Tawdry Top Ten List
Cats: Top Ten Lists|- I actually went to 15 pictures because I coundn’t help myself.
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Where Love Has Gone Spoiled rich girl (Susan Hayward) marries World War 2 flier (Mike Connors). The marriage starts to fall apart once the war is over and they have a baby girl. Years pass and the now teenaged daughter (Joey Heatherton) is arrested for murdering her mother’s latest lover. Shades of Lana Turner / daughter Cheryl / Johnny Stopanato triangke. Although Harold Robbins, who wrote the novel, denies the source, Lana didn’t speak to him for years. Bette Davis as Susan Hayward’s mother tips the tawdry meter to maximum.
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Peyton Place See the posting about this one.
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Summer Place Movies with the word “Place” in the title where always favorites at the store. This picture would definitely be on the syllabus if Tawdry were taught on a college level. Lines like “Have you been bad, Johnny? Have you been bad with other girls?”, forbidden love, cheating spouses, old flames rekindled, drunken fathers, uptight racist mothers and lurid discussions of undergarments make this one of the great melodramas, with a Frank Lloyd Wright house as a location, ever made.
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Leave Her To Heaven Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) meets a beautiful woman, Ellen (Gene Tireney), on a train. When I say beautiful I mean she goes on another top ten list. They fall in love and are married. After a few disturbing events, Richard gradually comes to realize that his wife is murderously insane with jealousy. Of course, there is always her sister (Jean Crain).
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Parrish It seems that Troy Donahue was born to play the juvenile male lead in many a tawdry picture. As Parrish McLean, he lives with his mother Ellen (Claudette Colbert)on Sala Post’s (Dean Jagger) tobacco plantation in the Connecticut River Valley. His mother winds up marrying Sala’s rival Judd Raike (scenery chewing Karl Malden), ruthless planter who wants to drive Sala out of business. While Judd insists that Parrish learn the business from the ground up, Parrish shows he is smarter than his step brothers and learns many a valuable lesson.
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Susan Slade Again with Troy Donahue. Connie Stevens is Susan Slade, a nice girl who meets (and of course marries) a race car driver who conveniently dies in a wreck. She of course is pregnant. Fingers point to Troy but he is not the father so the solution is for the about to retire father (Lloyd Nolan) to take a job in south America for a year and then come back with a new child, a sibling for Susan. Susan’s mother (Dorothy McGuire) takes on the role of mother to this baby. Of course the plan does not go as planned. Delmar Daves directed this one as well as Parrish and A Summer Place along with Dark Passage a few years earlier. When Dorothy McGuire is on screen alone, don’t worry it’s not your eyes. It’s just an incredibly soft focus.
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Best Of Everything Beautifully shot, a good deal of it on location on New York City, this is the tale of the women who toil in the slave / meat market that is the publishing world. Hope Lange is Caroline Bender, the recent arrival to the city who starts as the assistant to embittered editor Amanda Farrow (Joan Crawford) and ends up with her job as well as Amanda’s life. Caroline’s friends include the beautiful Gregg (Suzy Parker) the aspiring actress / secretary and the naive April (Diane Baker) who is dumped by her insensitive lover and father of her child Dexter (the
Robert Evans who is great in this role).
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Strangers When We Meet Architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas) is missing something in life. He has a wife and family and a successful practice. It’s not until he becomes embroiled in an affair with beautiful Maggie Gault (Kim Novak), a neighbor with her own family, that he finds what he has been missing. She is in a sexless marriage and has grown quite disiliusioned with the sanctity of her wedding vows. All this in the age of Eisenhower / 1950’s sexually repressd America. The two lovers are forced to face the choice between love and loyalty. Walter Matthau is great as the slimey neighbor.
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Home From The Hill Captain Wade Hunnicutt (Robert Mitchum) is the wealthiest and most powerful citizen in his Texan town; he is also a notorious womanizer, he is shot at in the first 2 minutes of the picture by an irate husband. This has turned his wife Hannah (Eleanor Parker) against him. When one of his more serious indiscretions was revealed, Wade agreed to allow her to bring up their son Theron (George Hamilton pre suntan) to get her to stay. However as Theron reaches adulthood, Wade insists on taking over his upbringing, initiating him in hunting and other masculine pursuits, under the watchful eye of Rafe (George Peppard), Wade’s loyal employee. But Theron’s new pursuits and skills lead him into a love-affair with a local girl, and thence to his learning things about his parents and Rafe that were previously hidden from him. Gossip and innuendo (all of it from men, not women) don’t help things either. Mitchum is as always great in this and deserved at least a nomination. I’m prejudiced so you decide.
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Born To Be Bad Joan Fontaine is the sweet Christabel who is the wolf in sheeps clothing. She shows up at her sister Donna (Joan Leslie) house, convinces Donna’s wealthy fiance Curtis (Zachary Scott) that Donna only loves him for his money. Then Christabel steals Curtis and marries him, for his money of course. All the while she is carrying on with the rugged writer Nick (Robert Ryan) who sees right through her but doesn’t care.
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Stolen Life Bette Davis plays twin sisters. One them is good, the other is evil. Need I say more! And I never use exclamation marks.
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Damned Don’t Cry This picture features Joan Crawford in another “girl from the wrong side of the tracks” roles. In flashback, we see the woman’s anonymous roots; her poor working-class marriage, which ends in tragedy and her determination to find “better things.” Soon finding that sex appeal is her only salable commodity, she climbs from man to man toward the center of a nationwide crime syndicate. This pictures combines my 2 favorite cinematic elements: tawdry and film noir.
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Mildred Pierce See the posting.
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Beyond the Forest Rosa Moline (Bette Davis in her lastpicture at Warner Brothers) is bored with life in a small town. She is having a torrid affair with Chicago industrialist Neil Latimer (David Brian) who has a hunting lodge nearby. Her doctor husband’s (Joseph Cotton) patience is tried: he tells her to go to Chicago and never come back. Once there, Neil tells her he’s engaged to another woman . Back home and pregnant, Neil shows up and now wants her. The caretaker at Neil’s lodge threatens to reveal her pregnancy. And then there is a hunting accident. This is the picture, that goddamn Warner Brother’s epic Virginia in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf can’t remember the name of. It’s the one with the line “What a Dump).
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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane How can this not be on a top 15 list.
