User Reviews

Generally regarded as director Nicholas Ray's least successful movie, "A Woman's Secret" is based on the novel "Mortgage on Life" by Vicki Baum and tells the story of an investigation into the near-fatal shooting of a well-known young singer. What transpired before the shooting is revealed through a series of flashbacks with some pieces of information proving to be more reliable than others and very little being discovered which could explain why the victim's mentor so readily confessed to the crime.

Following one of her radio broadcasts, popular singer Susan Caldwell (Gloria Grahame), who's known professionally as Estrellita, returns to the apartment she shares with her mentor Marian Washburn (Maureen O'Hara) and announces that she intends to give up her singing career. This leads to a very animated quarrel, a physical struggle and a gun being fired that leaves Susan critically injured before Marian, very calmly and without hesitation, calls for medical help and reports the incident to the police.

Police Inspector Jim Fowler (Jay C Flippen) leads the investigation and Marian's business partner Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas) hires attorney Brook Matthews (Victor Jory) to defend her. Jordan, who believes implicitly in Marian's innocence, explains to Fowler that she'd enjoyed a successful career as a singer before having contracted a throat ailment that damaged her voice and led to her retirement. Some time later, they had jointly "discovered" Susan and steered her to success but despite this she'd remained as unsophisticated and unstable as she'd been when they first knew her and didn't appreciate the value of her new career. Susan's attitude frustrated and irritated Marian who'd invested so much of her time and effort into coaching her protégée. Would this have fully explained why Marian was so desperate to prevent Susan from giving up her career or was there more to their relationship than meets the eye?

"A Woman's Secret" begins well and remains intriguing through most of its running time but unfortunately leads to a conclusion that disappoints. No doubt, this is the main reason why the movie was a commercial flop and still remains so unappreciated many years after its first release. Despite this, however, it's not entirely without merit because there are some good performances (particularly from Gloria Grahame, Jay C Flippen and Melvyn Douglas), some enjoyable humour and amusing dialogue (e.g. when Jordan describes Susan as having "a voice with hormones"). The flashback structure also creates an impression of more substance than would have been the case if the drama had simply been presented in linear form.

Interestingly, during the making of this movie, another drama was being played out behind the cameras, as Nicholas Ray and Gloria Grahame had an affair which led to their unsuccessful marriage and divorce. This had been Grahame's second marriage and after her third one also ended in divorce, she subsequently married Ray's son, Anthony in 1960.

Vicki Baum was a popular German novelist. Because she was Jewish, she and her husband left Germany in the 1930s and she became a Hollywood screenwriter. One of her books "Mortgage on Life" became the basis for the film "A Woman's Secret". There are a lot of secrets in the film. What really happened when the gun was fired, what type of person was Susan Caldwell?

The film starts with a fight between Susan (Gloria Grahame) and Marion Washburn (Maureen O'Hara). Susan is the singing sensation Estralita but she is fed up with the grind of public appearances and radio shows and wants to retire. She and Marion go upstairs, there is a shot and when police come, Marion calmly confesses that she fired the gun that could fatally have injured Susan.

Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas) and Brooke Matthews (Victor Jory) get involved. Luke, a very good friend of Marions, persuades Brooke, a lawyer, to represent her. Both are convinced that Marion could never do such a thing. From the start there are conflicting personalities. Marion is presenting herself as "hard as nails" and all business, yet she inspires love from everyone - Susan is funny and quirky, yet she is less than loved. Luke takes Inspt. Fowler (Jay C. Flippen) to lunch and gives his version.

Marion was a singer and he, her pianist. She is on her way to the top when she is stricken by a rare throat infection. After a year off she begins to sing again but her voice is gone. After leaving a rehearsal they run into Susan, a young singer down on her luck. Gloria Grahame really lifts the film up. She has just the right amount of quirkiness and knowing innocence as Susan, who just happens to have a great voice. She is happy for Marion to do all the work, promoting, booking, pushing her to practice etc. Marion then takes her to Paris to give her some much needed polish. Luke follows to keep an eye on them but Susan has already gone, pursuing a man to Algiers, with the promise of a place in an Opera company. Needless to say, there was no Opera company.

On the ship back to New York, Susan, with a new name, Estralita, meets Brooke and sweeps him off his feet!!! By the end of the film she also has a hot headed young soldier (Bill Williams) madly in love with her and unwilling to believe she is anything but sweet and innocent.

