You just better have a good elevator man! Or in the case of this film, it is a woman, the mother of all evil mothers, Bette Davis. Seemingly sweet and loving to everybody around her (including her former son-in-law), Mrs. Hayden is power hungry, strong-willed, domineering, bossy, and utterly charming. Daughter Susan Hayward has resented the lack of love she has gotten from her mother, having been treated like a prize calf at the county fair, made to look good in order for the family to keep their social standing. This old Nob Hill family in San Francisco has not had one scandal in their lives-until one night when Hayward's teenaged daughter Joey Heatherton goes berserk and stabs Hayward's lover to death. Hayward's ex-husband Mike Connors comes back as Heatherton is tried as a juvenile, and all of the family's skeletons are released.
Sound like an E True Hollywood Story? It should, 'cause novelist Harold Robbins based this upon the Lana Turner/Johnny Stompanato affair where Lana's daughter Cheryl allegedly killed him in self-defense to protect mama. Hayward's Valarie is not a high-powered movie star here-she's a talented sculptress, and one of her knives was used as the weapon in the murder. (Turner was only angry about this for a few years as she went to appear on a Harold Robbins based TV series, "The Survivors", which ironically didn't...) When you've got dynamic actresses like top-billed Hayward and featured Davis appearing together, sparks are going to fly, the melodrama is going to spill over the cauldron top, and there are going to be some genuinely amusing unintentional camp moments. This is a "Dynasty" type soap opera where the matriarch arranges a marriage between her heir and the army hero, controls their every move (even giving him a do-nothing Vice President job at her company and a portrait of herself to line the foyer of the house she bought for them), and smiles sweetly at all times. The two ladies are dynamic together, although the fact that every single major character in this remains exactly the same for the seemingly 18 years that it takes place. Hayward's sudden weakening at the end seems out of character and throws the whole film off balance.
The real acting comes from Mike Conners as the husband so de-masculinized that he turns to drink. He is the moral conscience of the family, fortunate not to be related to this brood by blood. The least comes from Joey Heatherton as the daughter, so unconvincing in her delivery in the pivotal dramatic scenes that she seems like she's too much in awe of the legends around her to create an interesting character. Jane Greer offers some sympathetic moments as the head of the juvenile detention center, an ironic choice in casting considering hers and Hayward's one time reign as two of the great femme fatals of film noir, both appearing in "They Won't Believe Me".
As long as you look at this as total cinematic soap opera trash, you can really enjoy this for what it is, maybe not horrid to be a fun bad movie, but certainly a delightful chance to be nosy inside another family's fictional horrors.
Sound like an E True Hollywood Story? It should, 'cause novelist Harold Robbins based this upon the Lana Turner/Johnny Stompanato affair where Lana's daughter Cheryl allegedly killed him in self-defense to protect mama. Hayward's Valarie is not a high-powered movie star here-she's a talented sculptress, and one of her knives was used as the weapon in the murder. (Turner was only angry about this for a few years as she went to appear on a Harold Robbins based TV series, "The Survivors", which ironically didn't...) When you've got dynamic actresses like top-billed Hayward and featured Davis appearing together, sparks are going to fly, the melodrama is going to spill over the cauldron top, and there are going to be some genuinely amusing unintentional camp moments. This is a "Dynasty" type soap opera where the matriarch arranges a marriage between her heir and the army hero, controls their every move (even giving him a do-nothing Vice President job at her company and a portrait of herself to line the foyer of the house she bought for them), and smiles sweetly at all times. The two ladies are dynamic together, although the fact that every single major character in this remains exactly the same for the seemingly 18 years that it takes place. Hayward's sudden weakening at the end seems out of character and throws the whole film off balance.
The real acting comes from Mike Conners as the husband so de-masculinized that he turns to drink. He is the moral conscience of the family, fortunate not to be related to this brood by blood. The least comes from Joey Heatherton as the daughter, so unconvincing in her delivery in the pivotal dramatic scenes that she seems like she's too much in awe of the legends around her to create an interesting character. Jane Greer offers some sympathetic moments as the head of the juvenile detention center, an ironic choice in casting considering hers and Hayward's one time reign as two of the great femme fatals of film noir, both appearing in "They Won't Believe Me".
As long as you look at this as total cinematic soap opera trash, you can really enjoy this for what it is, maybe not horrid to be a fun bad movie, but certainly a delightful chance to be nosy inside another family's fictional horrors.