Birthday coincidences

John Ireland and Dorothy Malone in a lobby card from Security Risk (1954)

Not knowing what to blog about today, I decided to look at the IMDb's list of people born on this date, and noticed Dorothy Malone, who is still alive and turning 89 today. Nowadays, Malone would probably best known for winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Written on the Wind, which I blogged about back in May 2012. Later, she would go on to play Constance MacKenzie in the primetime TV soap opera version of Peyton Place, taking up the role Lana Turner had originally done in the movie for four seasons. (I don't think I've ever seen an episode of the TV show, so I can't comment on it.) And, as you can see from the lobby card above, she appeared in lesser-known movies like Security Risk.

And that's where the coincidence comes in. As you can also see from that lobby card, Malone's co-star in Security Risk was one John Ireland, who was also born on January 30, albeit in 1914 -- today would be his centenary. Looking through the list of movies, I first spotted them as appearing together in The Fast and the Furious, from which the photo at left is taken. Seeing that collaboration sent me off to do a Google search for photos of Ireland and Malone, with the intention of using a screencap or lobby card from The Fast and the Furious at the top of today's post, but as you can see, I found the lobby card for Security Risk, a movie I'd never heard of.

The image search also yielded something else, which was for a promotional photo from The Bushwhackers, a 1951 western that, like Security Risk, I'd also never heard of. (They both seem to have been made at low-budget studios, which would probably explain why I'd never heard of them.) The Bushwhackers also looks to be one of those movies that fell into the public domain at some point, and may or may not be in print. Amazon lists a couple of versions available for purchase, but they only list a couple of copies available, or only available from resellers. One wonders what one is getting for 23 cents, anyway.