Happy Birthday, Audrey Totter - Noir Watch: Lady in the Lake (1947)

Watched:  12/18/2025

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  ha ha ha ha...  oh, mercy

Director:  Robert Montgomery

December 20th marks the birthday of Signal Watch patron saint of noir bad girls, Audrey Totter.  

For more on one of our favorite stars of the silver screen, here's a post from earlier this year on Moviejawn.

Last year, through a series of misadventures, we missed our annual watch of Lady in the Lake (1947), and so we wanted to make sure we got in this year's screening.   You have your Christmas movies, I have mine.  

Robert Montgomery stars and directs, mostly as Marlowe's voice over.  Montgomery is not a bad actor, but his Marlowe is maybe my least favorite - I mean, Bogart plays the same guy in The Big Sleep, and I'm a huge fan of Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet.*

There's truly nothing like this movie - not from this era.  95% of the film is presented from the subjective viewpoint of Philip Marlowe - our lead and a detective.**  The idea is that the audience is looking through Marlowe's eyes - eyes which are a camera the size and weight of a Mini-Cooper.  As a studio film where they let a new director run with an idea, it's some very strange viewing that in 2025, feels like the world's longest videogame cut-scene.

The subjective view had been done in part (see  Dark Passage.  No, really, amazing film.), but they're still working out how to do it, and Montgomery is new to directing,so the effort inevitably draws attention to itself in numerous ways.  Angles are off for where Marlowe's hands appear.  Lighting is complicated sometimes.  Everyone looks Marlowe directly in the eye, which is kind of insane for actors, but also leads to odd blocking.  But it can also produce some neat effects as characters approach Marlowe or he approaches them, and gives a real personality to what we do and don't see.

But, the novel of Lady in the Lake is a tangled web of events and characters.  In the book, we're deducing events that happened in the past, but that takes travel to multiple locations the movie doesn't visit, where quite a bit happens.  If Montgomery wanted to adapt a novel, there had to have been one that was going to be more streamlined. Maybe due to the complexity of trying to shoot this way in the woods, or for runtime or budget, the movie skips whole sections of the book and relates them as exposition.  But those speeches are discussing crucial people and events we don't see - in a movie about what we see.  It's... weird. 

Thus, the movie requires absolute attention to the right things at the right time or it doesn't make sense.  It really helps to have read the book.  

The tidbit I figured out in the last year is that Jayne Meadows, who plays a major supporting role, is the sister of Audrey Meadows - co-star of The Honeymooners.  

But we're here to discuss Audrey Totter, and discuss Audrey Totter we shall do.  

In a movie that weaponizes the male gaze, Totter is our object of interest.  It's a male gaze weighed down my machinery - the glace away to the receptionist is not a furtive glance, it's an Exorcist head-spin.  Taking in Adrienne Fromsett, Totter's character, is not done in bits and pieces, it's a psychopath's lingering stare.  As the script is incredibly weak for explaining why Marlowe - not a kid in this movie - falls for Adrienne Fromsett, it's up to Totter's presence to making a convincing argument.  And, I'll call it a homerun.  

People tend to guffaw at short clips of Totter in this movie, but she's creating a whole acting technique on the fly here, supporting her pal who got her in the movie (as Muller explains, she was up for Kitty in The Killers but landed this role, instead.  One wonders what other trajectory her life might have taken).  She's not given options, she's running the film canister out performing whole scenes without a cut, alone on the other side of the camera.  She's flirting, haranguing, threatening and "making love" to a lens, not near a lens.  

And, clips look strange out of context.  Within the movie, Totter makes the movie come alive in ways no other performer does.  Jayne Meadows may be electric every time you see her, but it feels like a screentest.  She's in a wider shot, she's not moving at all in the first scene.  Totter's Fromsett moves, she's her own woman, and she's not pinned down by Marlowe/ the camera.

Returning to a movie with a two year gap provides a chance for fresh eyes.  And maybe it's the transfer I'm watching on HBOmax, but details kind of came out at me.  When Marlowe brings her the gun, she's shaking - I've seen this a few times and heard a bit of change in her tone, but the frosty exterior is barely holding.  When we meet her, she's the facade of the upscale gal - she's putting on something like a finishing-school accent, but by the time she's had it with Marlowe, she's a streetwise gal in expensive clothes - too people who've seen too much who can be real with each other.  It's a subtle shift, but it's interesting to hear her choices in a movie that's distracting the viewer with novelty.

If Totter had an issue as an actor, it was that she wasn't a character actor.  She played bad girls, but good luck saying this is the same character as her role in Tension, The Unsuspected, or Man or Gun.  She has trademark eyes, certain, and it's absolutely Audrey Totter in every role, but it's not quite the same as some actors of the era who tended to play the same, no matter the role.  And then, she could pivot to playing heroines in High Wall or  FBI Girl, or knocking your socks off in The Set-Up.  Or a seductress in Any Number Can Play.  

I have my suspicions that by not pigeonholing Totter, she maybe became 2nd or 3rd choice instead of "an Audrey Totter type" when they got around to casting.  Which is too bad.  I think she's ahead of her time.

Anyway, here at The Signal Watch, ever since Jenifer directed our attention to Ms. Totter, we've been huge fans, and we're delighted to remember her on her birthday.

If anyone has information on where I can find the following films, let me know:

• Under the Gun
• Massacre Canyon
• Ghost Diver
• Champ for a Day
• Assignment Paris
• The Blue Veil

*it's also easy to take a swipe at Montgomery for being a huge HUAC supporter but he did produce Elizabeth Montgomery, so how bad could he be?

**Marlowe is the narrator/ lead in a popular line of detective novels by famed mystery novelist Raymond Chandler