No Man's Woman

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 gives an impressive performance as an egocentric man-eater ;it seems that she takes her pleasure by breaking her fellow men 's lives.After thirty minutes, four men and two women have a reason to do away with her , that beats everything!

That's why the second part , without her , seems pale by comparison ; it's a whodunit , with the usual suspects ,the false alibis , the wrong man who confesses something he's not done.

Recalling Joan Crawford , Miss Windsor's going to blow your mind.

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.

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.

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.)