Ann Savage

Ann Savage (born Berniece Maxine Lyon, February 19, 1921 – December 25, 2008) was an American film and television actress. She is best remembered as the greedy cigarette-puffing femme fatale in the critically acclaimed film noir Detour (1945). She featured in more than 20 B movies between 1943 and 1946. Effectively leaving the film business in the mid 1950s, Savage made occasional appearances on television and worked for industrial and inspirational film producers from the 1950s to the 1970s. She made a number of live appearances at film festivals, especially for screenings of Detour. In 2007 she was cast by director Guy Maddin as his mother in My Winnipeg, "a part that had been tipped to bring her an Academy Award and which introduced her to a legion of new fans". Early life Ann Savage was born Berniece Maxine Lyon in Columbia, South Carolina. During her early years, her family moved often as her father, an officer in the United States Army, relocated from base to base. After he died when Berniece was four years old, her mother moved the two of them to Los Angeles. Growing up around the corner from the Jewelry District, the Broadway movie palaces of downtown Los Angeles served as her babysitter while her mother worked selling jewelry.