Film noir actress Audrey Totter dead at 95

Audrey Totter, an actress who specialized in playing temptresses, dangerous dames and women harboring dark schemes in a series of movies from Hollywood's film noir period of the 1940s and '50s, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 95.

She had congestive heart failure after a stroke, her daughter, Mea Lane, said.

Totter first set the screen afire with a small but sizzling part in the 1946 noir classic "The Postman Always Rings Twice." Over the next several years, Totter was in demand as one of Hollywood's sexiest and most alluring actresses, often playing cynical and malevolent women.

One of her signature roles came in the 1949 film "Tension," in which Totter's character kills one of her lovers, then manipulates her jilted husband into taking the rap for her.

"I had great parts," Totter said in 2001, "but the pictures just didn't catch on -- they didn't do big box office."

"For years nobody bothered with me -- didn't know who I was, didn't care," she told the Toronto Star in 2000. "Now I'm recognized on the street, I'm asked for my autograph, I get loads of fan mail."

Audrey Mary Totter was born Dec. 20, 1917, in Joliet, Ill. Her Austrian-born father was a streetcar driver.

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She acted in radio dramas before going to Hollywood. After film noir began to fade, she acted in westerns and television, including a recurring role as a nurse on "Medical Center" in the 1970s.

In 1953, she married Leo Fred, a doctor and assistant dean of the UCLA School of Medicine. He died in 1995. Survivors include her daughter, a brother and two grandchildren.