From United Artists
Directed by Gordon Kay
Starring
Marla English
Kathleen Hughes
Sara Shane
John Bromfield
Madge Kennedy
Jess Barker
Anthony George
Now here's one for the books! You've heard of it, of course. And look at these seven actors... some of your favorites, right? Uh-huh, right. Well, I'll tell you, it's far from the best movie ever made but with the proper attitude adjustment (meaning you're not expecting a lot), it's trashy and fun.
There are a number of things that make it a potboiler of the first order. (If you're unfamiliar with the term potboiler, it simply means a work of poor quality, produced quickly for profits.) It was completed in 18 days and stars four actors who were either just starting out or who couldn't manage to get out of the rut of making B pictures or, well, potboilers.
It doesn't take too long into it that one is abundantly aware of the crazy title. The thing is that only two of the sisters are bad and when that is further investigated, it might even be said that only one is. The third sister is not bad at all although she should be honored for being the dullest while being the film's most sympathetic character. Anyone who's ever seen this movie would comment on the odd title.
The Craig sisters, Valerie, Vicki and Lorna, are the daughters of a man worth 40 million dollars. He is killed in a plane crash in which the pilot, Jim Norton, escapes unharmed. After Jim (Bromfield) is cleared of any wrongdoing, he is confronted by the most treacherous of the sisters, Valerie (Hughes). She offers him $200,000 to seduce and marry the good one Lorna (Shane), who along with her attorney-fiance (Barker), now controls the purse strings for the family. Valerie threatens Jim that she will frame him for murdering her father is he doesn't cooperate. Of course, it seems highly unlikely that she could accomplish this and the script does nothing to substantiate it.
While Valerie constantly comes on to Jim, so does Vicki (English) who is an obvious sexpot. I'm one of the devastating Craigs, she purrs to him. I graduated magna cum laude from Embraceable U.
The two sisters do not get along at all and after Vicki torments Valerie about who's better-looking, they get into a slapping match and Valerie throws Vicki on the bed and savagely beats her in the face with a riding crop. When Vicki sees how damaged her face looks, she jumps into her car, speeds down the curved roads from their mountaintop home, crashes and dies. At least one assumes she dies. I do not recall anyone actually addressing that but I do recall that no one even mentions her absence.
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| Shane, Hughes, Bromfield standing with English as the couch tomato |
What Valerie doesn't count on is that Jim and Lorna actually do fall in love before they marry. Here's another half-baked plot point. What about that fiancé? Apparently he gives no mind to his fiancé falling in love with another man. It's another thing the script doesn't cover. Did I mention Jim is also living in the mansion with the sisters and their tipsy aunt (Kennedy) who suspects that Jim is up to no good while never once considering the same about her nieces.
Valerie makes a couple of attempts to cause harm to Lorna but ultimately it is Valerie who is killed in her own mess. Jim and Lorna and all those millions apparently live happily ever after.
Clearly it is not a good movie. (Movies at lengths of one hour and 16 minutes rarely are.) It is representative of a great many movies in the 50's that featured good-looking actors in a lot of B- fare. They were cheap to make, they could be put into theaters on double-bills and the public flocked to them. Bromfield, Hughes and English all appeared in the popular sci-fi monster flicks of the day and were well-known to a certain faction of the movie-going public.
English was the most well-known of the quartet and is top-billed although she definitely has the smallest role. Bromfield is clearly the star here. Hughes is a superb villainess and often played one in her mainly supportive roles. As of this writing, she and Shane are still alive. Let's meet the four stars...
Kathleen Hughes is the best thing about Three Bad Sisters... actually it's a hoot of a performance, arguably her best ever. She rarely had a part this large. I have no idea why she didn't make it but she did get caught up in that Universal-International quagmire that took on beautiful people, trained them and then failed to use them in any beneficial way. In this film she looked a great deal like a young Monroe and even had that soft voice and open mouth. It's not surprising that she tried out for several roles that MM ended up getting.
Marla English only made 14 movies. She had been a model and Paramount liked her looks and signed her on but ended up only using her is five films. Unlike the other two ladies, English was usually the female lead in her films. The first time I ever saw her was in Rear Window... she was one of the apartment dwellers that Jimmy Stewart watched through his binoculars. Her best film was probably the 1954 noir, Shield for Murder. She quit films, had three husbands and six children.
Sara Shane, unfortunately, never really made it in Hollywood, hard as she may have tried. She was lovely to behold (she reminded me of Loretta Young) and MGM put her under contract but never used her beyond bit parts in three films. She, too, had a brief stay at Universal but her roles got larger when she left. Freelancing she did both this film and the Clark Gable-Eleanor Parker western, The King and Four Queens, the same year. While I liked her, she always seemed to hold back in her acting. She eventually turned to writing health books and moved to Australia.
John Bromfield was a hunk, no two ways about it. He was handsome with a beautiful voice and a penchant for showing off his body. He was also a decent actor. Paramount took him on and he started off in good films... Sorry, Wrong Number, Rope of Sand, Paid in Full and The Furies... but soon he was relegated to the B's. Suspiciously, Paramount ordered him to marry actress Corinne Calvet and it was a stormy union. He did some TV, even his own series, and then quit acting to become a commercial fisherman.
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A staple of movie magazines
in the 1950's
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