Bigger Than Life

Assured opening from director Nicholas Ray and producer/co-writer/star James Mason, as city schoolteacher Ed Avery, Kipp Hamilton as colleague Pat, Walter Matthau as coach-buddy Wally and Rusty Lane as principal Bob, and a secret partly revealed, in Bigger Than Life, 1956.

Ed (co-writer and producer James Mason) back at school now thriving with Cortisone treatment, dropped by wife Lou (Barbara Rush), covering for colleague Pat (Kipp Hamilton), director Nicholas Ray offering some intense student art and suggesting a problem, in Bigger Than Life, 1956.

Schoolteacher Ed (producer and co-writer James Mason) still hospitalized with mysterious illness, his wife Lou (Barbara Rush) discovering his secret second job, doctors Ruric and Norton (Roland Winters, Robert Simon) with bad and maybe-good news, in Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life, 1956.

Financially-strapped schoolteacher Ed (co-writer and producer James Mason) seems anxious as he and suspicious wife Lou (Barbara Rush) wrap a bridge party, Walter Matthau as Wally among the guests, director Nicholas Ray working the Cinemascope screen and interior lighting, in Bigger Than Life, 1956.

Cortisone use drives a father (James Mason) into paranoia in Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life (1956).