31. Susan Hayward in 'I Want to Live!' (1958)

  

Plot Intro

This is the true story of Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward), a con artist and prostitute who suddenly finds herself convicted of the murder of an elderly woman and sentenced to death. As the time of her execution approaches, Barbara makes repeated attempts to prove her innocence…

Paul says...

Now that we are well into the 1950s, we are getting female performances and characters with a great deal more grit than in the previous decade. The '40s was fraught with glamorous and impossible heroines (Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones and Olivia de Havilland). The '50s returns to the more downtrodden, tragic female leads that we got in the '30s but with more reality and greater emphasis on true stories (this is the third biographical film in a row). This is interesting because during our journey through the Best Picture winners, the gritty, more socially-conscious movies did not arrive until the late '60s, with the '50s focusing more on big-budget epics and musicals.

Susan Hayward certainly pulls out all the stops here. She plays Barbara as erratic, desperate and hot-tempered, a far cry from the more placid Joanne Woodward in the previous year, or the wide-eyed vulnerability of Ingrid Bergman the year before that. It’s a passionate performance but I would question whether it’s appropriate for the content and intentions of the film. Like The Three Faces of Eve, the film goes to great pains to tell us that the events are facts, and there are some courtroom and prison scenes where there is immense attention to detail. But Hayward’s performance feels theatrical and overdone in comparison.

It’s also kind of hilarious how beautiful she is, as are her fellow inmates. Having watched Orange is the New Black, an outstanding series that doesn’t hold back from showing the grim, stomach-turning reality of prison life, it felt insane to me that all female inmates would have such well-coiffed hairstyles, full make-up and smooth skin. Where are they getting all these beauty products?!

But the big downside to the film is the same as the previous two Best Actress wins, that although it claims to be cold, hard fact, a quick Wikipedia search proves otherwise. I Want To Live! presents Barbara as unquestionably innocent, a misguided and wrong-place-wrong-time criminal vilified by the press and public. But the real evidence (and even Susan Hayward herself who did a large amount of research agreed) proves pretty clearly that Barbara is guilty. Of course, this doesn’t justify her eventual fate - for me, the capital punishment would be universally banned. I’m not against storytellers playing with history in order to create entertainment. It can provide an accessible way in which people end up more educated and motivated to read around a subject. But I don’t like when a film sets itself up as objective fact when it is anything but. 

The film’s big high point for me was the final 20 minutes which shows, in excruciating detail, the processes and build-up to Barbara’s execution in a gas chamber. It shows how the toxic gas is made, the steps to be taken, and the various delays as a result of Barbara’s final attempts to be found innocent. Although it doesn’t seem to have anything opinionated to say about the death penalty (adding to the film trying to be more of a documentary than a piece of fiction), it is still a sickening experience and it made me question what could be going through a condemned person’s mind as they walk their final walk and sit in the chamber awaiting their fate while being gawked at by journalists like an animal in a cage. 

Hayward was a well-established actress in the late '50s who had tackled a variety of hardcore roles. This was actually her fifth and last nomination for Best Actress and her previous nominations also included other historical figures. It would also be her last big success. She moved to Georgia because her second husband (whom she married in 1957) owned a ranch there, and the distance from Hollywood rendered her film roles more sporadic throughout the 1960s. She sadly met an untimely death from brain cancer in 1975, aged just 57, one of the shortest careers and life spans of the Best Actress winners, but a well-remembered name nonetheless.

Highlight

The final 20 minutes which showed just how gruelling and cold the lead-up to execution in the USA is. Ban capital punishment. Ban it all, I say!

Lowlight

Like the previous film, I Want to Live!’s claim of accuracy and fact is questionable. Even if they took their claim out (it’s just a title card at the beginning and end) this would change things for me.

Mark

4/10

Doug says...

I Want To Live! sounds like the title of a mid-range ‘20s musical about a down-on-his-luck handsome aristocrat who goes on a series of adventures in New York one night before he ends up marrying some beautiful ditzy heiress. 

