Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz returns to the show business milieu of ALL ABOUT EVE for this story of a filmmaker (Humphrey Bogart, playing a slightly modified version of Mankiewicz himself) who discovers a peasant girl (Ava Gardner) dancing in a nightclub and transforms her into a star. Before long Bogart falls in love with his creation, but his possessiveness and the pressures of stardom send her frantically looking for an escape.

The revolutionary Broadway musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II gets the deluxe M-G-M treatment with the help of producer Arthur Freed and director George Sidney. Captain's daughter Kathryn Grayson falls in love with riverboat gambler Howard Keel on board the Cotton Blossom while best friend Ava Gardner watches from afar in this box office hit. “Ol' Man River” and “Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man” are among the memorable songs heard here.

The CITIZEN KANE of film noir that begins with the ending - "I did something wrong ... once" - and moves backward through interweaving flashbacks to reveal the layer of double crosses that led to the opening scene. The script by Anthony Veiller (with an uncredited assist from John Huston) takes the first 10 minutes from Hemingway's short story and then spirals into the noir netherworld that Robert Siodmak depicted better than any other director. The smoldering sexuality between Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner catapulted both to super-stardom. With Edmond O’Brien and Jeff Corey.