by Adrian Wootton

Gloria Grahame (1923-1981) was an American actress during the golden age of Hollywood with a career that had its peak during a 5 year period from the late 1940’s until the mid 1950’s. She was once described as a "Major minor movie star." Whilst perhaps a little unkind this epithet correctly indicates that Grahame never became an "A" list star but instead developed a unique niche, especially in "Noir" films, gracing movies often in supporting roles but making an indelible impression. This was against the backdrop of a almost constantly turbulent private life and an often stormy professional one as Gloria brought an idiosyncratic and often stubborn approach to her acting performances which regularly infuriated directors but remarkably got amazing results. In fact Grahame’s marvelous contribution to a few select films such as Crossfire, In a Lonely Place, Sudden Fear, The Big Heat and Human Desire is a vital ingredient of what has made them regarded as classics and ensured they have lived long in the critical consciousness of the genre.

With a new biopic movie being made about Gloria’s life , or more accurately mainly the bizarre last few weeks of her life; Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool starring Annette Benning it this seems an appropriate time to look back on this Femme Fatale’s life and Noir career.

Born in 1923 in California Gloria was the youngest child of Michael Hallward and Jean Grahame (Gloria’s older sister Joy was born a few years earlier) both originally of UK descent. Jean was a former actress who now taught drama and so transmitted her love of performance to her second child. Indeed Gloria seemed a natural and after her parents breakup a solid but unspectacular Education (including time at the Hollywood High school who previous pupils included Judy Garland and Alan Ladd) she was soon treading the boards in amateur and professional theatre in LA before getting jobs in New York. On returning to California to act in a play (chaperoned everywhere by her Mother who was, confidant, manager and acting coach) in early 1944 the 20’year Gloria was spotted by a talent scout working for MGM boss’s Louis B Mayer. Impressed by the attractive, sexy and dryly funny young actress Mayer signed her to a contract and she made her film debut in the frothy comedy Blonde Fever in the same year. Pf far more significance was her casting by director Frank Capra (a last ditch choice when he had exhausted all other options - like so many of Gloria’s appearances) in the timeless Christmas Masterpiece It’s A Wonderful Life in 1946. Even at this early stage the seeds of her mature screen persona we’re set as she played a frothy local sexpot who in the dystopian future that might happen becomes a despairing prostitute. Unfortunately although a nice role in a great film MGM didn’t know what to do with Gloria so sold her contract to RKO where studio owner Howard Hughes also failed to understand her potential and mainly loaned her out to other studios. During this period she made another seminal movie and gave perhaps her first great performance in the Edward Dymytrk thriller Crossfire (1948) which tackled the controversial subject of anti-Semitism head on. Gloria’s role as a sympathetic good time girl gained real critical traction as she was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar. Sadly she didn’t win, nobody saw the film and her career remained firmly in the doldrums. Gloria had also become noticeably conscious of her physical appearance and obsessively dissatisfied with her face (especially her upper lip) had begun a series of cosmetic surgery procedures that would continue, often with disastrous effects such as partial paralysis, throughout the key years of her movie career. It was this obsessive behavior that also got her the nickname of the "girl with the Novocain lip."

By now on a personal level Gloria had disentangled herself from one husband (the actor Stanley Clements who was jealous possessive and violent) and gained another the mercurial, brilliant and troubled Film Director genius Nicholas Ray. Under his egis, and with the support of Producer and star Humphrey Bogart, she was cast alongside the great Man in what would prove to be one of her greatest roles, in one of the great Noir thrillers of all time, namely the 1949 In A Lonely Place.  Based on the novel by Dorothy B Hughes the Film is a classic mixture of Murder mystery and romantic love torn apart by jealously and suspicion. It’s also heavily autobiographical courtesy of Ray’s input into the script, translating the faltering relationship of he and Gloria into dramatically authentic on screen fiction. She would never be better than in this role of Laurel Gray a world weary, smart sexy starlet first entranced and then terrified by her lover the magnetic, violent screenwriter Dix Steele so memorably embodied by Bogart.

Despite being nearly flawless In a Lonely Place was not particularly successful critically or commercially and perhaps most importantly it wasn’t seen by the people who mattered ie studio bosses including her own Howard Hughes.

So although Gloria Grahame had proved just how good she could be In a Lonely Place was not the  career breakthrough it could / should have been and she was still left to parlay herself into the best roles she could find. Gloria did this by taking the unusual move of abandoning long term movie contracts and going freelance. Whilst risky it turned out to be a wise decision as she had the freedom and flexibility to grab parts as and when they came up and meant she was often stepping into things others had rejected.

