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Today is Vincent Price's 105th birthday. I have only seen four of his pictures, but since one of them is widely regarded as one of finest films noir of all time (and features one of my favourite actors, Dana Andrews), I thought I would tell you a little bit about it for this week's «Film Friday.» Directed by Otto Preminger, Laura (1944) opens in New York with the discovery of the facially disfigured body of the beautiful and highly successful advertising executive Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), murdered by a shotgun blast to the face, inside the doorway of her apartment. Police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) interviews each of the suspects: Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), an imperious society columnist and Laura's possessive mentor; Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), Laura's weak-willed playboy fiancé; and Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), Laura's socialite aunt, who is in love with Shelby. Mark also questions Laura's loyal housekeeper, Bessie Clary (Dorothy ...

Directed by Billy Wilder, Stalag 17 (1953) concerns a group of American air force sergeants interned in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp in 1944. This motley crew of men, placed at Barracks 4, includes J. J. Sefton (William Holden), an entreprising cynic who trades openly with the German guards for cigarettes, eggs, silk stockings, and other luxuries; Stanislas «Animal» Kusawa (Robert Strauss), who is infatuated with movie star Betty Grable; Harry Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck), Animal's wisecracking best friend; Price (Peter Graves), the righteous security chief; Hoffy (Richard Erdman), whom the prisoners have appointed as their leader; and Cookie (Gil Stratton), who inventories and protects Sefton's stash of contraband items. One day, fellow inmates Manfredi (Michael Moore) and Johnson (Peter Baldwin) try to escape through a tunnel, but are shot by waiting guards when they emerge outside the barbed wire fence. The other prisoners naturally conclude that one of them must have told t...