Review by C.J. Bunce
Just out from Running Press, Turner Classic Movies/TCM is releasing an expanded edition of a 2021 in-depth looking at six actresses behind 1940s film noir. In Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir, noir movie enthusiast Eddie Muller researched, befriended, and interviewed six women who could be found in familiar noir films, paraded on movie posters as dark dames, and helping Hollywoof define a genre still viewed and reviewed by movie buffs today. In his original book, as reproduced in the new edition, he first digs into their early upbringing and coming to studios like RKO and MGM, encountering an established system that churned its players through an often sexist, manipulative, and unfair construct. Then he looks at the women and what happened to them 50 years later. In this new edition, available now here at Amazon, he updates their stories, and adds short biographies of ten underappreciated film noir talents.
Muller points out his selections don’t include the more well-known actresses that he has written about in other books, actresses like Lauren Bacall, Lizabeth Scott, Lana Turner, and Barbara Stanwyck. So to fans of the bigger noir movies these actresses may not be all that familiar: Jane Greer, Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor, Evelyn Keyes, Coleen Gray, and Ann Savage.
Often late teens or barely adults from small towns going to Hollywood with their mothers, their stories seem familiar to stories or actresses that came later. Through his interviews Muller lays out the good and bad of glamour and spotlights all that was wrong and ignored in mid-century moviemaking.
Jane Greer had ups and downs with billionaire Howard Hughes on the way to making Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum, sliding into a role vacated by Lizabeth Scott because of Mitchum’s arrest for drugs. Audrey Totter made her way in and out of “bad girl” roles, including the before-its-time Lady in the Lake (a noir Christmas movie reviewed here at borg) and Michael Curtiz’s The Unsuspected. Actors had to stand on an apple box to play alongside tall Marie Windsor, and both Windsor and Coleen Gray would star in a young Stanley Kubrick heist movie, The Killing.
These are stories about B pictures, how they got made, and the affairs–and more than a fair share of the gossip–that surrounded them from the perspectives of their leading ladies. Looking back on their lives after 50 years provides a fresh perspective. Most interesting may be Audrey Totter’s making of The Lady of the Lake, known for its unique camera work.
Smaller sections are devoted to actresses Joan Bennett, Peggie Castle, Rhonda Fleming, Marsha Hunt, Ella Raines, Ruth Roman, Gail Russell, Jan Sterling, Claire Trevor, and Helen Walker. Some of these are early interview subjects Muller didn’t or couldn’t expanded into a full feature, while others are darker tales of promising but short-lived careers. Gail Russell’s may be the most surprising, and it’s the best written story of the group.
If film noir is your genre, you’ll want to read the new revised and expanded edition of Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir, now available at all bookstores and here at Amazon.
Don’t miss the other volumes from TCM’s film library reviewed here at borg, covering a wide range of topics across film history and genres: 52 Must-See Movies That Matter, 52 More Must-See Movies That Matter, Must-See Sci-Fi, Dynamic Dames, Forbidden Hollywood, Viva Hollywood, Fright Favorites, Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics, TCM’s Hollywood Victory, TCM’s Danger on the Silver Screen, TCM’s Rock on Film, TCM’s Essential Directors, TCM’s Christmas at the Movies, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, TCM’s 50 Oscar Nights, But Have You Read the Book?, Eddie Muller’s Noir Bar, Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed, Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir, Forbidden Cocktails, Hollywood Pride, Falling in Love at the Movies, and TCM’s 20th Century Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio.