Melvyn Douglas is great and really gives the film a witty touch. Maureen O'Hara is very classy but she doesn't have her usual spark - in this film she seems quite subdued. Gloria Grahame is a bright light - if it wasn't for her the film would be pretty dull.Jay C. Flippen is also very good as the Inspector who feels something is amiss with Marion's confession. Mary Phillips, who was Humphrey Bogart's second wife, plays Mary Fowler.

Recommended.

The film begins with a shooting. While Maureen O'Hara tells the police she shot her protégé, Gloria Graham, her boyfriend (Melvin Douglas) is sure she couldn't have done such a thing. Both tell their side of the story from their perspective and the police wait until Graham recovers from surgery to get at the truth.

This is an okay idea for a film--not great, but it sure could have been a lot better. The main problem is that although this was meant to be a serious suspense/mystery film, there were some characters who were poorly written--mostly the women in the cast. The worst, of course, was the detective's nosy wife. I assume someone thought it would be cute to include her in the story, but frankly she seemed all wrong for the overall mood of the film. On one hand, it was supposed to be a mystery and was rather interesting but on the other, they stuck this obnoxious ditz into the film for comic relief! Comic relief in a film like this just made very little sense. Having this obnoxious lady blundering about was akin to putting Pee Wee Herman in an opera. The other problem is that it simply made little sense to have O'Hara taking responsibility for the shooting--especially once you learn the truth. It just made no sense at all. The final problem, though not as serious, was that the character Graham played was frankly too dumb and flighty. Had they made her more ruthless or just less stupid, the film would have clicked much better. It all seemed as if the writers just couldn't write women's parts well.

Had they worked out these problems, the film might have been very watchable. However, because of these factors, it's only a minor time-passer and not a film to rush to see.

A Woman's Secret boasts a distinguished pedigree. Vicki (Grand Hotel) Baum wrote the novel, adapted for the screen by Herman (Citizen Kane) Mankiewicz, directed by the young Nicholas (In A Lonely Place) Ray and photographed by George Diskant. Its starry cast includes Maureen O'Hara and Gloria Grahame, Melvyn Douglas, Victor Jory, Bill Williams and the estimable character actor Jay C. Flippen. That's a lot of talent to be lavished on what is little more than a diverting piffle – a genteel mystery set in New York show-biz circles. Why, nobody even dies.

O'Hara plays a faded singer and Grahame her wildly successful protegée (Estrellita, or :Little Star'). One night a shot rings out, critically wounding Grahame. O'Hara confesses, claiming that she wouldn't let Grahame abandon the career she had built for her and through which she relived her own dreams. Grumpy musical gadfly Douglas doesn't buy the confession, and most of the movie unfolds through a series of flashbacks told from various points of view. But Citizen Kane it ain't.

Despite side-trips to Paris and Algiers (and a hotel key from Lafitte Parish, Louisiana), A Woman's Secret stays a tepid basin of soap-opera suds. Its most endearing element comes from police inspector Flippen and his amateur-sleuth wife Mary Philips, who steal every scene they're in (not that there's much to steal). Were they Hitchcock's inspiration for Alec McCowan and Vivien Merchant in Frenzy? They were the best thing about that movie, too.

A Woman's Secret was sandwiched between several Film Noir titles early in Director Nicholas Ray's career. Maureen O'Hara and Melvyn Douglas play mentors of up and coming singer Gloria Grahame after O'Hara's career fails because of losing her voice. Grahame is shot after a radio show one night, and the rest of the film is devoted to revealing the relationships between O'Hara, Douglas, and Grahame and what happened. As a director, Nicholas Ray had a reputation of obtaining strong performances from his casts, and this film is no exception. O'Hara has an especially unusual role for her type as a more assertive character than usual. Douglas plays his usual nice guy self, and Grahame is very good as the ditsy singer who doesn't appreciate her career. The supporting cast is good also.

While not truly a Noir film, A Woman's Secret does have a few elements often identified with the genre: a shooting, story told in flashback, and a few red herring suspects. The Noir-ish feel of the film at the beginning changes to melodrama and then is later offset by the comedic moments between Jay C. Flippen, the inspector, and Mary Philips as the inspector's amateur sleuth wife, resulting in an uneven tone for the film when there should/could have been dramatic build-up. These exchanges occur before the build-up leading to the denouement. Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the script based on Vicki Baum's novel Mortgage For Life. O'Hara did her own singing here, but Grahame's singing was dubbed. The film is notable as an early character driven drama in Nicholas Ray's career, which would become the hallmark of most of his later films. **1/2 of 4 stars.

