Ann Savage Dies

’40s femme fatale star Ann Savage dies at 87

Ann Savage, who earned a cult following as a femme fatale in the 1940s pulp-fiction crime story “Detour,” has died. She was 87.


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


Though her Hollywood career generally had been over since the mid-1950s, Savage had resurgence in the past year with a key 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 (“Saddles and Sagebrush,” “Satan’s Cradle”), musicals (“Dancing in Manhattan,” “Ever Since Venus”) and wartime tales (“Passport to Suez,” “Two-Man Submarine”).


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


Savage will be being buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery alongside her third husband, Bert D’Armand, Adamson said.