The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)

Sick Product of a Sick System

hyped garbage

How sad is this?

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is tripe dressed up in fancy clothes. A loose remake of "A Free Soul" this silly melodrama is a painless time waster and not much else. What was once a racy provocative drama has become an empty potboiler.True it does have Elizabeth Taylor at the peak of her beauty and that's always worth seeing. Additionally she is a much more relaxed and natural actress than Norma Shearer ever was. But she is handed a part that has been diluted from the original which is true of the entire picture. William Powell, a welcome presence as always, isn't given the flashy part that Lionel Barrymore won an Oscar for in the original just a disapproving father without any real bite. No wonder he left MGM after this if this is the best they had to offer.The real problem is the casting of Fernando Lamas in the old Clark Gable role, with Gable and his animal magnetism you could understand Norma's desire and willingness to stray with him. With Lamas, attractive though he may be, there is none of that and he comes across as a cheap hood made good and an oily one at that and Liz's headstrong determination to be with him makes her seem a foolish, spoiled nitwit.For fans of the stars, and of course this being an MGM film they are beautiful dressed and the surrounding sumptuous, it's worth one watch but that will be more than enough.

Though this movie lacks the menace and seediness of "A Free Soul," it nonetheless shares the blazing sensuality that we saw between Clark Gable and Norma Shearer in 1931 in Fernando Lamas and the impossibly gorgeous 22 yr old Taylor.When contrasted with "A Free Soul" (which is hard not to, since the film was so sexy and frank, and Lionel Barrymore's performance won him an Oscar), the story in "The Girl Who Had Everything" is pretty slim. A few reviews mentioned this was MGM's kiss good-bye to 61 yr old William Powell, who'd been with the studio since 1934, and it looks it. The sets are pretty stripped down and simple, with minimal outdoor shots--but that's not to say the movie looks cheap, because even at programmer status, the MGM gloss remained.Taylor is perfect as a willful, headstrong Jean Latimer, and her growth from spoiled, immature flirt to a sobered woman, is powerful. Though mores of the 1950s are ever present, the double standards when it comes to female sexuality remain--a man can be a "free soul" without suffering the consequences a woman will, and Jean and her father Steve are forced to realize that she cannot live life the way he has, despite his raising her to be independent and free.Where this film falls short in comparison to its source material is the 1950s Code Era ending, where Lamas gets his comeuppance through his gangster associations, rather than the result of Jean's honor being defended by her fiancé.Gig Young is woefully underused here (was the movie cut down?), and Fernando Lamas, for all his intensity, is a standard Latin lover.However, this is an entertaining film, and if anyone manages to get a hold of this and "A Free Soul," watching both is an interesting study in changing mores as well as what was permissible in the Pre-Code era.

This film is a good example of standard MGM output in the early 1950s - still glossy, with good production values, but dramatically no great shakes. It is perhaps most notable as being William Powell's final film at MGM. Although it must have been appealing to Powell to play the same part that won Lionel Barrymore an Oscar in 1931 (for A Free Soul), the writer of this film let Powell down with a routine script. Also notable is André Previn's score, which seems unnecessarily lush at times given the routine nature of the production.

A bit of an old fashioned drama, but entertaining if you like movies about simpler times. The plot is simple and not overly cluttered. The cast is superb. If you like to watch movies instead of analyzing them, then just sit back, watch and enjoy.