The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe

Rather boring biopic about Edgar Allan Poe. If you removed the characters' names I doubt anybody would be able to figure out who this was about. The movie plods along with little excitement. Poe is a fascinating person and could make for a great biographical picture. He certainly was a complex man with many personal demons and an undeniable genius. This movie isn't willing to get that deep. Like other reviewers have said, it feels like a few short films pieced together. Shepperd Strudwick is part of the problem. He was a fine character actor but not a good leading man. Linda Darnell is pretty as always. Jane Darwell is her mother. Wish I could recommend this one but I can't. It's a cure for insomnia if there ever was one.

Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, The (1942)

*** (out of 4)

Well handled, if a bit too short on detail, film about Poe (John Shepperd) and his struggles with life. The most interesting aspects are Poe's battle with editors over copyright laws, which was the real reason he has blacklisted. The film plays out like three short subjects put together for a feature film and I'm really not sure why Fox didn't put more detail into the film but then again, they did the same thing with The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. Shepperd does a very good job in the role and the supporting players are fine as well.

This has yet to be issued on DVD but if you can catch it on FMC then it's worth watching.

I can't attest to the historical accuracy or inaccuracy of this film--though I tend to think it is woven from whole cloth--but The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is surely one of the least interesting biopics of all time. John Shepperd is a rather stiff Poe, Linda Darnell does little to enliven the proceedings as his great love, and even Jane Darwell is given precious little to work with. It's always fun to see Harry Morgan on screen, here a year away from his terrific performance in The Ox-Bow Incident, and Frank Conroy is sufficiently loathsome as Poe's stepfather. Otherwise, this is a Bryan Foy misfire, though thankfully bereft of Mr. Foy's penchant for newspaper headline narration.

"The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe" is a seldom-seen biopic about the famous author. While in some ways it's pretty good, overall it seems pretty stilted and dull.

The film is a reasonably accurate account of the author's life...probably more accurate than most biopics of the day. It also seems to focus mostly on his relationships with women as well as his snippy/snarky attitude which often hurt him in his literary career. My complaints about it are mostly due to the style as opposed to the content. In other words, it's so melodramatic (with droning melancholy music) and the language so stilted it seems rather stilly and trite....like a third-rate production, which is odd since it came from prestigious Twentieth Century-Fox. Okay...but better you just read the Wikipedia article on the man.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was acclaimed by many to be America's greatest writer in the 19th century. As you see he lived but 40 years. But this had to be a most complex mind to have written the poems and stories he did in that time.

Which you will not get from this biographical film that came from 20th Century Fox's B picture unit. All we get from him here is he was an alcoholic and he crusaded against the copyright laws which made him sell his work for pittance. Under today's laws Poe would have been rich. I also think he would have been as dissipated a person he was in his century as such like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O'Neill would have been in this century.

It's obvious this film had a bigger destiny for it, but Darryl F. Zanuck downgraded it to the B picture unit. It might have been something for Tyrone Power or Don Ameche. Sheppard Strudwick took the lead and he does turn in a fine performance with very little to work with.

The loves of his life are Virginia Gilmore whom he loses to another and Linda Darnell his beautiful, but sickly second wife to whom a lot of his work was dedicated.

A nice film, but way too brief and superficial.