GLORIA GRAHAME

(1923-1981. Born Gloria Hallward, Pasadena, California)

Radiant and sensual enchantress/martyr – “noir’s pre-eminent masochist” (Foster Hirsch) – with smooth, roundish features, seen-it-all-eyes and a perfect coquettish pout, enhanced by an overbite she tried repeatedly to fix with surgery. Her beat was nightclubs, bars and tacky boudoirs, or the bedrooms of hoodlums and bullies. Her power over men was palpable; her purpose rarely as obvious as it seemed.

Daughter of British stage actress Jean MacDougall, who steered her towards the stage in her teens. She made headway on Broadway before Hollywood beckoned in 1944. Set out her stall as a temptress in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), but studios didn’t consider her star material, restricting her to secondary roles. She shone nonetheless: nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar for topical thriller Crossfire (1947); winning for her charming comic turn in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful.

Her true metier was noir. Her characters were sexy yet shopsoiled, alluring yet disenchanted. They were drawn to men who were bad for them – Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place, Broderick Crawford in Human Desire, Jack Palance in Sudden Fear, Lee Marvin in The Big Heat, Gene Barry in Naked Alibi. Grahame gave these women a toughness born of bitter experience; shrewdly, she also made them vulnerable. There’s desperation behind their machinations, whether murderous plots (Sudden Fear, Human Desire) or doomed alliances with policemen (The Big Heat, Naked Alibi).

Out of the shadows she scored a hit as the girl who “cain’t say no” in Oklahoma!, but her career wound down in the late Fifties, not helped by the scandal that swirled around her failed marriage to Nicholas Ray – it was widely rumoured he found her in bed with his teenage son from a previous relationship. She married Anthony Ray in 1960, the last of her four husbands.

She remained active on stage thereafter; more sporadically on television and in films  (a string of cheap horror flicks). Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1974, she battled the disease and seemed to have beaten it. It returned in 1980, but she declined aggressive treatments. Dedicated as ever to her craft, she was preparing for a stage run in London when she died.

Perhaps the sexiest of noir’s many sirens, she famously summarised her seductive appeal: “It wasn’t the way I looked at a man, it was the thought behind it.”

Five standout roles

As taxi dancer Ginny in Crossfire, she gives a murder-suspect GI brief respite on a heavy night. But there is steel in that heart of gold: the way she bridles at police questioning, her dialogue a defensive hail of bullets, vividly suggests a girl who looks after number one.

As Laurel Gray in In a Lonely Place, she is the perfect foil to Bogie’s neurotic writer – calm where he is turbulent, but equally bruised and worldly-wise. Her poignant farewell scene is beautifully played: “I lived a few weeks while you loved me...”

As Debby Marsh in The Big Heat, she adroitly transforms from ditzy dame to tragic avenging angel, her fatal attraction to Lee Marvin’s coffee-throwing henchman eventually coming full circle.

As Vicki Buckley in Human Desire, she is femme fatale by way of battered wife, embroiling Glenn Ford in a plot to bump off brutish husband Broderick Crawford. One of Grahame’s supplest, most keenly judged portrayals – carnal, calculating, fragile.

As vivacious Rosemary Bartlow in The Bad and the Beautiful, she sweetly but firmly cajoles husband Dick Powell, a cynical writer, into taking up a contract with Hollywood big shot Kirk Douglas. It has terrible repercussions for Rosemary. Powell’s eulogy for her – “gay and foolish; naive, shrewd and heart-breaking all at once” – could also be a tribute to Grahame’s prowess. 

Kevin Grant