In her final film appearance, Hedy Lamarr plays an aging movie star (she was only 42 at the time of filming) who is nearly killed by a freak accident on set, but is saved by handsome extra, George Nader, who is oddly named, for modern audiences, Chris Farley. Lamarr falls in love with Nader, but so does her adopted daughter, Jane Powell, who hides the fact from Nader that she's Lamarr's daughter. Maybe there was something in this tawdry material that Douglas Sirk could have salvaged, adding a subtext about class and conformity as he did with "All That Heaven Allows," but director director Harry Keller is no Sirk and the film ends up being a waste of Lamarr's talents and a sad coda for her film career. There's a rather poignant moment near the end of the film when a nurse tells Lamarr's character she always felt she was a better actress than the movies she was given, which is sadly true for Lamarr's own film career. FUN FACT! The Female Animal was the "A" picture that was distributed as a double-bill with the "B" picture being Orson Welles's "Touch of Evil."
Review of The Female Animal
