Crossfire
Gloria Grahame delivers an unforgettable performance as a bleach-blond, gin mill taxi dancer who gets mixed up with a discharged GI one long, strange night in Washington, DC. One of the first Hollywood films to address antisemitism, Crossfire is a taut procedural about the mysterious murder of a Jewish man. Boasting star turns from noir icons Robert Ryan (nominated for Supporting Actor) and Robert Mitchum, the film also received Oscar nominations for Directing (Edward Dmytryk) and Best Picture, though both Dmytryk and the film’s producer Adrian Scott would soon be blacklisted at the height of McCarthyism and, as members of the Hollywood Ten, serve prison terms.

A Woman’s Secret
Grahame ignites the screen in this sudsy near noir. She plays radio singer Estrellita, protégée to ex-chanteuse Marian Washburn (Maureen O’Hara). The women’s relationship is untangled over a series of unreliable flashbacks, offering star turns by both O’Hara and Grahame. Adapting the serialized novel Mortgage on Life by Austrian émigré writer Vicki Baum, A Woman’s Secret is also one of Citizen Kane (1941) screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s final screen credits. The sophomore effort of director Nicholas Ray, A Woman’s Secret marks the beginning of his offscreen romance with Grahame. They were married by the time the film was released in 1949.