People” and “I Walked With A Zombie” before helming one of the greatest of all film noirs, “Out of the Past”). Tourneur’s first western was also his first color film, a big budget Technicolor picture with all the trimmings: shooting on location in Oregon, a quartet of songs by Hoagy Carmichael (one of which was nominated for an Oscar), and a stellar cast that included Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward (who, having bounced around Hollywood for years, soon rose to stardom after signing with producer Walter Wanger and starring in “Canyon Passage,” earning her first Oscar nomination the following year), British star Patricia Roc, and John Ford mainstay Ward Bond… a far cry from Tourneur’s early no-budget days at RKO.