Passages: Ann Savage won cult following for 1945’s ‘Detour’

LOS ANGELES — Ann Savage, who earned a cult following as a femme fatale in 1940s pulp-fiction movies such as “Detour,” has died at 87.

The actress died in her sleep at a nursing home on Christmas Day from complications following a series of strokes, said her manager, Kent Adamson.

Her Hollywood career had largely been over since the mid-1950s, but she had a resurgence over the past year with a starring role in Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg.”

Starting with her 1943 debut in the crime story “One Dangerous Night,” Savage made more than 30 films through the 1950s, including Westerns, musicals and wartime tales.

Savage was best-known for director Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 B-movie “Detour,” in which she played a woman ruthlessly blackmailing a stranger, played by Tom Neal.

Decades later, “Detour” and Savage gained a cult audience on television and home video.

Graham made sculptures at Roosevelt memorial

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Sculptor Robert Graham, whose massive bronze works mark civic monuments across America, including the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, has died at 70.

Graham died Saturday at the Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital with his family at his side, including his wife, actress Anjelica Huston, the governor’s office confirmed.

In Washington, Graham’s bronze sculptures mark the Roosevelt memorial, where bronze panels symbolize the 54 social programs initiated under the president’s New Deal. Graham also created the life-size bronze figure of President Roosevelt in his wheelchair at the entrance of the memorial.

In New York City’s Central Park, Graham’s Duke Ellington Memorial stands 30 feet high, with three columns topped with the muses holding up an 8-foot figure of the musician next to a piano.

Associated Press

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