Fortune Is A Woman aka She Played With Fire 1957 - Arlene Dahl, Jack Hawkins, Christopher Lee, Dennis Price, Ian Hunter

During Hollywood's golden era Technicolor films were so delicious sometimes they looked unreal. Some stars especially redheads looked exceptional in Technicolor and one of the best was Arlene Dahl. I always wondered, "Do they use more intense Technicolor when Arlene Dahl is on the screen or is it just something that happens to the film stock when she shows up?" But of all the candidates for Queen of Technicolor, Dahl’s claim seems to me the strongest. There have been plenty of ravishing redheads in movies. But Arlene Dahl is quite simply the fairest of them all. MGM often wasted her playing foil to Red Skelton But even then (at least in Three Little Words (MGM, 1950) she made a lovely impression that went way beyond just beauty. Fox used her intriguingly as a schemer in Woman's World(20th Century-Fox, 1954). But it was in Saturday matinee adventures – as the sweetheart of assorted pirates, swashbucklers and handsome rogues (John Payne, Fernando Lamas, Rock Hudson et al) that she really won the hearts of a generation of little boys. And probably their fathers. I’ll never forget her in Alan Ladd’s Desert Legion (Universal, 1953), where she basically played a kind of one-woman Shangri-La. And beautifully, of course. Dahl’s best acting came near the end of her Hollywood run. The great James Mason has played opposite some pretty distinguished actresses. But Dahl proved one of his all-time best screen partners. A charmingly indomitable and ladylike yin to his yang in the delightful Journey To The Center Of The Earth (20th Century-Fox, 1959). The actress’s own Scandinavian background even seemed to lend an additional ring of authority to the snatches of Icelandic dialogue the script intermittently required of her. And, of course, the trademark beauty was still alluring. But it was the lady's genuine talent and charisma that made the part so memorable. Dahl lost a couple of important roles during her prime years. Jose Ferrer wanted her as his Roxane in Cyrano De Bergerac but Metro refused to loan her. (A couple of years later, she did play the part – very effectively – opposite Ferrer on Broadway). In the mid-50’s a serious illness forced her to withdraw from the cast of King Vidor’s War and Peace, where she’d been cast as the beautiful but heartless Helene. Anita Ekberg took over the role (though, infuriatingly, her dialogue was dubbed by someone else). Now I’m always glad of a chance to eyeball Ekberg. But I can’t help thinking Dahl would’ve brought something pretty special to the part. In 1957 Arlene Dahl traveled to England to make two films for Columbia her first was Wicked As They Come where she literally sleeps her way to the top English society and the second feature was She Played With Fire (1958) where she's involved in an in heiress scheme. Too bad they were both filmed in black-and-white.