Gloria didn’t mind being "miss replacement" (a nickname she gave herself) and more often than not she got well played supporting roles that were often meatier than bland starring roles. A case in point was Sudden Fear (1952) a well executed thriller vehicle for Joan Crawford playing alongside Jack Palance, where Gloria more or less steals the show as the sharp sexy mistress helping her lover plot his wife’s demise. The on screen chemistry generated by Palance and Ms Grahame was actually a reflection of their off screen real life liaison. It was also at this time that Gloria’s marriage to Nicholas Ray finally collapsed for good (speeded up perhaps by a somewhat unwise one night stand with her 13 year old stepson Anthony Ray!) and she embarked on what would prove to be the most successful years of her movie career. Indeed Sudden Fear was a decent box office success and Gloria’s profile finally rose. Surprisingly however it was to be in Vicente Minnelli’s The Bad and The Beautiful (1953) one of her smallest and least characteristic roles, as a kooky Southern Belle wife of a writer, that gave her albeit briefly , the biggest success of her life and rocketed her into the big time. With only 9 minutes of screen time Gloria wowed audiences, critics and Oscar voters alike and won the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Leaving aside an embarrassing appearance at the 1953 Academy Awards ceremony Gloria was really now in demand. This lead to her appearing in arguably the defining role of her career as Debbie Marsh the sassy sharp tongued gangster’s moll in Fritz Lang’s brutal and brilliant The Big Heat starring alongside Glenn Ford and Lee Marvin. Making the movie wasn’t plain sailing, as Lang was an undoubted genius but autocratic and dictatorial on set which didn’t sit well at all with Gloria. In fact as she became more established she also had developed a whole series of quirky, idiosyncratic and for the technical crew, downright infuriating, habits in her acting. This included refusing to ever say a line twice in the same way (and substituting her lines by funnier ones written by New love and soon to be husband no 3 comedy gag writer Cy Howard) and not remaining in the correct blocking on set which meant she was constantly out of correct focal length to the camera. If this wasn’t enough Gloria had taken to making up her face more heavily to accentuate her lips and stuffing her upper lip with cotton wool to make it even more prominent. This then caused problems as cotton wool got wet, loose and transferred to the lips of actors (much to consternation of Glenn Ford) as she kissed them and meant between takes the make up all had to be redone. Lang and his legendary Cameraman Charles Long were very unhappy about all of this and there were some unpleasant exchanges. It’s also very ironic, considering the filming  circumstances, that the most famous scene in the film has Gloria being facially disfigured by her gangster boyfriend when he throws hot coffee over her. Nevertheless notwithstanding all the on set disruption and tension (or maybe even as a partial result of it) The Big Heat turned out it be a classic and Gloria Grahame gave her most memorable performance ever. She literally lights up every scene she is in with her sparkling sexy semi-tough presence and her smart, witty (rewritten) dialogue adds zest and pep to the dramatic exchanges. After this she was reunited with Lang (much to his chagrin) and Glenn Ford in Human  Desire (1954) a tough modern adaptation of Zola’s La Bete Humaine. Lang more than a little sadistically took out his frustrations about working with Gloria by insisting that a scene where she was being hit by her onscreen husband was retaken no less than 27 Times! Still the film was finished and another impressive effort it was too although it didn’t repeat the success of The Big Heat.

On personal  level Gloria now  had two young  children and with Cy was in another highly volatile  marital relationship. Indeed Noir seemed to enter her real domestic life as they fought and feuded all over the world whilst she travelled making films and there was even a famous incident when Gloria pulled a pistol on her husband in Paris hotel!

Nevertheless she kept on regularly working in decent thriller and dramatic films such as Naked Alibi Cobweb and Not as a Stranger (1954/5). Unusually Gloria secured her biggest payday when somewhat bizarrely cas in the Fred Zinnemann’s Musical Film Oklahoma in 1955 (especially as she was gone deaf and couldn’t dance or sing a note!). This was also sadly something of a watershed in her career as her typical "bad" behavior, exacerbated by getting aggressive advice from her husband phoning in every day, attracted not only the ire of the filmmakers but also of her fellow actors who thought she was deeply unprofessional and trying to upstage them at every opportunity. It created a terrible atmosphere on and off set and meant that not only was noon speaking to her by the end of filming but a reputation for being extremely difficult spread like wild fire through the Industry.

Indeed after this Gloria Grahame only really made one more notable movie in Hollywood when Robert Wise cast her in what was little more than an impressive cameo in his liberal anti-racism  thriller Odds Against Tomorrow in 1959.

After this Gloria Grahame entered into a kind of wilderness appearing in odd tv series (and occasionally making an impact in episodes of crime or sci-fi shows such as Burke’s Law and The Outer Limits). But matters were made worse publically by her reuniting and subsequent marriage to her former stepson Anthony Ray in 1960. It was to be the longest relationship of her life and produced two more children but the scandal damaged her. Unfortunately this was also a very unstable partnership which combined with custody battles with her other ex husbands took a heavy toll on Gloria. She had a mental breakdown in 1964 and received electroshock therapy. She did recover and carried on working in tv and theatre and made something of a small comeback in the early 1970’s appearing in some independent movies like Chandler (1971) and Melvin and Howard ( 1973) but eventual divorce from Anthony Ray and the first diagnosis of breast cancer in 1974 gave Gloria a whole new set of challenges.

Ever the survivor she battled on working on both sides of the Atlantic in Film and tv for another seven years until after recording some episodes of a British tv thriller series Tales of The Unexpected based on the stories of Roald Dahl and preparing for a new theatre production her cancer returned with tragically terminal effect. Her last weeks of life in the UK were the subject of a posthumous memoir from her friend and former lover Peter Turner in 1987 it hat now forms the basis of the forthcoming movie Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool where Gloria is brilliantly  portrayed by Anette Benning (who was inspired by Gloria’s films when she played in Stephen Frears’s The Grifters).  Gloria died at the age of only 57 after been flown overnight from the UK to New York in October 1981.

Her legacy maybe "major minor" but in a select group of films, which are themselves some of the greatest of their era she shone brilliantly demonstrating a unique on screen persona that made her genuinely memorable.

NB. This is an edited text version of the Illustrated talk Adrian Wootton presented at the Noir In Festival 2017 and is indebted to the work of Gloria Graham biographer Vincent Curcio and his book Suicide Blonde - the life of Gloria Grahame and Robert J Lentz and his critical work Gloria Grahame Bad Girl of Film Noir the complete career.