A Woman's Secret (1949)

Film: A Woman's Secret (1949)

Stars: Maureen O'Hara, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Grahame, Bill Williams, Mary Philips, Jay C. Flippen

Director: Nicholas Ray

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the tangential themes of this month that we're encountering is a "filling in the gaps" with my filmographies, particularly of some of my favorite actors of the film noir genre, and few figures fit that bill quite the same as Gloria Grahame.  Grahame, an Oscar-winning actress with an honestly salacious & tragic life (she would be married to both her director of this film, Nicholas Ray, and his son Anthony), would star in a number of film noir classics, including In a Lonely Place and The Big Heat.  Our film today is one of her lesser-known works, and weirdly doesn't star Grahame, who spent much of her career alternating between lead & supporting parts in her movies.  Instead, it stars one of the most unlikely film noir femme fatales imaginable: Maureen O'Hara, in one of only two film noir roles the prolific actress would have in her career.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is largely told in flashback, after an opening scene where it looks like Marian (O'Hara) has shot Susan (Grahame), potentially to her death.  We learn a bit of their backstory, about how Marian once had it all-a promising career as a singer, all the while she was clearly in love with her pianist Luke (Douglas).  But when she loses her voice from an illness, she becomes involved with an aspiring young singer (Susan), and through her starts to live her failed dreams, becoming maddened by it, even as Susan wants to quit the industry after some success.  The film eventually ends with us realizing that Susan was attempting to kill herself, and in the scuffle she shot herself.  Marian, torn up by her selfishness over making Susan stay in the industry, takes the blame and would've gone to jail had Susan not been revived and confessed what really happened.

This confession is the best part of the movie not because of Grahame or O'Hara, but because of a pip of a performance from Mary Philips.  Philips, best-known today as Humphrey Bogart's second wife, was a character actress during the time and aces her role as a busybody amateur detective, whose husband (played by Jay C. Flippen) is the actual inspector on the case.  In a different era, this would've made a fantastic idea for a TV procedural, as the two have solid chemistry, and Philips steals every scene of the movie she's in as a Jessica Fletcher-type.  One of those little performances that shows up in the sides of film noirs that you can't help but admire.

If only Philips was adding to a better movie.  A Woman's Secret doesn't work, primarily because O'Hara is miscast.  O'Hara was not a poor actress, but she was occasionally a limited one, and it shows here as she really should've gotten the part given to Grahame, as she'd be better as the put-upon sainted character while Grahame would've sunk her teeth into the role of a woman driven mad with jealousy by giving another woman her dreams after they are stolen from her.  O'Hara, though, was the bigger star of the two at the time, and the studio never would've let them swap, so we get a promising concept (doesn't that plot sound good?), without enough execution.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai