Audrey Totter

American actress Audrey Totter (1917-2013) often portrayed jilted lovers, bad girls, unfaithful wives, and women with a past. She played her first film role as a 'bad' girl in Main Street After Dark (1945). Her greatest roles were in such Film Noirs as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Lady in the Lake (1947) and Any Number Can Play (1949). Totter played her last screen role in 1987 in the TV series Murder, She Wrote.


Italian postcard in the Divi e Divine series by La Casa Usher. Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter in High Wall (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947). The card refers mistakenly to Robert Taylor's film The Power and the Prize (Henry Koster, 1956).


Italian postcard, no. 121. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Audrey Totter and Robert Montgomery in The Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947).


Italian postcard, no. 1222. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Robert Montgomery and Audrey Totter in The Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947).

John Garfield's blonde floozie pick-up

Audrey Mary Totter was born in Joliet, in northeastern Illinois, in 1917. Her parents were John Totter, who was born in Slovenia with birth name Janez, and Ida Mae Totter. She had two brothers, Folger and George, and a sister, Collette. Totter graduated from Joliet High School, where she acted in school plays.

She was a Methodist who began her career performing in several productions for her local church, as well as being involved with the YWCA players. Totter continued her acting career in radio in the late 1930s in Chicago, only 40 miles northeast of Joliet. She played in soap operas, including 'Painted Dreams', 'Ma Perkins', and 'Bright Horizon'.

She moved on to film when MGM offered her a seven-year film contract. She made her film debut as a 'bad girl' in Main Street After Dark (Edward L. Cahn, 1945) and established herself as a popular female lead in the 1940s. The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946) with John Garfield and Lana Turner, was the first Film Noir in which she appeared. Totter had a small role as John Garfield's blonde floozie pick-up.

Although she performed in various film genres, she became most widely known to movie audiences for her work in Film Noir. She co-starred in Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) starring Montgomery as Detective Philip Marlowe. The film was not well received and is now better remembered for its interesting subjective camera technique. Audrey's first hit as a femme fatale co-star came on loan-out to Warner Bros. In The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz, 1947) starring Claude Rains, she cemented her dubious reputation in "B" noir as a trampy, gold-digging niece married to alcoholic Hurd Hatfield.

She then starred in High Wall (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947), as a psychiatrist to patient Robert Taylor, The Saxon Charm (Claude Binyon, 1948) with Robert Montgomery (again) and Susan Hayward, and Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow, 1949) as a loosely-moraled 'Girl Friday' to Ray Milland. Totter played other successful roles in the boxing drama The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949) as the beleaguered wife of washed-up boxer Robert Ryan, and in Tension (John Berry, 1949) as the two-timing spouse of Richard Basehart. Looking back, Totter stated in 1999, "The bad girls were so much fun to play. I wouldn't have wanted to play the Coleen Gray good-girl parts."


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 105 (Series C. 99 - 196). Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Italian postcard, no. 121. Photo: Dear Film. Audrey Totter in A Bullet for Joey (Lewis Allen, 1955).

One of filmdom's most intriguing ladies

By the early 1950s, the tough-talking 'dames' Audrey Totter was best known for portraying were no longer fashionable. She reportedly was dissatisfied with her MGM career and agreed to appear in Any Number Can Play (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949) only after Clark Gable intervened. MGM began streamlining its roster of contract players and worked towards creating more family-themed films.

Totter was released from her contract in 1951. She worked for Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox, but the quality of her films dropped. From the early 1950s, she increasingly acted in television series. In 1958, Totter played boarding house owner Beth Purcell in the Western series, Cimarron City, starring George Montgomery.

Later she appeared in episodes of such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1960), Perry Mason (1964), Rawhide and The Virginian. Totter had a continuing role from 1972 to 1976, playing Nurse Wilcox, the efficient head nurse, in the series Medical Center, with James Daly and Chad Everett. The last time she appeared in front of the camera was as a nun in the episode Old Habits Die Hard (1987) of the mystery series Murder, She Wrote starring Angela Lansbury.

Audrey Totter was married to Dr. Leo Fred, Assistant Dean of Medicine at UCLA, from 1953 to his death in 1995. They had one child, Mae Lane. In 2013, Totter died of congestive heart failure at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, Woodland Hills, Califonia, eight days before her 96th birthday. After a memorial service, her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific.

Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "One is certainly hard-pressed to think of another true 'bad girl' representative so closely identifiable with film noir than hard-looking blonde actress Audrey Totter. While she remained a "B"-tier actress for most of her career, she was an "A" quality actress and one of filmdom's most intriguing ladies. She always managed to set herself apart even in the most standard of programming."


Vintage postcard, no. 351. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Vintage postcard, no. 951. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.