Wohin die Liebe führt

Fans of great "bad movies" should lap this up like a bowl of frosting. Loosely based on the Lana Turner-Johnny Stompanato-Cheryl Crane murder incident, Harold Robbins fashioned a novel to cash in on and exploit the gossipy tale. This resultant film carries on the tradition in high, campy style complete with hilarious "racy" dialogue, glamorously sanitized sexual shenanigans, concerned social workers, over the top sets and decor and signature Edith Head costumes. Velvet-voiced crooner Jack Jones (later to be immortalized as the pipes heard in "The Love Boat" theme song) kicks off the film with a yummy title song against dreamy shots of San Francisco. Hayward stars as a socialite sculptress who finds herself paired with WWII hero Conners. Her gorgon-like mother (Davis) steers them toward marriage, yet, when Conners doesn't do her bidding, pulls out all the stops to destroy the union and press for a divorce. The marriage does produce a daughter (Heatherton) who, years later, finds herself in juvenile hall after filleting one of Hayward's live-in lovers. Though the tale spans twenty years, Conners and Hayward (and Davis!) look exactly the same throughout. The hair, clothes and furnishings show no evolution, nor any feel for the period. (Hayward has her customary bouffant bubble 'do which she wore in virtually every film from the '50's on, no matter what the time, place or character!) Hayward frets and yells and suffers while draped in fur accented suits (or sometimes in her uproarious sculpting scarves) with her bizarre accent fully in place. Somewhat paunchy Davis sashays around in her pretty concoctions, wearing an intriguing grey wig and doling out orders. At times she resembles her old nemesis Joan Crawford and one could easily picture her in the part as well. Conners does all right, though no matter what histrionics he could come up with, there's no room for him in this film. The battle royale is between Hayward and Davis. Davis was already miffed at Hayward for just having remade "Dark Victory" as "The Stolen Hours". Then there were differences over the script with Davis reworking scenes until finally Hayward pulled her weight and demanded that the script be shot as originally written (which was no Pulitzer Prize winner.) Later, Davis had yet another battle (which she won) over how her character's fate should be played out. The animosity between these two women is palpable. Amid all the soapy trappings and turgid dramatics, there is some really hateful fire and some awesomely bitter moments between them, which are fun to behold. Anyone wanting to get plastered should do a shot every time one note Heatherton whines the word "Daddy". Nearly twenty belts of booze ought to do anyone in! She is hilariously bratty and annoying, though she does get some decent licks in, notably in a scene with Seymour. Greer shows up as a sympathetic and concerned case worker. She holds her own with dignity against the fire-breathing Hayward. The dialogue is riotous throughout with some lines actually eliciting guffaws. The lawyer has a great one about the deceased and his relationships with the mother-daughter team, "He wasn't any good at double entry bookkeeping, but he was great at double entry housekeeping". "Star Trek" fans will be startled to see Kelley in a film like this, referring to the bedroom habits of Hayward. In the source novel, Davis' character comes across far more sympathetically, though that may not have been as interesting for the cinema. Also, Conners' character had a devoted second wife who was carrying his child. Most of the novel's plot line made it to the screen, however, though the film's ending is far less happy. There's very little resembling reality in this movie, but thank God for it. It's a glossy, pseudo-sordid potpourri of theatrics and glitz with occasional verbal fireworks.

Society sculptress in San Francisco marries a war veteran, a man who quickly turns to the bottle after failing to carve out his own niche away from the realm of his domineering mother-in-law; sometime later, the daughter they share apparently kills mom's lover in a jealous rage. Harold Robbins' best-selling roman à clef lifts its subplot from the real-life Lana Turner-Johnny Stompanato case, and those bits and pieces are rather interesting. However, much of the movie is spent with bickering marrieds Susan Hayward and inert Michael Connors trading barbs, and the promising idea loses its impetus and becomes a stillborn soaper. Connors, heavily made-up and with lacquered black hair that never changes during the story's many years, twitches and twists his mouth into a grimace throughout the entire picture, only coming to life while tipsy in a brief dinner scene. Hayward fares better, but her slurpy, silly lines are pure camp ("You're a kept-man, not a war hero! And a drunk! A drunk! A DRUNK!"). Bette Davis is pretty much wasted as Hayward's mother (who would've thought a film co-starring these two high-powered ladies could be so dull?) and Joey Heatherton scowls continuously as the teenager in trouble (I loved her retort. Though, about how she lost her virginity: "It happened horseback riding!"). Tatty-looking picture has some fun trappings--Susan's round bed, Princess telephones, fashions that often match the room décor--but the plot is lazy and Edward Dmytryk's direction is completely rote. One Oscar nomination: for the cheesy title song composed by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn. *1/2 from ****

