Really Surprised!

Purely Joyful Movie!

How sad is this?

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

In the end, this lousy film noir is all about nothing. Why the writers thought that their denouncement of how/why a temperamental singer (Gloria Grahame) was shot, and why her mentor (Maureen O'Hara) would claim guilt is about as engrossing as a Progressive Car Insurance Commercial. No surprises, no plot twists, basically no plot. It starts off promising with the usually feisty but essentially lovable O'Hara playing an embittered character laying claim to Grahame's career, then the sound of a gunshot coming from Graham's room while arguing with O'Hara. From there, it bogs into a bunch of melodramatic nonsense with O'Hara flashing back to how she lost her own singing voice, how she and her fiancé (Melvyn Douglas) met Grahame (playing a poor man's Eve Harrington), how Grahame's romantic nonsense (involving Douglas, sleazy looking Victor Jory and handsome Bill Williams) almost ruined their relationship and finally the revelation of the so-called secret. When a film with this cast ends up being a dud, you know that the fault lies with the screenplay. It seems obvious that it looked much better on paper, but when transfered onto celluloid, it sinks like a rock through slushy ice on a winter pond.

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 film begins with a shooting. While Maureen O'Hara tells the police she shot her protégé, Gloria Graham, her boyfriend (Melvin Douglas) is sure she couldn't have done such a thing. Both tell their side of the story from their perspective and the police wait until Graham recovers from surgery to get at the truth.This is an okay idea for a film--not great, but it sure could have been a lot better. The main problem is that although this was meant to be a serious suspense/mystery film, there were some characters who were poorly written--mostly the women in the cast. The worst, of course, was the detective's nosy wife. I assume someone thought it would be cute to include her in the story, but frankly she seemed all wrong for the overall mood of the film. On one hand, it was supposed to be a mystery and was rather interesting but on the other, they stuck this obnoxious ditz into the film for comic relief! Comic relief in a film like this just made very little sense. Having this obnoxious lady blundering about was akin to putting Pee Wee Herman in an opera. The other problem is that it simply made little sense to have O'Hara taking responsibility for the shooting--especially once you learn the truth. It just made no sense at all. The final problem, though not as serious, was that the character Graham played was frankly too dumb and flighty. Had they made her more ruthless or just less stupid, the film would have clicked much better. It all seemed as if the writers just couldn't write women's parts well.Had they worked out these problems, the film might have been very watchable. However, because of these factors, it's only a minor time-passer and not a film to rush to see.

With elements of All About Eve, Mildred Pierce and Trapeze in it, A Woman's Secret hardly rates as being as good as one of the three films mentioned. Maybe the title is wrong, there really is no secret about anything here.If A Woman's Secret has earned any place at all in cinema history it's because director Nicholas Ray met and fell for Gloria Grahame on the set of this film. He became her second husband. As for the film, retired singer now manager Maureen O'Hara has a quarrel with her protégé Gloria Grahame. Later on when Grahame is shot and critically wounded, O'Hara is brought in for questioning.Composer and critic Melvyn Douglas in a character based on parts of Alexander Woollcott, Clifton Fadiman, and Oscar Levant just simply doesn't believe the whole thing. He lobbies vigorously on O'Hara's behalf with investigating detective Jay C. Flippen. But it's Flippen's wife, Mary Phillips, who actually finds the key. The answer is really rather obvious, but it's how the story is unraveled that's the key to the film.Nicholas Ray went on to direct a whole lot better films and the suspense factor just isn't there for me in this one. The very professional cast go through their required paces. Others in the ensemble include Victor Jory as a criminal attorney that Douglas brings in for O'Hara who knows both of them and Bill Williams, a former GI who was to marry Grahame.With their only being a small amount of alternate probabilities other than O'Hara trying to commit murder, there's not much of a secret to A Woman's Secret.