Welsh-born Irish actress Peggy Cummins (1925-2017) is remembered by many moviegoers for her striking performance as the murderous young femme fatale of the film noir Gun Crazy (1950). Others recall her as the actress who almost played the title role in 1948's Forever Amber but was rejected when it was decided that Cummins was too young and inexperienced for such a key role in a major production.

A beautiful and talented blonde, Cummins enjoyed a long film career (1940-62) playing a variety of roles--though none of them brought her the full-fledged stardom she seemed to deserve. She was born Augusta Margaret Diane Fuller in Wales while her Irish parents were visiting there and forced to delay their return to Dublin as a storm blew through. Her father was a grandson of noted architect James Franklin Fuller, and her mother was film actress Margaret Cummins.

Cummins studied ballet while a child and at age 13 made her London stage debut in a children's revue. Her movie debut came in 1940's Dr. O'Dowd, and she continued to work in English stage and film projects until 1945, when 20th Century-Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck brought her to the U.S. in that ill-fated attempt to star her in Forever Amber. After a few weeks' work on the film, Fox contract player Linda Darnell replaced Cummins in the part.

Zanuck assigned Cummins roles in other Fox productions including 1947's Moss Rose with Victor Mature and the 1948 films Escape with Rex Harrison and Green Grass of Wyoming with Charles Coburn. In 1950, she returned to London to marry Derek Dunnett, raise two children and resume her career in such British movies as My Daughter Joy (1950), Always a Bride (1953) and her final film, In the Doghouse (1962).

Here are the films in the TCM tribute:
The Late George Apley (1947) was Cummins' first assignment for Fox after the Forever Amber disappointment. She plays the daughter to Ronald Colman, who is cast in the title role in this adaptation of the John P. Marquand novel and the play co-written by George S. Kaufman. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the film is set in Boston during the pre-World War I period and concerns the struggles of the stuffy Mr. Apley in adapting to changing times.

Gun Crazy (1950) has gained cult status as a study of a young couple on a crime spree, foreshadowing 1967's Bonnie and Clyde. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis, this film noir melodrama has Cummins as a carnival sharpshooter who entices her newlywed husband (John Dall) into a series of violent robberies. New York Times critic Howard Thompson wrote that, "Looking as fragile as a Dresden doll, Miss Cummins bites into her assignment like a shark."

Always a Bride (1953) is a British romantic comedy in which Cummins plays a young woman who joins her father (Ronald Squire) in posing as a married couple at swanky Riviera resorts so they can con unsuspecting tourists out of their money. Terence Morgan plays the young man who complicates the situation when the Cummins character falls in love with him. Ralph Smart directed.

Hell Drivers (1957), a British film noir directed by Cy Enfield, stars Stanley Baker as an ex-convict who goes to work for a trucking company where corruption is rampant. Cummins plays a secretary who knows the company's secrets, and the cast also includes Herbert Lom, Patrick McGoohan and, in very early roles, Sean Connery and David McCallum.

Curse of the Demon (1957), originally called Night of the Demon in Great Britain, is a horror film directed by a master of the genre, Jacques Tourneur (1942's Cat People). Dana Andrews stars as an American psychologist investigating possible murders by a satanic cult in England, with Cummins as the niece of one of the victims. Like Gun Crazy, this film developed a cult following. Martin Scorsese named it among his list of top 85 films to see.

by Roger Fristoe