It’s actually the true (ish) story of Barbara Graham, a criminal who ended up being found guilty of murder and executed by gas chamber. Awkward. 

I say true-ish because the film posits Graham as almost certainly innocent of the charge. It admits she’s a ‘tough cookie’ who has committed crimes including theft, prostitution and vice, but says she’d steer clear of murder. To that end we get lots of her clutching her baby son and weeping, or passionately telling anyone who’d listen that she’s innocent. Wikipedia has a somewhat different take, with the real Graham being described by those who met her as ‘sociopathic’. Indeed even watching this sanitised version, you get the idea she almost certainly did ‘do it’. 

It’s not a bad film - certainly not dull, and I was intrigued for the full two-hour running time (yet more evidence that two hours is the perfect maximum length for any film, are you listening, Scorsese?) Susan Hayward’s Graham is a refreshing tonic against the sappier of Hollywood’s leading women, being sharp and rarely moved to emotion. There’s even a (slightly annoying) motif of her pretending to throw dice and making decisions on the outcome. Life for Graham, this film suggests, is akin to living from chance to chance. 

There’s also some great set-pieces. I liked the scene where Hayward is being tailed by undercover detectives, including a dotty-looking old lady on a bus. There’s also a mad party-scene where Graham is wildly dancing, and Hayward’s portrayal of this is so vigorous that one fears that she is actually mid-epileptic fit. However the final half hour of the film is particularly strong, showing Graham riding wave after wave of hope - her gas chamber appointment being delayed again and again, even as she’s about to walk into it. The rise and fall of each pause and delay is exhausting to watch, let alone experience. 

Hayward herself is pretty unremarkable by today’s standards. We have actors like Frances McDormand and Nicole Kidman who can convey a multitude without lifting an eyebrow so while Hayward’s muted and controlled performance may have felt fresh in the ‘50s, it feels less so now. Satisfyingly she does yell ‘I want to live!’ at one point - saying the title in the film always makes me giggle. 

Ultimately this film feels quite controlled. I didn’t feel particularly for the subject and I’m not sure of the intention behind it. Casting Graham as an innocent women attacked by the justice system might have felt more powerful if there wasn’t such a sneaking suspicion she actually did murder a defenceless widow (Hayward herself said she thought Graham did it). But an interesting and different film in the line up of romances and dramas - and also not our only death-row film in this project as Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking is yet to come…

Highlight

The scene where they prepare (and eventually use) the gas chamber is fascinatingly detailed. Apparently it’s very accurate and I imagine intended to shock. However I wasn’t particularly affected emotionally. If it was intended to force the American people to turn against the death penalty, it didn’t work. As of January 2022, there are 2,436 people on death row in the States. 

Lowlight

I didn’t love Graham, and I think her perceived strong performance is actually more a testament to a decent script. Another actress might well have found more nuance and unease in the role - making her appear lily-white didn’t feel very truthful. 

Mark

5/10

30. Joanne Woodward in 'Three Faces of Eve' (1957)

 

Plot Intro

Dr Curtis Luther (Lee J. Cobb), a well-known psychiatrist, receives a visit from a woman named Eve White (Joanne Woodward) and her husband Ralph (David Wayne). They are concerned about Eve’s apparent memory loss. But Luther quickly discovers that Eve has Dissociative Identity Disorder, and has an alternative personality named Eve Black who slips in and out of consciousness. He dedicates himself to working with both Eves to try and cure the condition- but this is further complicated when a third personality reveals itself.

Doug says...

A 1950s film dealing with the complexities of dissociative identity disorder? What could go wrong? 

Actually, in a surprising twist, The Three Faces of Eve manages to sidestep a lot of the problematic ways they could have dramatised this true story, avoiding making any of Eve’s personalities ‘evil’ or ‘twisted’ (as I was steeling myself for). Mental health is often belittled or demonised in films from the past century so it was a pleasant change to see the production team and crew make clear choices to not go down that route and actually show the intriguing complexities of someone dealing with what was then known as multiple personality disorder. 

