Guilty Pleasures: Back Street

1961 Romance Drama
From Universal-International
Directed by David Miller

Starring
Susan Hayward
John Gavin
Vera Miles
Charles Drake
Virginia Grey
Reginald Gardiner
Robert Eyer
Tammy Marihugh

Yes, yes, it is a guilty pleasure but far more pleasure and actually not a lot of guilt.  I've discussed this movie with others for years and find that although there are a lot who like it (mainly women, of course) there have been far too many who have derided it for its gooey center, shameless sentimentality and bouts of preposterousness, often ending their bombardment with how could you?

Well, that's an easy one to answer.  I love the goo and the sentimentality and I've learned to overlook the unbelievable bits.  While we're at it why do those of us who like sentimentality always feel like we need to apologize for it?  And c'mon now, one can double that if you're a guy who likes it.  I've always loved a good love story particularly when there's suffering.  I love sentimentality.  You may like spaceships, animated creatures in the sea or the jungle, car crashes or decapitated heads rolling across the floor.  Good thing there's room for many tastes in movies, eh?

But far and above that entire last paragraph, I love this film because of its two leading actresses, queens of lionesses in my large pride.  Susan Hayward and Vera Miles did it for me.  Luckily, this film was a fabulous showcase for both of them.  Leading man John Gavin, whom Universal originally brought on as a threat to Rock Hudson, was at the height of his fame at the time.  Women dragged their husbands to it.  I dragged my wife.  Universal's cash registers overflowed.

Hayward plays the other woman.  As the story unfolds during WWII, she lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is a budding clothing designer.  She meets marine Gavin who is trying to get home to Chicago.  With two people this attractive, it wasn't a stretch to find that they fall in love within a day or so.  He doesn't tell her he's married as they decide that she will join in on his flight home.  We'll assume he would have told her about the wife.

But it doesn't work out that way.  She runs out of gas on the way to the airport and since they had had an argument during their last meeting, it wasn't a surprise that he would assume she's not coming.  She arrives at the gate as the plane door closes.

Time passes and she becomes a top designer in New York.  She is walking down the street when Gavin spots her.  He apologizes for not staying in touch or formerly mentioning his marriage.  (Hayward had found out by checking old newspapers that he, a department store magnate, had married in a lavish, society wedding.)  He does everything he can to resume their love affair but she will not have it.

Luckily, her boss sees her dismay and suggests they open an office in Rome that Hayward will run.  While out at dinner in Rome, Hayward helps a drunken woman who has fallen on the stairs and as she tries to help her up, Gavin does so as well.  It seems that he and his wife (Miles) have moved to Rome to open new department stores.  When Hayward sees how Miles chews out Gavin, she has a change of heart and the affair blossoms once again.

Gavin and Hayward on the set

Love scenes are filmed at Hayward's beautiful seaside villa but at the same time we learn more about the Gavin-Miles marriage which is in shambles.  He is a distant husband, a workaholic and of course is having an affair.  Miles, a shrew of the first order, a drunk and obviously unfaithful herself now and then, is holding the marriage together with the threat of him losing contact with their son and daughter whom he adores.  When he asks for a divorce, she snarls I have no intention of being the ex-Mrs. Paul Saxon (Gavin's character's name).  We have no doubt she means it.

When Gavin opens up another store, this time in Paris, and says he's moving there, Hayward elects to do the same.  He buys her a beautiful rural home and all goes well until two things occur.

One is that Miles suspects Gavin of cheating but she doesn't know with whom.  A private detective is hired and he finds out what she wants to know.  As Hayward is hostessing a fashion show at her salon, Miles busts in and in front of many patrons names Hayward as being her husband's mistress.  Secondly, Gavin's son (Eyer) accidentally discovers the truth and confronts Hayward which greatly unnerves her.  She now sees their affair as hurting his children and her career and decides to end it.  She tells him she never wants to see him again.  He tells her to hold on.  He is going to confront his wife and then will return and never leave.

We know it's coming.  Gavin rushes home and as he's entering his courtyard, Miles, looking like a million bucks, comes rushing out to attend a fancy dinner.  He demands they talk and she dismisses him.  As she guns her Chrysler forward and the music is frantic, Gavin jumps in the passenger seat.

