A bestseller in 1949; passé by 1965, film adaptations of John O’Hara’s major novels ended not with a bang, but with this whimper. Where O’Hara projects once attracted stars like Liz Taylor, Paul Newman, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, here tv director Walter Grauman gets Suzanne Pleshette, Bradford Dillman & Ben Gazzara, none able to ‘carry’ a film. Pleshette, playing a Country Club nymphomaniac, thinks she can walk the straight & narrow by marrying Dillman’s butter-and-egg man (he’s actually a wealthy farmer), then can’t say no to the swarthy testosterone lure of Gazzara. Perhaps if done as a period piece with the sweep & glossy TechniColored production values of Douglas Sirk melodrama, along with his critical social objectivity, the simplified psychological details strengthened by tongue-and-groove joined story beats, it could still make an effect. But everything’s all so earnest, you can’t even giggle at it. Well, almost can’t. Not when you’ve got local newspaper editor Peter Graves hitting on Suzanne Pleshette. Talk about mission impossible.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Are the O’Hara novels still read? His short stories certainly should be. None of the big film adaptations do well by him (embarrassments like PAL JOEY/’57 and BUTTERFIELD 8/’60). The one exception his great film-biz novella NATICA JACKSON, made as a one-hour PBS film with Michelle Pfeiffer and Hector Elizondo as part of 1987's ‘Tales of the Hollywood Hills’ series. Alas, only available intercut with another episode from the show. A real loss.
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