Movie Review Smash Up the Story of a Woman
' Nail-Upwards, Story of a Woman,' in Which Susan Hayward Is Seen as an Alcoholic, Makes Its Bow at Capitol Theatre
https://www.nytimes.com/1947/04/xi/archives/smashup-story-of-a-woman-in-which-susan-hayward-is-seen-as-an.html
' Nail-Up, Story of a Adult female,' in Which Susan Hayward Is Seen every bit an Alcoholic, Makes Its Bow at Capitol Theatre
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April xi, 1947
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In that location isn't much doubt that "Smash-Up—the Story of a Adult female" will be tagged as "the 'Lost Calendar week-finish' of a lady," since it has so fortuitously to do with a female alcoholic, synonymous to the gentleman lush in that previous film. But don't let this flattering parallel fool you. "The Lost Calendar week-end" was a hard and plausible bulge, while the current alcohol drama at the Capitol is soggy and full of (figurative) corn. It has much more resemblance to "The Drunk" of ancient memory than to the best flick of 1945. All it lacks to arrive outright melodrama is a pair of swinging doors.And we note this in full recognition of its studiously contrived appeals to the sympathies of ladies in the audience who might otherwise view their fallen sister askance. For this is the story of a woman—a night-social club singer of considerable renown—who loses her grip and starts to sousing every bit her husband, a radio crooner, starts to smoothen. As his Hooper rating skyrockets, her resistance to the canteen descends, and, before she knows information technology, she is non only nipping just getting boozer and disorderly in wretched style.This irony of life might brand for drama of a genuinely touching sort, every bit it did in that memorable picture show of success and drunkenness, "A Star Is Born." But, actually, in the writing, this complex tension has been so weakly and unconvincingly drawn that the reason for the lady's dipsomania seems completely arbitrary and contrived. Furthermore, the writer, John Howard Lawson, has so muddled the lady with mother-love that the story becomes a wallow less in liquor than in mawkish sentiment. For the lady and her hubby accept a daughter—a dimpled and darling little child—and it is when papa takes the tot from mama that the syrup actually flows. In the end, mama, fuzzy from drinking, still saves the child from a burning house, which reconciles her with her husband and evidently cures her of her passion for booze.Bogus and hackneyed in construction, the story tends further to assume the qualities of a radio daytime series with the injection of several soapy songs. 1 of them, "Life Can Be Beautiful," is moaned and groaned then many times that a less than consummate juke-box fanatic may be tempted towards the end to scream dissent.Too, in its direction and performance, this film gives little show of sincerity of purpose toward depicting the realities of dipsomania. Susan Hayward performs the boozy heroine with a solemn fastidiousness which turns nearly of her scenes of drunken fumbling and heebie-jeebies into off-key caricatural. And it is notable that her advent is never unflatteringly disarrayed. Lee Bowman plays her married man as a completely obtuse and negative gent, while Eddie Albert is droll equally his side-kick and Marsha Hunt is slinky as a vamp. Carl Esmond makes a patent-leather doctor who plainly handles everything from obstetrics to psychotherapy, and Sharyn Payne makes a carbohydrate-coated tot.Except for the spectacle of much drinking past a lady and a lot of mod chic, this offering from Producer Walter Wanger shows little more than than any former-fashioned barroom tear-jerker.Xavier Cugat and his orchestra, featuring the Garcias, Luis del Campo, Chino and Alladin; Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and Betty. Reilly are on the Capitol'due south stage.
Boom-UP, THE STORY OF A WOMAN; screen play past John Howard Lawson with additional dialogue by Lionel Wiggam; based on an original story by Dorothy Parker and Frank Cavett; directed by Stuart Heisler; produced by Walter Wanger for Universal-International. At the Capitol.Angie . . . . . Susan HaywardKen Conway . . . . . Lee BowmanMartha Greyness . . . . . Marsha HuntSteve . . . . . Eddie AlbertDr. Lorenz . . . . . Carl EsmondMr. Elliott . . . . . Carleton YoungMike Dawson . . . . . Charles D. BrownMiss Kirk . . . . . Janet MurdochEdwards . . . . . Tom ChattertonAngelica . . . . . Sharyn PayneMr. Gordon . . . . . Robert ShayneEmcee . . . . . Larry BlakeWolf . . . . . George MeekerFarmer . . . . . Erville Alderson
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1947/04/11/archives/smashup-story-of-a-woman-in-which-susan-hayward-is-seen-as-an.html