As they're driving through the curvy city streets, he tells her he's leaving her and and that she can have everything.  When she sarcastically asks what about the children, he replies they already know.  Pull over here and let me out.  She realizes she's lost him once and for all and pushes the accelerator to the floor.  They crash into a tree at high speeds.  She is killed.

If that is the big dramatic scene, the great tear-jerker scene is up next when Gavin, bandaged from the neck down in a
hospital bed, asks his visiting son to call Hayward.  In a nearly inaudible whisper he says to her Rae Smith, I love you, and he dies.  She then hears the boy crying out Dad, Dad as she is left sobbing on the phone.

The final scene shows the children arriving at her door and asking her if they can visit her sometimes?  Touching but one of those stretches.

Producer Ross Hunter knew from the beginning that he wanted Hayward for the lead.  She balked at first because she was newly-married and blissfully in love.  She didn't want to work but her husband insisted.  She also resisted because it was not her usual chew-the-scenery kind of part; she felt she was more a melancholy victim of events and that the role of the wife, while smaller, was the juicier female role.  

Once she overcame her objections, she went full bore as she usually did.  Her production company would co-produce.  It also helped that she rarely had been dressed in so glamorous a fashion.  It's said that her costumes were $100,000 of the overall budget.  Perhaps not a lot of acting was required because that glow of love that she consistently showed on her face came from the fact that she was so in love in real life.

Miles has one of her most delicious parts, never more malevolent.  She has rarely looked so beautiful nor has she been dressed more spectacularly.  She tames Hayward (not an easy chore) in the great fashion show scene.  She had spent much time on the screen in good girl roles and often as a brunette that this was such a treat to see her as a wicked, evil blonde.  Film fans would know that Miles and Gavin had just finished making quite a famous film, Psycho.

A ferocious scene with Miles and Gavin

Hunter had just produced two Gavin movies. Midnight Lace and Imitation of Life and along with Spartacus
and Pyscho around the same time, the actor's visibility was at its greatest.  It's not surprising that Hunter hired him although I suspect an attraction was part of it.  Gavin was not as horrible an actor as some have said and yet it is undeniable that he was a bit wooden.  His scenes with Miles are the best but he is so charming in his scenes with Hayward.  He is certainly one of the top reasons this film was so popular with the public.  

The supporting cast is most effective.  Reginald Gardiner is a hoot as the effete fashion maven.  Virginia Grey shines as Hayward's sister and young Eyer (whom I loved a year earlier in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs) is spot on.

I don't think David Miller ever made a splash in Hollywood as a top director but he was a capable one and I very much liked a number of his films... Our Very Own, Sudden Fear, The Opposite Sex, Lonely Are the Brave and Captain Newman, M.D., among them.  He had a knack for handling powerful actresses.

Female filmgoers certainly also loved the gowns in this film.  There are not only the many beautiful clothes that Hayward and Miles wear, but it's a movie about the fashion industry.  Jean Louis received an Oscar nomination for his costumes.
Frank Skinner wrote a gorgeous theme and right now I can't stop humming it.  Stanley Cortez put his Technicolor cameras to great use and the sets were stunning.  It also didn't hurt the overall look was enhanced by location filming in Rome and Paris. 

I always thought one of poignant takes about the story was its focus on what-ifs.  How different life might have been for them at certain points.  What if Hayward hadn't run out of gas?  What is Gavin's plane had been delayed?  What if he had divorced Miles when he first met Hayward and before he had children?  What if the son hadn't made his painful discovery?  I rarely look at life through the prism of what-if but I admit this movie steers me in that direction.

Back Street was written by the durable Fanny Hurst.  She wrote the great tear-jerkers of the day.  It had been filmed twice before.  In 1932 it starred Irene Dunne and John Boles (who?) and in 1941 it was Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer.  Both were in black and white and the stories stressed the suffering.  Actually, this version stressed suffering too but it was more than offset by the beautiful clothes, fancy jobs, sets, cars and cities.

Producer Hunter specialized in making his movies larger than life and hiking up the glamour, lavishness and extravagance.  I, for one, am glad he did.  It is not a great film but it is so entertaining.

Here's a quick look at the premier:  

Next posting:
The most gay-friendly
actress of all-time