GLORIA GRAHAME: The Poll

In a Lonely Place

Been too long since I've seen Grahame in any movie. Most of my familiarity with her work is decades old, from a time when old b&w movies were a staple of late night tv.

I need to see Human Desire. Currently it's a 3-way tie between The Big Heat, The Bad and the Beautiful and In a Lonely Place, with Odds Against Tomorrow coming up behind.

She was really great paired off with Glenn Ford. It cracks me up so much to think that some 1970s casting agent saw the guy who spent most of the 1950s playing the Angriest Man in the World and said "Yeah, that's who we want for Superman's father!"

i agree with all those contenders -- she's quite something in Chilly Scenes of Winter, liplocking with Peter Riegert...

She's really good in The Bad and the Beautiful in a part that ought to be cringe-inducing now -- an airheaded, manipulative, little-ole-me Southern belle; somehow she makes it more than a caricature.

I've never seen any of the post-50s films, I didn't realize she'd made any.

I'll go with The Big Heat: so moving and doomed.

Early Annette Bening stole a lot from her, eh?

she did a bunch of TV in the '60s and 70s... and she has a small part in Demme's Melvin and Howard.

Over the course of her career, Grahame became increasingly concerned with her physical appearance. She was particularly concerned with the appearance of her upper lip which she felt was too thin and had ridges that were too deep. To remedy this, Grahame began stuffing cotton or wads of tissues between her lip and teeth to give the appearance of fullness which she felt gave her a sexier look. Several co-stars discovered this after filming kissing scenes with Grahame as the tissue or cotton would often transfer to their mouth.

I can't make a coffee pot joke, right

sploosh! aieeeeee

'97 career profile, for research assistance:

Odds Against Tomorrow would be her last studio picture for twenty years.... In Robert Wise’s determinedly arty bank-robbery thriller, Grahame is the loopy neighbor of ex-con Robert Ryan. When Ryan reneges on a promise to babysit her child, she runs a considerable gamut spanning annoyance at Ryan’s no-show, concern for her temporarily unattended infant, flirtatiousness, and finally a pervy-erotic fascination with murder (“How did it feel … when you killed that man?”). That’s altogether too much for a four-minute part, but Grahame’s a past master of the pervy-erotic stuff (so’s Ryan), which here is expressed with the eye giant close-up rather than the mouth.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/gloria-grahame/

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Woah, how'd I (almost) miss this?!

The Big Heat, unquestionably, though In a Lonely Place is a more than acceptable answer as well. Human Desire is decent (unforgettable if you've read Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet), but it is easy to see how it gets overshadowed by the earlier Lang/Ford/Grahame collab.

I still need to see Crossfire and The Bad and the Beautiful.

I love The Big Heat, so I voted that. It was tough though, I think "In a Lonely Place" is probably her best performance.

Also, since her most famous movie hasn't been discussed, it's worth noting that she brings a layer of complexity and humanity to what could have been a one-note role in "It's a Wonderful Life"

In a Lonely Place for being Bogart's best antagonist.

Voting for that one, with The Big Heat a close second. Alfred otm.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Photo finish

I almost voted for The Bad and the Beautiful.

Her Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful is puzzling -- she's funny and fine in about 10 minutes of screen time, but it's basically the least melodramatic role in a melodrama. And she's the wronging wife instead of the wronged wife. I assume it was body-of-work sentiment, even though she was only 29!

video essay, in conjunction with BFI retro

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/video/in-her-eyes-notes-gloria-grahame

We just watched In a Lonely Place and Gloria Grahame is wowzers.

What a weird movie though. Bogart seemed weird-scary not fun-scary (I guess that's the point). I found the ending kind of sad and dark even though I wanted to tell Gloria she needs to run.

Sounds like you felt just what the movie wanted you to feel! Dix is a danger and Gloria should run but that doesn't mean it's not sad.

I guess. Something about the timeframe and male lead kept making me think she was going to change him and there was going to be a happy ending. It subverted those expectations nicely.

^this

Which was an xpost but will also apply to the last sentence of the previous post

Also was hurting my brane for a while trying to remember what role Richard Dix played in this.

hurting Richard too

Good thing there was no production scheduling conflict with a Whistler movie.

This probably gets mentioned every time In A Lonely Place comes up but the novel is really worth reading, though it’s a little disorienting to read if you know the film first because it does something very different with Dix.

Yup, it's great.

We watched Crossfire last night. A really good flick even if it is on the nose at times. Mitchum plays a good guy. Graham is great and gorgeous again, but she is in the movie for < 10 minutes and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor? Ok!