It's Anthony Mann day on TCM, eight movies in 14 hours. It started at 6 a.m., with "Two O'Clock Courage"
(pretty great title, huh?), and ends with the conclusion of "Cimarron,"
at 8 p.m. No other director in the decade and a half after World War II
left such a stamp on multiple genres: noirs, westerns, epics ("El Cid"),
even biopics ("The Glenn Miller Story"). James Stewart stars as
Miller, one of eight films he made with Mann (who's pictured below right). The Mann-Stewart
collaborations are practically their own genre. They have a special place in film history, having done more to
deepen, broaden, and complicate Stewart's persona than anything else in his
five-decade-long career. Who knows, no "Naked Spur" or "Man from Laramie" -- and no "Vertigo"?