Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir
Eddie Muller
Harper Collins, 2001
The femme fatale is one of noir’s most familiar roles, yet it is also perhaps the most enjoyable, as it provides the female lead more opportunities to be creative than that of the put-upon male lead. Eddie Muller has put together a highly enjoyable book chronicling the lives and careers of six favourite femme fatales: Evelyn Keyes (The Prowler), Marie Windsor (The Narrow Margin), Jane Greer (Out of the Past), Coleen Gray (Kiss of Death; The Killing), Audrey Totter (Lady in the Lake), and, God bless him, Ann Savage (Detour) – I’ve been wanting to find out more about her for years.
Even though these six ladies came to Hollywood and worked through the studio system, and as such, tried on a variety of roles, it is for their parts in the classics of the shadowy noir world for which they are best remembered today. In some cases, they were typecast and couldn’t get anything but the “bad girl” roles, but for the most part, their careers began to dry up as the studio system gradually set its sights for newer talent. As such, Dark City Dames is also a fascinating read about the studio system itself, from the backdoor politics to those of a grander scale (such as McCarthyism).
Each of these “dames” has two chapters devoted to them. In the first half, each has a section chronicling their lives and careers in Tinseltown, with necessary pitstops at the roles which made them famous. The second half fills in the “Whatever Happened To…?” quotient of each of these talents. Each is accompanied with recent photographs of some of noir’s favourite femmes, and they, like their subjects, have a ghostly, ageless beauty, much like the films that made them famous.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #13 (“Noir”).
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.