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Sadly Over-hyped

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Can you imagine a movie where Maureen O'Hara plays the bad guy? Me neither, but I was seriously excited when A Woman's Secret started and she shot Gloria Grahame in the opening scene. Her usual over-the-top persona is gone, and in its place is a confessed murderess!As Maureen sits in a jail cell, her boyfriend Melvyn Douglas and the head detective Jay C. Flippen try to piece together the real story behind the shooting. Prepare yourself for lots of flashbacks, and lots of dubbed singing from Gloria-anyone who heard her in Oklahoma knows she can barely carry a tune. Still, when she's wearing a gorgeous gown by Edward Stevenson, it doesn't really matter what comes out of her mouth. At the end of the day, the mystery was far more interesting than the real story, so if you do decide to rent this one, chances are you'll feel let down by the ending. It's not the worst old movie in the world, though, especially if you want to see another side to Maureen O'Hara.

After two duds, Nicholas Ray's third directorial attempt finally broke through the mold to create an intriguing story complete with a fine mixture of hard-boiled and humorous dialogue as well as solid acting from everyone down to the minute supporting roles.Maureen O'Hara and Gloria Grahame headline a two women with a strange connection pushed even closer together when one of them is shot and the other is accused. Melvyn Douglas, in his trademark wry style of speaking, attempts to investigate, hoping to clear O'Hara's name. What follows is a string of flashbacks interspersed with the police, Grahame's lover and even the police inspector's wife getting into the mix. Rays films all of this with some interesting camera angles as well as some lighting tricks which certainly would influence his later work. The social messages are done away with and what is left is a witty, clever script by the (in)famous Herman J. Mankiewicz which keeps us hanging in the balance up to the very end.

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.

The title -- "A Woman's Secret" -- might be enough to turn some viewers off. It sounds like a Joan Crawford beastie from the 1930s. And actually the opening isn't too promising. Partners Maureen O'Hara and Gloria Graham have an argument. Graham, a singer and protégé of O'Hara's, wants to break up the deal. She runs upstairs. O'Hara follows, full of anger. A shot rings out. The maid dashes upstairs and finds Graham on the floor with a bullet near her heart. O'Hara is standing over her. Shortly afterward, O'Hara confesses to the cops, led by Jay C. Flippen.Well, in the kind of typical genre movie that suggests itself, one of the young ladies (and they're both young) should have been exploiting and abusing the other, who will have suffered in silence. There should be a man in the picture -- jealousy, intrigue, confused emotions, one crisis piled upon another.Instead, it's a meandering B movie sort of plot with quite a few character making an entrance, followed by a few remarks. There's the angry Bill Williams, the effete Mamma's boy Victor Jory, and mostly Melvyn Douglas as a close friend of the female duo, closer to O'Hara than to Graham.Sometimes you may wonder what the point is, what direction the plot is heading in, but the movie is saved mainly by the appealing presence of O'Hara and Graham, and by a subtle wit built into the dialog, not always obvious. I'll give one example.Graham is in the hospital recovering from the gunshot wound. Douglas comes to visit her but is blocked by a gnarled old cop seated by the door. "No hangin' around here is allowed. There's a waiting room at the end of the hall," says the cop authoritatively.Douglas tries to wheedle his way in but gives up and begins to walk away. Then he stops and points to a door at the end of the hallway. "That door that says "Waiting Room," is that where you wait?" The cop nods firmly and says yes, the barb sailing completely over his head.And don't worry. Maureen O'Hara didn't shoot Gloria Graham. Would Maureen O'Hara ever shoot ANYONE? No, she wouldn't, although if you sassed her too much she might slap you roundly.The two ladies sing some pretty pop tunes -- "Estrellita" ("Little Star") written in 1912 and based on a Mexican folk song, and "Paradise", which tune you may recognize, if not the title.