Heroine of the Month: Cleo Moore
Actors and actresses all get labels, by fans, critics and studios alike, and for good or bad that is how they will always be remembered. Cleo Moore’s label was Queen of the B Movie Bad Girls for the many low budget crime films she made in the fifties playing the femme fatale who leads a weak older man to his ruin. So of course she would make her film debut in a jungle serial. Columbia’s adaptation of DC Comic’s Jungle Jim rip off Congo Bill (1948) starred Moore as that great old standby, the white goddess of a jungle tribe who is really the missing heir of a great fortune that is rescued from unscrupulous fortune hunters and returned to civilization by the title hero.
After her brief time in the serial trenches, Moore did some modeling before returning to film in 1950 with small parts in Rio Grande Patrol (1950) and Gambling House (1950). But it was her collaboration with Writer/ Actor/ Director/ Producer Hugo Haas that would earn her her nickname as she continually lead Haas downward into nightmarish noir stories of sex and murder in The Neighbor’s Wife (1953), Bait (1954), The Other Woman (1954), and Hit and Run (1957).
She retired from film in 1957 and made headlines by announcing that she was returning to her home state of Louisiana to run for Governor, though no record exists that she ever actually became a candidate.
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