By Love Possessed (1961)

One of my all time favorites.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Blistering performances.

By Love Possessed is your high gloss soap opera 50s early 60s style. Had it been done at Universal it would have had Douglas Sirk directing and Rock Hudson in the lead. Here we have Efrem Zimbalist starring and John Sturges who's a bit lost in this genre directing.Possibly Sirk passed on this one. The drama centers around the law firm in a most conservative small town. Senior partner is Thomas Mitchell who does not look well at all, possibly at the beginning of his final illness and his partners are son-in-law Zimbalist and Jason Robards. Zimbalist is your hail fellow well met and a bit stuck up Ivy League type, a bit thick in his dealings with wife Barbara Bel Geddes and son George Hamilton.As for Robards he's married to Lana Turner, but he's not been up to that challenge recently. This was still the era of the Omnipresent Code and impotence and its causes are not spoken of by polite movie characters. Turner turns to Zimbalist for some action.Young Hamilton repeats his sensitive youth character from his role in Home From The Hill in the previous year. He's got good, but neurotic girl Susan Kohner on the string, but his hormones cry out for the town teen tramp Yvonne Craig. She and her mother Claire Carleton are the ones you really remember from this film, their performances have some real bite to them.Efrem Zimbalist was starring in 77 Sunset Strip at the time at Warner Brothers and they were hoping to transition him to a big screen name like they did with James Garner. That was not in the cards for Zimbalist, but he did get to co-star with a screen legend in Lana Turner.Not his fault, but the way Zimbalist's role was written I could never develop a rooting interest for him to overcome and deal with his problems. Quite frankly, he's a fathead. Turner also seemed a bit off kilter for a screen sex symbol in this film.But Lana's fans will love her.

The question this film asks is how can a great director such as John Sturges ("Bad Day at Black Rock", "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", "The Magnificent Seven", "The Great Escape", and "Ice Station Zebra") turn around and make such a lousy film? And a secondary question is how a star as big is Lana Turner, during a particularly productive period in her career ("Peyton Place", "Imitation Of Life", "Portrait In Black", and "Madam X") get sucked into such a film, particularly one where she gets relatively little screen time.I rarely notice goofs in movies, but I sure did in this one. In a very early scene, Efrem Zimbalist tells his secretary that his wife will be home from the hospital that day. 5 minutes later he tells someone else a day or two.Oddly enough, this is a movie with an unusually strong cast. The best acting in the film -- though she got relatively low billing -- was by Barbara Belgeddes as Zimbalist's wife; she brings the scenes she is in to life. The billed star of the film is Lana Turner, who does have some good scenes, although not as much screen time as one might expect. I always liked Efrem Zimbalist Jr., although here he was criticized as being wooden...although that's sort of what the character called for, so was it him or the direction; I'm not sure. I was surprised and disappointed in Jason Robards' role here as Turner's husband; I'll excuse his undistinguished acting here by pointing out that this was only his second film. George Hamilton was very stiff here, and how he got started in movies, I'll never know. Susan Kohner, as the ward of Thomas Mitchell was not particularly good in this film, although she was in another collaboration with Turner -- "Imitation Of Life". I had a lot of sympathy for Thomas Mitchell in this film...he portrays a lawyer that is getting to old to continue...and it was about this time that Mitchell was diagnosed with the cancer which killed him about a year later; nevertheless, a fine performance. You'll see Carroll O'Connor in a small role as a policeman.There is an issue with this film. There's another film -- which I can't place at this time -- that is from the same era that uses an almost identical subplot -- an older lawyer who is shifting funds around to cover one account or another as a result of his own financial misfortune earlier in life. I can't remember the name of the other film or whether it was before or after this one, although I do recall that it was in black and white. One film or the other stole the plot line...it's simply too close.So, whose fault is it that this film seemingly lurches from one scene to another and never realizes its potential. I have to place the blame squarely at the feet of the director -- John Sturges. It's odd...his previous film had been "The Magnificent Seven"...a very successful film, and now a classic. Ah well...no one can win them all.Should you watch it. Well, it has its moments. If you like any of the actors, the watch it. If not, pass it by.

The fact that this is a trashy soap opera should come as no surprise to anyone acquainted with this genre from the 1950s and 60s. After all, it stars Lana Turner--a woman who made a mid-life career out of appearing in these films. This was the result of her own soap opera-like life off-screen (which included a husband murdered by Lana's own daughter who claimed he was molesting her!). Instead of avoiding this bad publicity, she exploited it to the hilt. Additionally, Efram Zimbalist Jr. and George Hamilton are in the film--two veterans of this sleazy genre--so, as I said, it's no surprise what sort of film "By Love Possessed" is.The plot is about a lot of very stylish and very well dressed folks who, consistent with the genre, have very little reason to be unhappy but are miserable. When two marriages start to dull, Efram and Lana find each other in a torrid affair with each other. As for Hamilton, he is miserable because he's doing great in Harvard Law AND is supposed to marry a beautiful society woman who adores him (oh, the horror!!)--so he goes slumming and falls in with an opportunistic tramp (Yvonne Craig). What's to come of all these handsome, rich and dissatisfied folks? If you care, see "By Love Possessed". However, it is hard to care about these people and they all come off as rather petty and stupid (and those are only their good qualities). This film comes off as slickly made but rather vacuous--and lacking the appeal of other Turner efforts of the time such as "Peyton Place". Worth seeing if you like highly polished trash--and I could easily see this as a guilty pleasure. But also a film that is difficult to praise.

I had to see Lana Turner with Efrem Zimbalist, or the other way around. It was a curiosity – superstar with moderate actor. However, she did have some less than star quality leading men. Zimbalist is GQ for sure, and that voice - attractive shell but hollow performance.There have been other films with the same deficits of this one that have come across. Usually, the higher caliber actors can put it over. Someone must have called for flat line, and they all adhered. What comes out is exactly what one can find on daytime soaps. Everyone was at some stage of pathetic. That would except the Mitchell character, who was a breath of fresh air. They could have called this "All Fall Down." Too bad Helen didn't pass around the cleaning fluid and clear out all the suds. The simultaneous make-ups at the end were so low on the meter, they hardly registered. This one lacked a pulse from start to finish.