As I recently honored the women of film-noir, I wanted to do the same for the men. This is a list of who I feel is the best of the best.
This isn’t specifically about male leads, it is a list compromising all of the men who contributed to the noir style in front of the camera. Some of these men were private dicks, detectives, forces of evil or just regular Joes. Many of them were most or all of these character types.
These are my top twenty-five men that starred in film-noir during the classic era of the 1940s and 1950s.
1. Humphrey Bogart
2. Edward G. Robinson
3. Robert Mitchum
4. Alan Ladd
5. Peter Lorre
6. James Cagney
7. Van Heflin
8. Burt Lancaster
9. Orson Welles
10. John Garfield
11. Robert Ryan
12. Dick Powell
13. Glenn Ford
14. Raymond Burr
15. Dana Andrews
16. George Raft
17. Kirk Douglas
18. Dennis O’Keefe
19. Joseph Cotton
20. Dan Duryea
21. Fred MacMurray
22. Tom Neal
23. Richard Basehart
24. Farley Granger
25. Jack Palance
Talking Pulp 