Guilty Pleasures: Where Love Has Gone

1964 Drama
From Paramount Pictures
Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Starring
Susan Hayward
Bette Davis
Michael Connors
Jane Greer
Joey Heatherton
George Macready
DeForest Kelley
Anne Seymour
Anthony Caruso
Willis Bouchey

Talk about a guilty pleasure... a really guilty one.  I cannot deny that it is overwrought, a bit too soapy and more than occasionally cheesy, contains embarrassing acting, has some writing that makes one cringe and is based on a novel from sleaze-master Harold Robbins.  None of the main characters is sympathetic.  It feels trashy from start to finish; one is inclined to shower immediately after seeing it.  In other words, I absolutely loved it.

Robbins based his novel on what was standard fare for him... a roman a clef exercise ripped from the headlines.  In this instance it was the manslaughter case of Lana Turner and her thug boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, who was stabbed to death by Turner's 15-year old daughter, Cheryl Crane, who came to her mother's defense as she was being beaten.

It was one juicy tidbit after another as the aftermath of the murder and the trial played out.  I remember it well and was mesmerized as I sat in my car across from Turner's Beverly Hills home.  The whispers got louder and louder, the chief one being that Turner stabbed him and somehow got Cheryl to take the blame because her punishment would be less severe.  That was never proven but it didn't stop it from being mentioned in this film.  It was inevitable that Harold Robbins would become involved.  Was Dominick Dunne too busy on some other exposé?

There has been head-scratching over the years over what in the hell possessed Bette Davis and Susan Hayward to accept roles in such a potboiler.  Let's be clear, superb as they were at their craft, both were past their prime.  Had Where Love Has Gone been available and offered to them in the 40's or 50's, surely both would have declined.  But the 60's were another matter.  Davis said she loathed the script but needed money to pay for her daughter's wedding.  Hayward at first accepted and then declined but was persuaded to take it due to her husband's urging.  She said she would do anything to keep her man happy.  Besides, it was to be a quick shoot.  What could possibly go wrong?

The story is told from the point of view of Michael Connors... the father, ex-husband and war hero.  He has not been allowed to see his daughter for years but is now summoned back to San Francisco from his Arizona home where he is a successful builder.  The family wants to show a united front after the daughter is arrested for murder.

For half the film, via flashback, we learn about the Connors-Hayward marriage.  He meets her, a successful sculptor, at one of her showings, and both are attracted to one another.  He also meets Davis, Hayward's highly manipulative and extremely wealthy mother, who invites him over for dinner.  While there, she gets him alone and offers him a vice-presidency in the family company if he marries her daughter.  He is appalled and tells her he'd like to put her over his knee and give her a good spanking.  Hayward hears the encounter and is even more taken with him as she sees him take on her mother, something she feels she's never been capable of doing satisfactorily.

This, by the way, is a crucial point of the story that badly misfires because one never gets the point that Hayward is afraid or unsuccessful in taking on Davis.  Several scenes (more on them later) show that Hayward quite nicely stands up to Davis.

Have you ever considered letting Valerie (Hayward) run her own life, Connors asks Davis, who replies only in times of weakness.

Hayward and Connors do, in fact, fall in love and marry.  Davis buys them a beautiful home and completely furnishes it, with a large portrait of herself to hang over the fireplace.

Hayward encourages Connors to find work that he wants to do but he doesn't realize that his controlling mother-in-law has secretly stalled his efforts.  With tail between his legs, he hires on at the family firm.  Hayward is apoplectic and loses some respect for him.  She cannot stand her mother winning... again.  Connors becomes an alcoholic because of how his life has turned out and when he ignores Hayward, she returns to her playgirl ways and the marriage ends in divorce.

It is a long but well-told flashback that reveals a totally believable family drama.  When back in current times, we learn there are salacious letters from both mother and daughter (Heatherton) to the boyfriend.  Connors is appalled and Davis wants to wrest control of Heatherton when it becomes apparent Hayward will lose custody.  She goes to Connors with a plea to remarry for the girl's sake and hopefully find love again.  He declines.

The custody hearing, with all of the principals in attendance, comes at the film's finale and I have always loved it.  Loved it!  It is shown below.  It is one of three scenes that totally captured my attention.  Another one involves Jane Greer as a probation officer pointing out to Hayward that she lost her custody rights when she brought a man into her home to live (remember, this is 1964) and to point out that the daughter is not a virgin.  Perhaps my favorite, short as it is, involves Hayward and Davis meeting in a hallway at the juvenile facilities and having a go of it about motherhood.  Both actresses are in top form, all I could have expected them to be.

