No Man's Woman

Remember how the Perry Mason show always started with a drama about a bunch of unfamiliar characters, one of whom went out of his or her way to be nasty to all the others, leaving a nice collection of suspects for the viewer to sort through after he or she was murdered? The beginning of this film, made two years before the Mason show debuted, will bring back memories of those episodes. There's no shrewd defense attorney or even a courtroom scene but, again Mason-like, it was filmed in sunny 1950's L. A. with slick professionalism and an almost anonymous cast, with the exception of renowned noir femme fatale Marie Windsor.

As usual in such dramas, the cops set their sights on the wrong suspect. In this case, however, the suspects themselves work out who's the guilty party.

In brief, a straightforward well-made little whodunit that moves along briskly and should keep you engaged for eighty minutes or so.

Windsor plays a conniving, unfaithful wife whose fed up husband wants to marry a "nice" girl and is willing to make her a fair offer in exchange for a divorce. She makes an exorbitant demand and ups the price by 100 grand after he responds by throwing a drink in her face. This is followed by her shocked father-in-law's remark "no matter how you look at it, that woman is a witch!" To which his son replies "no matter how you spell it either." A good example of some of the clever (not to mention funny) pseudo-profanity and "no-no" innuendo script writers had to develop back then.

As usual, Windsor plays her part to the hilt and makes a very credible villain. Unfortunately, the script writers went overboard with her character, almost making her a caricature of herself. They exaggerate her "W" or "B"ness to such a degree that it becomes unrealistic and even comical. What self-respecting cold, calculating gold-digger would publicly commit adultery with her secretary's fiancée before she was done squeezing her husband? Windsor herself seems to display an inner grin even with her nastiest facial expressions. She no doubt realized how ridiculous some of the script was. In the movie, she owns and lives in an art gallery. Since the real Marie Windsor was a multi-talented individual who achieved some success as a painter and sculptress, I wonder if this is simply coincidental.

I guess one purpose served by making her such a larger than life meanie is to make all the suspects seem equally likely to have killed her.

A mix of true "noir" and standard "whodunit" hurt by overdone melodramatics, yet still worth seeing.

Marie Windsor, who had already made an impression as a self-serving and blundering undercover policewoman in NARROW MARGIN (US 1952), gets to have an even more selfish and self-serving role in NO MAN'S WOMAN.

She thinks nothing of cheating on hubby John Archer while refusing to divorce him, to try a new affair with her employee's fiancé, and to kick her journalist lover out when he is fired for breaching his professional duties in a bid to assist Windsor with the sale of her paintings.

Windsor so commands this film that it never quite recovers from her demise. Archer, with a voice that resembles that of the voiceover one hears in many of the B pics of the time, fails to get my sympathy the moment he takes to drinking, classy Patrick Knowles tries his best but his part is not the most endearing, and Jill Jarmyn just cannot act to save her life.

Thankfully, cinematography is competent and Adreon does his best with limited acting resources and a script with some clever twists. Short, not sweet, but NO MAN'S WOMAN merits watching.

Above average murder mystery about a greedy, scheming woman who 'gets it' and the cops think the husband did it.

Nothing original, but the film is a sprint from start to finish so you shouldn't get bored. For a supposedly 'B movie', this has an excellent cast of players. Lots of pretty girls, weather beaten cops and a hunk or two for the womenfolk...

Marie Windsor is particularly fun to watch playing the manipulative wife... which she did twice, a year later, in Kubrick's 'The Killing' and Corman's 'Swamp Women'. (I wonder what she was like in real life!)

The first half of the movie presents the case for 'offing' the nasty woman and the second half is spent finding out who-dunnit. The running time of just over an hour goes by quickly, there's not a moment wasted. You won't be disappointed in this 'Perry Mason' style caper.

Double standards are at work here. Marie Windsor ( a fine actor and in my opinion underrated ) chooses her men, decides her financial advantage over her separated husband and because of that she is categorised as being ' evil. ' She also likes younger men, and makes that clear even if it means trying to steal one away from a working companion. In my opinion men can behave as equally ' badly ' and get way with it on film, but women in 1950's films cannot, and deserve the ultimate punishment. No spoilers except to say that nearly half of the film is without Marie Windsor's presence and her widowed husband's lover played reasonably well by Nancy Gates becomes a ' good ' woman in desperate peril. Despite my reservations this B-film which is more grey than noir has witty dialogue ( again thanks to Windsor ) and a heady atmosphere of sexuality pervades the first half. Well directed it does not deserve being a lost film. I give it a 6 for Marie Windsor, with putdowns like Eve Arden and as wide-eyed in the pleasure of her ways as Joan Crawford at her best.