Celebrity Biographies
Ann Savage
He acted in about thirty tapes of all genres. However, Ann Savage will remain to be remembered as the typical ‘femme fatale’ of film noir, for her leading role in the film Detour . The actress died on Christmas Day 2008, at the age of 87, as a result of a series of strokes, in a Los Angeles nursing home.
Bernice Maxine Lyon -her real name- was born on February 19, 1921, in Columbia (South Carolina). She was the only daughter of a US Army officer, he was constantly changing assignments, and she took her family to different military bases for seasons. She died when her daughter was only four years old, and from then on she was cared for exclusively by her mother, who was a merchant. When she was 10 years old, her mother took her to live in Los Angeles, where she was already presenting her to various castings. She appeared in stage productions as a high schooler and at a very young age she studied at the Max Reinhardt Acting School. The school principal, Ben D’Armand, fell in love with her, and became her agent and later her husband (she had divorced a certain Clark Tennesen with whom she was briefly).
After adopting her stage name, Ann Savage, she began to excel on the stage, making her film debut as an extra in The Great Waltz , an MGM production. She then was signed to Columbia Pictures, and began appearing in leading roles in numerous films, including Two Señoritas from Chicago , Dangerous Blondes , What a Woman! and Dancing in Manhattan . She rose to co-star during the World War II years until she landed the role of a lifetime for her, Vera, the unscrupulous woman and eternal smoker in Detour , a B-series production directed by Edgar G. Ulmer., which today is considered a cult film. His character discovered that the protagonist had usurped an identity that was not his and decided to blackmail him. Savage had previously starred in three films with the same lead, Tom Neal : Klondine Kate , Two-Man Submarine , and The Unwritten Code . But none had been as wildly successful as Detour .
Savage was also a popular pinup model during the war, and toured a number of times to entertain US troops. After the conflict ended, she broke her relationship with Columbia, and ended up as a ‘freelance’, in B-series productions such as The Spider , The Dark Horse and Renegade Girl .
The western Woman They Almost Lynched was her last film work for several decades. She appeared sporadically in some television series, and in the mid-50’s she decided to retire almost completely, and she moved with her husband to New York. She would occasionally appear as a guest on a television show, or attend film noir conventions. In the 1980s, she returned to the screen for a small role as a nun in Fire with Fire , and appeared in an episode of Saved by the Bell . She also came out as herself in the documentary My Winnipeg .