An Academy Award nominee it wasn’t, and labeling Universal’s 1950 Undercover Girl a ‘film noir’ might be broadening the genre’s parameters a bit. Or not, depending on where you draw the line between ‘noir’ and postwar crime melodrama. Pretty sure there’s no connection to the popular comic character Starr Flagg – Undercover Girl from right around the same period, which was created by that human writing machine Gardner Fox with art by Ogden Whitney, first appearing in Manhunt starting in 1947, graduating to her own short-lived comic title in 1952.
Still, Canadian born actress Alexis Smith, perhaps best known to noir and crime film fans for The Two Mrs. Carrolls alongside Humphrey Bogart in 1945, wields a revolver pretty well in this postwar era crime-action film as a rookie cop out to nab the narcotics gang responsible for her father’s death. Or at least, she does it handily in the film’s publicity stills.
I don’t know if you’ve read the comics (a situation easily remedied if you haven’t… thanks to https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=2465), but I’m pretty sure Ogden Whitney modelled Starr Flagg after Lisabeth Scott. What do you think?
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I have the Class Comics Library 2018 Trade PB which says it’s the complete series — three issues of her own titles plus two stories from Manhunt. And I’d agree that she appears to be modeled on Lizabeth Scott, precisely the same hair style, if not the same demeanor.
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