Quando l'amore se n'è andato

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.

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?

On April 4, 1958, Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, stabbed Turner's boyfriend, underworld figure Johnny Stompanato, to death, in what was later deemed a justifiable homicide. This scandalous incident served as the inspiration for Harold Robbins' 1962 novel "Where Love Has Gone," his follow-up to "The Carpetbaggers." And this tawdry novel was given the A-list treatment by Paramount two years later, in a film that was critically lambasted but commercially successful. The picture featured the cream of Hollywood talent both in front of and behind the camera, but turned out to be a highly melodramatic affair, replete with florid dialogue and soap operalike qualities. But is it fun to watch today, almost five decades later? Oh, yes, indeed!

The film cleaves into two fairly discrete sections. In the first, we meet Luke Miller, an aspiring architect (played by Mike Connors) whose daughter, Danni, has just killed his ex-wife's lover in San Francisco. (Fifteen-year-old Danni, it should be mentioned, is played by future sex symbol Joey Heatherton, 20 here and almost unrecognizable as a redhead.) In flashback, we see how Luke first met Danni's mom, a sculptress and artist named Valerie Hayden (Susan Hayward), daughter of society matron Mrs. Gerald Hayden (Bette Davis, despite the fact that Bette was only 10 years older than Susan), and how their marriage soon dissolved due to alcoholism and infidelity. In the film's second half, we are witness to Danni's juvenile hearing and see the aftermath of the murder, including a short sojourn in blackmailing territory.

"Where Love Has Gone" features some beautiful sets and makes excellent use of its S.F. locales. It also features a catchy Sammy Cahn/James van Heusen theme song, warbled by Jack Jones, and eye-catching costumes by famed designer Edith Head. Edward Dmytryk's direction (he had previously worked with Susan on 1955's "Soldier of Fortune," though never before with Bette, and had just directed the film adaptation of "The Carpetbaggers") is typically expert, and the supporting cast (including DeForest Kelley as a cynical art critic, here two years pre-"Trek"; the always hissable George Macready; Jane Greer, who had appeared with Susan in 1947's "They Won't Believe Me"; and Whit Bissell, who seems to have appeared in half the films ever made!) is just fine. But of course, the main selling point of this film has to be the first and only pairing of two of Hollywood's greatest actresses, Bette Davis and Susan Hayward (two of MY personal favorites, at least). These two supposedly didn't get along well on the set (surprise, surprise), but sure do have a cutting and nasty chemistry on screen! Susan's final courtroom speech may be the film's finest moment, thespianwise, although Mike Connors, here three years prior to beginning his eight-year run as TV's Mannix, provides the film with its most ingratiating performance. In short, "Where Love Has Gone" is certainly nobody's idea of a great film, much less "high art," but yes, it sure is fun to watch. And really, where else are you going to see the "Brooklyn Bombshell," Susan Hayward, handle a blowtorch?

Paramount Pictures assigned star Producer Joseph E Levine to bring the torrid best seller roman a clef of the Lana Turner Johnny Stompanato murder to the screen. Levine cast surefire box office queen Susan Hayward to play "Lana, and to play the other strong female role, the one and only Ms. Bette Davis. There was a long time interest to see these two great stars in a film. Directed by Edward Dymtryk the film is a powerhouse with great acting by Susan Hayward and Bette Davis. I wish they had cast another actor other than Mike Connors in the role of Hayward's lover and Ann Margret rather than Joey Heatheron. Ms. Hayward got top billing over Ms. Davis--the first time in her great career Bette Davis was billed under another great female star!-- and wore great stylish outfits by Edith Head. It is now well known that Bette Davis and Susan Hayward did not get along at all during filming. Susan Hayward was afraid of Bette's well known use of tricks and since Susan Hayward had both cast approval and script approval and top billing, had Bette Davis boxed in. No changes were allowed. In fairness, the script did need more juice and a tougher script would have benefited the talents of Susan Hayward nd Bette Davis. Bette Davis carped about Susan Hayward until her death, and Susan Hayward joined Joan Crawford, Miriam Hopkins on Bette's "hate list". (Soon to be joined by Faye Dunaway and Lillian Gish. Where Love Has Gone with top notch Paramount production values is an old fashioned film and is best seen to see two great movie stars Susan Hayward and Bette Davis!

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.