Joseph H. Lewis was an American B-movie film director whose stylish flourishes came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement in 1966. In a 30-year directorial career, he directed numerous low-budget westerns, action pictures, musicals, adventures, and thrillers. Today he is remembered for mysteries and film noir stories: My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) and So Dark the Night (1946) as well as his most highly regarded features, 1950's Gun Crazy, which spotlighted a desperate young couple who embark on a deadly crime spree, and the 1955 film noir The Big Combo, with its stunning cinematography by John Alton.
Lewis on the set of The Undercover Man (1949)
My Name Is Julia Ross is a 1945 American film noir thriller directed by Joseph H. Lewis, and starring Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, and George Macready. Its plot follows a young woman in England who is hired as a live-in secretary for an ailing widow, where she awakens one day and is gaslit by those around her, claiming she is someone else. The screenplay is based on the 1941 novel The Woman in Red by Anthony Gilbert. The film received a loose remake called Dead of Winter (1987), starring Mary Steenburgen.
Theatrical release poster