lead roles in Crime Against Joe

While her music career earned her public notice, London also continued to appear in films, with lead roles in Crime Against Joe (1956) as well as appearing as herself in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), in which London performs three songs, including “Cry Me a River”. The film was a box-office success and became one of the top-30 highest grossing films of 1956. London subsequently appeared in a television advertisement for Marlboro cigarettes, singing the “Marlboro Song”. She appeared in several Westerns: In 1957, she appeared in Drango playing a Southern belle harboring fugitives, followed by a starring role opposite Gary Cooper in Man of the West , in which her character, the film’s only woman, is abused and humiliated by an outlaw gang. The same year, she appeared as a pending bride in the Western Saddle the Wind ; London’s performance received critical acclaim in The New York Times . She appeared in The Wonderful Country in 1959, in which she plays a downtrodden wife of an army major.