A question I am frequently asked is why write about Gloria Grahame? What is it about her or her movies that demanded my attention?

As happened with my second book project, Korean War Filmography, I was led to Gloria by Lee Marvin.  I began work on my first film book, Lee Marvin: His Films and Career, in the mid-1990s and published it in 2000.  While working on that first book, I became strongly impressed with The Big Heat (1953), which is a key movie in Lee Marvin’s development; it solidified his villainous persona for years to come.  And I was even more impressed with Gloria, who basically steals the show from Marvin and star Glenn Ford.  Her performance in The Big Heat is amazing, and I soon wanted to know more about her.

I began writing and publishing my movie newsletter, “Filmbobbery,” in 1999, and decided that I wanted to incorporate performer profiles into my format.  The first issue spotlighted Kurt Russell.  The second issue spotlighted Gloria Grahame.

For that profile I watched nearly all of Gloria’s available movies, summarized her career and ranked her five best performances.  The Big Heat was number one.  But I found that I liked Gloria’s performances a great deal, and that she was often better than the material with which she was working.  Every now and then I found a film like The Glass Wall (1953), which revealed more depth and versatility to her acting.

Even though my next book led me away from Gloria, she was never far from my thoughts about future books.  And after Korean War Filmography was finished, it was to Gloria that I turned.  Several years later, this book is the result.

So what is it about Gloria that I find so compelling?  She seems more alive on film than many of her contemporaries.  Her best performances are spontaneous and without vanity.  She could play cute or cunning, vulnerable or vicious, elegant or earthy at any moment, and was at her best when shading emotions into one another at the same time.  Gloria at the beginning was fresh and vibrant; later she was more sophisticated yet still primal.  She combined beauty and talent into one fascinating body of work.

For a relatively minor star (her heyday lasted just over a decade, from 1946-1956), Gloria made movies with some of the best directors in Hollywood (and Britain): Lang, Minnelli, Capra, Kazan, Dmytryk, Robson, Ray, De Mille, von Sternberg, Zinnemann, Gilbert, Kramer and Neame.  She costarred with some of Hollywood’s biggest names, yet wasn’t afraid to make “little” movies with limited appeal because the parts were better.  She studied hard (often with the help of her mother, stage actress Jean Grahame, who coached Gloria throughout her career) and devoted herself to giving the best performance possible, even when her instincts took her in paths different from those her directors wanted her to follow.

Her individuality really appeals to me.  In some ways an archetypal blonde starlet trying to make it big in Hollywood, Gloria soon found ways to differentiate herself from the myriad of other blonde starlets also searching for stardom.  For the most part, Gloria’s performances avoid the cookie cutter mold; she finds something to anchor each character and make it her own, often quite memorably.  That word probably sums Gloria’s appeal for me more than any other – memorable.  I find her memorable, and distinctive, and captivating.  I have greatly enjoyed getting to know her (through her films, of course) over the past several years, and I hope that she would have appreciated my book about her.  I hope you do too.