Crawl the Police!

Exhausted, these cops on patrol
Have tossed every flop, dive, and hole
Despising all scum
Some guys can grow numb
The cost is a whopper: their soul.

Bitter and cynical police detective Robert Ryan is On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray; 1951). With Charles Kemper and Anthony Ross.

Blight and Day

A journey from darkness to light
Towards day and away from the night
Two souls, once alone,
together are thrown
The damsel will rescue the knight


Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952) Image source: John K. Stuff!; Glenn Kenny's Some Came Running.

Pounding a Beat-Down

Jim Wilson knew crime -- how he knew it!
When a lame lie got told, Jim saw through it.
A blonde makes a slip,
some crumb offers lip...
Then WHAM! "Why'd you punks make me do it?"



He's prowling, our battering boy,
For lowlifes his fists can destroy;
His home-life's no fun
Once thrashing is done...
Just thoughts of stale "Noo-it duh joy."

Mrs. Henry Windle Vail



Limericks by MrsHenryWindleVail. Robert Ryan and Cleo Moore in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). B-girl Moore is interrogated by Ryan's brutal cop, Jim Wilson. She applies a perfume called "Nuit de Joie" -- which she mispronounces in a poignant sort of way.

Sleazy Does It

The girls that he meets aren't nice
These girls can be had for a price
They hang out in bars
and backseats of cars
and ev'ryone knows them in Vice


Cop Robert Ryan is given the once-over by hooker Nita Talbot in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Image source: Film Walrus Reviews

Punch and Duty

No talker, he's more of a hitter
A garbageman beating the litter
This cop likes to bash
on criminal trash
I guessing he's probably bitter


Robert Ryan rages in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Image source: John K. Stuff.

On Dangerous Sound

It pounds in his head like a drum
his hatred of criminal scum
Down dark dirty streets
confessions he beats
While loathing the thug he's become



Robert Ryan lays into a suspect in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Image source: John K. Stuff. The film's score is one of Bernard Herrmann's greatest, its pounding, driving opening (using an anvil) giving way to a lovely romantic theme, "Viola d'Amour", just as the film shifts from urban to rural, from dark to light.

Wrecks and the City

With hookers and lowlifes and dope
a cop's at the end of his rope
But then, while away,
encounters a Ray
of love and renewal and hope


Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino find themselves On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952), a rare romantic and optimistic note in the Ryan filmography. The upbeat ending was forced on director Ray, who wanted Ryan's troubled cop to return to the city, albeit as a changed man.

Bold Type-casting

Bob Ryan was born to be bad
As psycho, a brute or a cad
A guy that looked tough
and liked to play rough
who walked around bubbling mad



Above: It was Joan Fontaine, not Ryan that was Born to be Bad (Nicholas Ray, 1950). Top: Robert Ryan in a production still for Back From Eternity (John Farrow, 1957). Below: The actor in 1956, showing a gentler side rarely seen on screen. The face the camera camera revealed led to far more roles as scary tough guys than romantic leads. "Has there ever been a face--rugged and manfully handsome yet fragile with inner agonies promising to explode into volcanic rage--like Robert Ryan's?" --Guy Maddin

They Love by Night

Two innocents out for a ride
They're hardly a Bonnie and Clyde
The two become one
and find on the run
the love they have both been denied


They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1946-9), starring Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, was Nicholas Ray's debut as director, and the first adaptation of Edward Anderson's terrific novel, Thieves Like Us. Top: Screen capture from Only the Cinema.

Rebel Without Applause

Rebelling like teenagers should
he feels that he's misunderstood
His Mom wears the pants
and Dad is a Nance
So what? He gets Natalie wood!



James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955). Pics: Doctor Macro. Dedicated to those critics without a clue, Pete Fitzgerald and Brian Buniak. Thanks to Walt Hitman for the assist.