Central Library Friday Film Club. Remembering Edward Anhalt: Panic in the Streets
A man named Kochak, a hoodlum who has illegally entered the United States aboard a tramp steamer, has been in the country — specifically, New Orleans — for only a matter of hours. He has already found an illicit poker game, lured there by his duplicitous cousin Poldi. Kochak is up $190 at the poker game when, suffering from flu-like symptoms, he tries to leave. Unfortunately for Kochak it isn't the sort of poker game you're allowed to leave with money in your pocket, so Blackie, the seething psychopath in charge of the game, sends Poldi and his other flunky Fitch (Mostel) after Kochak. When Kochak pulls a knife, Blackie shoots him to death.
It turns out that for Kochak, it didn't matter. The authorities pick up his corpse and take it to the morgue, and discover terrifying news: Kochak was suffering from pneumonic plague, a highly communicable and nearly 100% lethal illness. The bullets only shortened his life by about 12 hours. More importantly, Lt. Commander Clinton Reed of the U.S. Public Health Service (Widmark) realizes that pneumonic plague may be on the loose in New Orleans. A seemingly unimportant gangland slaying suddenly becomes hugely important as Reed goes on a desperate hunt for Kochak's murderers, before they spread the plague all over the city.
The series we show in November and December is titled "Edward Anhalt Remembered". Edward Anhalt (March 28, 1914 – September 3, 2000) was an American screenwriter, producer, and documentary filmmaker. After working as a journalist and documentary filmmaker for Pathé and CBS-TV, he teamed with his wife Edna Anhalt, one of his five wives, during World War II to write pulp fiction.
As a screenwriter, Anhalt won two Academy Awards: He shared the Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story with his wife Edna Anhalt for Panic in the Streets (1950) and a second Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Beckett (1964).
