First seen (albeit all-too-briefly) within the world of noir in WHEN STRANGERS MARRY (1944), she began to attract more attention with small parts in SPELLBOUND (1945) and THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946) before scoring her first plum role as "the other" femme fatale, Meta Carson, in OUT OF THE PAST (1947). Hollywood quickly determined that Fleming was meant for technicolor, so her work in noir would ultimately be sparse, particularly in B&W, with only CRY DANGER (1951), THE KILLER IS LOOSE (1956) and WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956) being added to the traditional "delivery system" of noir.
For goodness sake, your writeup for SPIRAL STAIRCASE refers to Rhonda Fleming only in the film credits! "Not mentioned but still saluted?" I mentioned her in THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE in my writeup; you didn't. So you are saluting her because she was cast in a "woman in peril/distress" noir? The rationale and the motivation here are simply bizarre.
Your point in the essay about toxic masculinity as embodied by Albert is an excellent one that is not usually covered in film noir writing--which is one of the frustrations that tend to crop up when reading your work: that you often bury your best insights due to the apparently compulsive need to stamp out anything resembling the "hard-boiled." The point about Albert is also applicable to many aspects of what we are experiencing in the present day (particularly in the USA) and it would make a good topic of discussion--if you seemed more amenable to that instead of remaining in a more self-promotional mode.
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