Bad girl movies
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
"Bad girl movies" are a subcategory of film noir labeled by latter-day movie buffs to describe the dark films of the 1940s and 1950s starring bad girls: beautiful women who were usually on the wrong side of the law. The movie posters to these films usually featured sexy artwork of the lady in question, posed seductively, and these images today in original posters and reproductions are as collected today, as are the films themselves are on VHS and DVD.
Women in prison films
Perhaps the ultimate bad girl movies are women's prison films with the women in question behind bars; the majority of these films were made well after the classical film noir period and include one of the more socially-conscious films of the genre, Why Must I Die?.
Classic "bad girl" performances
Among the classic "bad girl" performances are:
- Ida Lupino in They Drive by Night (1940)
- Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon (1941)
- Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face (1941)
- Faye Emerson in Lady Gangster (1942)
- Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944)
- Claire Trevor in Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Born to Kill (1947)
- Ann Blyth in Mildred Pierce (1945)
- Ann Savage in Detour (1945)
- Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
- Veda Ann Borg in Accomplice (1946)
- Ava Gardner in The Killers (1946)
- Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
- Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep (1946)
- Janis Carter in Framed (1947)
- Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947) and Station West (1948)
- Jayne Meadows in Lady in the Lake (1947)
- Lizabeth Scott in Dead Reckoning (1947) and Too Late for Tears (1949)
- Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street (1948)
- Leslie Brooks in Blonde Ice (1948)
- Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1948)
- Anne Baxter in All About Eve (1950) and Bedevilled (1955)
- Laurette Luez in D.O.A. (1950)
- Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy (1950)
- Audrey Totter in Tension (1950)
- Joan Fontaine in Born to Be Bad (1950)
- Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and Niagara (1953)
- Cleo Moore in On Dangerous Ground (1952) and One Girl's Confession (1953)
- Gaby Rodgers in Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
- Marie Windsor in The Killing (1956)
- Jane Russell in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956)
- Diana Dors in The Unholy Wife (1957)
- Mamie Van Doren in High School Confidential (1958)
- Nicole Kidman in Malice (1993)
- Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction (1994)
Others in the "bad girl" category include: Gloria Grahame, Dorothy Malone, Beverly Michaels, and Jane Randolph.
See also
