This Is My Love

Strong performances but Darnell, Duryea, Domergue and Jason make this worth watching but you get the feeling that this could have been much better. Part of the blame is in the direction and part in the script.

This Is My Love was made near the end of Darnell's Hollywood career. She kept getting better as a actress but never learned how to market herself in a business where the studio system was collapsing. I'm reading a book which claims Darnell's millionaire second husband offered to make her a producer so she could choose her own scripts and costars but she turned him down and got a divorce instead. A shrewd businesswoman would have taken the deal and extended her film career but I guess we all have to be true to ourselves in the end. You have to feel sorry for actresses like Darnell that had the talent and beauty to be megastars but ended up on the B list instead.

anyone know where i could get a copy of THIS IS MY LOVE . rick jason is great. he was lt. hanley in the COMBAT TV series. loved his voice. wonder why he did not become a bigger star, linda darnell was also a great actress and i read she died in a fire when she went in to get a child. wish that other rick jason stories were available as he not only could act well, he was very handsome. rick jason wrote in his autobiography that linda darnell was excellent to work with and played her role very well. rick jason is a fox in a henhouse. darnell and married sister both want him, and who can blame them. but this leads to trouble. tensions build and come to a climax, i especially liked jason taking darnell dancing. well worth seeing.

There is no way I would have let dan talk to me like that. Her boyfriend joked and played ⚙ much. Glenn wasn't all that, he knew the sister was married but didn't care. Evie was a tramp and spoiled. Dan may been in wheelchair, but he still could have watched his own kids. Telling Vida to answer the door, when all he had to do was roll his ass over and open it. Vida should never have moved in with them. I would have told Dan what I thought about him, and let him know his precious Evie was cheating. He was so full of self pity. He was too over the top in this. Cripple or not I didn't feel sorry for him.

Directed by Stuart Heisler {The Glass Key} and starring Linda Darnell {Vida Dove}, Faith Domergue {Evelyn Dove/Myer}, Dan Duryea {Murray Myer} & Rick Jason {Glenn Harris}, This Is My Love is a Noirish potboiler dealing in sexual repression, deception, heartbreak, sibling strife and murder. All of which sounds like the film should be a most potent piece of work, sadly the film never rises above being a ponderously paced story that's devoid of a blood pumping heart.

It's a shame this vastly underachieves as a drama since the performances of the three principal actors are very strong, especially Darnell, who as Vida Dove neatly blends a smouldering sexuality with a tinted confusion of the life she is leading. Based on Hugh Brooke's story, Fear Has Black Wings, This Is My Love is filmed in Pathécolor and theatrically released out of RKO. Never released on DVD and mostly forgotten by all but Darnell/Duryea purists, Heisler's film hints at being far more intriguing than it actually is. It's not so much that one finds themselves waiting for a plot spark that never arrives, it's the overriding feeling that the finale here will be a let down. The very nature of the piece telegraphs where these characters will end up, thus rendering the ending the damp squib it ultimately is.

It's a testament to Darnell, Domergue and Duryea that they have given the characters some substance, managing to hold the viewers attention span by way of their craft. One scene as Darnell's Vida shouts down at the wheelchair bound Murray is worth sitting thru the movie for. But it's a rare moment of heat raising as the tepid screenplay, staid direction and the woefully bland performance of Rick Jason swamp any chance of movie ignition. There's some value with Franz Waxman's score, and Connie Russell popping in to sing the title song is a bonus. But much like the sisters Vida & Evelyn Dove in the picture, I too felt boxed in, and that is something I'm sure the makers wasn't aiming for. 4/10

Linda Darnell and Dan Duryea make this film by perhaps the best performance of their careers both of them, in a play perfectly suited for them and bringing out the best of both of them, Dan Duryea as a bitter cripple, a former dancer, bringing his bitterness to a burning epitome of pathetic anger and despair, and Linda Darnell, the more beautiful of two sisters, making you wonder why she was left a spinster while her sister Faith Domergue gets stuck with two children with a later incapacitated furiously bitter husband. Of course Linda must take this "gas station Casanova" (Rick Jason) seriously when he deigns to court her, actually to get at her married sister, but as the sensitive and empathic woman she is, she takes it too seriously and realizes her mistake too late. It's a great story of frustrated love and jealousy, human fallacy and passion running amuck because of misapprehensions. To this comes the innocence of the two children, making noise by their mischief but at least pointing out their presence, and Eddie (Hal Baylor) as the clown of the drama, totally naïve and believing his jokes to be funny, while he is the only one laughing at them, which actually makes them funny for their sheer stupidity. The scenery is remarkably and consistently bleak and humdrum, a shabby restaurant and a claustrophobic home, with only some dream sequences for a relief - this is actually a drama on level with Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and others of that category. To this comes Franz Waxman's irresistible music, giving the story and the characters and their bleak world all the beauty that they are missing. It's a wonderful, tense drama which must bring about deep reflections for everybody about their own life meanings and motives.