If you're up on your old Hollywood gossip, you probably remember when Lana Turner's daughter stabbed Lana's boyfriend to death in the 1950s. If you didn't know that, there's no need to read up on it; Hollywood made a movie about it seven years later! In Where Love Has Gone, a teenage daughter is arrested for murdering her mother's boyfriend and is put on trial. While the names were changed, Susan Hayward plays the Lana Turner part, Joey Heatherton plays the daughter, and Mike Connors plays the ex-husband, puzzled by his daughter's behavior.

Bette Davis joins the cast as Susan's mother, and when the two powerhouse actresses share the screen together, they practically tear each other apart! The gloves are off and the two women spit fury, snap one-liners, and give their all in emotional outbursts. Regardless of the scandalous plot, it's worth watching the movie just to see the two strong legends act together. If you like courtroom dramas, dysfunctional families, or emotional soap operas, rent Where Love Has Gone over the weekend with a bunch of your girlfriends. In the supporting cast, you'll see Jane Greer, DeForest Kelley, Anne Seymour, Walter Reed, and Whit Bissell.

The team of Paramount Pictures, author Harold Robbins, and director Edward Dmytryk scored a big box office success with The Carpetbaggers in 1964 at the box office and so Paramount decided to keep the team going and adapted another of Robbins's novels for the big screen, Where Love Has Gone.

Unlike The Carpetbaggers which employed a bunch of old Hollywood names for a story about an older era of Hollywood, this film was located in San Francisco. But the story is unmistakably modeled on the infamous Johnny Stompanato murder from 1958 where Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane killed her mother's mobster boyfriend with a butcher knife. Although our protagonist here is a sculptress, no mistaking where Harold Robbins got his plot from.

Sculptress Susan Hayward the daughter of wealthy San Francisco dowager Bette Davis has her live-in boyfriend killed in front of her by her daughter Joey Heatherton. The boyfriend of Hayward who was living with both of them was also doing both of them. He was on the books as Hayward's manager, but he was better at double entry housekeeping than double entry bookkeeping. The arrest is a scandal and the family gathers to protect Heatherton, a call goes out to Phoenix, Arizona where her father Michael Connors has been living for years out there making a success at his profession of architecture. Lawyer George MacReady wants to see a supportive family in the picture.

It's a pretty sordid story and Where Love Has Gone has a long flashback detailing the marriage of Hayward and Connors and the constant meddling of Davis in their lives. He took to drink and she went back to her former hobby of promiscuity.

The story sticks pretty close to the events as unfolded in the Stompanato homicide, but the ending that Harold Robbins has for his characters is all his own.

The main attraction of Where Love Has Gone is the one and only teaming of screen divas Bette Davis and Susan Hayward. In fact way back when Hayward had a small bit in Davis's film The Sisters, but now they were both legends. And like David and that other legend Joan Crawford, she and Hayward didn't become bosom buddies and there were some flareups according to books about both actresses, but nothing on the line of the grand feuds that Davis had with such folks as Joan Crawford and Miriam Hopkins back in the day.

As for Lana Turner she remained closemouthed about the book and movie of Where Love Has Gone, but you have to believe there were some hurt feelings there.

Where Love Is Gone is trash, it doesn't pretend to be anything else. And the chance to see Hayward and Davis sharing a screen and spitting fire should not be missed.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures from the 60's is WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, a turgid 1964 soap opera loosely based on the events surrounding Lana Turner when her daughter Cheryl was accused of murdering her then boyfriend Johnny Stompanato. In this story, the actress becomes a sculptor named Valerie Hayden-Miller and Mike (Mannix) Connors plays Luke Miller, her no good husband. Joey Heatherton is amusing as the daughter and Bette Davis does her fair share of scenery chewing, sitting in the world's ugliest chair, as Valerie's mother. The movie holds a certain morbid fascination since it is loosely based on fact but everyone involved is either overacting or not acting at all which can be quite fun to watch. Hayward is an appropriate hand-wringing heroine from the 60's and Davis just looks embarrassed. I remember reading somewhere that Davis agreed to do this movie so that she could pay for her daughter's wedding. Need I say more?