The Shrike

First film directed by highly talented actor Jose ferrer ,who would direct his own version of the Dreyfus affair,long before Roman Polanski .

His portrayal of a failed playwright is thoroughly convincing : confined to a mental hospital after nearly taking his own live, he remembers his past ,his wife who dominated him , who treated him like a grown up kid , urging him to give up on his writer's job for a place in her father's business.Ill at ease with the other inmates , he sometimes wonders if it's not a wrongful confinement .June Allyson,cast against type, is not bad as a selfish wife who finally realizes she may need a shrink too .An over possessive woman ,she fears her husband may leave her for an actress ,Charlotte: in fact she does not see this thespian is a way for the writer to assert himself as a man.It's perhaps too bad that the ending should have been sweetened ;but do not miss Ferrer's excellent performance.

I saw this movie after I had been married for a while, and have thought about it a .lot. in the decades since. Why, you ask? I understand that so much of it, even the ending, will ring true for a certain type of person. And for others, it may seem unbelievable.

But love is not the wonderful live-happily-ever-after kind of thing that Hollywood loved to show in the old times. Love hurts, love drives you crazy, love makes you miserable sometimes.

Among your group of married people you know, there may easily be people who are trying frantically to extricate themselves from their relationship, or tragically and pathetically dream about it. If you discover who they are, ask .them. to see the movie or play and tell you what they think.

As Ferrer wanders through a doorway, beginning to move from "sad" to "crying" to "blubbering", it may seem over the top. Beware, you are just too used to what Hollywood and Broadway have been feeding you. Consider, instead, that this could indeed happen just this way in real life. This is a truly realistic movie.

June Allyson steps way out of type for this bravura acting effort. It is a psychological study of a playwright (Jose Ferrer) slowly sinking into depression and attempting suicide unsuccessfully. Allyson plays his loving but demanding wife. It is very clinical and grimly realistic. Allyson is magnificent and 100% believable as the domineering wife who comes close to loving her man to death. Ferrer is very good as the brooding playwright who comes apart at the seams under the pressure he buys into. Edward Platt is very good as Ferrer's brother. Only Joy Page is a tad unbelievable as Ferrer's ultra-sympathetic would-be paramour. Altogether, I rate it 9/10.

June Allyson is really good in this movie but Isabel Bonner should be given some credit also. Especially when she was married to the writer and died playing her part. I wonder how much time went by between filming the movie and her death.

(July 2, 1955) ACTRESS DROPS DEAD ON CARTHAY CIRCLE STAGE The final curtain fell on the Carthay Circle Theater stage last night for Isabel Bonner, New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with Actor Dane Clarck in "The Shrike." Miss Bonner, 47, who in private life is the wife of Joseph Kramm, author of "The Shrike," was seated by the bedside of Clark when she suddenly fell forward with her head down on the spread.

I saw this film in its original release in Hollywood and have never forgotten June Allyson's shrew of a wife and how she kept putting the psychological knife in her poor, emotionally wasted husband, played by Jose Ferrer. I was too young to know why a wife would do this but the effect has never left me. This film deserves a beautifully restored DVD presentation. June Allyson deserved an Oscar nomination and perhaps the award given the fact that she made a 180 turn against her long established type. Ms. Allyson would only make three more Hollywood films and then escape into television with her own series and then guest host and star in her husband, Dick Powell's, weekly anthology series. She proved her dramatic mettle over and over on television and lived out a serene, much respected retirement in California's wine country near Clint Eastwood's place. Those in Ojai, according to what one resident told me, would see Ms. Allyson in town and about and always gave her the respect of admired distance, yet with warmth. I loved June Allyson, still a handsome beauty to the end.