Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer

Starring: Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, Louis Hayward, Gene Lockhart, Hillary Brooke, Rhys Williams, June Storey, Moroni Olsen, Dennis Hoey, Alan Napier

STORY

Beautiful. Intelligent. Ambitious. Dangerous.

Jenny Hager knows exactly what the world sees when it looks at her — and she learns very early how to use it.

The Strange Woman takes us to Bangor, Maine, in the 1820s, where Jenny grows up as the daughter of an abusive, alcoholic father. Poverty and humiliation surround her childhood, but Jenny has no intention of remaining powerless forever. Even as a girl, she discovers that beauty, charm and manipulation can become weapons.

By adulthood, Jenny has become stunningly beautiful — Hedy Lamarr at perhaps her most hypnotic — and wealthy businessman Isaiah Poster is captivated by her.

Jenny marries him.

It gives her exactly what she has never had: money, position and security.

But security isn't enough.

When Isaiah's son Ephraim returns home, Jenny begins exerting the same irresistible influence over him. Ephraim is weak, emotionally vulnerable and easily controlled, and his attraction to his father's beautiful young wife quickly becomes dangerous.

Jenny pushes him toward the unthinkable.

When Isaiah dies, Ephraim believes the future he imagined with Jenny is finally within reach.

He has badly underestimated her.

Jenny's attention turns instead toward John Evered, the handsome, strong-willed manager of the family's lumber operations. John, played by George Sanders, is everything Ephraim isn't — confident, capable and difficult to manipulate.

There is only one problem.

John is engaged to Jenny's friend Meg.

That doesn't stop Jenny.

Soon desire, jealousy, betrayal and guilt begin colliding around a woman who has spent her entire life manipulating people before they have the opportunity to hurt her.

But The Strange Woman refuses to make Jenny Hager simple.

She can be cruel and calculating, yet she is also capable of generosity. She can destroy people and then perform acts of genuine compassion. She desperately wants love while repeatedly poisoning the relationships that might provide it.

And slowly, Jenny discovers there is one person she may never be able to manipulate successfully.

Herself.

Hedy Lamarr dominates the film. Jenny is seductive, wounded, selfish, frightened, ruthless and strangely vulnerable — sometimes within the same scene. George Sanders brings strength and sophistication to John Evered, while Louis Hayward makes Ephraim increasingly tragic as a man hopelessly caught inside Jenny's emotional web.

Dark, sensual and psychologically charged, The Strange Woman gives us a Hedy Lamarr far removed from the idea that she was merely one of Hollywood's legendary beauties.

Here, the beauty is part of the danger.

And Jenny Hager knows it.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
HEDY LAMARR TOOK CONTROL

The Strange Woman represented an important moment in Hedy Lamarr's career.

After leaving MGM, Lamarr wanted greater independence and more control over the kinds of roles she played. She partnered with producer Jack Chertok to make The Strange Woman, giving herself an opportunity to tackle the darker, more complicated character of Jenny Hager.

For a woman working inside the Hollywood system of the 1940s, taking that kind of initiative was no small accomplishment.

MORE THAN HOLLYWOOD'S GREAT BEAUTY

Hedy Lamarr's extraordinary appearance frequently overshadowed discussions of almost everything else she accomplished.

The Strange Woman gave her a role requiring considerably more than glamour.

Jenny isn't simply a femme fatale. She is contradictory — capable of manipulation and compassion, cruelty and vulnerability. Lamarr gets to move between all of those qualities while keeping us wondering exactly how much of Jenny's behavior is calculated and how much is driven by emotions she cannot control.

EDGAR G. ULMER STEPPED UP IN SCALE

Director Edgar G. Ulmer became famous for creating visually distinctive movies with limited resources, particularly during his years working in lower-budget filmmaking.

The Strange Woman gave him a considerably more elaborate production than many of the pictures associated with his career.

The period settings, costumes, atmospheric interiors and lumber-camp sequences allowed Ulmer to work on a broader canvas while retaining the shadowy psychological atmosphere that made his films so distinctive.

BASED ON A BESTSELLING AUTHOR'S NOVEL

The film was adapted from Ben Ames Williams' 1941 novel The Strange Woman.

Williams was an enormously prolific American writer whose fiction regularly appeared in major magazines and was frequently adapted by Hollywood.

The movie transports his story of obsession, ambition and moral corruption to nineteenth-century Bangor, Maine.

