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.

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, 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.

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.

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.