One, but not two, birthdays

TCM is spending this morning and afternoon showing a bunch of Robert Ryan movies. Interestingly enough, it's not his birthday today; all the sources I've seen have his birthday not on October 11, but November 11. Then again, that is a holiday here in the US, so it's just as well that TCM marks the occasion in October. TCM is also marking the centenary of director Nicholas Ray this month, and two movies that Ray made with Ryan are on tonight's prime time schedule. On Dangerous Ground, from which the photo at left is taken, is the second of these movies, overnight at 2:00 AM. That's preceded at midnight by Flying Leathernecks, a movie reminiscent of Twelve O'Clock High, in that Ryan plays an ineffectual commander who is replaced by martinet John Wayne, who drives the Marines into Guadalcanal about as hard as Gregory Peck drives his charges.

As for somebody whose birth anniversary is today, try Nancy Guild. It's one of those names that looked familiar when I saw it in the list of birthdays, but I couldn't quite remember where. That's probably because she only made about half a dozen movies in the 1940s and early 1950s. But I'd blogged about one of those before: Somewhere in the Night.