She wasn’t just any dame. She was gorgeous and earthy, sassy and seductive. There was a shadowy mystery about her, and she was almost impossible to resist, especially for the distracted, weak-willed, sex-starved antihero of classic, 1940’s and 50’s film noir.

But she was also dangerous. She took things—mainly other people’s money and other women’s men. Or she wanted someone murdered, often her own husband. Or she was involved with the wrong crowd and needed help against unsavory characters. The trouble was, if the hero did her bidding, he could end up losing everything, even his life. No wonder critics called this noir archetype the femme fatale, or fatal woman. She was a good reason to be afraid of the dark.

No two femme fatales were exactly alike. Some were very wicked, others almost sympathetic. But whatever the type, their alluring and alarming presence almost always drove the noir plot—sometimes at high speed and right through the railing of conventional movie morality. In the 1944 film “Double Indemnity,” top star Barbara Stanwyck shocked audiences with her chilling portrayal of a woman who seduces a man into murdering her husband. The popular film jump-started the noir genre while earning the star an Oscar nomination and many future roles as the spider woman.

Of course, Stanwyck would not be the only great femme fatale. Other actresses who made the dishonor roll with multiple first-rate performances included the likes of Rita Hayworth. Ava Gardner. Joan Crawford. Gloria Grahame. Marie Windsor. Audrey Totter. Joan Bennett. And Lizabeth Scott.

Bennett and Scott weaved their black magic at opposite ends of the femme fatale curve. Having played mainly conventional girlfriends and wives, Bennett gave her dark women a slightly softer, more helpless edge than most other femme fatales had. But that made her all the more appealing to gullible characters such as Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson), her too-willing victim in “Scarlet Street.” On the other hand, the dark-browed, dusky-voiced Scott seemed born to play a more vicious variant of the femme fatale—and would return to the role again and again. In “Killer Bait,” one of Scott’s best films, her sexy blonde housewife dispatches both her husband and the fool who tries to replace him. And she does it for no other reason than a lust for cold hard cash.

Although the femme fatale routinely used her body to get what she wanted, it would be a mistake to dismiss her as just a sexist creation of male-dominated Hollywood. In a sense, she was the most consistently liberated female character to reach the big screen up to that time. Yes, she was selfish and vain. But she also demonstrated unusual independence, always calling her own shots—and sometimes firing them, too. She showed audiences that women could be more than just wives, mothers, and Bette Davis—that they could be both sexy and bad as well. Production Code censorship forced the dark lady to pay for her transgressions, and that often meant a bullet to her cold heart by film’s end. But she was usually the most anticipated and memorable part of any film noir in which she appeared. And she played a huge role in giving the genre its hardboiled sophistication and slinky style.

Yet where did this determined doll come from? And why did she so dominate classic noir for most of its early existence, in films as varied as “Woman in the Window,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Gilda,” “Out of the Past,” “The Killers,” “Criss Cross,” and others? Interesting theories and explanations abound. But one of the most intriguing argues that her popularity was a byproduct of women’s greatly enlarged role in American society during the war, when millions left hearth and home to join the man-short workforce. Would this change become permanent? The femme fatale supposedly reflected a fear of, and a fascination with, the social-sexual consequences of this stronger, more “liberated” woman.

Whether the femme fatale really owes her existence to such psychology will never be known. However, it’s interesting to note that as American society fell back into more traditional patterns at home and in the workplace, the femme fatale—and her temptations— began to fade from film noir. And the genre itself more or less died out in the late 1950’s, giving away to straightforward crime dramas with more conventional women characters.

The femme fatale tried to make a comeback in the neo-noir films of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. But bathed in Technicolor, given the politically correct sheen of a new era, she didn’t seem like her old self. Now we understood the truth: The noir dame we knew, loved, and feared was gone forever……..