I Wake Up Screaming (1941) (aka Hot Spot)
d. H. Bruce Humberstone

Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis)

In this early film noir (probably the first one!), 8th Avenue lunchroom night-shift waitress Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis) was murdered (strangled) just before her anticipated departure for Hollywood.

In a story told mostly in flashback, publicity agent/manager Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature), a NY fight promoter, had been impressed by Vicky's beauty, ambition, and aspirations to be a model, and began to support her as an up-and-coming "celebrity" for all the obvious reasons - besides talent: "She had looks, youth, good figure, what more do you want?" Her ascent to the top had been swift:

...Life became just one great, dizzy world for her. She was asked everywhere. She got offers to pose for advertisements, model clothes, enter the aquacade, join the ice ballet, every possible form of publicity. She even remembered the singing lessons Mom had paid for and suddenly started to fancy herself as a chanteuse. Frankie even managed to get her a job singing with a name band.

However, she dumped Frankie when she impulsively accepted another "business" arrangement with a Hollywood producer-promoter who gave her a screen test and immediately offered her a long-term contract. After being spurned, Frankie commiserated at a bar with his two buddies: fading, aging actor Robin Ray (Alan Mowbray) and gossip columnist Larry Evans (Allyn Joslyn), who lamented their lack of luck with women who couldn't be controlled:

Robin: Women are all alike.
Larry: For Pete's sake, what difference does that make? You've got to have them. They're standard equipment.

Frankie was particularly miffed: "All I got was a handshake, a smile and a promise."

Because he had been spurned, Frankie was immediately suspected of the crime when he was found standing by her body in her NYC apartment. In the film's opening, he was intensely grilled under bright lights by a number of police detectives, including ruthless and vindictive NYC police detective Inspector Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar). Cornell held Frankie responsible for the murder of Vicky during an intense and unhealthy personal crusade to frame him. Two other suspects that were questioned included journalist Larry Evans (Allyn Joslyn) and Frankie's friend Robin Ray.

Jill Lynn (Betty Grable), slain Vicky's stenographer sister who shared a NYC apartment with her, aided Frankie in his flight and search for justice because she believed in his innocence. While she was harboring him, she fell in love with him. Vicky's picture (or photograph) was frequently in the frame of view during the investigations - showing her power from the grave. Working with Frankie to find the real murderer, Jill and he firmly suspected that the killer was Vicky's twitchy, sullen apartment switchboard operator-doorman and front-desk manager named Harry Williams (Elisha Cook, Jr.). His alleged motive to kill Vicky was because she had rejected him.

By film's end, it was confirmed that detective Cornell was also one of Vicky's admiring and obsessive stalkers, and knew the real killer right from the start. To cover up his own knowledge that Williams was the killer, he doggedly and jealously framed Frankie for the crime.

The detective's apartment was adorned with a huge, enshrined framed portrait of the deceased femme fatale on his mantle, and many other photographs of the young starlet on the walls. He had intended to marry her someday. To Frankie, Cornell admitted his crazed and sick fascination with Vicky, but confessed that he was frustrated when Frankie spoiled his romantic plans:

I lost Vicky long before Williams killed her. You were the one who took her away from me, not him...I followed her around for months before I got up enough courage to speak to her. I used to hang around the restaurant at night to see that she got home all right...Then you came along with your grand plans of makin' somethin' of her! Puttin' ideas into her head that she was a glamour girl and all that kind of stuff! Why didn't you leave her alone?

During his tell-all to Frankie, the fixated and hopelessly-obsessed Cornell had already taken a poison concoction to commit suicide, rather than face prosecution for a cover-up and for framing Frankie. He fell dead at his desk in front of another picture of Vicky.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
d. John Huston

Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) (aka Miss Ruth Wonderly, Miss Leblanc)

In the beginning of this moody and early film noir, deceitful femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) (with lots of alias names, including Miss Wonderly) arrived in the San Francisco office of private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), pleading and asking for protection against a mysterious man named Floyd Thursby.

