The Other Love

When this was first released in the end David Niven plays the piano and says something like 3 mistakes and Barbara doesn't answer he goes over the her holds her hand and finds she has died. This was cut out after it was released the second time a few years later.

Famed concert pianist Karen Duncan (Barbara Stanwyck) is recuperating in a Swiss sanatorium from a respiratory illness under the supervision of loving Dr. Tony Stanton (David Niven). She befriends fellow patient Celestine Miller (Joan Lorring). Playboy Paul Clermont (Richard Conte) crashes his race car barely avoiding Karen on the road. Her illness is more serious than she suspects. She is shocked by Celestine's unexpected death. Stanton tells her that she must rest but she ignores his advise and runs off to live her life with Clermont. It's a bit slow. With Stanwyck, it holds out a possibility of something more. I was hoping for a good twist or something different. In the end, it doesn't really give more than a straight downward slide into a romantic melodrama.

David Niven and Barbara Stanwyck were both actors of quality, but they share absolutely no chemistry together in this sudsy melodrama about a concert pianist with TB. The rugged Richard Conte, a racing driver with a taste for the high life, is a much better fit for Stanwyck's screen presence, but isn't really given enough time to make his mark. Naturally, Stanwyck looks gorgeous throughout, despite her life-threatening illness...

In The Other Love Barbara Stanwyck steps into territory that was reserved for Margaret Sullavan, Hollywood's all time champion of essaying roles in bittersweet romances. Two films of her's, Three Comrades and The Mortal Storm bare no small resemblance to The Other Love. Especially the former since it also was taken from a Erich Maria Remarque story.

But Three Comrades had Frank Borzage directing it and that was the man for these films. His touch on bittersweet romances is as apparent and obvious as Alfred Hitchcock with suspense. This film would have raised a few notches in ratings had he directed it. And of course Sullavan would have aced the part of the tubercular heroine.

As it is Stanwyck is not bad in the role of a patient of Dr. David Niven at a Swiss sanitarium for tuberculosis. Niven is having a lot of trouble keeping his professional decorum with Stanwyck, but the doctor does win over the potential lover. Stanwyck doesn't realize how sick she is just as Sullavan didn't realize it in Three Comrades. She's a classical concert pianist and the enforced rest is rusting her technique.

The first chance she gets she runs off with racing driver Richard Conte who she doesn't tell how sick she is. But in the end Conte proves to be a stand-up guy.

There is also a very touching performance from Joan Lorring as a singer who is also a patient in the sanitarium. Her death just about pushes Stanwyck over the edge.

Barbara and the cast acquit themselves well, but Frank Borzage could have made The Other Love a classic.

A truly irresistible piece of high-fashion schmaltz, The Other Love stars Barbara Stanwyck in the sort of 'genteel weepy' role more commonly associated with Norma Shearer or Joan Fontaine. A lady pianist dying of some unspecified lung disease. Whatever her illness may be, it only makes her grow more glamorous the closer she edges towards death.

Of course, dying in so decorous a fashion would take a bite out of anybody's schedule. So our Babs cuts short her international concert tour, and checks into a plush clinic with a panoramic view of the Swiss Alps. There she meets David Niven, a handsome doctor who takes a more-than-professional interest in her case. Frankly, I found his fascination with Babs and her illness to be downright ghoulish - and couldn't help wondering if he was a closet necrophiliac.

Realising, perhaps, that Niven is far too lightweight to make a convincing leading man (at one point, I felt they should switch roles!) La Stanwyck runs away to Monte Carlo. There she starts living the high life with a tough, sexy racing driver (Richard Conte). Given the fact that she has only a few weeks left to live, I thought this was eminently sensible behaviour on her part. Ah, but her heart is calling her back to Niven and his Alpine clinic...

The Other Love is spectacularly well-made by unsung director Andre de Toth, and boasts a luscious Tchaikovsky-esquire score by Miklos Rozsa. But it's success is down to Barbara Stanwyck, who lends a much-needed note of toughness and reality to what would otherwise be a pure camp melodrama. Played by anyone else, our heroine would most likely drown in syrup long before succumbing to a weakness of the lungs.