TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 1 and 10 a.m. ET is Joseph H. Lewis’ My Name is Julia Ross (1945) Starring Nina Foch, with Dame May Whitty, George Macready and Roland Varno

By David in TN
Friday, May 20, 2022 at 3:43:00 P.M. EDT

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 1 and 10 a.m. ET is Joseph H. Lewis’ My Name is Julia Ross (1945) with Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, George Macready and Roland Varno.

Film Noir Guide: “Foch, an unemployed American living in London, is grateful for her new live-in position—that of private secretary to a wealthy dowager (Whitty)—but, fortunately for the viewer, the mundane job turns into a film noir nightmare.

“On her first day at her new job, Foch is drugged by Whitty’s psychopathic, middle-aged son (Macready) and taken to a mansion outside London, where she’s passed off as his ill wife, recently released from a mental institution. It’s obvious to Foch that Whitty and Macready are up to something, but she can’t get the servants or the townspeople to believe her, because they all think she’s balmy.

“Trapped inside the estate by a high wall and a locked gate, the spunky captive tries every trick up her sleeve to escape or contact her boyfriend (Varno) in London, but Whitty and Macready always seem one step ahead of her.

“A frightening and compelling suspenser, this was director Lewis’ first noir, the film he considered the impetus for his successful career. Foch is perfect as the victim caught up in a seemingly hopeless situation, and Macready is excellent as the mama’s boy with a penchant for pocket knives. This classic film noir inspired the excellent Dead of Winter (1987) with Mary Steenburgen.”

David in TN: At the time, Nina Foch was 21, playing second and sometimes leads in Columbia B pictures. She later played supporting roles, getting an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Executive Suite (1954). She played guest roles in TV dramatic series’ for decades and taught acting.

Nina Foch looked great in My Name is Julia Ross, probably her best performance.



N.S.: In the Stix household, we positively adore Nina Foch, if only for one role in a botched movie.

First, she played an aristocratic nymphet in Spartacus (1960) who demands that the White, eponymous, 5’9” hero be forced to undergo a death match, which is against the rules at gladiator school, against black, 6’4” Woody Strode. Her character says, “I want the black one,” which was completely ahistorical, but which expressed black supremacist and White Communist propaganda, according to which White women were irresistibly attracted to black men.

When Strode’s character clearly wins the match, but refrains from killing his opponent, Foch’s character is given the option of mercy, but instead gives Spartacus the thumbs-down. That death sentence provokes Strode’s character to unsuccessfully attempt to kill Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier), who was behind the death match, and which sparks the slave rebellion. Because, you see, black slaves have a fundamental sense of justice.

Where Foch was irresistible was in Vincente Minelli and Gene Kelly’s An American in Paris (1951). I had first seen this picture in the summer of 1973 on a special series of classics broadcast weekly on CBS’ The Late Show (Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935; San Francisco, 1936; Meet Me in St. Louis, 1944, etc.).

I had recalled it as great enough to be an all-time, Top 30 picture. A few years ago, I bought the DVD and my chief of research and me watched it and I was greatly disappointed. (He wasn’t impressed either, and for the same reason.)

The protagonists, played by Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, are both unlikeable. Kelly’s got that Irish charm, but his artist, Jerry Mulligan, is a heel. And the female lead, Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron), is physically unattractive, personally unlikeable, and devoid of charm. However, things are much different with the second bananas. Nina Foch plays Jerry’s patron, Milo Roberts, and she’s beautiful, intelligent, and kind, all of the things Lise isn’t. And Lise’s guardian, Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary), is gallant, charming, and intelligent.

A true happy ending would have had Henri sweeping Milo off of her feet. Instead, Henri and Milo each end up alone, with a broken heart.

So, when Alan Jay Lerner set things up so that Jerry and Lise go off into the sunset, it signaled a failure on his part. (Why is it that writers of romantic comedies are obsessed with leaving certain characters—and not bad guys—broken-hearted?)

Lerner (1918-1986) was obsessed with a type of story in which an older man is responsible for the education of a girl or young woman, and suddenly realizes that he’s in love with her.

(The greatness of the picture derives from the Brothers Gershwin’s music, Kelly’s choreography, for which he should have gotten a co-director credit, the sets by Cedric Gibbons, et al., the costumes by Orry-Kelly, et al., Alfred Gilks’ and John Alton’s cinematography, and Minnelli’s painterly direction. As hard as it is to make a movie masterpiece, it is that much harder to make a musical masterpiece, because there are more moving parts.)

After American, Lerner must have realized that he’d botched the script, and embarked on a series of do-overs.

The first do-over, with composer Frederick Lowe (1901-1988), was the most successful: My Fair Lady (1956), based on Shaw’s play, Pygmalion.

The next do-over, Gigi (1958), also with Lowe, was also successful, in terms of Oscars (eight) and box office, and it did have its moments, especially the Chevalier-Gingold duet, “I Remember It Well.” However, for anyone who was familiar with its predecessors, Gigi had to have a feeling of Lerner having gone to the well once too often.