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Gloria Grahame: Debby Marsh In The Big Heat

664 Words3 Pages

Gloria Grahame (1923 - 1981) as the ill-fated Debby Marsh in The Big Heat is ideally portrayed by Grahame in a good-girl gone bad by choosing the wicket side of life, and ultimately paying the price for liking the wrong man, who is essentially good (Bannion). “Gloria Grahame likewise introduced a new shading to the fatal woman type, playing her not as a victimizer, a cruel tyrant, but as a victim, whimpering and aching and even good-hearted. (Hirsch 157). Grahame had an extraordinary career in Hollywood as, “a femme fatale with extraordinary carnal allure, Gloria Grahame electrified moviegoers with her turns as venal, sexually aggressive women in such films as Crossfire (1947), In a Lonely Place (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), which earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. A professional actress from childhood, Grahame began her career playing sexually confident if emotionally unstable women, and essentially repeated that role throughout the 1940s and 1950s, which marked her heyday in Hollywood. Few actresses …show more content…

“Here is where noir comes into its own, introducing themes of true moral and psychological complexity. Cornered, The Blue Dahlia, Black Angel, Phantom Lady, Deadline at Dawn, D.O.A., The Big Clock, The Big Heat are stories of manhunts conducted by investigators with personal motives” (Hirsch 173). This is an excellent brutal crime drama that demonstrates a real threat back in the 1950s with dealing with the national crime

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Even though the time periods did not match up, San Francisco and Detroit almost mirrored each other. Neither were what they are today yet, with big buildings and enormous populations; however, one thing that they did share was the fact that they had a problem with everyday crime and how some crimes were taken care of. Both Dashiell Hammet and Elmore Leonard were “tell it how it is” novelists. They shared the same message when speaking through their characters with hidden messages about the times. Corruption was exposed when talking about their fictional detectives being hard-boiled and not always playing by the rules.

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2195 Words | 9 Pages

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849 Words | 4 Pages

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1890 Words | 8 Pages

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