In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I discuss the diamond anniversary of the release of Billy Wilder’s screen version of Double Indemnity. Here’s an excerpt.

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Seventy-five years ago, “Double Indemnity” opened in theaters across America. It was an instant hit, and remains to this day a staple offering of revival houses and on cable TV and streaming video. Yet little journalistic notice has been taken of the birthday of Billy Wilder’s first great screen drama, a homicidal thriller that nonetheless had—and has—something truly unsettling to say about the dark crosscurrents of middle-class American life….

It’s hard to understand what possessed Wilder to take on such a project. He was best known in 1944, after all, for having collaborated with Charles Brackett, a Harvard-educated WASP, on the screenplays for such romantic comedies as “Ninotchka” and “Ball of Fire.” But then he swerved far off course and decided to make a movie out of a 1936 crime novella by James M. Cain, who also wrote “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” another hard-boiled tale of sex and bloodshed. Moreover, Wilder was determined to direct “Double Indemnity” himself, having concluded that most Hollywood directors treated scripts like “toilet paper that they either used or they didn’t.” The patrician Brackett had no interest in adapting so sordid a tale for the screen, so Wilder found himself another collaborator in Chandler. The two men soon grew to loathe one another, but the fruit of their uneasy labors landed seven Oscar nominations and turned Wilder into the hottest of properties.

Small wonder: Every aspect of “Double Indemnity” is distinguished, so much so that you could write a column about any single element….

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Read the whole thing here.

A scene from Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck:

From 2009:

YouTube isn’t quite as wonderful as it ought to be, but when it’s good, it’s really good. The other day, for instance, I discovered that it is now possible to view the first hour and a half of CBS’ live coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy–uncut….

Read the whole thing here.

“Observation must be continual, if our ideas are to remain true. Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge; perpetual hazard, perpetual experiment keep quick the edge of life.”

George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy

“The highest form of vanity is love of fame.”

George Santayana, The Life of Reason

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review an important New Jersey revival of The Rainmaker and the Public Theater’s latest Shakespeare in the Park production, Coriolanus. Here’s an excerpt.

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Few American plays have traveled a more circuitous path to posterity than N. Richard Nash’s “The Rainmaker.” It started life in 1953 as a “Philco Television Playhouse” live-TV drama, then was turned into a stage play and, shortly thereafter, a movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster, subsequently serving as the basis for a hit Broadway musical, “110 in the Shade.” “The Rainmaker” remains to this day a regional-theater staple, so much so that it’s being performed this month by two of New Jersey’s top companies, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and Cape May’s East Lynne Theater Company. Unable to see both versions, I tossed a coin and opted for Bonnie J. Monte’s Shakespeare Theatre production. Warm, sympathetic and richly humane, it’s one of the very best things that Ms. Monte and her marvelous company have given us, the kind of revival that causes you to realize that a play you’ve always liked is in truth an American classic….

“Coriolanus,” Shakespeare’s most explicitly political play, doesn’t get done much in New York. It’s only had one Broadway production—in 1938, for four nights—and the Public Theater’s new Shakespeare-in-the-Park outdoor version is the first time it’s been mounted in Central Park since 1979. I wonder whether this slender history might have something to do with the fact that Daniel Sullivan’s high-concept staging, performed on an apocalypse-now corrugated-tin junkyard set by a cast dressed in rags and tatters, has been received with general enthusiasm, seeing as how it doesn’t quite add up to the play Shakespeare wrote….

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To read my review of The Rainmaker, go here.

To read my review of Coriolanus, go here.

A featurette about the Shakepeare Theatre of New Jersey revival of The Rainmaker:

A scene from the 1956 film version of The Rainmaker, directed by Joseph Anthony and starring Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn:

Tab Hunter appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel (Francis’ husband), Dorothy Kilgallen, and Richard Kollmar (Kilgallen’s husband). This episode was originally telecast by CBS on February 3, 1957:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)