WHERE LOVE HAS GONE: where-ever it's gone why didn't you take me with you?

The more I see of Susan Hayward the less I like her.
It's getting to the stage now where - when presented with the opportunity to view one of her films - I have to very seriously consider whether I can tolerate sitting through another 90 minutes to 2 hours of her particular brand of acting.
Whoever she's playing, she never fails to fail to convince me that she is that character, rather than just
an actress named Susan Hayward acting out a part particularly unpersuasively.

The real-life Dorian Grey of Hollywood film stars, she always looks the same, her immobile hair never changes, and her character never ages even when, as is the case with WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, the story covers a period of almost 20 years.
Yet despite all this, Susan Hayward is not the worst thing about this film.
That dubious honour belongs to the film itself along with everyone in it and everyone involved in making it.
This bloated, empty vessel, this rancid cinematic cargo of rotting dung spawned from the lurid imagination of Harold Robbins, is so terrible it gives the airport novel genre a bad name.
Hayward plays Valerie Hayden, the world's most unlikely world renowned sculptress. In the studio she's a whizz with a hammer and chisel, and out of it she's a world class nymphomaniac. The former talent is god given, the latter - as the film goes to extraordinarily repetitive lengths to make clear - is the result of a loveless childhood. Her domineering mother, played by Bette Davis, is more concerned with maintaining the Hayden family's good name in San Francisco society, than showing her daughter affection.
The only thing mother and daughter can agree on is Major Luke Miller (Mike Connors). A bona fide World War 2 hero and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Mrs Hayden sees him as perfect husband material, while Valerie's smitten when she witnesses him standing up to her mother. And so he allows himself to be drawn into their spider's web where he soon discovers that fighting the Japs was a walk in the park compared to life with the Haydens.
All of this overheated and unoriginal melodrama plays out in a flashback prompted by their teenage daughter's (Joey Heatherton)  murder of her mother's lover, more than a decade after Valerie divorced her broken and defeated husband.

Supposedly inspired by the real life 1958 killing of film star Lana Turner's gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato by her teenage daughter some six years earlier WHERE LOVE HAS GONE lacks even that tawdry event's slender sliver of class. The story's little more than a warmed over assortment of tired and tiresome melodramatic cliches, the script is hysterical ("I love all the wrong people and hate all the right ones!" and "I use sex the way you use alcohol" are just 2 examples) and the cast extremely lacklustre. Davis inserts pauses into her lines in all the wrong places, Connors oozes less charisma than a garden fence, and Heatherton's idea of a 15 year old sexpot is a perpetual pout.
What's perhaps most disappointing is that this film's not even trashy enough to rise to the status of a camp classic. It's only redeeming feature is that it's not three hours long and, really, that's no reason  to invest valuable minutes of your life in watching it. I've done the dirty work so you don't have to.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: trashier than the municipal dump

I'd always imagined that VALLEY OF THE DOLLS would be trashy. I'd read enough about the film in books on the history of 1960s cinema to expect airport novel junk with a high Hollywood gloss but I didn't realise quite what a soap opera it would be as well.

I don't mean those self-perpetuating daytime tv soaps with their cardboard sets and wooden acting. VALLEY OF THE DOLLS is Dynasty style soap, right down to the casting of a Hollywood star who's seen better days.
That actress on the slide is Susan Hayward, playing Helen Lawson, a Broadway legend who's attained her mythic status by clambering over the bodies of those who were more talented but less determined. It's a part that would have also suited the late 60s-era Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, although it's doubtful whether anything or anyone would have remained standing had either of those ladies been cast in the role.
It's a shame that Hayward's part isn't bigger. Lawson is an enjoyable and much needed counterpoint to the shrieking, wailing and immature suffering of the three interchangeable young women at the heart of the story.
I had the hardest time telling Barbara Parkins (Anne) from Patty Duke (Neely). They both look so similar that it took me the first thirty seconds of any scene either of them was in to figure out which one I was watching. It didn't help that the same guys got involved with both of them.
The third of the trio is Sharon Tate as Jennifer. Although beset by the same personal and career setbacks as Anne and Neely in her climb up the greasy pole of showbusiness, with her striking looks, long blonde hair and fixation on her breasts, I had no problem identifying her.
It's the myriad of misfortunes which inject the element of soap opera into the proceedings. Between the three of them they rack up more adultery, mental illness, drug addiction, abortions, fatal diseases, alcoholism, attempted suicides, one-night stands, and ex-boyfriends/husbands in just a few short years than any trio of real-life famous-for-being-famous paparazzi-addicted socialites could manage in a lifetime.

