WOMAN OBSESSED

Stephen Boyd and Susan Hayward

WOMAN OBSESSED (1959). Director: Henry Hathaway.

When her husband (Arthur Franz) is killed during a forest fire, Mary Sharron (Susan Hayward) hires a man named Fred Carter (Stephen Boyd) to help her on the farm. Mary has a little boy named Robbie (Dennis Holmes), who is a little wary of Fred at first. Eventually Mary and Fred decide to marry, but the latter's parenting skills are noticeably lacking. This causes decided problems between husband and wife which are hardly helped by his backslapping her and then forcing her to have sex with him. Sexual assault anyone? 

Mary and Fred fall for each other: Boyd; Hayward

From the title and the star you might hope that Woman Obsessed is a trash wallow with Hayward chewing the scenery as she deals with man troubles and other women, but nothing much like that ever happens. The sluttish and homely Barbara Nichols shows up now and then as Fred's ex-girlfriend (he definitely stepped up in class when he married Hayward), but there are no cat fights -- although Fred and Nichols' new boyfriend do have a lively fistfight late in the picture. Instead we are offered some dubious dime store psychology from Hayward's doctor (Theodore Bikel) in regards to Fred's attitudes towards alleged cowardice and other things. Some of the occurrences in the film are predictable; others are not. Both the doctor, Hayward, and the film itself gloss over the rape that clearly occurs (offscreen) halfway through the movie. 

Dennis Holmes with Hayward

Modern-day audiences will have a problem getting past the rape, although there is an attempt to redeem Fred with his heroic efforts to save Mary's life after she has a miscarriage, and his change in attitude towards the boy once he realizes that he, too, can feel fear. Hayward gives a more subdued performance as fits her character and Boyd is actually quite good. Affecting a kind of Canadian accent -- this takes place in Saskatchewan -- it disguises and offsets the somewhat nasal quality of his voice. 9-year-old Dennis Holmes (playing 7, not too big a stretch) is wonderful as little Robbie; he was best-known for a role on the western TV series Laramie with Robert Fuller. Everything is wrapped up in the end like a fifties sitcom. 

Verdict: A nice score (Hugo Friedhofer) and some good acting aren't enough to make this memorable. **. 

I WANT TO LIVE!

Sailor Brett Halsey with good-time gal Susan Hayward

I WANT TO LIVE! (1958). Director: Robert Wise.

Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward), a prostitute and petty criminal, falls into bad company and finds herself arrested for the murder of a 61- year-old woman who supposedly kept cash in her house. One of Barbara's alleged confederates (James Philbrook) turns state's evidence and his testimony helps to convict her. Then it's on to death row ...  I Want to Live! was conceived as a heavily fictionalized anti-death penalty film, so it greatly stacks the deck in favor of Graham's innocence (not that the film suggests she should be executed if she were guilty), suppressing certain details and intimating it's only her reputation and background and her once being very nasty to a witness that have sealed her fate. Graham also makes the mistake of trying to bribe a fake witness who turns out to be a cop. Graham supposedly had a sexual affair with a fellow inmate, Rita (Marion Marshall), and while this is played down, it is pretty clear that Rita has a hankering for Barbara, whom she later betrays. As for Hayward, she comes off as much too well-bred to be a completely convincing "B" girl, so she substitutes toughness and crudity and on that level is quite effective, winning an Oscar (as did Robert Wise, whose direction is on the money). Of the supporting cast, there is notable work from Virginia Vincent as Barbara's lovely friend, Peg; Wesley Lau [Perry Mason] as Barbara's husband, Henry, who can't remember if she was home with him that certain night or not; Gage Clarke as the defense attorney, Tibrow; and Peter Breck as Peter Miranda, who claims he will set up an alibi for Barbara if she pays him but turns out to be a cop. Others in the cast include Brett Halsey [Return of the Fly], Lou Krugman, Theodore Bikel, Simon Oakland, and Joe De Santis [A Cold Wind in August].

