Hollywood sure does get some wood over movies about making movies. 1958’s The Female Animal opens on a wide shot of a movie shoot. Our point of view is dead-on what appears to be beachside cliff. There is a wood-and-rope bridge across a waterfall running over the edge of a cliff.
Hedy Lamarr is on the bridge, acting out a scene where she struggles with a man. From her perspective, she sees a man and woman standing together behind the cameras and lights. She’s so startled, she falls several stories into the pool below. Cue stock “swirling newspaper” effect and we’re back to however far back in the past the events started which led up to this moment.
In this, the past, Lamarr is absent-mindedly walking across a soundstage, unaware of a falling light. Those studio lights were monstrous back then. It is quite likely Hedy would have lost her head if not for the quick actions of George Nader, playing an extra in whatever picture they were making.
As thanks, Lamarr invites Nader to be her date at a premiere. The date is successful enough that she hires him to maintain her beach house. I don’t recall if they discussed his duties. Probably most involved fluffing her shrubbery.
Although both the interiors and exterior are sets, I still want to live in this beach house. One weird feature is a bar with aquavit, champagne, gin and brandy on tap. Champagne on tap—would that even work? And nobody drinking it cares which vineyard and vintage it is?
Nader likes Lamarr, and is happy to have an in for bigger roles, but he bristles at being a kept man. He even tries to walk away from the arrangement when they encounter a fellow screen star (Jan Sterling) and her boy toy. Lamarr tries to shrug off Sterling’s insinuations. “Leaping to conclusions again?” “What else is there to leap at here but men.”
A complication arises in the form of Lamarr’s daughter, played by Jane Powell. Powell was adopted and is deeply resentful of Lamarr. “My mother. What did you do to earn that title beside pay a few bills.” Lamarr tries to empathize, but you wonder how much effort she really put in over the years. “I had to do it the hard way.” “What makes you think being your daughter is the easy way?”
Nader becomes involved with Powell after intervening in an altercation she’s having with her boyfriend at a bar being tended by the police lieutenant from Arsenic and Old Lace. She is sooo fake drunk. Unaware of who she is, Nader takes her to the beach house and throws her in the shower, like William Powell did to Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey.
Powell is definitely not Lombard. I can’t recall if I have ever seen her in anything before, but she’s not very good here. The nadirs of her performance comes whenever she plays drunk, which is too often in this picture.
Fortunately, the other actors are largely in good form. Lamarr, in what was to be her last feature film, is especially noteworthy. Those wanting to learn more about Lamarr are advised to seek out Bombshell, the excellent documentary about her life, including her work as an inventor(!). She actually created a technology that led to today’s Bluetooth devices.
Nader doesn’t fare as well, as his acting is a bit wooden. Still, he looks the part, which is half of the job right there.
The sharp script puts some choice bits of dialogue in every character’s mouth. Like this exchange between Powell and Nader’s agent: “My name’s Penny.” “And, me, an old coin collector from way back.” Or how about Lamarr bribing a manic kid to tell her which apartment is Nader’s: “Here’s a quarter. Before you spend it on wild living, can you tell me where Mr. Farley lives?”
That dialogue makes The Female Animal an above-average drama, but I’m not sure it qualifies as film noir, which is how it is being marketed by Kino. Regardless of how one categorizes it, this is a solid movie and it alone should motivate purchases of the second entry in Kino’s Dark Side of Cinema boxed set collections.
Dir: Harry Keller
Starring Hedy Lamarr, George Nader, Jan Powell
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s box set Dark Side of Cinema II