(1919
or 1922-2000. Born Emily Marie
Bertelsen, Marysvale, Utah)
Tall, poised, sultry femme fatale-cum-frontier hellcat, with
strong, striking features. “I never
had a classic face. One of my casting directors at Paramount said, ‘Her eyes are
too big and she has a bad mouth.’” Perhaps that is why
the raven-haired actress flourished away from the major studios (not by choice)
in less prestigious productions, where her ability to enhance or salvage bad or
indifferent material was invaluable.
Studied acting under famed coach Maria Ouspenskaya after moving to
Hollywood in 1940. Eight years on – after stints as a cigarette salesgirl and
model, after bit parts and stage-work – she got her first featured role in Force of Evil, playing a racketeer’s wife with eyes for John Garfield’s compromised lawyer. It was the first of several shady
ladies Windsor would portray in films
noir and melodramas. Purring her lines and moving with feline fluency, she dominates
her scenes with her smaller co-star – at 5ft 9in, Windsor was always
self-conscious about her height.
Had the ability to express depth of
character in the most thinly written roles. (Although she wasn’t a miracle
worker – don’t look for nuance in Cat-Women
of the Moon.) She would imagine the history of her hard-bitten
anti-heroines and scheming succubi; empathise with them rather than just spit her
lines and pout.
She could do straight glamour, but her best roles had a taint about them
– “I wasn’t afraid to dirty my hands,” as she put it. Take her character in The Narrow Margin, pithily dismissed as “cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy” by
Charles McGraw’s flintlike cop. Windsor named Richard Fleischer’s exemplary suspenser one of her favourite films,
along with Kubrick’s The Killing and
the offbeat western Hellfire.
The Fifties was her heyday, black
thrillers and B-westerns her bailiwick. Shared the screen with major male stars
in The Fighting Kentuckian (John
Wayne), Frenchie (Joel McCrea) and The Bounty Hunter (Randolph Scott)
without playing subservient, and enacted forceful leads when given the
opportunity: overseer of a female-dominated town in Outlaw Women; crafty counterfeiter-cum-chanteuse in Dakota Lil; poisonous art dealer in noir
whodunnit No Man’s Woman.
Later supporting roles exuded greater
warmth and wisdom. Worked tirelessly on television and returned to the stage in
the Eighties – named Best Actress by LA’s
theatre critics for The Bar Off Melrose
(as a Forties film star on the comeback trail). She was also an
accomplished painter and sculptor.
“I do have a slight disappointment in my heart that I wasn’t
a bigger star,” she said. Nevertheless, her reign as ‘queen of the B’s’ was
a glorious one.
Five
standout roles
As the mob moll (or is she?) in The
Narrow Margin, she is all brass and steel. This dame has known hard times;
Windsor conveys this with hard-boiled precision.
As Elisha Cook’s grasping, two-timing wife in The Killing, her machinations serve to wreck the titular heist –
and her own plans to profit from it. Her character is said to have, “A great
big dollar sign where most women have a heart,” but Windsor was sympathetic: “She felt that life just hadn’t given her a fair shake, and
she was determined that it would.”
As Iron Mae McCloud in Outlaw
Women, she smoothly rules the roost in Las Mujeres, lending a scruffy
little western a touch of (tarnished) class.
As reluctant outlaw Doll Brown in Hellfire,
she engages Bible-bashing Bill Elliott in a battle for her soul. Badass in
breeches, wily in flattering frocks, a knockout in showgirl frills, this is vintage
Windsor – a woman fighting her corner in a man’s world.
Kevin Grant
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