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Caged Overview:

Caged (1950) was a Crime - Drama Film directed by John Cromwell and produced by Jerry Wald.

SYNOPSIS

The class entry in women-behind-bars movies. As nineteen-year-old Parker sits in a car, waiting for her husband outside a gas station, she has no idea that she is an accomplice to a burglary in progress. When her husband is killed in the robbery attempt, she is arrested and sentenced to a term in a women's prison filled with savage inmates and brutal guards. She struggles to retain her sanity throughout cruel mistreatment, a prison pregnancy, murders, and an inmate revolt. Remade as House of Women.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion)

Academy Awards 1950 --- Ceremony Number 23 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best ActressEleanor ParkerNominated
Best Supporting ActressHope EmersonNominated
Best WritingVirginia Kellogg, Bernard C. SchoenfeldNominated
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Caged BlogHub Articles:

This Ain’t Endora: Agnes Moorehead in Caged (1950)

By shadowsandsatin on May 2, 2024 From Shadows and Satin

Caged (1950), categorized in most cinema circles as film noir, takes a grim and often harrowing look inside a women’s prison, concentrating primarily on one Marie Allen (excellently portrayed by Eleanor Parker), a 19-year-old who’s convicted as an accessory to an armed robbery committed by her h... Read full article

Eleanor Parker Was “Caged”

By Virginie Pronovost on Oct 9, 2020 From The Wonderful World of Cinema

When I was introduced to Eleanor Parker as Baroness Elsa Schraeder in The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965), I didn’t immediately become a fan of her. Her character annoyed me, and, perhaps, I was too focused on Julie Andrews to take the time to focus on her performance. And this, even tho I ... Read full article

Caged (1950)

By 4 Star Film Fan on Jun 17, 2018 From 4 Star Films

Caged proves to be a stark, even uncompromising picture for the 1950s. Director John Cromwell had a long career in Hollywood, helmed some quality film noir, and became a subsequent casualty of the Blacklist but this just might be his finest effort. Furthermore, despite being an actress of some accla... Read full article

Caged (1950, John Cromwell)

By Andrew Wickliffe on Jun 19, 2016 From The Stop Button

Max Steiner does the music for Caged, which is strange to think about because Caged barely has any music. Director Cromwell instead emphasizes the silence, especially as the film opens. Right after the opening credits, which do have music, Caged gets very quiet. “Silence” reads all the w... Read full article

Caged (1950)

on May 16, 2014 From Journeys in Classic Film

Before Orange is the New Black rocked television screens, the women’s prison was a location commonly lampooned in exploitation movies of the 1970s or X-rated content.  If you go back further you’ll find 1950′s Caged, a social welfare “expose” on the harsh realities... Read full article

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Quotes from Caged:

Evelyn Harper: Let's you and me get acquainted honey. You may be a number to others but not to me. Sit down in this chair, it's kinda roomy.
Evelyn Harper: Come on you tramps - line up for Christmas.
Marie Allen: For that forty bucks I heisted I sure got myself an education.
Emma Barber: That trained seal can sure ask a lot of questions. Who is this Pearl Harbor anyway? What is she, an inmate?
Marie Allen: Kindly omit the flowers.
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Facts from Caged
Eleanor Parker was required to have her blonde hair buzzed off to the scalp for her role as a female convict.
In order to do research for the film, Virginia Kellogg pulled some strings to incarcerate herself in a woman's prison. What she wrote once she was out was not so much a screenplay, but a kind of almanac of everything she witnessed while in prison. Warner Bros. then got their screenwriters to make a screenplay out of it.
Originally titled iThe Big Cage/i, an early version of the script was intended as a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford vehicle.
iScreen Director's Playhouse/i broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on August 2, 1951 with Eleanor Parker reprising her film role.
In an early example of product placement, Snickers, Mason Mints, and Life-Savers are clearly visible when Harper opens the drawer in her room.
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