Where to start? She made appearances in some of my favorite noirs: Caged (1950, as
"Smoochie"), Union Station
(1950), Appointment With
Danger (1951) and Slaughter on Tenth
Avenue (1957). She was great alongside Kirk Douglas in the
classic Billy Wilder film Ace in the Hole
(1951) (why, oh why won't someone release this to DVD?) and she gives a very
nicely understated performance as Humphrey Bogart's wife in Bogey's last hurrah,
The Harder They Fall
(1956).
She was also in a few of what I like to call my guilty pleasures: Split Second (1953, a great
Dick Powell-directed B-pic about a group of people trapped in a ghost town
that's due to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb test), Women's Prison
(1955)--with a cast that includes Ida Lupino (as a waaaaay over-the-top
prison warden), Cleo Moore, Audrey Totter, Phyllis Thaxter and Ida's hubby
Howard Duff, and of course, High School
Confidential (1958).
The last movie I saw her in was the 1981 comedy First Monday in October
(1981), which wasn't all that great, but it did have Walter Matthau in it, and
if memory serves me correct, she played his wife. Again, another quiet but
effective performance.
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