Audrey Totter, an actress who specialized in playing temptresses, dangerous dames and women harboring dark schemes in a series of movies from Hollywood\u2019s film noir period of the 1940s and \u201850s, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 95.<\/p>\n
She had congestive heart failure after a stroke, her daughter, Mea Lane, said.<\/p>\n
Totter first set the screen afire with a small but sizzling part in the 1946 noir classic \u201cThe Postman Always Rings Twice.\u201d When her car breaks down, she steps out as John Garfield \u2014 already enmeshed with another femme fatale played by Lana Turner \u2014 offers to look under the hood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to wait standing up,\u201d says Miss Totter\u2019s character, Madge. \u201cIt\u2019s a hot day and that\u2019s a leather seat. And I\u2019ve got on a thin skirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Garfield raises the idea of driving across the border to Mexico, Madge takes the bait: \u201cYou\u2019re an outlaw. Can\u2019t stand captivity. Me too. . . . What time will we get back from Mexico?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, uh, I got a whole week,\u201d Garfield\u2019s character says. \u201cCome on, slide in.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right,\u201d Madge says.<\/p>\n
Over the next several years, Totter was in demand as one of Hollywood\u2019s sexiest and most alluring actresses, often playing cynical and malevolent women who, in the words of film historian Eddie Muller, \u201chad a heart as big and warm as an ice cube.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of her signature roles came in the 1949 film \u201cTension,\u201d in which she was the faithless wife of a bland druggist. Her character was \u201ca vile voluptuary \u2014 sin incarnate,\u201d Muller wrote in his 2001 book \u201cDark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the film, Miss Totter\u2019s character kills one of her lovers, then manipulates her jilted husband into taking the rap for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you, anyway,\u201d she taunted him. \u201cYou want the cops to move in here and live with us?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you haven\u2019t got enough brains to agree with me, then keep your mouth shut. From here on in, I\u2019m answering all the questions \u2014 got it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Totter starred in \u201cLady in the Lake\u201d (1947), directed by and starring Robert Montgomery as Raymond Chandler\u2019s jaded private eye Philip Marlowe. In \u201cHigh Wall\u201d (1947), she was a psychiatrist trying to uncover the secrets of a brain-injured war veteran who falsely confessed to having strangled his wife.<\/p>\n
She played the long-suffering wife of Robert Ryan, an aging boxer in \u201cThe Set-Up\u201d (1949). In \u201cThe Unsuspected\u201d (1947), with Claude Rains, she played a scheming wife in a complicated tale of murder. As in many of Totter\u2019s movies, the plot took a back seat to her performance, highlighted by her steely gaze and imperturbable composure.<\/p>\n
At one point, a man is admiring a painting in her house.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s very much like Montreux in his middle period,\u201d he says. \u201cWho painted it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband,\u201d Totter replies. \u201cIn his sober period. Before he married me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Totter was considered for a starring role in \u201cThe Killers\u201d (1946), but a scheduling conflict kept her off the project. The part went to Ava Gardner and made her a star.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had great parts,\u201d Totter said in 2001, \u201cbut the pictures just didn\u2019t catch on \u2014 they didn\u2019t do big box office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only later was she recognized as one of film noir\u2019s biggest stars, along with other actresses including Gloria Grahame, Jane Greer and Barbara Stanwyck. Considered B-movie throwaways at the time, noir films are now one of the most avidly studied genres from Hollywood\u2019s golden age.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years nobody bothered with me \u2014 didn\u2019 t know who I was, didn\u2019t care,\u201d she told the Toronto Star in 2000. \u201cNow I\u2019m recognized on the street, I\u2019m asked for my autograph, I get loads of fan mail.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she had to turn down a proposal from one teenager, writing back to explain that she was now a grandmother in her 80s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knew these movies would be so popular 50 years later? Maybe it\u2019s because the world isn\u2019t like that anymore. The fantasy of it. They painted with light in those days, it\u2019s a look that just isn\u2019t done anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Audrey Mary Totter was born Dec. 20, 1917, in Joliet, Ill. Her Austrian-born father was a streetcar driver.<\/p>\n
She acted in radio dramas before going to Hollywood and signing on as a contract player with MGM. After film noir began to fade in the 1950s, she acted in westerns and television, including a recurring role as a nurse on \u201cMedical Center\u201d in the 1970s.<\/p>\n
Although she briefly dated Clark Gable, Totter was never tainted by a trace of scandal. One of her best friends was Grahame, whose off-screen life was more notorious than anything she did on camera.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of my fellow Hollywood glamour girls led such tragic, wasted lives,\u201d Totter said in 2000.<\/p>\n
In 1953, she married Leo Fred, a doctor and assistant dean of the UCLA School of Medicine. He died in 1995. Survivors include her daughter of Woodland Hills, a brother and two grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Totter\u2019s final acting role came in 1987, when she appeared on an episode of Angela Lansbury\u2019s \u201cMurder, She Wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n
She continued to receive offers but seldom found anything that appealed to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat could I play?\u201d she asked in 2000. \u201cA nice grandmother? Boring! Critics always said I acted best with a gun in my hand.\u201d