Later that night, there was the surprise killing (point-blank) of Spade's infatuated and enthusiastic partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) at the corner of Bush and Stockton Streets in the dark city. Soon after, Spade was considered a likely suspect.

Spade met with Brigid O'Shaughnessey, wearing stripes, in an apartment on California Avenue, under the name of Miss Leblanc. She was trying to charm him when she begged helplessly: ("You've got to trust me, Mr. Spade. Oh, I'm so alone and afraid. I've got nobody to help me if you won't help me. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You're brave. You're strong. You can spare me some of that courage and strength surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. I need help so badly. I've no right to ask you, I know I haven't, but I do ask you. Help me!").

He could see through her fake sincerity and knew she was 'dangerous': ("You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. It's chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade'") but he was obviously attracted and allured to her anyway, but knew she was duplicitous:

The schoolgirl manner, you know, blushing, stammering, and all that... if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere.

He demanded another $500 for further investigative expenses.

During a second visit with Brigid in her hotel room, Spade confronted her directly: "You, uh - you aren't exactly the sort of a person you pretend to be, are ya?... The schoolgirl manner, you know, blushing, stammering, and all that... if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere"). He also complimented her on her 'act' - "You're good. You're very good!"

After seductively asking Spade what she could offer besides money, he brutally took her face in his hands and kissed her roughly - digging his thumbs into her cheeks, as she accepted his lingering kiss; then he angrily and distrustfully told her: ("I don't care what your secrets are. But I can't go ahead without more confidence in you than I've got now. You've got to convince me that you know what this is all about, that you aren't just fiddling around, hoping it'll all come out right in the end").

She was involved with a trio of ruthless, shady treasure hunters led by Fat Man Casper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) who had spent many years pursuing the trail of the legendary "black bird" statue (or "dingus"), the fabled and bejewelled Maltese Falcon - the film's MacGuffin. In one of the film's exciting sequences, the bundled package containing the falcon bird ("the dingus") was unwrapped and discovered to be fake - not gold but only made of lead: (Gutman: "Fake! It's a phony! It-it's lead! It's lead! It's a fake!").

Brigid engaged in a final confrontation with Spade in which he forced her to confess to the double-crossing murder of his partner Miles Archer in order to implicate Thursby, her unwanted accomplice: ("This isn't the time for that school girl act. We're both of us sitting under the gallows. Now, why did you shoot Miles?"). She confessed and then, to save herself from the murder charge, she attempted to be submissive and tried to throw herself at him once again, hoping that he would continue to protect her and conceal her crime, but he coldly rejected her. With a fluttery, bogus innocence and pathos, she wildly professed the existence of her love for him and begged him not to turn her in. He coldly and flatly told her:

"Well, if you get a good break, you'll be out of Tehachapi in 20 years and you can come back to me then. I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck...Yes, angel, I'm gonna send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you."

He then reasserted his resolve to not give in to her charms: (Spade: "You're taking the fall." Brigid: "You've been playing with me. Just pretending you care to trap me like this. You didn't care at all. You don't love me!" Spade: "I won't play the sap for you!...You killed Miles and you're going over for it"). And then Spade reiterated his code of ethics:

"When a man's partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner, and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's - it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere."

Even though he admitted his ambivalence about her and that he couldn't completely deny his love for her, he was resolute: "All we've got is that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." He knew that her manipulative nature dangerously outweighed the possibilities of mutual love. She offered a last kiss just as the cops arrived.

Brigid was handed over to the officers for the murder of Miles Archer. She was arrested and ultimately took "the fall." Brigid was tearfully taken away and waiting in the elevator for the gates to close. The steel cage was pulled in front of her like the bars on a captive's cell, framing her frightened, motionless, lonely face staring fixedly between the bars of the gate. The outer door shut (paralleling the closing of a theatre's curtains at the conclusion of a performance) and the elevator dropped from view - she disappeared down the elevator shaft.