Fallen Angel (1945 film)

Fallen Angel
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Otto Preminger
Produced by	Otto Preminger
Screenplay by	Harry Kleiner
Story by	Marty Holland
Starring	Alice Faye Dana Andrews Linda Darnell
Music by	David Raksin
Cinematography	Joseph LaShelle
Edited by	Harry Reynolds
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	October 26, 1945 (1945-10-26) (United States)
Running time	98 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1.5 million

Fallen Angel is a 1945 black-and-white film noir directed by Otto Preminger, with cinematography by Joseph LaShelle, who had also worked with Preminger on Laura a year before. The film features Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Charles Bickford. It was the last film Faye made as a major Hollywood star, and she did not make another film until State Fair (1962).

Eric Stanton (Andrews), a down-on-his-luck drifter, gets pulled off a bus in the hamlet of Walton because he does not have the $2.25 extra fare to take him to San Francisco. He finds a greasy spoon called Pop's Eats, where Pop (Percy Kilbride) is worried about waitress Stella because she has not shown up for work for days. Ex-New York cop Mark Judd (Bickford) tells him not to worry. Sure enough, the sultry Stella (Darnell) soon returns. Stanton (like the others) is attracted to her, but she is unimpressed by his smooth talk and poverty.

Stanton cons his way into a job with Professor Madley (John Carradine), a traveling fortune-teller. No one is willing to buy tickets to the "spook act" because influential local spinster Clara Mills (Anne Revere) disapproves. Stanton gets to Clara through her inexperienced younger sister June (Faye) and persuades them to attend the performance.

Madley stages an entertaining séance, channeling Abraham Mills, the deceased father of Clara and June. Using information secretly dug up by his assistant Joe Ellis (an uncredited Olin Howland), Madley brings up the sisters' financial problems. The two leave quite upset.