Und wäre die Liebe nicht...

Look at Eve Harrington now! Oscar-winner Anne Baxter is marvelous in this movie, in which she plays Tacey, a gambling hall hostess who tries to go straight. She falls in love with gambler Clint Saunders (nicely played by Rock Hudson), and starts life anew with him and his brother. Julie Adams plays the bad girl who steals Clint away to the hilt. Natalie Wood gives an endearing performance as Seely, an orphan who also lives with Clint and Tacey. This is a sadly underrated film which showcases the talents of some of Hollywood's most cherished stars.

Having watched Anne Baxter in 'The Ten Commandments' I wanted to learn more about her track record leading up to 1956 by watching this film. Don't bother. The film fails to provide any interesting characters or an engaging storyline. You could say that it is a bad script, but there is a line where Anne Baxter says: 'The most important thing for a woman is to feel needed.' I'm not even sure if Rock Hudson succeeded in making her feel needed in the film as his character was unsympathetic. The film comes nowhere the quality of 'The Razor's Edge' where Baxter earned her Oscar by playing a sympathetic character. This is a poorly written script which does not make full use of the talents of Baxter and Hudson.

This is the worst example of what the Universal "living room beefcake" Rock Hudson could make in those years. Not the best of the best, as you can guess, and nor the best of Jerry Hopper. Anne Baxter, poor Ann Baxter did her best at least to save the whole, but for my taste could not make it. But if you crave for the atmosphere of this fifties era, so you can spend a couple of hours watching it.

In thinking over the title One Desire I've concluded it refers to the One Desire that Anne Baxter and Julie Adams have for Rock Hudson. Each wants the whole Rock and not just a piece of it.

Baxter and Hudson play a pair of saloon denizens. She's a house madam and he's a gambler by trade. Both decide they can do much better, especially after Hudson's little brother Barry Curtis arrives with nowhere else to go. Later on the two take in Natalie Wood an orphan girl whose father is killed in a mining accident.

This nice jerry built family is interrupted when Adams who is the spoiled daughter of a Senator and bank president Carl Benton Reid sets her cap for Hudson. She connives to get the kids taken from Baxter as an unfit parent and Hudson being no match for her wiles marries her and Baxter goes back to her old trade.

The surprise here is Julie Adams who usually plays nice women. This was a bit of offbeat casting for her, but she pulls it off. She's as manipulative as Eve Harrington.

An interesting tale, the women are fine, I could not quite grasp Hudson's character as so naive especially with his background as a gambler. You're supposed to learn to read people in that trade.

In what was supposed to be a soapy melodrama, One Desire ended up a bit of a disappointment. With the heavy dramatic star Anne Baxter playing a stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold and the handsome Rock Hudson as a selfish playboy, you'd think nothing could go wrong with the movie. The story took turns that verged on the ridiculous, and even in a soap opera, plot points that ridiculous didn't fly. Perhaps the original novel was extremely lengthy and fleshed everything out so it made sense, and perhaps the Hollywood movie chose to include all the key points even if they were choppy and silly.

Anne starts off the head hooker in a casino who's in love with no-good cards dealer Rock. When he gets a special visitor, his long-lost kid brother, Barry Curtis, he decides on a fresh start in a new town. Without any commitment or guarantees, Anne packs her bags and goes with them to the mining town. Rock takes a room at a hotel and pays for Anne's house so they can be respectable but so she can raise his brother while he goes to work. How respectable is it to have a man you're not even engaged to paying your rent, at that time? And if Rock is such a jerk to treat her that way, why would she go with him in the first place, keep house, cook, raise his brother, and risk her reputation when he flirts with other women right in front of her? Julia Adams, a banker's daughter, is the object of the ambitious Rock's latest affection, but it turns out Julia has a mean streak in her and takes it out on Anne.

So far, this sounds like a really interesting story, right? Trust me, the second half of the movie is much less fun. You'll get to see Anne in some pretty costumes, and you'll get to see a gawky Natalie Wood in the last childish role before she reestablished herself in Rebel Without a Cause, but there's not much more incentive. For a much better Anne Baxter drama, check out Season of Passion, and for Rock Hudson in a more likable role, try A Farewell to Arms.