CHARACTER ACTORS PART 11: GLORIA GRAHAME. Here's why I love her: Without Love (1945) w/ Katharine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy It's A Wonderful Life (1946) w/ James Stewart Crossfire (1947) w/ Robert Mitchum

In A Lonely Place (1950) w/ Humphrey Bogart

Sudden Fear (1952) w/ Joan Crawford

The Big Heat (1953) w/ Glenn Ford & Lee Marvin

Blood and Lace (1971)

Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) w/ John Heard

Gloria never seemed to catch a break. She was either the woman some man done dirt to or else the floozy who never got any respect. In "The Big Heat", Lee Marvin horribly scars her by hurling a boiling pot of coffee in her face. "In A Lonely Place" finds Humphrey Bogart similarly terrorizing her. Even in the perennial family feel good Christmas staple "It's A Wonderful Life", it's Gloria Grahame who plays a "loose woman". Gloria seems to be one of the quintessential film noir dames. When she falls for hack writer Humphrey Bogart in "In a Lonely Place" after providing an alibi for him when a girlfriend is murdered, things seem to be going along fine. However, Bogie soon reveals a terrifying, violent temper leading Gloria to doubt whether or not the man she loves is actually a murderer. Bogie's performance is actually terrifying while Grahame makes you feel genuine fear and concern for her welfare. "In A Lonely Place" is actually a kinda nastier version of Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion". There is a particular aspect to Gloria Grahame which is so beaten-down by life that it lends itself to so many of the roles in which she was cast. Something in her eyes (those half-open, heavy-lidded eyes) seems to speak to a life of hard knocks and a happy ending never seems to loom in her future.

It was a particular stroke of casting genius which found Gloria Grahame, near the end of her career, cast in the role of John Heard's marginally insane and frequently suicidal mother in one of my favourite films: "Chilly Scenes of Winter". We first meet her character near the beginning of the film when she calls her son threatening to kill herself. When Heard goes to her house, we find Gloria Grahame wearing a long evening dress and high heels sobbing inside a bathtub filled with water. The scene is played tragi-comically since the suicide attempts are never really for real (only once during the movie does she eat a card of laxatives because her suicide attempts are apparently caused by constipation pain). Gloria's character apparently longs for the past: she frequently wears 40's-style evening gowns and her hair is still done in the 40's fashion. Knowing Gloria Grahame's long movie career (and the types of characters she played), one could easily believe she would turn into this type of character; who seemingly chooses to go a little dotty so she can do or say whatever the hell she feels. And that's a pretty good reason to love her.