Over-Exposed

Cleo Moore is front & center in this tawdry 1956 tale of the rise & fall of a model/photographer who gets involved in one grift too many. Moore has just been involved at a club's bust (she didn't know what kind of club she got a job at) & the cops have warned her to leave town but no sooner does she step towards a bus stop, a kindly photographer, played by Raymond Greenleaf, offers her a room for the night but being strapped for cash, when he offers to teach her the photography ropes, she obliges. Getting a gig at a prominent nightclub, Moore soon rises in the ranks gaining the attention of a gossip rag's reporter but also the movers & shakers in town. One night while taking a photo of a noted dowager, she catches in the background the club's silent partner, a gangster, who was implicated in a murder the same night so when the dowager dies later on the dancefloor during her birthday, the smut peddler hopes to publish the pic but when Moore resists, he steals & publishes the pic anyway. No amount of protestations about her innocence in the matter, Moore still becomes a persona non grata until she remembers the gangster's pic. Will she successfully blackmail the wanted man for a payout or die trying? Moore, never rising to the echelon of her fellow blonde contemporaries like Marilyn Monroe, Mamie Van Doren or Jayne Mansfield, nonetheless does the best she can by the material & comes away pretty much unscathed (all bluster & suspicion whenever offered a helping hand) but considering she never did get to work w/A list directors (or even B listers), she knew when to step away. Also starring future Colonel Trautman, Richard Crenna, as Moore's reporter beau.

Cleo moore is lila, getting kicked out of town, for hanging around in a bar. She meets up with max (ray greenleaf), who teaches her photography skills. She ends up in new york, where russ (crenna, from the rambo films) helps get her set up with a job. The only actor I recognize is jack albertson, from willie wonka and poseidon adventure. Les (albertson) runs the nightclub where lila works. As she gets rich and successful, her friends notice that she loses her home town girl compassion. Lila acts so greedy, that the one time she does the right, compassionate thing, no-one believes her. And now she's in danger. Can russ and max get her out of a jam before she gets in trouble with the mob? Tcm host eddy muller does a prologue and and epilogue for this film. Apparently, the story is partially based on a real female photographer. Moore died so young at 43, from a heart attack. Directed by lewis seiler. This was one of his last films. He didn't win any oscars, but worked with bogart five times!

In Over-Exposed, Cleo Moore makes an ascent from B-Girl to reigning photographer of café society that's as rapid as it is unpersuasive. She's a mid-1950s version of Blonde Ambition, or, as she puts it, `Where there's money, there's Lila – green becomes me.'

She wasn't always Lila, least of all not the night the clip joint she'd just started working for got raided. The alcoholic, has-been shutterbug (Raymond Greenleaf) who snaps her mug outside the police station takes pity on her by showing her the rudiments of his craft. She's a quick study and, more to the point, a shrewd operator, buttering up monied old janes with appeals to their deluded vanity.

Off to New York, she tries in vain to land a job as a photojournalist, though she befriends a young reporter (Richard Crenna). Instead, she opts for the glamor and easy money to be had as a `flash-girl' in a nightclub; on the side, she snaps compromising photos for a sleazy columnist (James O'Rear). Soon, she holds a concession at the poshest watering-hole in town, the Club Coco; the fact that it's mob-operated doesn't bother her, but it bothers straight-arrow Crenna, who's thinking of popping the question.

Invited to snap a birthday celebration at the club for grand dame Isobel Elsom, Moore inadvertently records the dowager's death throes as she slumps while displaying her newly acquired skills at the mambo. Moore decently destroys the photo, only to have O'Rear steal and publish the negative; closing ranks, her society clients drop her like a hot brick. Up against a wall, Moore decides to dabble in blackmail, using as bait another inadvertent picture – one that demolishes the alibi of one of club's mob backers, wanted for murder....

With elements of Shakedown and the soon-to-come Sweet Smell of Success, Over-Exposed stays a little too nice to rival them. It pulls back from any real nastiness and grit in its eagerness to keep the hard cookie Moore soft at the center (and insure smiles at the ending). Still, there are smirky glimpses into the world of parasites and lick-spittles who buzz around money, as well as welcome, old-school turns from Greenleaf and Elsom. Moore flashes solid credentials as a brassy schemer, while Crenna takes yet another step in the career that would stretch, chiefly through the magic of television, from Our Miss Brooks to The Rape of Richard Beck. Over-Exposed, diverting enough to watch, is quite under-developed.

Cleo Moore was more-less competition (via B films) for Marilyn Monroe. It is a shame that her career was short as she was a very good actress, but was saddled with innumerable low budget projects. She was long associated with indie producer Hugo Haas who generally cast her as a femme fatale in a series of "bad girl" films, which made a fortune, but did not elevate her career. The films eventually gained cult status, unfortunately, long after she left the screen. In OVER EXPOSED, and despite a slim budget, Moore is at her best playing a young blond with ambition. The film has a rather clever twist as she plays a photographer, but instead of posing in front of the camera ( in a bikini!), she works it as a business enterprise and, of course, there is a price to pay for that move as well. A neat little film noir that has been re-released via Columbia Pictures in a dvd box set, worth the price. Moore retired from films in the late 1950s and entered the real estate market, but to this day has a devout following. Some of her Hugo Haas productions have been re-issued on dvd, remastered prints, so keep watch.

Over-Exposed (1956)

"You'd use your grandmother's bones to pry open a cash register." That's the best line in "Over-Exposed," a surprisingly solid crime and ambition (and cheesecake) movie. But then, the second best line is when the leading bleach blonde model/photographer played by Cleo Moore has made it big, and she says, "Green becomes me."

This is a better movie than it could have been, with little known cast and crew and a story that seems at a glance to be a cross between formulaic gangster and splashy girl-photographer with some spunk. There is a love interest (a really nice guy who sees through our heroine's hard gloss to a decent kid inside) who comes and goes and seems to a lifeline to her salvation. But the real lure overall is success and money, which is found at a nightclub run by classy thugs. The movie remains a bit cheesy throughout, however, letting Lila be a club photographer wearing scant clothes, kind of like a cigarette girls did in those days.

One of the surprises was how central and accurate the photography was to the whole movie, start to finish, and I'm not talking cinematography, which was good, but the role of the photography in the plot, including shooting and developing and retouching. And blackmail, by the end. The friendly old man photographer at the start is a strong balance to the wayward and snippy young girl (Moore), and the two end up helping each other throughout.

So there is a lot going on, actually, and it's pretty well done in the main, with those occasional hiccups of a lower budget enterprise. Look for Constance Towers, who later made fame in a couple of hard hitting Sam Fuller movies (like "Naked Kiss"). Give this one a go. And know that the second half is more exciting than the first.