Film noir the most influential of the early noirs. A slew of now-renowned noir "bad girls" followed, such as those played by Rita Hayworth in "Gilda" (1946), Lana Turner in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946), Ava Gardner in "The Killers" (1946), and Jane Greer in "Out of the Past" (1947). The iconic noir counterpart to the femme fatale, the private eye, came to the fore in films such as "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, and "Murder, My Sweet" (1944), with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. The prevalence of the private eye as a lead character declined
The Postman Always Rings Twice (opera) The Postman Always Rings Twice (opera) The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1982 opera with a libretto written by Colin Graham and music by Stephen Paulus, based on the 1934 novel by James M. Cain, "The Postman Always Rings Twice". The opera was the first of four commissioned from Paulus by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. It opened to generally strong reviews, and prompted the critic from the "New York Times", in an otherwise mixed notice, to call Paulus "a young man on the road to big things". The opera has since been performed numerous times around the