The murder of Mabel Monahan is never depicted (in the fifties it would have been considered in poor taste anyway) and the woman herself is given short shrift. We never see any relatives she may have had, and the prosecutors are never developed as characters. In the long run it doesn't matter if Graham pistol whipped and suffocated her victim -- just the fact she was there and participated (if we are to believe this is true) makes her guilty in the eyes of the law. Apparently the prosecutors had very good reasons to think Graham was guilty that had nothing to do with her "morals."  The execution scene is very well-handled but it tries to extract pity for Graham without ever doing the same for her alleged victim, who died horribly in a terror that was probably worse than Graham's.

Verdict: Take with a grain of salt, but well-done for what it is. **1/2 out of 4.

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI

Stuart Whitman vs. a ticked off baboon

SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (1965). Director: Cy Endfield.

This was one of two heavily promoted desert/plane crash movies released in 1965, the other being The Flight of the Phoenix. In this a group of travelers, told their regular flight has been delayed, decide to continue on in a small charter plane. Unfortunately said plane runs into a swarm of locusts which clog the engines and cause the craft to crash in the middle of the Kalahari desert. Unlike Phoenix, this picture includes a pretty blond (Susannah York) for some of the men to fight over. Stuart Whitman plays a nasty character who forces one older man (Theodore Bikel) to march through the desert at gun point to try to get help after the pilot, who set off on a similar journey, doesn't come back. [What happens to the pilot is quite ironic.] Eventually a battle of wills develops between Whitman and the remaining passengers, especially Mike Bain (Stanley Baker), who rightly sees the man as the dangerous nut that he is. A miscast Whitman is only adequate in the role of the basically sociopathic O'Brien, and at times York doesn't seem to know what to make of her helpless and unsympathetic character. Baker, Bikel, and Harry Andrews as a German passenger are all excellent. Although the advertisements for the film played up the presence of dangerous baboons in the area, these animals really haven't much to do until the very end of the picture. [Killer baboons later showed up in In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro.]

Verdict: Man vs. man with nature waiting in the wings. ***.

MY FAIR LADY

MY FAIR LADY (1964). Director: George Cukor.

George Cukor, primarily concerned with actors and not with being "cinematic," may not have been the best choice to helm the film adaptation of the smash Lerner and Loewe musical, but the film is still so entertaining and well-acted that there seems little point in complaining about its static, theatrical aspects. Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, and Stanley Holloway are all superb, and they are bolstered by an outstanding supporting cast made up of the likes of Gladys Cooper as Henry Higgins' mother (wish we saw more of her) -- Cooper, of course, was the dragon-mother of Now, Voyager -- Wilfrid Hyde-White as Pickering; Mona Washbourne as the housekeeper Mrs. Pearce; and Theodore Bikel as that "ruder pest" from Budapest, Zoltan Karpathy etc. This is probably one of the few (only?) film adaptations of a Broadway musical that includes all of the songs (the adaptation of Fanny dropped the songs entirely, although you at least heard the music in the background). Great story, great score, great entertainment. Eliza's haunting refrain of "what's to become of me?' echoes -- along with a great sense of loneliness -- as she returns to the place where she once sold flowers and none of her old companions fully recognize her. You really can't go home again.

Verdict: Loverly. ***1/2.

I BURY THE LIVING

I BURY THE LIVING (1958). Director: Albert Band.

You may not hold out much hope for this low-budget Twilight Zone-like horror film, but stick with it and you may be surprised. Richard Boone stars as the new manager of a cemetery who accidentally sticks black pins ( meaning they’re dead) instead of white pins (alive) into a map of cemetery plots that also lists the names of the owners. The newlywed couple whose pins are black are killed shortly afterward, and Boone is pretty freaked. He deliberately puts in another black pin just to convince himself it’s all a fluke – and this man dies too. Several other people insist that he put in more black pins, trying to convince him to stop being silly and superstitious, and these people also die – supposedly of natural causes. You would think this idea wouldn’t work on anything other than a 22 minute TV show, but the movie manages to hold the attention for almost four times that length and becomes extremely disquieting to boot. Band’s direction is also inventive and admirable. Boone and the other cast members are fine, but a nearly unrecognizable Theodore Bikel (with a fine Scottish accent no less) steals the picture as retiring cemetery employee Andy. Okay, the contrived plot doesn’t really stand up to a lot of scrutiny, to say the least, and the movie has at least three different endings, but it has to be given points for being decidedly different.

Verdict: Definitely worth a look. ***.