PRODUCTION CAME TO A SUDDEN STOP

Filming began in December 1945 — and almost immediately encountered trouble.

Hedy Lamarr became ill with influenza.

Production had to shut down from December 13, 1945 until January 3, 1946 while its star recovered.

When your leading actress is also the woman around whom practically the entire story revolves, there isn't much filming you can do without her.

GEORGE SANDERS — PERFECTLY CAST

George Sanders was almost uniquely equipped to play a man capable of standing his ground against Jenny Hager.

With his cultured voice, intelligence and effortless screen authority, Sanders gives John Evered exactly the strength necessary to make Jenny's fascination with him believable.

He isn't simply another man overwhelmed by her beauty.

That makes him much more interesting to Jenny.

LOUIS HAYWARD ENTERS JENNY'S WEB

Louis Hayward's Ephraim is the opposite.

Emotionally vulnerable and desperate for Jenny's affection, Ephraim becomes one of the clearest examples of the destruction she can leave behind.

His relationship with Jenny moves the movie into increasingly dark territory as desire becomes entangled with betrayal, guilt and death.

AINTOID: THE LOCKHARTS WERE BOTH THERE

Gene Lockhart plays wealthy businessman Isaiah Poster.

And another Lockhart appears in the movie as well.

His real-life wife, Kathleen Lockhart, is also in the cast.

The Lockharts were the parents of actress June Lockhart, who would become familiar to generations of television viewers through Lassie and Lost in Space.

AINTOID: FILMED AT SAMUEL GOLDWYN STUDIOS

Although produced by Mars Film Corporation as a Hunt Stromberg production, The Strange Woman was filmed at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios.

Production ran from December 1945 into March 1946, including the shutdown caused by Lamarr's illness.

HEDY WASN'T ONLY A MOVIE STAR

There is an extraordinary second chapter to Hedy Lamarr's legacy that has nothing to do with Hollywood glamour.

During World War II, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed and patented a frequency-hopping communications system intended to make radio-controlled torpedoes more difficult for enemies to detect or jam.

Their invention was far ahead of its practical implementation.

Decades later, Lamarr's technological work finally received substantial recognition, transforming the way the world remembers a woman Hollywood had once primarily promoted for her beauty.

BEAUTY AND BRAINS WERE NEVER OPPOSITES

That makes watching The Strange Woman particularly fascinating today.

Hollywood sold Hedy Lamarr as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

Away from the camera, she was also an inventor with an intensely curious mind.

The two things were never contradictory.

Hedy Lamarr simply happened to be both.

AINTOID: CARMEN DRAGON PROVIDED THE MUSIC

The film's dramatic score was composed by Carmen Dragon, an acclaimed conductor, arranger and composer who worked extensively in film, radio and television.

Dragon later won an Academy Award for his work arranging the music for the 1944 musical Cover Girl.

AINTOID: LUCIEN ANDRIOT BEHIND THE CAMERA

Cinematographer Lucien Andriot photographed the film in black and white, helping give Jenny's nineteenth-century world its rich shadows and atmospheric quality.

Those visuals are especially important in a movie built around moral ambiguity. Jenny may be one of the most beautiful women in any room she enters, but Ulmer and Andriot repeatedly surround that beauty with darkness.

AINTOID: UNITED ARTISTS DISTRIBUTED IT

The Strange Woman was produced outside the traditional major-studio structure and distributed by United Artists.

For Lamarr, that mattered.

She wasn't simply appearing in another studio assignment selected for her.

She had helped create the opportunity herself.

THE TITLE HAS A BIBLICAL ECHO

The title takes on additional meaning late in the story when Jenny hears a fiery religious sermon invoking the Biblical image of the “strange woman” whose seductive appeal ultimately leads toward destruction.

For Jenny, the words strike painfully close to home.

The woman who has spent years controlling everyone around her is finally forced to confront what she has become.

AINTOID: HEDY LAMARR'S JENNY HAGER

Jenny Hager may be manipulative, selfish and destructive.

But Hedy Lamarr refuses to play her as a monster.

We see the frightened child underneath the beautiful woman. We see someone who learned early that vulnerability could be dangerous and control could mean survival.

That doesn't excuse what Jenny does.

It makes her considerably more fascinating.

And it gives Hedy Lamarr one of the richest dramatic roles of her career.

DATE RELEASED

October 25, 1946