Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, and Kirk Douglas star in this 1946 film noir about a husband and wife who share a dark secret from the past.

Stanwyck is Martha Ivers, a cold-hearted woman who killed her overbearing aunt years earlier on the night Martha was to run away with her impovershed boyfriend, Sam Masterson.

The aunt’s killing was witnessed by the son of a family employee. The father joins Martha in a lie about what actually transpired. He then uses the knowledge against her, forcing her to allow him to move into the family home. Years later, he coerces her into marrying his son, Walter O’Neil (Kirk Douglas in his motion picture debut), now a district attorney.

Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) reappears in the town setting the stage for doublecross, duplicity and death.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is available for full screen viewing on Google Video and can be purchased in DVD format in our OTR Shop.

A woman (Eve Miller) meets an older man while traveling on a train. The stranger, who introduces himself as Dr. Velonius, seems to be able to see into the future, and relates a forboding tale of a man who kills a woman at a railroad station.

Inner Sanctum is a  little-known film noir  directed by Lew Landers (The Return of the Vampire, Crime, Inc., Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land, Terry and the Pirates, Tales of the Texas Rangers), and stars Charles Russell stars as Harold Dunlap, the brooding killer. Russell should be familiar to Old Time Radio fans as radio’s original star of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar (excluding the Dick Powell audition).

The storytelling clairvoyant, Dr. Velonius, is played by Fritz Leiber, Sr. Leiber worked in dozens of films from 1916 to 1950 including A Tale of Two Cities, Samson and Delilah, The Song of Bernadette, Phantom of the Opera, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. His son Fritz Leiber, Jr. is a popular science-fiction author.

Released in 1948, Inner Sanctum is loosely based on Inner Sanctum Mysteries magazine, a long-running radio show and a Lon Chaney, Jr. movie series of the same name. Beyond the macabre tale told in the film, it bears little resemblance to any of them. Some OTR aficionados may be reminded of The Mysterious Traveler, an old-time radio series featuring an unnamed man on a train unnerving his fellow travelers with gruesome tales of death.

Charles Russell as Harold Dunlap
Mary Beth Hughes as Jean Maxwell
Dale Belding as Mike Bennett
Billy House as McFee
Fritz Leiber as Doctor Valonius, the Seer
Nana Bryant as Thelma Mitchell
Lee Patrick as Ruth Bennett
Roscoe Ates as Willy
Eddie Parks as Barney
Eve Miller as Marie Kembar, Dunlap’s Fiancée

Radio Hams is a short 1939 movie reel about the popularity of amateur or “ham” radio.  The film was directed by Felix E. Feist and written by E. Maurice Adler.

Feist was a film and television director born in New York City. He is best remembered today for Deluge (1933), for writing and directing the film noirs The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) and The Threat (1949), and helming the second screen version of the Curt Siodmak sci-fi tale Donovan’s Brain(1953). He directed Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin in their first significant screen appearances, in the short film Every Sunday. Feist was the adoptive father of noted fantasy author Raymond E. Feist.

E. Maurice “Buddy” Adler was an Academy Award-winning American film producer and a former production head for 20th Century Fox studios. His 1954 production of From Here to Eternity won the Academy Award for Best Picture and in 1956, his Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing was nominated for best picture. Adler is also remembered for producing the 1956 film Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe.

Compiled from Wikipedia