In both 1951\u2019s Cry Danger<\/em> and 1956\u2019s Slightly Scarlet<\/em>, Fleming plays fundamentally decent women who give their love to troubled men and end up paying a price for it. While the enticing introductions to Fleming\u2019s characters may imply that they\u2019re opportunistic social climbers, their motivations are purer than that, and they consistently choose love over money, even if it leads to their doom. With her vibrant red hair, breathy vocal delivery, and often form-hugging outfits, Fleming could easily come off as a sultry seductress, but the films allow her to subvert audience expectations while sticking to a recognizable noir template.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI want to introduce you to a pretty girl,\u201d says ex-con Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) to his newfound accomplice Delong (Richard Erdman) in Cry Danger<\/em>, as they make their way to the trailer park where Rocky\u2019s former flame Nancy Morgan (Fleming) now resides. Nancy lives up to that billing, but she\u2019s not the one melting hearts when Rocky and Delong arrive. \u201cYou better grab me quick before my knees give way,\u201d she says upon seeing Rocky for the first time in five years, and it\u2019s Rocky who draws Nancy away from the straight-and-narrow path she\u2019s been on, not the other way around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Slightly Scarlet<\/em> also begins with Fleming\u2019s character reuniting with an ex-con. Fleming\u2019s June Lyons arrives to pick up her sister Dorothy (Arlene Dahl) from the women\u2019s prison where she\u2019s spent the last 18 months on a charge of grand larceny. Like Nancy, June has kept herself squeaky clean while her loved one has been behind bars, but Dorothy\u2019s return begins a series of events that will draw her into a dangerous underworld. \u201cYou must be quite a secretary,\u201d Dorothy says suggestively when she sees the upscale home that June\u2019s job with businessman and mayoral candidate Frank Jansen (Kent Taylor) has afforded her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Nancy, though, June is never dishonest with her feelings, and she isn\u2019t working an angle. For both of them, their love for the wrong man is genuine. In Nancy\u2019s case, she was once Rocky\u2019s girl but is now married to his best friend and partner in crime, who\u2019s still in prison while Rocky has been released on a technicality. Rocky is determined to clear both his own name and his partner\u2019s, which necessitates renewing his connection to slimy crime boss Louie Castro (William Conrad), while a police detective (Regis Toomey) watches his every move, eager to send him back to prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy is adamant that Rocky should drop the whole thing, especially because her husband is up for parole in six months anyway. Powell, another noir staple, is great at playing a principled tough guy, and Rocky doggedly pursues the truth even though all it does is put him and the people he cares about in harm\u2019s way. He didn\u2019t pull the job he was sent away for, but he wants to get paid anyway, since he did the time as if he had done the crime. Nancy is right when she tells him to let it go, but anyone who\u2019s seen a film noir knows that this star-crossed couple isn\u2019t going to get a happy ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least Rocky has his principles, however misguided. That\u2019s more than can be said for June\u2019s love interest in Slightly Scarlet<\/em>, a mob fixer who uses June\u2019s connections to Jansen to get what he wants and doesn\u2019t seem particularly concerned about hurting her. Former cop Ben Grace (John Payne) starts following June as a way to dig up dirt on Jansen for powerful kingpin Solly Caspar (Ted de Corsia), but she\u2019s too upstanding for him to find anything. \u201cA dame is a dame \u2014 there\u2019s bound to be something you can nail her on,\u201d Caspar insists, articulating one of the central themes of film noir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ben knows better, though, and instead he turns on Caspar, feeding June incriminating information that forces Caspar to flee town. Ben hasn\u2019t gone straight, despite what June may think as she starts falling for him. He\u2019s just positioned himself to take over Caspar\u2019s operation, undermining Jansen\u2019s efforts as a supposed social reformer. It would be easy to view June as na\u00efve, but Fleming gives her a level of appealing self-assurance. She believes that Ben is a good person because she loves him, and she\u2019s a good person herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Nancy and June are romantics at heart, Cry Danger<\/em> and Slightly Scarlet<\/em> are still blatantly horny movies, with noir\u2019s familiar sublimated desires. Cry Danger<\/em>\u2019s Rocky is devoted to Nancy, but that doesn\u2019t stop nearly every woman he encounters from throwing herself at him, including the spouses and accomplices of the people trying to set him up. Nancy\u2019s trailer-park neighbor Darlene (Jean Porter) oozes sexuality every moment she\u2019s onscreen, and she\u2019s so alluring that Delong keeps hooking up with her even though she steals his money every time they\u2019re together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pickpocketing is a handy metaphor for sexual activity, and Slightly Scarlet<\/em>\u2019s Dorothy is an even more insatiable kleptomaniac than Darlene. She\u2019s ravenous for both jewels and men, and she sets her sights on Ben despite (or because of) his obvious interest in her sister. \u201cWe\u2019re two of a kind \u2014 both bad,\u201d she tells Ben, but he doesn\u2019t want someone who\u2019ll match his badness. Dahl plays Dorothy with a building mania that sets her up for a hard fall, punished for her unhinged appetites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fates of Fleming\u2019s characters are less harsh, but still tragic, and she plays the anguish just as effectively as the flirting and scheming. Shot in crisp black and white, director Robert Parrish\u2019s Cry Danger<\/em> is more hard-boiled, ending on a bitter throwaway line from Rocky. Director Allan Dwan takes a different visual approach to Slightly Scarlet<\/em>, which is filmed in lush Technicolor with the heightened style of a melodrama, giving June a final moment of catharsis. Regardless of how her characters go out, Fleming holds onto their emotional integrity. She finds the grace in a cynical genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/slightly-scarlet-1024x576.jpg\")
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