Drawing on Citizen Kane and prefiguring All About Eve, Herman J. Mankiewicz's script for A Woman's Secret spins a twisty tale, told in a series of overlapping, sometimes contradictory flashbacks so that the past becomes a shifting chimera of unreliable accounts. New York entertainer Marion Washburn (Maureen O'Hara), having lost her singing voice, takes on a young protegée from small-town California and learns to regret it. Sarah Caldwell, whose stage name is Estrellita, proves to be less starry-eyed than unstable, especially around men and Lugers. Ray loathed everything about the project except Gloria Grahame, who plays Sarah with fierce fragility; he met the glorious Grahame on set and later married her. But he managed to bring crackling cynicism to the studio gloss, and this pristine print highlights the noir elegance of George Diskant's crisp black-and-white camerawork.