It’s obviously simplified, and indeed the real ‘Eve’ spoke out against the film afterwards, and actually re-sought treatment in the 1970s which discovered her issues weren’t as simple as this film lays out. But I think there should be credit for trying to present the condition as it actually is - reinforced by a somewhat dry introduction given by a real medical professional at the start of the film. 

For me it’s an introduction to Joanne Woodward too and at first (as she plays Eve White: the dowdy sad housewife), I was wondering exactly how she garnered so much praise for what seemed quite forgettable. But actually it’s a masterstroke - she allows the audience to slightly dislike her for her boring, stuffy demeanour which then utterly reverses as the fun-loving attention-seeking Eve Black. Everything from her body language to her eye movements shift (and then again as the third ‘face’ Jane). It’s brilliant - three distinct, clearly drawn and rounded characters that Woodward flips between swiftly in scenes. We’re never in doubt as to who we’re currently witnessing which is very hard to pull off successfully. 

There are some sub-plots that feel a bit half-baked, most notably Eve White’s husband being sexually attracted to Eve Black (and the weirdest infidelity-style storyline one might experience) but overall the writers stick cleanly to the main story, unfurling it quickly over ninety minutes. It does feel a bit more documentary than drama, but frankly I’d rather that than a sensationalised and damaging misinterpretation of complex mental health (which I was expecting this to be). 

Highlight

The ways Woodward snaps between characters and the moments of likeability she finds in each persona are impressive. It’s not showy but it allows her to display real versatility in a way I can understand the Oscars crowd finding deeply impressive.

Lowlight

The dry documentary feel somewhat lessens the impact of the story, which is preferable to a damaging over-dramatised take, but I do think there could have been someway to liven the story without ethically compromising it.

Mark

7/10

Paul says...

Like Doug, I was struck by the objective and sensitive manner in which this film tackles a real mental health condition. Horror and Science Fiction writers in particular often sensationalise Dissociative Identity Disorder, usually called Multiple or Split Personality, rendering at least one personality as psychopathic or evil in a Jekyll and Hyde way. The truth is that this is a real mental health condition, one that is not related to crime or sociopathy and one that can cause enormous stress for the people who have it and their loved ones. The rather dry and self-important narrator is pretty superfluous but it does at least lend an air of authenticity and objectivity to the film, making it more of a documentary, even if it’s not the most exciting or pacy of works. 

Indeed, this is further exemplified by the subdued performances of the cast around Eve, allowing her to take centre stage so that her condition can be presented and discussed. Lee J. Cobb is usually a very larger-than-life, passionate actor as seen playing controlling villains in Twelve Angry Men and On the Waterfront. But here he is unusually soft-spoken and gentle. 

Plus Joanne Woodward’s performance is fantastic. She manages to construct three very distinct women through her voice and body language and slips between them effortlessly. After the death of Olivia de Havilland, she is now the earliest Best Actress winner to still be with us, now aged 92 but unfortunately living with Alzheimers. She has played many roles although she is probably best known for this film and for being married to Paul Newman from 1958 until his death in 2008. They were apparently notorious for spending a lot of time bonking (they’re both absolute 10s so who can blame them?) and for their faithfulness to each other, something which Newman referenced when he once stated “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?” Despite the compliment, Woodward apparently hated this statement.

Where the film leaves a rather bad taste in the mouth is its ending which, after a quick bit of research, turns out to be false and created by writers with nowhere near enough knowledge of mental health. The three Eves realise that her condition stems from an event in her childhood in which she was forced by her mother to kiss the corpse of her Grandmother goodbye at the latter’s funeral. The trauma developed her alternative personalities. This realisation immediately causes Eve White and Eve Black to disappear leaving the third and, apparently, original Eve alone who drives off into the sunset with her new handsome boyfriend.

