Ann Savage: Actress renowned for her role as a femme fatale in 'Detour'

Ulmer was a director famed for achieving remarkable results on a shoestring budget, and Detour may be his finest work, a taut 69-minute film noir. Savage was one of Hollywood's prime B-movie stars in the early Forties, acting in thrillers, westerns and jungle adventures. "Here I was," she said, "with the best part I've ever had, and really I was prepared. I had been playing the 'other woman' or femme fatale in a number of films, but Edgar turned out to be the most wonderful director I ever worked with. The picture was shot in six days – I worked for three and a half."

Born Bernice Maxine Lyon in 1921 in South Carolina, she was the only child of a watchmaker. She described her childhood as "nomadic", as her father would frequently uproot his family in the search for better business. After her father left home to live with another woman, Savage and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she led an unruly, rebellious existence. At the age of 18 she married a fast-living playboy, Clark Tennyson, but within a year she was back with her mother. "He was," she recalled, "just too wild."

Savage worked as a cashier and part-time bowling instructor at a Beverly Hills sports centre, where the customers included such Hollywood luminaries as Harold Lloyd and Howard Hughes. "It was a pin-setter who tipped me to a job opening at Max Reinhardt's acting school," she recalled. "I made a deal with the school's manager, Bert D'Armand, in which my work would pay the tuition." Having taken the name Ann Savage at the suggestion of D'Armand, she was appearing in a workshop production of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy in 1942 when she was spotted by a Columbia executive and offered a contract.

Her initial parts at Columbia were unbilled, but she had a strong role as a provocative victim of a murdered, blackmailing gigolo in One Dangerous Night (1943) and she was top-billed as the title character in the Alaskan-set Klondike Kate (1943), in which her leading man was Tom Neal. Though she and the brash, womanising Neal (who later served a jail sentence for killing his wife) did not get along too well, the studio felt the chemistry between them was potent enough to co-star them in two more vehicles, Two-Man Submarine and The Unwritten Code (both 1944).

Although Columbia announced that they were grooming Savage for "Rosalind Russell-type roles", she felt that actresses like Marguerite Chapman and Janis Carter were getting better parts. "I felt threatened the first time I saw Carter. She was clearly 'my' type, a frosty blonde with prominent cheek-bones and sly lips, destined to play it haughty and naughty... I didn't befriend other actresses. The situation was too competitive". Columbia ended Savage's contract by loaning her to Paramount for two films, Scared Stiff and Midnight Manhunt (both 1945). "When I left Columbia," Savage recalled, "I wanted to freelance. Leon Fromkess, head of 'poverty row' studio PRC [Producers Releasing Corporation] wanted me to sign a five-year contract but I didn't want to. So he settled for two films. And the first picture was Detour."

Adapted by Martin Goldsmith from his own novel, published in 1939, Detour was set during the last days of the Depression. A luckless musician, Al Roberts, tries hitchhiking from the East to West Coasts to join his sweetheart, Sue, who has gone to Hollywood, and is given a lift by a wealthy, but shady character whom he accidentally kills. Feeling that he won't be believed, he hides the body, takes the man's identity papers and drives onward until he picks up another hitchhiker, Vera (Savage).

Savage made an indelible impression as Vera. The moment when she suddenly turns to Al and snarls, "What did you do with the body?" has become a classic moment in film noir. When Savage first spoke that key line, the director stopped the scene. "He snapped his fingers very quickly, and told me to pick up the tempo," said Savage. "By speeding the delivery of the line, it caused me to deliver it so hard, harsh and angry, that it exposes Vera's psychosis, and it shocks Al and the audience." Detour was released to general acclaim, and was recently hailed by the Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan as "probably the blackest, most doom-laden film noir ever made" and Savage's performance as "sensational".

Savage's second film for PRC was Apology for Murder (1945), a thriller in which she seduces a reporter (Hugh Beaumont) into agreeing to kill her husband. Its similarity to Double Indemnity was palpable, and Fromkess considered calling it "Single Indemnity" to suggest it was intended as good-natured homage. Paramount were not amused, and the film had to be pulled after only one evening when the studio threatened to sue.

In 1946 Savage married Bert D'Armand. She later revealed that there had been a second marriage, but the man had turned out to be gay and she preferred not to name him. Savage made several forgettable films after Detour, including The Spider (1945), Renegade Girl (1946) and Jungle Jim in Pygmy Island (1950). After a small part in The Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) she became a prolific performer on television – in 1955 she and Neal were reunited in an episode of Gangbusters. Relocating to New York for a while, Savage indulged her passion for flying by becoming a qualified pilot. She also played a small role in Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

After D'Armand's death in 1969, Savage was faced with creditors' bills and in 1972 she took a secretarial job with Loeb and Loeb, a leading law firm in Los Angeles. She was to remain with the firm for 28 years, but her whereabouts had become so obscure that when UCLA mounted an Ulmer retrospective in 1983 nobody knew where she was. Reading of the planned Detour screening, Savage bought a ticket. When the applause for the film died down, Ulmer's widow Shirley mounted the stage. "What can you tell us about the actress who played Vera?" asked one of the audience. "No one knows what became of Ann Savage," replied Shirley. "I'm here," Savage called out, and the audience erupted as she walked down to the dais.

Afterwards, Savage was a frequent guest at festivals of film noir, happy to talk about those three and a half days that made her a cinema icon, and in 2006 she returned to the screen playing Guy Maddin's mother in My Winnipeg. In 1992 the Library of Congress named Detour as the first B-movie to be inducted into the National Registry of Film.

Bernice Maxine Lyon (Ann Savage), actress: born Columbia, South Carolina 19 February 1921; married firstly 1939 Clark Tennyson (marriage dissolved), thirdly 1946 Bert D'Armand (died 1969); died Los Angeles 25 December 2008.