A Woman's Secret

Maureen O'Hara should have been a star, she was a brilliant singer but her vocal chords gave out just as she was about to make it big. Rather than fade away, she used her formidable drive and intelligence to manage another singer to stardom, the lovely but dense Gloria Grahame. As the movie opens she is arrested for shooting Grahame, and the movie tells their story in flashback form.

I liked this movie a lot, it's intelligent and engrossing, and one of the few films of the period to focus on the relationship between two women. They need each other to achieve anything, but are complete opposites. O'Hara is focused, driven, smart, savvy and lives for her work; and Grahame is a dim-witted, good-natured bimbo who'd just like to enjoy life. The conflicts between them grow and grow as the movie progresses, building up until we come back to the shooting of Grahame.

The performances are good, as they should be in a character-driven film like this. O'Hara is as strong and smart as she usually is, and enjoys the chance to explore feelings not found in her usual romantic roles. It's priceless to watch her react to Grahame's blitherings. Grahame gives one of her best performances here (I've never been impressed with any others, truth to tell), she has a lovely time dropping bricks in polite company and blithely accepting the adoration of every man she meets.

Worth a look if you're in a mood for interesting people, not explosions.

Though not really a noir, this emerged a surprisingly compelling melodrama. That said, prior to its late-night Italian screening, the notoriously eccentric commentator Enrico Ghezzi stated that the film – Ray's second – was forced on him by Dore Schary; it is evident because, if there's an auteur at work here, it's screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Ray's treatment, however, is sufficiently stylish to overcome the essential impersonality with which he approached the material and, at least, through working on this film, he met future wife Gloria Grahame!).

Even if controversy still rages over Mankiewicz' exact contribution to CITIZEN KANE (1941), he gives this one a similar flashback structure; of course, comparisons to Orson Welles' magnum opus won't do Ray's more modest effort any favors, so I won't make any! Still, while not especially memorable, the film can stand on its own two feet – thanks largely to a fine cast (an unusually aggressive Maureen O'Hara, the volatile Grahame, the typically cynical Melvyn Douglas, Victor Jory as a wealthy but love-struck middle-aged man, Jay C. Flippen as an understanding police inspector). By the way, amusing though it is, the film's injection of humor is rather atypical for Ray – particularly in the figure of Flippen's wife, who likes to carry out her own sleuthing!

A WOMAN'S SECRET is a melodramatic noir style mystery based on a Vicki Baum story, played in florid fashion by MAUREEN O'HARA, MELVYN DOUGLAS and GLORIA GRAHAME, all of whom are a bit over-the-top under Nichols Ray's direction.

O'Hara is the tough ex-singer promoter of the singing career of Grahame, and plays some of her argumentative moments as though she's Joan Crawford brandishing a gun in "Mildred Pierce". She gives the whole part a surface temperament of angry emotions that doesn't quite ring true, alternating with sweeter moments. She does get a chance to demonstrate her pleasant singing voice, unlike Grahame who is dubbed.

After confessing to shooting Grahame during a heated argument over Gloria's decision to quit her career, she tells her story in flashback. Her good friend, MELVYN DOUGLAS, also fills in some of her background with another flashback, a la "Mildred Pierce" and "Laura" techniques.

Douglas is a piano accompanist who refers to Grahame's singing voice as "a voice with hormones". He has some clever lines and plays the film's most believable character. BILL WILLIAMS shows up midway through the story as Grahame's friend (in a wasted role) who's anxious to see that O'Hara gets punishment for shooting Grahame. "I hope they hang her!"

Unfortunately, it's also at the midway point that the story starts to lose interest, as the mystery is slow to clear up and the story rambles on with still another flashback full of exposition by Douglas about past events.

A tighter script without all the flashbacks and a more direct way of telling the story might have made for improvements. As it is, it has a promising start but loses its way, stumbling in a strand of back stories long before any final explanation is given.

An engaging little noir-style mystery, although it has to be said that this is very gentle even by the standards of the era and it's more of a cosy drama than anything else. The movie begins with an unexpected murder, and the rest of the tale is a mix of flashbacks leading up to the event interspersed with police procedural investigation into the crime.

In essence this is a chance to explore a love triangle between three famous actors of the day. The ubiquitous Maureen O'Hara bags the most dramatic role of the suspected murderess and headlines it as you'd expect, but Melvyn Douglas holds it all together as the man caught between two feisty women. Gloria Grahame is an intriguing actress who gives a rather sultry turn as the star singer and it's increasingly apparent as the story progresses that the director is in love with her.

Otherwise, despite the lack of action and incident, A WOMAN'S SECRET works rather well. Nicholas Ray handles the directorial duties with relish, and the characters are both interesting and larger than life. It's hardly the kind of movie to set the world on fire, but one which film fans should appreciate.

With elements of All About Eve, Mildred Pierce and Trapeze in it, A Woman's Secret hardly rates as being as good as one of the three films mentioned. Maybe the title is wrong, there really is no secret about anything here.

If A Woman's Secret has earned any place at all in cinema history it's because director Nicholas Ray met and fell for Gloria Grahame on the set of this film. He became her second husband.

As for the film, retired singer now manager Maureen O'Hara has a quarrel with her protégé Gloria Grahame. Later on when Grahame is shot and critically wounded, O'Hara is brought in for questioning.

Composer and critic Melvyn Douglas in a character based on parts of Alexander Woollcott, Clifton Fadiman, and Oscar Levant just simply doesn't believe the whole thing. He lobbies vigorously on O'Hara's behalf with investigating detective Jay C. Flippen. But it's Flippen's wife, Mary Phillips, who actually finds the key. The answer is really rather obvious, but it's how the story is unraveled that's the key to the film.

Nicholas Ray went on to direct a whole lot better films and the suspense factor just isn't there for me in this one. The very professional cast go through their required paces. Others in the ensemble include Victor Jory as a criminal attorney that Douglas brings in for O'Hara who knows both of them and Bill Williams, a former GI who was to marry Grahame.

With their only being a small amount of alternate probabilities other than O'Hara trying to commit murder, there's not much of a secret to A Woman's Secret.