No Man's Woman

So, how many victims can the great Marie Windsor (Carolyn) double-cross in less than an hour. Let's see, I've got to four and still counting. Actually, I'll watch anything with the big-eyed seductress. She always looks like she's enjoying some delicious inner joke even as her sly characters aim to corrupt, especially the poor two-timed Elisha Cook in that great heist flick The Killing (1956). Here she gets what amounts to a showcase as the victims pile up. In my little book, Windsor deserves a lifetime Oscar as a true one-of-a-kind.

The narrative starts out as a series of romantic entanglements, but shifts half-way through into a murder mystery. The mystery doesn't play that well since the focus is too spread out among the suspects. To me, it's the cast of B-movie familiars that carries the interest. Add up the delicious Windsor, a straight-up Archer, an officious Louis Jean Heydt, along with that grinning gnome Percy Helton, and the lordly Ankrum, and you've got characters worth watching. Then too, there's a revealing display of street scenes LA, circa 1955, along with a procession of tight female sweaters trailing behind the bosomy Marilyn Monroe.

All in all, it's a good little time-passer from Republic with what amounts to a central surprise to give it note. (Hard to believe, but looks like {IMDB} Windsor, born in Salt Lake City, was a lifetime Mormon! Talk about appearances vs. reality.)

As mysteries go, No Man's Woman runs in the league of those populous puzzles that fueled so many old Perry Mason episodes: a lot of suspects, one of whom will be fingered. But the movie preserves a starring performance by Marie Windsor, one of the all-time great broads of post-war poverty-row movies. She leads in more of them than one might think, most of them obscure (if not vanished) westerns, sci-fi cheapies, and crime programmers. But, top billing or not, we get to see less of Windsor in No Man's Woman that we might like – too many people want her dead.

Among them: her industrialist husband (John Archer) whom she won't divorce unless he forks over a ruinous settlement; his girlfriend (Jil Jarmyn), whose pleas Windsor coldly rebuffs; Windsor's art critic paramour/business partner (Patric Knowles), who writes puff-pieces for her gallery and gets fired for conflict of interest (today they'd call it `synergy'); her loyal young assistant (Nancy Gates), whose fiancé she blithely tries to steal; and the fiancé (Richard Crane), onto whose boat she invites herself in order to seduce then blackmail him.

Windsor, as one exchange between characters goes, is `a witch...whichever way it's spelled.' When her wicked-woman machinations have reached the boil, and just about everyone has indiscreetly remarked how they'd like to see her dead, a 3-a.m. intruder into her studio grants their wishes. And so the search for the murderer is on....

Much like the roles Joan Crawford at this juncture in her career was playing in A-productions, Windsor's character is that of an honey-voiced schemer hiding her self-interest beneath a facade of piss-elegance – with every petty victory, the huge orbs of her eyes flash with satisfaction. She was more memorable in The Narrow Margin and The Killing (better movies), but what she delivers makes one wonder why she never broke out of the B-movie ghetto.

Carolyn Grant (Marie Windsor) is just making enemies left and right - She won't divorce her estranged husband because the money is too good even though he (John Archer as Harlow Grant) wants to remarry to a less showy, more homey (but not homely) woman (Nancy Gates as Louise Nelson). Carolyn is trying to break up her employee's engagement just because. The guy (Richard Crane as Dick Sawyer) has no interest in her. So one night an intruder - the audience doesn't see who it is - shoots her dead on the stairs. Everybody she ever said hello to is rightfully a suspect.

So this film is neatly divided into two parts. The first part is playing out like a Douglas Sirk melodrama of the time. The second part, after the murder, is your basic whodunnit. It rather plays out like an overly long version of Perry Mason, as you are pretty sure you know who is going to end up murdered, there is a parade of people who have good motive for performing the murder, except this is not a courtroom drama and there is no hard charging defense attorney involved. Also, Marie Windsor hangs around with a pulse longer than any of the victims in Perry Mason, but then who wants to let Marie Windsor's bad girl talents go to waste?

It does seem like it is trying to compete for the kind of audiences who watched TV in the 50s. The sets aren't cheap but they aren't deluxe either. The acting is competent, and the script is not much of a surprise, but it does fit the bill if you are a fan of these 50s noir/crime dramas.

Marie Windsor is a piece of work. She's living apart from her husband, John Archer, but taking half his earnings. He wants to get married to Nancy Gates, so he asks Miss Windsor for a divorce. She wants a continuing half his earnings, plus $300,000 in cash; his father can sell his half of the business. Meanwhile, Miss Windsor is partners in an art gallery with Patrick Knowles, and putting the moves on Richard Crane, who's engaged to her assistant, Jil Jarmyn. In fact, she's just got Miss Jarmyn to return her engagement ring by telling her she's carrying on an affair with Crane.

So naturally she's shot by someone standing just offscreen. Enter the police.

It's a cheaply shot Republic B movie, and while everyone is decent, their line deliveries are rather declamatory. It's directed by Franklin Adreon(1902-1979). He had been writing Republic serials since 1937, and had directed a few for a couple of years. Now he was directing movies, and television, but it looks like the habits of the serials had stuck with him: grind them out cheap, grind them out fast and don't worry about the nuances. It's a well-written mystery, but the execution of the film is dull, except for Miss Windsor and her nasty attitude. I'd've shot her myself.

Marie Windsor stars as Carolyn Ellenson Grant, a nasty selfish lady. Her husband is desperate to divorce her, but she refuses and lives a completely separate life on his money. She also has a lover who she uses ruthlessly to get what she wants and along the way she decides to destroy a few lives for kicks. Eventually, she is killed and the police think the husband did it...not realizing practically EVERYONE had motives to do it! Can the poor hubby manage to prove his innocence?

The first portion of the film is more enjoyable than the last...though it is overall a very good movie. Watching Windsor playing such a conniving and god-awful person is incredibly enjoyable and it's a part that Joan Crawford could have done well in at this time...though Windsor was quite convincing. Worth seeing...and a bit like film noir in many ways.