Perhaps this is possible (I’m no psychiatrist), but it isn’t what happened. The real Eve, who until the 70s remained anonymous, had actually witnessed two deaths and a traumatising accident. The doctors treating her signed the rights to her life story in 1956 and both their book and this film, based on the book, were released in 1957. 20 years later, “Eve” herself published a new book, titled I’m Eve, revealing her name to be Chris Costner Sizemore. She claimed that her doctors in the 50s had exploited her to capitalise on her condition and make money out of it through the book and the film. Psychiatric conditions were, indeed, a hot topic in the ‘50s, as the Second World War had led to a great deal of research into the mental health of soldiers and clearer definitions of ADHD, OCD, Anxiety and many others were being constructed. She also stated that they never cured her of the condition. In fact, it wasn’t until her treatment in the ‘70s that she discovered that she had not three but more than 20 and started to reconcile them and take control of her life.

Sizemore died in 2016, managing to get a court settlement for the doctors signing away her life story, and leaving behind a multitude of published and unpublished writings that have helped psychiatric researchers. 

It is a shame that the film is steeped in these uncomfortable subsequent events. It renders the ending insincere and rather egotistical, with the writers trying to say “Look how clever these Doctors are, they cured her!” when it later transpired that they did not. Whilst I think we should forgive films for reshaping real, historic events in the name of entertainment, it crosses an invisible line when that reshaping becomes exploitative and irresponsible. Hopefully Sizemore had a fulfilling and happy life regardless.

Highlight

Woodward’s performance, especially the final scene in which she flips between all three Eves several times.

Lowlight

Pretty much anything that happened after the film was released.

Mark

5/10

Best of the Rest: Angela Lansbury

 

Plot Intro

We’re doing something a bit different here and instead of featuring one film, we’re discussing films from across Lansbury’s extensive career. 

Doug says...

The world lost an icon in October 2022. Angela Lansbury is one of my absolute icons - she has been present all through my childhood owing to her roles in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Beauty and the Beast. Later I discovered her early performances in Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Grey where she showed her absolute versatility playing nasty and innocent respectively. 

But where she truly shone is the stage. Her turn in Gypsy is legendary, and the brief clips you can see on YouTube show her bringing pathos, drama and a mounting sense of wildness as only the second person to play Mama Rose. She also will always be known as Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. 

But what I want to highlight here is the filmed version of her stage performance as Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd. She originated this extraordinary role (performed by other legends like Patti LuPone and Helena Bonham Carter) and the show was filmed and is available on Amazon Prime. 

As the murderous Mrs Lovett, Lansbury is peerless. She finds the comedy in the role, creating a physicality that shuffles, jerks and rolls around the stage. She obsesses over the Demon Barber, always close by him, lighting up with happiness when he comes near, and worrying when her own dark secrets may be revealed. 

One moment alone proves why she won the Tony for this performance. As she sits, comforting the boy Toby who sings ‘Not While I’m Around’ to her, she slowly realises he is on to her and Todd’s murderous game. She switches between pretending to engage Toby and understanding that she’s going to have to kill him. Mercifully, the producers of this filmed production allow us a sustained close up of Lansbury so we can see the glint and worry in her eyes. It’s captivating. 

Elsewhere as she skulks behind Todd, she is obsessive, touching his clothes, always trying to win his heart. It’s large and painted for the stage but with such subtle details that renders it true (and terrifying). 

Lansbury was a true actor. She could paint in broad strokes and while she never conquered Hollywood, they did eventually recognise her with an honorary Oscar. I think it’s telling that it’s a filmed production of her stage performance that highlights her mastery - because I think Lansbury was first and foremost a stage actor. She had the ability to draw in a whole theatre to her performance (again: see clips of Gypsy) and play anything from mad and murderous to sweet and innocent to knowing and wised up. 

When she died, I told Paul how sad I was that we had finally lost her. Paul replied ‘but what a career she had.’ A Golden Age actor who conquered stage and (small) screen - and a Disney Legend to boot. We won’t see her like again.  

Paul says...