Watching the multiple miseries which afflict them as they drag themselves painfully up that pole, it's impossible to avoid reaching the conclusion that fame and fortune are not worth the price they extract. The drama is so overheated that it's also easy to forget that it's not actually so far removed from reality. The history of Hollywood is littered with stars and wannabes who cracked under the pressure, from Peg Entwistle to Judy Garland. Ironically, Garland, who's own life bore many similarities to Neely's,  was hired and fired from the part of Helen Lawson because of her drinking and unpredictable behaviour.
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS is considerably less scandalous now than it was on it's original release in 1967. Thanks to the tabloids, kiss and tell memoirs, and websites like TMZ, there's little we don't know about what happens behind the scenes in showbusiness and the lengths to which some people are prepared to go to find fame and then hang on to it. 
There's something rather endearing about three young ladies quite prepared to trample the ten commandments in their drive to succeed, but unwilling to speak in anything less than perfectly formed sentences while they're doing it.
But even though it's power to shock is much diminished the film survives as an enjoyable example of ludicrous, overblown, implausible camp trash. 

JIMMY THE GENT: more plot than there's space for

JIMMY THE GENT left me dazed and more than a little confused. Director Michael Curtiz packs more plot into the film's 67 minute running time than I could keep up with. Breakneck hardly begins to describe the pace at which this story moves.
As best as I could understand it, James Cagney is a geneologist (yes, a geneologist!) who earns his living by "finding" the heirs to industrialists, playboys and other assorted super-rich who've died without leaving a will. His main rival is the upright and erudite Charles Wallingham (Alan Dinehart) who also tracks down surviving relatives, but does it the honest way. His second in command is Joan Martin, played by Bette Davis, who used to work for Cagney and still has a secret crush on him  although she'll slap your face and call you a liar if you're to suggest such a thing. 
Now I know that genealogist is not the first occupation that comes to mind when thinking of James Cagney but the good news is that the profession has been adapted to fit his screen persona, rather than the other way around. Cagney plays the part just like he would a newspaper journalist, bookmaker, Broadway show producer, or gangster. Genealogy is just  another racket and Cagney makes no concessions to the part in his acting. If anything he's more manic than usual, bellowing away at his employees, conjuring up at least a hundred different angles to every situation, and stomping around with that stiff-legged strut so beloved by impersonators every since. The whole performance is topped off by a truly bizarre haircut more at home on the head of a World War One-era Prussian officer.
Davis by contrast had yet to make the jump from Warner Bros A-list contract player to bona fide film star replete with her own collection of highly imitatable mannerisms. Here, in the third of six films she was to make for the studio in 1934, she's a heavily made-up peroxide blonde in a part that could just as easily have been played by Joan Blondell or Ginger Rogers.
JIMMY THE GENT is by no means a classic, but it is a fine example of the kind of product that rolled off the Warner Brothers production line at the rate of almost one a week during the period when Hollywood fully lived up to both words in the descriptor "dream factory."

OLD ACQUAINTANCE: a scenery chewing spectacular!

There weren't many actresses who could hold their own against Bette Davis but Miriam Hopkins was one of them.
Miriam who?
She was the Faye Dunaway of the 1930s appearing in a number of critical and box office successes ("Trouble in Paradise", "These Three", "The Old Maid") before fading from sight and memory. OLD ACQUAINTANCE, released in 1943, was Hopkins final film as a big star and she certainly went out in style.
She and Davis had worked together four years earlier in "THE OLD MAID" during which Davis had an affair with Hopkins husband, so there was little love lost between the two of them by the time Warner Bros reunited them for this overheated melodrama.
Knowing this backstory makes watching the film an even more pleasurable experience. Here are two big, temperamental stars, both accustomed to being queen of their domain, and with a history of mutual dislike, being asked to play a couple of lifelong friends who fall out over men and success.
Davis was the bigger star by 1943 but Hopkins refuses to yield. Where Davis is content to chew at the scenery Hopkins rips out large chunks and swallows them whole. To counter the by now familiar Davis mannerisms - the clipped speech, the vigorous sucking on cigarettes etc - all of which are on display here, Hopkins resorts to the sort of histrionics for which the word overacting is an inadequate descriptor.
Faced with two such forces of nature it's not surprising that the men in the story come off like potted plants. Both John Loder and Gig Young are so dull and colorless that it's difficult to understand how they avoid getting simply chewed up and spat out. 
To the best of my recollection OLD ACQUAINTANCE was the first Hollywood film to deliberately cast two such mutually antagonistic stars in order to record the sparks that would inevitably fly. Their barely masked on-screen contempt for each other would not be seen again until Davis was pitted against arch rival Joan Crawford almost twenty years later in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" The acidic bitchy energy generated by their rivalry contributed greatly to "Baby Jane's" status as a cult classic. OLD ACQUAINTANCE deserves similar consideration.

THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D: the stars deserved better

THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. is a tail-end entry to the golden era of screwball comedies and pretty weak one at that.
Bette Davis is miscast as flighty oil heiress Joan Winfield. Given to impulsive marriages to unsuitable men, she finds herself shanghaied by James Cagney when she attempts to elope to Las Vegas to tie the knot with vacuous, egotistical bandleader Jack Carson.
Not only is she unconvincing in this madcap role but at 33 years old she is clearly a decade too old to play a 23 year old child of the nightclub scene.
Had she essayed the part in 1937 or 38 she might have got away with it but by the time of the film's release in 1941 Davis had built a solid reputation for herself as a strong, often wilful, screen presence, given to dominating her men and suffering for her rebelliousness. To cast her as a flibbertigibbert who lived in fear of telling her overbearing father about her latest nuptials, and allowed herself to be repeatedly humiliated by Cagney's character, made very little sense.
THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. is an ill-advised effort by Warner Brothers to extend her range, ignoring the received wisdom of the studio system that stars became stars by playing a type which clicked with the public. Once they found that type, if they wanted to maintain their grip on the top of the slippery pole of success, they played variations on it over and over again.
Cagney, by contrast, plays Cagney. He's cocky, impulsive, pugilistic and brimming with confidence but really not very interesting. Both he and Davis are poorly served by a script that simply fails to sparkle. That's particularly disappointing considering it's written by Philip and Julius Epstein who, just one year later, would be responsible for the screenplays for "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "Casablanca."

STARLIFT: considerably fewer stars than there are in heaven

It's nothing more than a weird coincidence that I decided to watch STARLIFT on the 59th anniversary of the day in June 1950 when President Truman's ordered US forces into the Korean War.
STARLIFT, you see, is set largely at Travis Air Force base in California in the years when it was being used as a staging post for soldiers being shipped out to fight in Korea.
But you'd need to do your own research to know this because not once during the film is the name 'Korea' mentioned. We see transport aircraft flying out fresh troops and returning with wounded soldiers but there's no mention of where these men will be fighting or getting injured.
Which is kind of weird for a film designed to wave the flag and salute America's men in uniform.
Released in December 1951 by Warner Brothers, STARLIFT is a very obvious effort to replicate the success of the studio's star-studded World War Two homefront morale booster "Hollywood Canteen." This 1944 crowd-pleaser told the story of two soldiers spending their last three nights of leave hanging out at the famous armed forces nightclub in LA hoping to get a date with Joan Leslie. But really it was just an excuse for Warners to trot out every star under contract, from Joan Crawford, John Garfield, and Barbara Stanwyck to Peter Lorre, Bette Davis, Sydney Greenstreet and more.
STARLIFT features two Air Force soldiers hoping to meet fictional starlet Nell Wayne (a mask-like Janice Rule) and persuading a bunch of Warner Bros stars to put on a show for the departing troops. But in place of Crawford, Garfield et al the best the brothers Warner could scrape up in 1951 were Doris Day, Ruth Roman, Gordon MacRae, Virginia Mayo, Gene Nelson and Phil Harris with fleeting appearances by James Cagney, Randolph Scott, and a clearly embarrassed looking Gary Cooper.
This threadbare cast, whose combined starpower would struggle to illuminate a standard lamp, is perfectly matched by the crummy production values. Presumably in an effort to save money several long scenes were shot using really really bad back projection. How bad is it? You can see the join where the screen meets the floor of the soundstage!
To describe STARLIFT as a sloppy, lazy and third rate movie is to do a disservice to films which are sloppy, lazy and third rate. It's just terrible. Avoid it.