The success of Imitation of Life saw producer Ross Hunter come up with another Lana Turner-Sandra Dee melodrama, although this one is more of a thriller. It's based on a Broadway play by Ben Roberts and Aussie Ivan Goff, which only had a short run in the late 1940s but was highly regarded enough to launch those two as a team of writers.
The story is a twist on Double Indemnity, wasn’t too original in the first place – Lana Turner and Anthony Quinn are illicit lovers to conspire to kill Turner’s shipping tycoon husband (Lloyd Nolan); she has a step-daughter (Dee) who hates her and is in love with a hot headed young man (John Saxon) who provides the third act suspect when the net closes in around Turner. Further complicating things are a nasty lawyer (Richard Basehart) in love with Turner, a drunken chauffeur (Ray Walston) and sneaky housekeeper (Anna May Wong!). That’s a bunch of juicy support roles, so it’s no surprise to see Hunter attracted an all star cast (they also get to appear during the credits).
There are some changes from the play, where we never saw the husband (the murder had already happened), and John Saxon character was a unionist (which made for more logical drama as the whole thing takes place to the background of an industrial dispute – but that would have been too much for Hollywood to have a unionist heartthrob so instead he’s the son of a disgraced businessman trying to rebuild his family company. I suppose this change does personalise the conflict a bit more.)
It’s enjoyable enough in a silly way – there’s plenty of story but it does feel as though the leads are miscast: someone like Joan Crawford or Barbra Stanwyck could have done the emoting better than Turner, who is a blank slate; Quinn is too strong an actor to be believable as a nervy, neurotic, tormented doctor, which is how he plays it. Dee’s role isn’t much, she’s just a love interest, but she adds some star power; Basehart and Walston are excellent, Saxon glowers well (this was the third of three teamings he had with Dee), and Wong’s casting has definite novelty appeal.
No comments:
Post a Comment