Their first meeting (with director Dmytryk).  Those faces say it all.

Filming was not smooth sailing and it's not likely anyone expected it would be.  Davis was not only never good around strangers on a movie set, but she was not particularly fond of other actresses.  She was at a bad time in her personal life and it's said she came onto the set with an immediate and apparent dislike of Hayward.  Davis intensely disliked Hayward's haughtiness (as had scores of others before her) and how she retreated to her dressing room after a scene and rarely comingled with her costars.

Davis was as tough as people thought she was but Hayward was not.  Her starchy demeanor actually masked a great insecurity about her acting abilities.  She couldn't stand a single line of a script being changed, hated improvisation, whereas Davis was always in the mood to tweak a script or rather her part.  She was annoyed that Hayward was the star of the film and could not understand what the public saw in her.

As was usually the case with me on Hayward, I find her to be the best thing about the film.  I was bonkers about her as an actress and missing her films was simply never a consideration.  Some of her films were great, some very good, some so-so but she was always worth the price of a ticket.  One knew she gave her all.  Her acting in this film is as it always is... just great fun to watch,  Some of the turgid prose wears a little thin.   The words and her acting are letter-perfect in the final courtroom scene.  

Davis doesn't disappoint exactly, and she is eye-popping in her silver wig and glamorous look, but also doesn't offer much beyond her repetitive, well-worn mannerisms.  She is, however, formidable, and that's my favorite kind of actress.  Another such person was, of course, Barbara Stanwyck, whom I thought would have been more ideally cast and apparently she had been considered.  She and Hayward also liked and respected one another.  Stanwyck was also a frequent visitor when Hayward became deathly ill.  I find it sad that we weren't able to see the two of them share a screen together.

Michael Connors was miscast, not only because he was not a big enough name to be alongside these two actresses but because he is too bland to be with them.  I also think he was good in the final courtroom scene but otherwise there was not the spark there should have been.

What this film proved beyond a doubt is that Joey Heatherton is no actress.  In fact, it may be just about the worst performance I have ever seen.  She looked more interested in being a petulant sex-bomb than an actress.  Her character is hard and terribly unappealing.  When she says a few times, Daddy, I find the pleasure of my guilty pleasure slowly eroding.  No wonder she didn't have much of a movie career.

Greer is a delight in a role that gives the story the only normalcy one is likely to find.  She is strong but soft-spoken and it appears subtly that she and Connors' characters were developing a special rapport.   

The supporting cast shines.  George Macready as the family attorney always nailed it in smarmy roles. DeForest Kelley is Hayward's partner in her work and an occasional bed partner.  He advises us that Valerie finds that art and sex go hand in hand.  Anne Seymour, a fine character actress, makes an impressive showing in a single scene as a psychiatrist trying to make sense of the daughter.  Anthony Caruso, a real-life former Hayward lover, was good as a blackmailer.

Director Dmytryk had worked with producer Joseph Levine (another champion of sleaze) earlier in the year on another film based on another Robbins' novel, The Carpetbaggers, far more successful but not much better than Where Love Has Gone.  He was a wonderful director on many top films but he seemed to be out of his element here.  Was it because of two formidable, temperamental actresses and he just said aw the hell with it?

The studio thought one of the main female characters needed to die (by suicide)... payment for her indiscretions in the American way.  Dmytryk was so cavalier about it that he decided they would flip a coin.  It's a good thing that Hayward's character was the one because it would have been totally lacking in sense that Davis' character would have ended her own life.  

John Michael Hayes, a prolific screenwriter who has done amazing work, slipped off his white stallion for this one.  Edith Head designed some dazzling frocks for Davis and Hayward and cinematographer Joseph MacDonald presented San Francisco as a lovely gift.  There is also a dramatic, Oscar-nominated, title tune sung by Jack Jones over opening and closing credits.

I've never forgotten a party I went to shortly after the film's release.  A group of us were discussing movies in general and this one in particular and someone I'd never seen before or since said I don't know where love has gone but I hope it doesn't come back.  As stated, I am not unaware of the movie's shortcomings, but I'll tell you this: seeing Susan Hayward and Bette Davis together in the same film, savaging one another, is like catnip to me and one of the great highlights of film-going.  Here, take a gander (spoiler alert & poor copy):

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