Five haunting performances from film noir’s troubled femme fatale.
She wasn't hard to look at, either.
Hollywood too quickly forgets its stars, discards its leading women quicker still, and is sometimes merciless with performers considered “difficult.” Possibly no other actress of the post-war generation was so under-appreciated, or so self-sabotaging, as frequent film noir temptress Gloria Grahame.
Beginning as a contract player in light comedies for MGM (discovered by no less than Louis B. Mayer himself), her screen persona – made of equal parts fragility and resolve, mixed with a beauty that suggested the girl next door gone a little astray - never entirely caught hold with the public, even as she worked in classic films with the biggest movie stars of the era. Still, she was able to create a unique place for herself in film history, part sex symbol and part actor’s actor, combining the sensuality of Marilyn Monroe with the craftsmanship of a trained stage actress.
Grahame’s big break came in 1946 while on loan to RKO Pictures, playing party girl Violet in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. She worked constantly through the late 40s and into the early 50s, despite personal problems, crippling self-doubt, and a stormy reputation that dogged her career. A marriage to Rebel Without A Cause director Nicholas Ray (the second of four) began in trouble and ended in lurid scandal, though he directed her in In A Lonely Place, probably her best performance.
The five films below represent some of her best and also some of her most defining work. All are available on DVD.
Crossfire (1947): RKO bought out Grahame’s contract in 1947, rushing her into this mystery about returning G.I.’s and the murder of a sympathetic Jewish civilian. Grahame’s role, as a weary dance hall girl longing for a better life, formed the beginning of her noir screen persona: the slightly damaged goods trying to regain her footing in the tough man’s world of the city. Her time before the camera amounts to one long dialogue with troubled GI Mitchell (George Cooper) and a few other small scenes, so that her part is ultimately little more than a reprise of It’s a Wonderful Life‘s Violet. Nevertheless, she’s irresistable when compared to the middle class entitlement of Mitchell’s bland, Donna Reed-esque wife (Jacqueline White).
The film belongs to its male stars, Roberts Mitchum, Young, and Ryan, three tough men at odds over the brutal crime. Yet Grahame’s performance remains the most memorable, full of longing and the self-defensive cynicism that would become the trademark of dozens of film noir “dames” yet to come.
In A Lonely Place (1950): Grahame met Ray while co-starring in his “woman’s noir” A Woman’s Secret the year before, and the director would later refer to that first film as “a disastrous experience, not least of all because I met her.” Their second collaboration, based on the pulp novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, was by contrast a noir masterpiece: dark and romantic, with wry and melancholy comments both on the movie industry and about the gender roles found in even casual relationships. Off camera, Grahame struggled for co-star Humphrey Bogart’s acceptance throughout production, largely because Bogart had campaigned unsuccessfully for wife Lauren Bacall to get her role.
Lucky for Grahame that didn’t happen. Playing the salvation-promising Laurel Gray oppostie Bogart’s explosive screenwriter Dix Steele allowed her to project calm and poise after years of vamping. The scene below comes just after Gray provides Steele with an alibi in the disappearance of a nightclub hat-check girl:
The Bad and The Beautiful (1952): Grahame spent the two years after In A Lonely Place going through the bad girl motions in routine fare like Macao and The Greatest Show On Earth, but rebounded by joining the ensemble cast of Vincente Minnelli’s meaty show business expose. The rise and fall of a studio executive (Kirk Doulgas) is told through the reminiscences of a director (Barry Sullivan), a screenwriter (Dick Powell), and an actress (Lana Turner). The twist is that all three have good reasons to hate him, as their flashbacks illustrate.
Grahame plays the screenwriter’s lascivious, slightly manipulative Southern debutante wife, bringing more versatility and charm to the character than was probably intended. It’s a small but crucial part, as her fate defines the executive’s ultimate act of treacherous ambition. By making the character so endearing, so out of place among the Hollywood shark race, Grahame helped move the whole movie where it needed to go – no small accomplishment considering her heavyweight costars. The Academy noticed, awarding her the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
The Big Heat (1953): Fritz Lang’s furious tale of a cop (Glenn Ford) out for vengeance against the gangsters who killed his family includes so many archetypal noir story elements that it can function as an introduction to the genre all by itself. It’s a violent, stark, brutal film, muscular and remorseless in the self-assured way only 50s cops dramas could manage.
Playing the sexpot bad girl yet again, this time Grahame’s floozy gets the chance to repent after her thug boyfriend (Lee Marvin) scalds her face with a pot of hot coffee. But previous to that she’s his equal in malice, blowing through his cash and mocking his fear of the syndicate leaders that outrank him.
Grahame, versatile as ever, makes her previously amoral character capable of provoking real pity once she’s disfigured. Her revenge, fueled by self-loathing, is chillingly convincing – and no wonder. Always conscious of her looks and disdainful of a creased upper lip she considered ugly, Grahame resorted to plastic surgery and cotton implants to straighten out her lipline. At least one botched procedure left her upper lip paralyzed and her face seemingly frozen.
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959): Grahame’s career cooled following a disastrous turn as Ado Annie Carnes in Fred Zinnemann’s screen adaptation of Oklahoma!, amid reports of difficulty on the set and fights with co-stars. Four years later, director Robert Wise cast her in a small but memorable role in his noir about a gang of payroll robbers derailed by the slow-boiling racism of its members (Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte.) Grahame’s role is once again small, but helps embellish the monstrous egotism of Ryan’s ex-con antagonist.
Considered by some the last true noir of the genre’s classic 1950s era, the film was also Grahame’s final screen appearance for seven years. She turned to television and stage work both in the United States and Britain, eventually making something of a shabby return to the screen in 70s B-movies such as Chandler (1972) and Mama’s Dirty Girls (1974). She died of peritonitis after surgery for stomach cancer, aged 57, in 1981.
- Michael Kabel
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