Ann Savage (actress)
| Ann Savage | |
|---|---|
Ann Savage in Detour
|
|
| Born |
Bernice Maxine Lyon February 19, 1921 Columbia, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | December 25, 2008 (aged 87) Hollywood, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1943-2007 |
| Spouse(s) |
Clark Tennesen (m. 1939–41) Cleland Huntington (m. 1944–45) Bert D'Armand (m. 1943–69) |
Ann Savage (February 19, 1921 – December 25, 2008) was an American film and television actress. She is best remembered as the cigarette-puffing femme fatale in the critically acclaimed film noir Detour (1945). She featured in more than twenty B movies between 1943 and 1946.
Effectively leaving the film business in the mid-1950s, Savage made occasional appearances on television and worked for industrial and inspirational film producers during the 1950s–1970s. She made a number of live appearances at film festivals, especially for screenings of Detour.
In 2007, she was cast by director Guy Maddin as his mother in My Winnipeg, "a part that had been tipped to bring her an Academy Award and which introduced her to a legion of new fans".
Ann Savage was born Bernice Maxine Lyon in Columbia, South Carolina. During her early years, her family was "on the move constantly" as her United States Army officer father "moved from base to base". After he died when Bernice was four years old, her mother moved the two of them to Los Angeles. Growing up "around the corner from the Jewelry District," the "Broadway movie palaces of downtown Los Angeles… served as her babysitter" while her mother worked selling jewelry.
She attended 64th Street Grammar School, and Mount Vernon Junior High, and "first stepped on a soundstage at the age of 17" at MGM Studios, screen tested by Edgar Selwyn, "Ann spent time among the more famous Hollywood kids of the day like Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Freddie Bartholomew and Deanna Durbin." Her MGM-test did not work out, prompting her to "get her teeth capped" and "[a]cquir[e] theatre training at the Max Reinhardt workshop" on Sunset Boulevard. Reinhardt oversaw her name-change, and Bernice became Ann Savage. The Reinhardt school's manager, Bert D'Armand, would also become Savage's agent, and the two would later marry. Savage was offered a screen test by Fox, but she "decided not to turn up as she knew the studio already had a bevy of pretty blondes".
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