The career of director Nicholas Ray has always been a puzzle to me. It started spectacularly with the very photogenic John Derek playing a surly delinquent defended by Humphrey Bogart in "Knock on Any Door" in 1949. After a series of somewhat sudsy sort-of-noirs (They Live by Night, In a Lonely Place, Born to be Bad, On Dangerous Ground, Run for Cover) and the lurid Western, "Johnny Guitar" (1954, shot in color) pitting Mercedes McCambridge against Joan Crawford, Ray directed "Rebel Without a Cause" in 1955. That was a big success, is the centerpiece of the legends of James Dean and Sal Mineo, and os the icon of 1950s youth alienation. Ray went on to bigger but not better things (including "King of Kings" and "55 Days in Peking") and turned up playing a cameo part in Wim Wenders's film of the second Ripley novel (released as "The American Friend"). Whatever clout he amassed from the success of "Rebel," he failed to use. But back near the beginning of his career this review goes.

"A Woman's Secret" was released less than two weeks after "Knock on Any Door" and a year before "All About Eve." It is like the latter film in focusing on the relationship between a female Broadway star and an up-and-coming one. The screenplay for "A Woman's Secret" was written by Herman J. Mankiewicz (most famous for the screenplays for "Citizen Kane," "Pride of the Yankees," and "Dinner at Eight"), who also produced the movie. "All About Eve" was written and directed by Herman's younger brother Joseph (who picked up Academy Awards both for writing and directing "Eve" in 1950, as hedid the year before for "A Letter to Three Wives"). There are major differences. Maureen O'Hara as the established star is considerably more restrained than Bette Davis, and Gloria Grahame (who was married to Ray at the time) was considerably less driven and conniving than Anne Baxter as the up-and-comer. Baxter's Eve wanted to supplant Davis's Margo, whereas Grahame's Susan doesn't want the stardom Marian has lost. Also, Melvyn Douglas was considerably less acerbic than George Sanders. And Marilyn Monroe wasn't standing around...

The movie on its own terms? Well, it's much more interesting using it to highlight what's extraordinary in "All About Eve" in contrast of different Mankiewiczes' scenarios, but "A Woman's Secret" has lots and lots and lots of exposition, so I suppose that I have to supply some.

Marian Washburn(O'Hara) the toast of the Broadway musical stage has lost her voice. She and her piano accompanist Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas) find, polish, and promote a simple, unambitious young newcomer to New York with a great voice, Susan Caldwell (Gloria Grahame). Eventually (actually at the beginning of the picture and then in two alternate versions as told first by Marian and then by Susan that become flashbacks), Susan gets tired of being managed and decides to quit the successful career into which Marian has vicariously poured herself and is shot. The creaking plot is concerned with whodunit (though never apparently trying to get fingerprints from the gun or establishing the distance at which the gun was fired) and why Susan was shot, neither of which is a particularly interesting question.. or at least neither of which has a particularly interesting answer.

What I do find interesting is Maureen O'Hara playing a driven, less-than-wholesome part. She was very beautiful, but the parts I remember her playing (with the one in "The Quiet Man" standing out, but also those in "How Green Was My Valley," the Laughton "Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Our Man in Havana") were not glamour parts. Grahame often got to play tough "dames" and sultry sirens, notably in Ray's "In a Lonely Place" with Humphrey Bogart and in two Fritz Lang noirs with Glenn Ford, "The Big Heat" and "Human Desire." (Although her breakthrough was in "It's a Wonderful Life," I can't say that I remember her in that.)

The romance and career-making melodramas are not compelling, and it's impossible to take the movie's police investigation seriously. Fortunately for the viewer, there is a parallel investigation by the wife of the police detective (Jay C. Flippen) who spends his time listening to background flashbacks from Luke Jordan. As a Manhattan Miss Marple, Mary Philips is hilarious. Her bandiage with Flippen is very funny, and her character steals every scene she's in (not that there's much competition!). The character Melvyn Douglas plays makes no sense, but he delivers his lines with suave conviction.

George E. Diskant's cinematography is serviceable, though he achieved more noirish effects for Ray in "They Live by Night" an "On Dangerous Ground."

In the sibling rivalry, Joe clearly triumphed. "All About Eve" also has plenty of soap opera romances and failed romances, but is cut through by much sharper wit than the occasional flashes Herman supplied "A Woman's Secret." (Oh, yes, the title is stupid. Vicki Baum (Grand Hotel) novel on which it was based, had the more noirish and relevant title Mortgage on Life.)



Recommended:
Yes