‘Odds Against Tomorrow'(1959) is a generally overlooked crime caper noir starring Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Ed Begley and directed by Robert Wise. The film has much to recommend it, including the above title sequence which is hardly what one might expect for a jazz-infused, urban noir tragedy. Instead of a hard-hitting, slam-bang opening, the mood the filmmakers opted for was a rather thoughtful, even wistful one, with the floating graphics giving off a subdued vibe rather than bold and in-your-face one. The beautiful score by John Lewis (I’ve posted the entire soundtrack album below) was not the first time Wise had used a jazz score. His previous film, “I Want To Live’ deployed a very effective Johnny Mandel score, which was entirely Wise’s choice. I mention this because the films Executive Producer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, often took credit for this innovation. Bob–I get to call him that since I knew him–was not at all the sort to claim credit or boast of things he didn’t do. A sincere, low-key and serious man, he was genuinely offended that Mankiewicz made this claim and I rarely if ever heard him say a negative word about another director/show-biz professional. Although he did somewhat notoriously fire Spencer Tracy from “Tribute To A Bad Man”, but even then resented it being characterized in print as a ‘firing’, preferring instead to characterize it as a mutual decision do the difficulty of the filming locations–the altitude apparently was too much for Tracy. I see that I’ve gone into the weeds here a bit so let’s drop all this nonsense and enjoy the opening credits of this movie, which were apparently created by a company called ‘Storyboard.’ I’d love to know what other title sequences they created but just try Googling ‘Credit Sequence Storyboard’ and see what comes up. Pretty much everything but a company that existed sixty hears ago.