Over-Exposed

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!

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.

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.

A young woman learns the craft of photography, and uses her skills (and her wits) to fulfill her glamorous ambitions. This is part of a set called "Bad Girls of Film Noir" but that's a double misnomer. Lila isn't truly bad, just mildly manipulative and although the film is superficially a feminine version of Shakedown it lacks any real edge. I like my noir to be noir through and through, not just in the last 7 minutes. Cleo Moore is the only noteworthy performer in the cast (though Raymond Greenleaf is enjoyable as her mentor) and she's pretty good. It's interesting that one of the things that drives her character is a chip on her shoulder about being ogled, yet the film doesn't hesitate to objectify her, rarely passing up an opportunity to show off her shapely assets. Not bad as a time-killer and the script has some tasty lines, but overall it's forgettable.

OVER-EXPOSED is hands down my all-time favorite "bad girl" film noir. Sexy blonde Cleo Moore stars as a buxom dancer who gets packed into the paddy wagon her first night on the job unaware she's working for a clip joint. When small-time photographer Raymond Greenleaf snaps a candid of Cleo and the other gals being hauled in, a furious Moore tries to buy the negative only to be told he'll give it to her if he accompanies her back to his home so he can develop the rest of the film roll. A wary, knowing Cleo feels she has no other option and does so only to find the old guy is sincere and gives her the picture.

The unlikely duo become friends and when Cleo learns photography is, in her words "a good racket for a dame", she has Greenleaf teach her all he can about it while Moore builds up his profits telling rich old broads who come in for portraits, their pictures have been blown up and entered into a photography exhibit which of course makes the old vain crones insist on purchasing the large colored edition of their picture.

Finally when Cleo has become an impressive photographer herself she packs up and heads for New York City while she tries to sell her wares (the pictures, you dirty minds). There she meets handsome newspaper reporter Richard Crenna, gracious society dame Isobel Elsom, leering boss Jack Albertson, jealous coworker Jeanne Cooper, and select mobsters.

This is one of the enjoyable little film noirs I've ever encountered, full of pithy lines ("you'd use your grandmother's bones to pry open a cash register" an effete nightclub manager snaps at our heroine) and an utterly wonderful, spirited performance by Cleo Moore, as a "bad girl" who might not be so bad after all. There were a lot of sexy blondes in movies back in the 1950's and I've always felt Cleo was not only one of the most attractive but one of the better actresses of the lot. It's sad her career didn't progress much above the B level but she really shines in this film. This movie enjoyed a revival in 2009 at UCLA's Film and Television Archive museum as part of a retrospective of overlooked film noirs, was released on DVD in 2010 by Sony and hopefully it will eventually find it's way to TCM.