There is, however, another dimension to Barry's character, which lies at the heart of the story's conflict. He is a Jekyll and Hyde character who at times assumes the image of a married family man and husband to an unsuspecting Marcia Henderson, someone who runs the bakery on the ground floor below the apartment where he resides with his family.
When tough cop Sterling Hayden becomes convinced that Barry is a killer and cannot at that point prove his case he is believed to have lost his stability and is removed from the police force.
Determined to prove he is correct and win back respect and position as a policeman, Hayden makes Barry his preoccupation and trails him to a Mexican border town. It is here that he runs his criminal enterprise.
Hard luck Gloria Grahame is less a girlfriend than submissive victim to the mercurial Barry, compelled to cater to his every demand. Her perspective begins widening, however, when she meets and nurses back to health Hayden after an almost fatal collision with Barry's thugs.
This is a film where Grahame has a discernible character arc in which she loses her cynicism bred from being Barry's girlfriend and entertaining at a border town nightclub dive and begins feeling like a vital human being. Hayden is capable of loving her and she is hungry to accept affection from someone willing to demonstrate feeling for her.
When she agrees to help Hayden on his dangerous mission Grahame knows that her own life is at risk. Eventually it will be lost. Yet she is willing to go that far to generate new meaning and purpose.
When Barry later succeeded as a television leading man Grahame appeared on some of his programs. He could well have sought her services at least in part as a reminder of how her great performance alongside him in "Naked Alibi" no doubt aided him in gaining his major television breakthrough.
As for the most memorable scene of Gloria Grahame's career, that came in the nature of reacting rather than acting. Playing the badly abused girlfriend of sadistic mob thug Lee Marvin in Fritz Lang's 1953 film noir "The Big Heat." She is perpetually scarred following a scene when an out of control Marvin hurls scalding coffee into her face.
Gloria Grahame made her mark in brief but unforgettable intervals.
She never overstayed and left her fans begging for more.
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