Wonder What Jayne Meadows thought of this film?

David Traversa
Hi HoferPM-1! You wonder what Jayne Meadows thought about her role in this movie? I could tell you about another actress, Zully Moreno (one of the top stars during the fifties in Argentina), when being interviewed many years later and already retired in Spain from the movie industry, she was asked what she thought --as an old lady now-- about her movie career, and she said: "Well, all that...!, now it seems like a dream to me". Eventually she died from Alzheimer.

I though Jayne was quite good and wished the studios had used her more in noir roles. She reminded me a lot of Elsa Lanchester, both her looks and the way she delivered her lines.

Since the OP, Meadows died in April of 2015. If she thought anything of her performance in this film, or of her entire career, she should have been embarrassed. Her shrill overacting in this movie borders on the pathetic, as can be said of her entire brief career (five movies) as a contract player at M-G-M. After that, she only acted in a handful of movies, and spent the rest of her professional life as a television celebrity. She's one of the earliest illustrations of people who are "famous for being famous". Like everybody from the Gabor sisters to Paris Hilton and the Kardashians, her fame consisted of just showing up. In her later years, she became the human equivalent of a cartoon character, with her overly painted face and inhuman laugh, the most annoying laugh in world history. Her greatest claim to fame was her plethora of stints as a game-show panelist in the '60s, opening the door for other celebrities-without-credentials like Brett Somers.

She adored the film, discussed it at length in the interview she did for the Archive of American Television. Mentioned a funny tale, about practicing the staircase scene. Practiced at a beau's home, so dramatically it scared his butler and he left the home in a panic. It was also then that her name, was changed from her maiden name Cotter to an old family name Meadows. As Louis B Mayer told her it was to similar to Audrey Totter, who became one of her dearest friends.