Dark City Dames

by MULLER EDDIE

• ISBN13: 9780060988548
• ISBN10: 0060988541
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-13
• Publisher: Regan Books

Summary

<p align="left">Hollywood's devotion to "good girls" took a beating after World War II. That's when the crime movies, later to be called <I>film noir,</I> introduced a new archetype: the hardboiled dame. Shrewd, sexy, and strong-willed, these dames knew what they wanted, and stopped at nothing to get it. Eddie Muller, author of the quintessential noir opus <I>Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir,</I> escorts readers behind the scenes with the tough, flinty femmes fatales of such noir classics as <I>Out of the Past, Tension, Kiss of Death, The Prowler, Detour,</I> and <I>The Killing.</I> He profiles six extraordinary actresses who embodied, onscreen and off, the changing roles of American women -- Jane Greer, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Savage, Coleen Gray, Audrey Totter, and Marie Windsor -- as they balanced love and career, struggled against typecasting, and sought fulfillment in a ruthless business. Filled with delicious gossip and attitude -- and cameos by Tinseltown figures like Howard Hughes, Robert Mitchum, John Huston, and Otto Preminger -- <I>Dark City Dames</I> reveals the traps and triumphs of being a working actress in 1940s Hollywood. And in revisiting the actresses fifty years later, it goes further, offering hard-earned insights on the vagaries of life, love, success, and celebrity.</p>