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LIMITED SERIES HARD LUCK WOMAN: GLORIA GRAHAME AT 100 MAR 16–25, 2023
Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library
“Of all the American film stars, Gloria Grahame is the only one who is also a person.”—François Truffaut, 1952 Born in 1923 as Gloria Hallward in Pasadena to an American architect and a Scottish actress, she studied at Hollywood High before finishing her senior year on the road as part of a touring production of Good Night, Ladies . Scouted by Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer on Broadway, she was rechristened Grahame by Louis B. Mayer and spent two years at the studio before moving to Howard Hughes’s RKO, where Grahame was able to play the kind of desperately droll characters that became her calling card. Beginning with Crossfire (1947), which garnered Grahame her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, Grahame starred in an iconic cycle of ever-bleaker late film noirs. She famously quipped : “I dote on death scenes.” Curiously, it’s likely most audiences know her best from smaller parts in lighter fare, the town sexpot in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and an unforgettable supporting role in the widescreen, technicolor musical Oklahoma! (1955). In fact, Grahame’s Oscar win would come thanks to nine minutes of screen time in MGM’s The Bad and The Beautiful (1952). Grahame met and married her second husband, Nicholas Ray, when he directed her sophomore RKO feature—the deranged Pygmalion riff A Woman’s Secret (1949)—though their greatest collaboration came years later when Ray directed Grahame opposite Humphrey Bogart in the immortal Tinseltown noir In a Lonely Place (1950). Plagued by tabloid scandals and a turbulent personal life—she married four times—Grahame acted on screen and stage until passing away suddenly from peritonitis after an accident during surgery. She was 57 years old. Programmed and notes by Bernardo Rondeau.
1947. 85 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. A Woman’s Secret Grahame ignites the screen in this sudsy near noir. She plays radio singer Estrellita, protégée to ex-chanteuse Marian Washburn (Maureen O’Hara). The women’s relationship is untangled over a series of unreliable flashbacks, offering star turns by both O’Hara and Grahame. Adapting the serialized novel Mortgage on Life by Austrian émigré writer Vicki Baum, A Woman’s Secret is also one of Citizen Kane (1941) screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s final screen credits. The sophomore effort of director Nicholas Ray, A Woman’s Secret marks the beginning of his offscreen romance with Grahame. They were married by the time the film was released in 1949. DIRECTED BY: Nicholas Ray. WRITTEN BY: Herman J. Mankiewicz. WITH: Maureen O’Hara, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Grahame, Bill Williams. 1949. 85 min. USA. B&W. English. DCP.
Crossfire with A Woman’s Secret Thu, Mar 16 | 7:30pm | TMT Crossfire Grahame delivers an unforgettable performance as a bleach-blond, gin mill taxi dancer who gets mixed up with a discharged GI one long, strange night in Washington, DC. One of the first Hollywood films to address antisemitism, Crossfire is a taut procedural about the mysterious murder of a Jewish man. Boasting star turns from noir icons Robert Ryan (nominated for Supporting Actor) and Robert Mitchum, the film also received Oscar nominations for Directing (Edward Dmytryk) and Best Picture, though both Dmytryk and the film’s producer Adrian Scott would soon be blacklisted at the height of McCarthyism and, as members of the Hollywood Ten (see pg. 14), serve prison terms. DIRECTED BY: Edward Dmytryk. WRITTEN BY: John Paxton. WITH: Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Gloria Grahame.
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