STEVE COCHRAN: Life on the Edge

Infamous for playing “bad guys” on film, Cochran is a detective gone bad in PRIVATE HELL 36 (1954); Ida Lupino plays a club singer who falls for him.
Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman are on the lam for a murder she set him up for in the film noir melodrama TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)

Films of the Golden Age,
Issue Number 116,
Spring 2024

“I could play a corpse and be accused of overacting. The big secret to playing a gangster in movies is to really believe that the character you are playing is doing no wrong.”

A dark, husky, hirsutely handsome actor, STEVE COCHRAN (1917-1965) could have played charming anti-hero leads in the Cagney mold. After starting off as a featured heavy in the Boston Blackie series, however, he became typecast as the vile bad guy for the remainder of his “B” career. Earning solid notices as a henchman who crosses kingpin Cagney in WHITE HEAT (1949), Warner Bros. signed him tp play abusive post-war gangsters/murderers opposite the likes of Joan Crawford in THE DAMNED DON’T DRY (1950), Ginger Rogers in STORM WARNING. and Anne Baxter in CARNIVAL STORY (1954). In between, he lived a salacious Errol Flynn-like life of debauchery that led to his premature death at age 48.

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