The wealthy Fredric Summers hires private eye Alan Macklin (George Maharis) to investigate his young and lovely bride-to-be, Sylvia West (Carroll Baker), a newly-published poet and flower enthusiast. She's close-mouthed about her background and what little she has owned up to doesn't check out. Summers wants Mack to dig up her past but without having any contact with her, so he begins by taking her poetry to an English professor of his acquaintance who provides a psychological reading and pinpoints her origins to Pittsburgh. Mack's travels lead him to piece together the facts of her life: she had a love of reading from early on, but was raised in rough circumstances, raped by her stepfather, and becomes a prostitute. She lives briefly with a middle-aged dress salesman (Edmund O’Brien), gets a job as an arcade worker, then winds up back in prostitution where she becomes good friends with a woman named Jane. When Jane is hit by a car and is hospitalized for a month, Sylvia works overtime to help her pay for a private room. Sylvia is assaulted and beat up by a well-heeled client who pays her $10,000 not to go to the cops. By that time, Jane is married to a banker and he invests her money well, eventually making her financially independent. Intrigued, and not certain that Summers really deserves Sylvia, Mack arranges to meet her, not revealing his occupation, and the two of them hit it off, but we all know the moment of truth will have to arrive—will Mack give the unsavory report to Summers, will he decide he's in love with her himself, or will Sylvia have a plan of her own?
The mid-60's was when Hollywood’s restrictive Production Code began to collapse, and movies like this one were partly responsible. Ten years earlier, the filmmakers would never have been able to be so open about Sylvia's occupation, nor could they have included a line like this movie’s "Once a whore, always a whore." But the heroine still had to suffer, not just rape and humiliation, but constant unhappiness. There are also some incredibly vague hints made at same-sex attraction between Sylvia and some of her friends. Overall, this is a drab and unpleasant film, but it's saved by the acting of its leads and by a few of the supporting players. Carroll Baker was criticized at the time for giving a wooden performance, but to modern eyes, we see a woman still suffering from the effects of various traumas. The fact that she hasn't actually had a breakdown is somewhat amazing. Maharis, damned with faint praise in contemporary reviews as being bland but better than Baker, is very good as the familiar central figure of the passive detective who is more acted upon than acting (like Dana Andrews in LAURA). He is both charming and a little off-putting; we can see why his acquaintances like him, but also why he may not have had many successful intimate relationships. (And, he's damned good-looking.) Peter Lawford (as Summers) and Edmund O'Brien are unmemorable, and Aldo Ray and Lloyd Bochner are grimly effective as Sylvia's rapists; Ann Sothern, Joanne Dru and Viveca Lindfors are fine in supporting roles of varying importance. Paul Gilbert has a fun turn as a male madam who dresses in drag and goes by the name Lola Diamond. The ending is unrealistically upbeat—had this been made in the early 70s, it wouldn't have been. Overall, the movie is too sluggishly paced to be effective, but I was sad that the appealing George Maharis wasn't able to sustain a stronger career—he was just right as a detective, and I'd love to have seen him in some of the neo-noirs in the 70s, like The Long Goodbye or the remake of The Big Sleep. [TCM]
The wealthy Fredric Summers hires private eye Alan Macklin (George Maharis) to investigate his young and lovely bride-to-be, Sylvia West (Carroll Baker), a newly-published poet and flower enthusiast. She's close-mouthed about her background and what little she has owned up to doesn't check out. Summers wants Mack to dig up her past but without having any contact with her, so he begins by taking her poetry to an English professor of his acquaintance who provides a psychological reading and pinpoints her origins to Pittsburgh. Mack's travels lead him to piece together the facts of her life: she had a love of reading from early on, but was raised in rough circumstances, raped by her stepfather, and becomes a prostitute. She lives briefly with a middle-aged dress salesman (Edmund O’Brien), gets a job as an arcade worker, then winds up back in prostitution where she becomes good friends with a woman named Jane. When Jane is hit by a car and is hospitalized for a month, Sylvia works overtime to help her pay for a private room. Sylvia is assaulted and beat up by a well-heeled client who pays her $10,000 not to go to the cops. By that time, Jane is married to a banker and he invests her money well, eventually making her financially independent. Intrigued, and not certain that Summers really deserves Sylvia, Mack arranges to meet her, not revealing his occupation, and the two of them hit it off, but we all know the moment of truth will have to arrive—will Mack give the unsavory report to Summers, will he decide he's in love with her himself, or will Sylvia have a plan of her own?
The mid-60's was when Hollywood’s restrictive Production Code began to collapse, and movies like this one were partly responsible. Ten years earlier, the filmmakers would never have been able to be so open about Sylvia's occupation, nor could they have included a line like this movie’s "Once a whore, always a whore." But the heroine still had to suffer, not just rape and humiliation, but constant unhappiness. There are also some incredibly vague hints made at same-sex attraction between Sylvia and some of her friends. Overall, this is a drab and unpleasant film, but it's saved by the acting of its leads and by a few of the supporting players. Carroll Baker was criticized at the time for giving a wooden performance, but to modern eyes, we see a woman still suffering from the effects of various traumas. The fact that she hasn't actually had a breakdown is somewhat amazing. Maharis, damned with faint praise in contemporary reviews as being bland but better than Baker, is very good as the familiar central figure of the passive detective who is more acted upon than acting (like Dana Andrews in LAURA). He is both charming and a little off-putting; we can see why his acquaintances like him, but also why he may not have had many successful intimate relationships. (And, he's damned good-looking.) Peter Lawford (as Summers) and Edmund O'Brien are unmemorable, and Aldo Ray and Lloyd Bochner are grimly effective as Sylvia's rapists; Ann Sothern, Joanne Dru and Viveca Lindfors are fine in supporting roles of varying importance. Paul Gilbert has a fun turn as a male madam who dresses in drag and goes by the name Lola Diamond. The ending is unrealistically upbeat—had this been made in the early 70s, it wouldn't have been. Overall, the movie is too sluggishly paced to be effective, but I was sad that the appealing George Maharis wasn't able to sustain a stronger career—he was just right as a detective, and I'd love to have seen him in some of the neo-noirs in the 70s, like The Long Goodbye or the remake of The Big Sleep. [TCM]
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