By coincidence this is the second movie written by Mank's big brother Herman that I've watched in two days - courtesy of my good friend in France - and it's light years ahead of the first, Christmas Holiday and in yet another coincidence both movies were adapted by Mank from novels by heavy hitters, respectively Somerset Maugham and Vicki Baum. For this entry someone should coin a new term; slightly bizarre noir, which is what it is. At first glance we seem to be verging on Mildred Pierce territory inasmuch as an argument is followed by a gunshot and a confession which has to be as phony as a nine-dollar bill. On paper this is a film of about as mismatched talents as you could get, on paper at least. Who would ever associate Maureen O'Hara with Nicholas Ray? or cast her as Myrna Loy to Melvyn Douglas' William Powell? And, if it comes to that, who could envisage Jay C. Flippen and Victor Jory in the same film let alone a film that already has O'Hara and Douglas aboard, to say nothing of Gloria Graham who plays Estrellita as if she'd been told to effect a cross between Gracie Allen and Marilyn Monoro - although Monroe had yet to establish her persona in 1949 despite three or four small roles. Mank's script is pithy and droll, full of collectables such as 'What are you doing for dinner?' 'Eating', and, 'I just won another bet, they don't say "Where Am I?"'. If you believe Melvyn Douglas as a piano player-song-plugger you'll believe anything, even that Gloria Graham can carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton purse (she was dubbed, natch) but this time around it's fairly easy to suspend disbelief (since when, for example, have cops wives been allowed to sit in on investigations) and along the way we get to hear the elusive verse to 'Paradise' so really what more do you want.

A young singer named Susan Caldwell is shot and seriously injured in an altercation with her flatmate, Marian Washburn. When the police arrive, Marian confesses to the shooting, but much remains unanswered, especially as Marian did not seem to have a motive.

The past history of Marian and Susan's relationship is revealed in a series of flashbacks, mostly as related by Marian's friend, a musician named Luke Jordan, and Jim Fowler, the police officer investigating the incident. We learn that Marian was at one time a singer herself, but had to retire after losing her voice. Marian and Luke discovered aspiring singer Susan and took her under their wing, Marian becoming a mentor to Susan's career. Susan, however, has doubts about her talent and threatens to quit the business, something which appalls Marian, who has come to see Susan as a second self. There is also a tangled web of emotional relationships involving Marian, Susan, Luke, an attorney named Brook Matthews and Lee Crenshaw, a crude and ruffianly ex-soldier.

For much of its length "A Woman's Secret" is an engaging film noir. We instinctively know that Marian is innocent, despite her confession, but cannot quite put our finger on the solution to the mystery. It is adeptly directed by Nicholas Ray, in only his third feature film, in classic expressionist noir style and the acting is of a reasonable standard. Yet even in the early scenes there are things that do not ring true. Why, for example, does Matthews, Susan's former fiance, agree to defend Marian? Surely legal etiquette would prevent a lawyer who had had so close a relationship with the alleged victim of a crime from acting for the alleged perpetrator.

It is, however, the ending which really lets the film down and prevents it from getting a higher mark. Fowler's interfering wife Mary, whose knowledge of crime and police procedure is almost entirely gleaned from the pulp detective novels she reads, has previously functioned as the film's rather annoying comic relief, but she suddenly emerges as a major character with an important role in solving the mystery. The solution, however, only raises more unanswered questions. Instead of asking ourselves "Is Marian really guilty?", we now have to ask "Why did Marian confess to a crime she did not commit?", and never get an answer. The answer cannot be guilt feelings, as what she was trying to do- preventing Susan from committing suicide with a gun given to her by Lee, who turns out to be her estranged husband- was entirely laudable.

Susan's lack of self-confidence, understandable in an inexperienced young beginner, also becomes more difficult to understand when we learn that she has had immense success in showbiz, even seeing her name (or rather her stage name Estrellita) up in lights on Broadway. The film just about does enough in its early stages to keep an above-average mark, but it is really let down by a badly thought-out ending. 6/10.