When noir turned its full attention to the home front, however—when marriage was the subject of the film rather than a backdrop for a couple of scenes—things took a decidedly nasty twist. The home front, it turned out, was a battlefield of disappointment and recrimination. The sunny suburbs of America were breeding grounds of resentment and infidelity. And, sometimes, violence.
The most famous bad wife in classic noir was, of course, Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder’s 1944 Double Indemnity. Playing Mrs. Dietrichson, star Barbara Stanwyck practically invented archetype of the evil wife. Mrs. Dietrichson is the sexy young wife of a rich older man. When insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) comes to her door she seduces him into helping her kill her husband. Wilder adapted the script, from James M. Cain’s novel, with the help of Raymond Chandler. The two men hated each other, but they gave real fire to the character of Mrs. Dietrichson. “We’re both rotten,” she tells Neff. He nods and says, “Only you’re a little more rotten.” Poor bastard doesn’t know the half of it.
She was hardly alone, though. Due respect should also be paid to Audrey Totter’s chilling turn in director John Berry’s underrated 1949 Tension. Totter plays Mrs. Claire Quimby, the bored housewife of a milquetoast soda jerk played by Richard Basehardt. She’ll eventually drive her husband to the brink of murder, but Totter never plays Mrs. Quimby as an evil caricature. Rather, she is a woman with a large sexual appetite and a hunger for the easy life. Even as the plot progresses and Mrs. Quimby becomes more of a monster, she never completely loses our sympathy. She may be no damn good, but when she tells her husband what a schmuck he’s become (“It was different in San Diego—you were kind of cute in your uniform. You were full of laughs then. Well, you’re all laughed out now.”) it’s difficult to miss the disillusionment that’s driving her. Femmes fatales are always most effective when their evil derives from a real emotional place, in Mrs. Quimby’s case her violent reaction to the postwar suburban utopia. She prefers the speed and movement of the war years over her husband’s enthusiastic promise of a house with a garbage disposal. Hell, who can blame her?
Mrs. Palmer is played with a precise combination of sympatric sadness and coldblooded conviction by the exquisite Lizabeth Scott in Byron Haskin’s brilliant 1949 Too Late For Tears. Scott makes Jane Palmer both a touching figure—a woman drowning in the banality of what is supposed to her happy life—and a truly scary creation. We follow her as moment by moment she inches closer to the conclusion that she’d rather have the money than her boring husband.
The irony of Windsor’s title as world’s worst wife? Read Eddie Muller’s invaluable book Dark City Dames, which profiles several noir goddesses including Windsor and Totter, and you’ll discover that Marie Windsor was happily married to the same man for nearly fifty years. Muller’s moving account of the ailing Windsor gently caring for her dying husband Jack Hupp as they both neared the end of their lives is an ironic tribute to a great, and greatly undervalued, actress.
Other Wicked Wives of Note:
- Faith Domergue in Where Danger Lives
- Jean Simmons in Angel Face
- Gloria Grahame in Human Desire
- Arlene Dahl in Wicked As They Come
- Gene Tierney in Leave Her To Heaven
- Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai
- Googie Withers in Night and the City
- Peggie Castle in 99 River Street
- Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice
- Joanne Dru in 711 Ocean Drive
Jake Hinkson, The Night Editor, is the author of Hell on Church Street.
I might think twice about marrying Kathleen Turner in BODY HEAT?
Ditto Linda Fiorentino in THE LAST SEDUCTION?
You’ve given some thought to the deadly dames, Mike! Do we need the worst wives of neo-noir next?