Dig A Hole: Ann Savage
December 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Ann Savage had some thirty features to her credit and after her third appearance (a walk-on in The More The Merrier), there’s not an “A” picture in the bunch. Other than her last poverty row production, Allan Dwan’s The Woman They Almost Lynched, I have seen only one film starring Ann Savage. Why even bother covering the passing of someone so obscure? As Vera, the beastly vixen in Edgar G. Ulmer’s king of the B’s, Detour, Ms. Savage left an indelible mark as the definitive hard living film noir tramp.
Ann Savage was born Bernice Maxine Lyon in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 19, 1921. Her father, an army officer, died when Ann was four. Several years later her mother, a jewelry buyer, moved her daughter to Los Angeles. The young ingenue trained at Max Reinhardt’s acting school and appeared in local theatre productions. Bernice got more than she bargained for: Bert D’Armand, the school’s manager later became her agent and, in 1945, Mr. Ann Savage. The two remained a couple until his death in 1969.
Bernice Lyon became “Ann Savage” long before she stepped in front of a camera. The name change took place during a workshop production of Golden Boy that led to a contract at Columbia Pictures. While with the studio she appeared in such sapless fluff as Two Señoritas from Chicago (1943), Footlight Glamour (1943) and Saddles and Sagebrush (1943).
Savage starred opposite Tom Neal in three pictures — Klondike Kate (1943), Two-Man Submarine (1944) and The Unwritten Code (1944) — before the cut rate combo teamed with Ulmer for the budget-less, bizarre and intensely personal film noir masterwork. Savage plays a chain-smoking, hitch-hiking harridan who bullies her way into Neal’s car and eventually topples his life. No character in the annals of cinema has ever called another character “chicken” with quite the amount of venom and spit in her voice as Ann Savage. Shot in six days with two actors, two sets, a rear screen projector and the world’s largest cup of coffee, Detour is a tour de force of economy and inventiveness.
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Tags: ann savage, ann savage dead, ann savage detour, ann savage dies, b movies, edgar g. ulmer, edgar ulmer, Obituary, tom nealFiled Under Obituaries