The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946 film) filmed as "Le Dernier Tournant" ("The Last Turning") in France in 1939 and as "Ossessione" ("Obsession") in Italy in 1943. Frank Chambers (John Garfield) is a hobo who has hitched a ride with a man we later comes to learn is the local District Attorney, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames). He drops Frank off at a rural diner/service station, Twin Oaks, for a meal. Frank ends up working there. The diner is operated by a beautiful young woman, Cora Smith (Lana Turner), and her much older husband, Nick (Cecil Kellaway). Frank and Cora start to have an affair soon after they
Film noir M. Cain (whose "The Postman Always Rings Twice" appeared five years later), and popularized in pulp magazines such as "Black Mask". The classic film noirs "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) and "The Glass Key" (1942) were based on novels by Hammett; Cain's novels provided the basis for "Double Indemnity" (1944), "Mildred Pierce" (1945), "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946), and "Slightly Scarlet" (1956; adapted from "Love's Lovely Counterfeit"). A decade before the classic era, a story by Hammett was the source for the gangster melodrama "City Streets" (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian and photographed by Lee Garmes, who worked regularly with