“Say who do you think you’re talking to – a hick? Listen Mister, I been around,
and I know a wrong guy when I see one. What’d you do, kiss him with a wrench? “
Ann Savage, who played the dark dame, Vera, in Edgar G. Ulmer’s cult noir Detour (1945), has died aged 87.
Her Hollywood career had largely been over since the mid-1950s, but she had a resurgence over the past year with a starring role in Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. Starting with her 1943 debut in the crime story One Dangerous Night, Savage made more than 30 films through the 1950s, including the Westerns Saddles and Sagebrush and Satan’s Cradle, musicals such as Dancing in Manhattan and Ever Since Venus, and wartime stories like Passport to Suez (AAP).
When announcing her passing, Savage’s manager, Kent Adamson said of her performance in Detour:
It’s actually a showcase role… [Tom] Neal and Savage really reversed the traditional male-female roles of the time. She’s vicious and predatory. She’s been called a harpy from hell, and in the film, too, she’s very sexually aggressive, and he’s very, very passive. It’s very unusual for a 40s film to have a woman come on that strong.
The Time Out Film Guide says of Detour:
Neither pure thriller nor pure melodrama (though it has its true complement of doomed lovers, dead bodies, and a cruel sexual undertow), on an emotional level it most resembles the wonderful purple-pulp fiction of David Goodis. Passion joins with folly to produce termite art par excellence.
Detour is in the public domain, and can be viewed below.
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v9268445jrF3f3C
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Hi! Tony,
Like I already mentioned in my previous comment…my condolesence to actress Ann Savage family and friends…and may she Rest in Peace.
May she Rest in Peace.
A wonderful tribute, Tony.
You have stumped me yet again with Ruthless, Tony–another noir I have never seen. I must correct this soon.
I was sad to hear about her death, because of my love for detour. You did a great tribute to her, I must say.
Thanks DCD, Alexander, and Maiden for your comments.
Maiden I have added your blog, The Classic Maiden, to my Blogroll.
Ironically, I have wanted to see MY WINNIPEG for the last two months, but haven’t been able to catch up with it. I never realized that Ann Savage had a lead in it, so now my resolve to catch up with it is two-fold. She was fabulous in DETOUR. R.I.P.
Wonderful tribute here to a wonderful actress indeed.
In “My Winnipeg,” she played Maddin’s mother whom Maddin said to be almost immortal. If only the same could be said for Ms. Ann Savage, and I hope she rests in peace.
Thanks Nick for your comment.