In our ongoing series of selecting 4 films to help newly-minted classic movie fans get their bearings, we’re going to look at one of my personal favorites when it comes to the 1940s, Gene Tierney.

If you’re not familiar with her, she filled out a lot of film noir and romances throughout the 40s into the 50s although her career slowed down a bit due to some difficulties in her personal life. Regardless, her impressive filmography speaks for itself with a number of classics to her name.

Laura (1944)

You only need one film to become a cinema icon. Laura is the role of a lifetime for Gene Tierney and she casts a spell as the quintessential doe-eyed noir gal who never meant to entangle anyone. It just so happens that all the men in her life fall in love with her even after her death. Her portrait and the legacy she casts is just that enchanting in this Otto Preminger top-rate noir. The Preminger and Dana Andrews partnership would prove a fruitful alliance in Tierney’s career.

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

If there was any doubt Gene Tierney could play bad and play it well, Leave Her to Heaven shoots any naysayers out of the water. It’s an obsessive, vindictive noir love story made all the more unsettling by its picture-postcard color cinematography. She’s a deadly beauty who more than earns the title of femme fatale after only a few minutes on a lake, her eyes shaded by sunglasses. You’ll never look at her the same.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1948)

Sometimes we need the warmest sort of romantic comedies and this one is tied together by a gentle fantasy story as the title would suggest. When the ghostly suitor opposite Gene Tierney’s Mrs. Muir is Rex Harrison, what we are granted is such a genteel love affair plucked out of a different time and place. For that matter, a different world.

Whirlpool (1949)

This final spot is a hard choice. Where The Sidewalk Ends and Night and The City are probably more well-received film noir, but Whirpool is the one with the juiciest opportunity for Gene Tierney. Instead of playing the doting girl of someone else, she’s a kleptomaniac. Well-meaning but it gets her in heaps of trouble thanks to her husband’s reputation and the manipulative quack played by Jose Ferrer.

Worth Watching:

Shanghai Gesture, Heaven Can Wait, Where The Sidewalk Ends, Night and The City, The Mating Season, Advise & Consent