Rivalités

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?

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.

And that's not ALL poor Joey Heatherton's lost, in this lurid melodrama adapted from the Harold Robbins novel. Produced by Schlockmeister Joseph E. Levine (''The Carpetbaggers'') ''Where Love Has Gone is a VERY thinly disguised dramatization of the Lana Turner/Cheryl Crane/Johnny Stompanato case in which he was supposedly stabbed to death by Lana's daughter Cheryl. Here, the central figure is a famous sculptress (Susan Hayward) who resents her domineering mother (Bette Davis) and spends most of her time in the sack with various low-life lovers. Heatherton is her neglected teenage daughter, whose estranged father (Michael Connors) flies to her defense when she is accused of the murder. This leads to a lengthy flashback which shows, in detail, the courtship, marriage and eventual divorce he and Hayward endure.And, back in the present (where no one involved looks a day older, let alone wiser) things get worse, as one sordid revelation after another leads all of this to it's laughably melodramatic conclusion. Davis, who reputedly didn't like the script (or Hayward either, for that matter)and sporting a white wig and very thick eye makeup,reads her lines like an elocution school teacher, while Hayward bellows hers so loudly that people who saw this in a theater could probably hear them in the bathroom.And it's Hayward we have to thank for this exercise in excess, because she insisted the script be filmed as written-refusing any changes. Heatherton, trying (and failing) to look 15 yeas old, does little more than pout her way through her part, while occasionally delivering some howlers: ''Oh, Daddy, what's wrong with me? I love all the wrong people-and I HATE all the right ones!''. Oh Yes, and blaming the loss of her virginity on ''Horseback Riding''?. Connors, a few years away from ''Mannix'' is just there. ''Star Trek's'' DeForest Kelly is around as a sleazy art critic, while Film Noir bad girl Jane Greer (making a comeback after a heart operation)is a reserved, but concerned probation officer.And it's Greer, along with Anne Seymour (''All The King's Men'')as a psychiatrist, who give the best performances.This was pretty Hot Stuff for 1964, though less so these days. Despite the box office success it had, it's largely forgotten now.A new DVD has just been released by Olive Films, And the plush Technicolor production is something to see-remastered for the first time in all it's Widescreen Glory. And in spite of (or ,maybe because of) it's Producer attempt to cash in on what was really a very seamy incident in Hollywood History, the film is very entertaining, and a time capsule from a bygone era.

...when films of 1960-1965 had one foot in the demure production code era and one foot in the budding sexual revolution.

After the credits open with some horrid MOR song over idyllic shots of San Francisco, we cut to the action. Joey Heatherton stabs Rick Lazich in the presence of her mother (Susan Hayward), who had him as her latest boyfriend. Heatherton's dad (Mike Conners) flies in for appearance's sake, since he's there at the sufferance of Grandma (Bette Davis in another of her juicy later career roles) who controls everything.

We get a flashback to how Conners and Hayward married and divorced. Although, this is a flashback to some alternate-universe 1944 in which the US is still at war but everybody wears 1960s fashions and hairstyles. Conners is a war hero; Hayward a sculptress; Davis interferes in their marriage and gets all of the bankers in Frisco to make it so that Conners can only go back to her family business rather than start his own architecture firm. Hayward sleeps around (presumably) with her models while Conners drinks himself into a divorce.

Back in the present day, the killing is deemed a justifiable homicide, but Heatherton is kept in juvie while the courts can figure out who, if anybody should get custody of her. George Macready plays Davis' lawyer; Jane Greer comes from out of the past to play a social worker; and DeForrest Kelly plays Hayward's art dealer (Jim, I'm a doctor, not an art critic!).

Davis overacts and delivers pointed bons mots; Hayward wears big hair and recites some terribly overripe lines; Conners gets to be wooden; and Heatherton cries "Daddy!" all the time; you almost expect her to break out into the "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" song that appears at the beginning of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? And then there's an ending that makes no sense.

If you're looking for a serious movie, I'd rate it a 3/10. But if you're looking for the sort of turgid, over-the-top potboiler where you yell back at the screen and laugh at the absurdity of it all, I'd give it an 8/10. It's not quite as "so bad it's good" as Valley of the Dolls or Torch Song, but it's an eminently entertaining disaster nonetheless. I split the difference to give it a 6/10.

Just one more thing. Bette Davis is only nine years older than Susan Hayward, but very credibly looks like her mother. Part of that was that Bette Davis, dish that she was when she was young, aged very poorly for whatever reason. The other part is makeup. In contrast, Susan Hayward aged very well, as short as her life was, and she looks nowhere near 47 here, which was her actual age.

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 ****