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Ann Savage, gruff and tough noir star, dies
Ann Savage, ferocious star of the classic, down-n’-dirty 1945 noir “Detour,” has died at age 87. She was most recently seen in Guy Maddin’s acclaimed “My Winnipeg,” playing Maddin’s mother.
Savage was at the old Alamo Drafthouse Downtown in 2004 to screen “Detour.” I interviewed her by phone a few days before her appearance. We re-run it here:
She played the angry young woman, a hard-bitten harridan so venomous she didn’t speak, she hissed. Her male co-star cowered not out of gutlessness, but because she had the goods on the sap, could wreck his life with a phone call. This dime-store Medusa played her ace to the cruelest hilt.
This is Ann Savage, who portrayed wicked Vera in Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic noir “Detour” with such vituperative force, the actress struggled to shake her image as the harpy from Hell. That bad-girl swagger, that clipped delivery rendering words shrapnel, that emasculating snarl. It’s not easy to watch 1945’s fast, scrappy “Detour” (the cinematic spitball clocks in at a punchy 67 minutes) without feeling the burn of Savage’s nuclear heat.
And yet, here she is on the phone sounding for all the world like your beloved grandmother.
“People tell me I’m very sweet,” Savage says with a knowing chortle.
Savage is at her Los Angeles home, preparing for another road show with Eddie Muller, author of “Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir,” a collection of profiles about noir’s sauciest femme fatales, from Marie Windsor to Jane Greer and, of course, Savage. For six years, Savage and Muller have toured theaters to screen “Detour,” discuss the film and sign Muller’s books for diehard fans of the downbeat, postwar film style called noir.
Savage and Muller bring “Detour” to the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown for two shows tonight.
The actress’ preparation for the show includes avoiding the tennis court. “I never play tennis before I go on these tours, because you have a responsibility to what you’ve been asked to do,” says Savage. At 83, she can’t dismiss potential injuries. “I’ve fallen a couple of times. I go for any ball I can hit!”
That sounds more like Vera, a woman whose preferred riposte is a scratchy “Shut up!,” who snaps like a junkyard cur and marinates her fury in battery acid.
In “Detour,” Al Roberts (played by Tom Neal) finds himself in a bind when his ride abruptly croaks and he decides to hide the body and keep driving. He picks up Savage on the side of the road. “The very last woman I should have ever met,” says Al in the trademark world-weary voice-over of noir.
But before he realizes what kind of rotten apple he’s picked, Al glances over at Vera napping in the passenger seat of the breezy convertible. “She seemed harmless enough,” he says.
As if on cue, Vera jerks awake and bites Al’s head off. Throughout the movie’s taut, corrosive journey, she never stops chewing.
Made by B-flick factory Producers Releasing Corporation, known as PRC, “Detour” never quite shinnied out of the B-movie basement, despite some good reviews in 1945. Yet like many gems overlooked in their time, such as “Sweet Smell of Success,” “Detour” acquired a patina of cult adoration, and is considered by buffs to be one of the great quintessential noirs. A 1992 remake didn’t fare so well.
“I’m thrilled to death,” Savage says of its longevity, “because it’s kept me in the limelight.”
Low-budget director Ulmer shot “Detour” in six days with a limited allowance of film stock. Most of the simple story takes place in a grubby apartment in Los Angeles, where Vera and Al’s ill-paired chemistry pressure cooks. Though he’s innocent, all fingers point to Al’s guilt in the driver’s death, and Vera holds him hostage in an extortion deal. Al sweats and squirms as she tightens her serpent’s squeeze. The slightest protest from Al is swatted down with vinegar outbursts. “You’ll pop into jail so fast it’ll give you the bends!” Vera growls.
In one of those fabled Hollywood miracles, Savage shot her scenes in three and a half days. Preparation was minimal, Savage recalls, as the character of Vera was written (by Martin Goldsmith, on whose novel the film is based) so sharply. Ulmer had Savage speed up her delivery to make it snap and asked her to speak “tough and hard.”
“I couldn’t talk from the diaphragm,” Savage says. “I was delivering it right out of the throat through clenched teeth to keep that anger. She was very angry all the time. You’re very tense when you’re playing angry. It wipes you out.”
Born Bernice Lyon in South Carolina, Savage’s oddly apt stage name was inspired by her real-life temper. She demonstrated this spirit to co-star Neal when they worked previously on “Klondike Kate,” in which Savage played the lead. Neal, on a dare, stuck his tongue in the actress’ ear. She socked him in the jaw.
Savage later channeled her dislike for Neal as Vera. “I had got such mistreatment from him that when I got the part of Vera with him playing such a milquetoast, I had to go home at night and laugh, because that had to be hard for him,” she says.
Savage took the role of Vera after Columbia dropped her contract, making her a free agent. But the role of a lifetime had more of a stigmatizing than star-making effect. Her acidic performance burned into the memories of directors and producers, who saw Vera when they looked at the glamorous Savage.
Savage worked in film and television until 1986. Her movies were chiefly B and Savage was typecast as the “other woman.” Later in life, she took up flying planes for fun and did secretarial duties in a law office for 28 years.
It’s with presentations of “Detour” like tonight’s that Savage can bask in belated glory among fans.
“Vera was a wonderful part. It was so strong,” she says. “Bad girls are the best parts. Vera got to be drunk, maudlin, sexy. There were many wonderful little nuances about her.”
When “female empowerment” is mentioned in the same sentence as Vera, Savage recoils. “Oh, please don’t use that. ‘Female empowerment.’ ” She chuckles. “That’s a new one to me.”
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