OVER-EXPOSED is hands down my all-time favorite "bad girl" film noir. Sexy blonde Cleo Moore stars as a buxom dancer who gets packed into the paddy wagon her first night on the job unaware she's working for a clip joint. When small-time photographer Raymond Greenleaf snaps a candid of Cleo and the other gals being hauled in, a furious Moore tries to buy the negative only to be told he'll give it to her if he accompanies her back to his home so he can develop the rest of the film roll. A wary, knowing Cleo feels she has no other option and does so only to find the old guy is sincere and gives her the picture.
The unlikely duo become friends and when Cleo learns photography is, in her words "a good racket for a dame", she has Greenleaf teach her all he can about it while Moore builds up his profits telling rich old broads who come in for portraits, their pictures have been blown up and entered into a photography exhibit which of course makes the old vain crones insist on purchasing the large colored edition of their picture.
Finally when Cleo has become an impressive photographer herself she packs up and heads for New York City while she tries to sell her wares (the pictures, you dirty minds). There she meets handsome newspaper reporter Richard Crenna, gracious society dame Isobel Elsom, leering boss Jack Albertson, jealous coworker Jeanne Cooper, and select mobsters.
This is one of the enjoyable little film noirs I've ever encountered, full of pithy lines ("you'd use your grandmother's bones to pry open a cash register" an effete nightclub manager snaps at our heroine) and an utterly wonderful, spirited performance by Cleo Moore, as a "bad girl" who might not be so bad after all. There were a lot of sexy blondes in movies back in the 1950's and I've always felt Cleo was not only one of the most attractive but one of the better actresses of the lot. It's sad her career didn't progress much above the B level but she really shines in this film. This movie enjoyed a revival in 2009 at UCLA's Film and Television Archive museum as part of a retrospective of overlooked film noirs, was released on DVD in 2010 by Sony and hopefully it will eventually find it's way to TCM.
The unlikely duo become friends and when Cleo learns photography is, in her words "a good racket for a dame", she has Greenleaf teach her all he can about it while Moore builds up his profits telling rich old broads who come in for portraits, their pictures have been blown up and entered into a photography exhibit which of course makes the old vain crones insist on purchasing the large colored edition of their picture.
Finally when Cleo has become an impressive photographer herself she packs up and heads for New York City while she tries to sell her wares (the pictures, you dirty minds). There she meets handsome newspaper reporter Richard Crenna, gracious society dame Isobel Elsom, leering boss Jack Albertson, jealous coworker Jeanne Cooper, and select mobsters.
This is one of the enjoyable little film noirs I've ever encountered, full of pithy lines ("you'd use your grandmother's bones to pry open a cash register" an effete nightclub manager snaps at our heroine) and an utterly wonderful, spirited performance by Cleo Moore, as a "bad girl" who might not be so bad after all. There were a lot of sexy blondes in movies back in the 1950's and I've always felt Cleo was not only one of the most attractive but one of the better actresses of the lot. It's sad her career didn't progress much above the B level but she really shines in this film. This movie enjoyed a revival in 2009 at UCLA's Film and Television Archive museum as part of a retrospective of overlooked film noirs, was released on DVD in 2010 by Sony and hopefully it will eventually find it's way to TCM.