Nightmare Alley (film)

Nightmare Alley is a 1947 film noir starring Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, and directed by Edmund Goulding. The film is based on the 1946 novel of the same name, written by William Lindsay Gresham.

The movie follows the rise and fall of a con mana story that begins and ends at a seedy traveling carnival. Fascinated by everything there, including a grotesque geek, Stanton Stan Carlisle Tyrone Power works with Mademoiselle Zeena Joan Blondell and her alcoholic husband, Pete Ian Keith. Once a topbilled act, Zeena and Pete used an ingenious code to make it appear that she had extraordinary mental powers, until her unspecified misdeeds drove Pete to drink and reduced them to working in a thirdrate outfit. Stanton learns that many people want to buy the code from Zeena for a lot of money but she refuses to sell she is saving it as a nest egg. He tries to romance Zeena into teaching it to him but she remains faithful to her husband and even hopes to send him to a detox clinic for alcoholics.One night in Texas, Stanton accidentally gives Pete the wrong bottle the old man dies from drinking wood alcohol instead of moonshine. To keep her act going, Zeena is forced to teach Stanton the mindreading code so that he can serve as her assistant. ........

Source: Wikipedia