Henry Hathaway’s brilliant Kiss of Death (1947) –where instead of hearing the usual tough guy voice over telling us about his journey through NOIR hell, we are told about the hardships of Nick Bianco (brilliantly played by Victor Mature) by the lovely kind caring voice of Coleen Gray as the loyal Nettie standing behind her man! Similarly cast in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) Colleen stands behind the great Sterling Hayden as ex con Johnny Clay asserting: “It is not that you were locked in. It was that I was locked out.” Was Coleen what I would dub as a “Femme Simpatico” specialist?
