Keechie

       There exists two portrayals of the ugly duckling of Noir who is one of my favourite femmes from the screen versions of Edward Anderson's Thieves Like Us . She is a more a doomed lover on the run than a femme fatale and unusual in a number of ways. In Nicholas Ray's 1948 They Live by Night ,which is around the fringes of my top ten Noirs from the 'classic' era, Kathy O'Donnell is my own favourite but Shelley Duvall also has her moments in Altman's 1974 version.

        The highway stretched on like a long ribbon of wet funeral cloth; the rain-drunk weeds of the right-of-way rushing behind.

Edward Anderson

Thieves Like Us

1937