Oh, Ange. She’s such a popular figure in our household that we even have a plant named after her (Angela Leafsbury, a fulsome bit of flora even if the name is a rubbish pun). She’s an example not only of an incredible showbiz career, but also of how our perception of time and human generations can be completely eschewed. She was born in 1925, which makes her older than Queen Elizabeth II, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Anne Frank, Jackie Onassis and Grace Kelly. She was born in the same year as Paul Newman, Malcolm X, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Margaret Thatcher, Peter Sellers, Honor Blackman and Richard Burton. She was 10 years older than Elvis. She was 20 years old when Cher was born (although sources disagree over whether Cher was born in 1946 or 1846). 

Why am I throwing these Wikipedia-influenced factoids at you? Because I want to show how Ange Lange’s career and life was so lengthy and so consistently active right from when she was 18 and well into her 90s, that she almost transcended time. Even mine and Doug’s generation (and she was in her mid-60s by the time I was born), and perhaps even the generation after us, are so familiar with her work thanks to her collaborations with Disney and the many gifs and memes that Jessica Fletcher cascaded into the zeitgeist, that she remained current and relevant. Many of the cultural icons (whether you love or hate them) listed above have either passed away or their careers ended long before their deaths, it is easy to assume that Ange came long after them. She did not- she was a part of them. It shows just how long and yet, paradoxically, how short an 80-year career can be.

Let’s spend some time dissecting this unbelievable 80-year career. It’s telling that Ange’s (and I call her Ange like I know her) first film role was not the usual bit-part in a lost film, but a major supporting role in popular and influential thriller, Gaslight. So at the age of 18, Ange gets her big break in a successful Hollywood film with already-established-legends Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer and THEN has the nerve to get nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 17th Academy Awards in 1945. Did she fade away and reappear in the mid-70s for Bedknobs and Broomsticks? Hell no she didn’t. The next year, she got Oscar-nominated again for The Picture of Dorian Gray, her second nomination before she was 21. 

Surely then her career faded a little? NO! Don’t be so foolish. By the end of the 1940s she had acted with not just Bergman, but Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, George Sanders, and Gene Kelly. In the early '50s she got her third Oscar nom for The Manchurian Candidate. In the following decades she garnered some spectacular theatre credits such as the original Broadway production of A Taste of Honey with Joan Plowright and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian for you Star Wars fans), the original production of Mame with Bea Arthur, the original London production of Gypsy and the original production of Sweeney Todd. 

Surely after all this she would be tiring and looking to do smaller roles, right? WRONG. It was AFTER all of this that she gained the lead in the murder mystery series Murder She Wrote which lasted 12 years. THEN she played Mrs Potts in Beauty and the Beast, singing one of Disney’s most immortal love songs. And even after all that she had the audacity to return to theatre in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit TWICE and even make brief appearances in Nanny McPhee, Mary Poppins Returns and in the upcoming Knives Out sequel. On top of that, I have barely had time to recommend her roles in Agatha Christie adaptations Death on the Nile and The Mirror Crack’d, and in the terrible remake of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. She even found time to contribute to the Democrat party in the States, the Labour Party in the UK and charities providing support to victims of domestic abuse and HIV (go Ange!) 

I think one would struggle to name any other actor or actress who has achieved such consistent success and longevity. So how on earth did she do it? The question is all the harder to answer bearing in mind that she was not conventionally glamorous in the same vein as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Grace Kelly, nor did she really have any lead roles until past the age of 50 (and even then her niche was in eccentric or matronly supporting roles). Indeed, Eglantine Price and Jessica Fletcher were probably her only best-know lead roles on screen, with Mame, Rose and Mrs Lovett for the stage. On top of that, she had her ups and downs in her personal life. Her son struggled with drug addiction for a period and her daughter had to be saved from the terrifying Manson family cult. 

I think the answer lies in a brief section of her Wikipedia page (yeah, I do my research), which explains that Ange never fully engaged in the glitzy nightlife of Hollywood, even in her youth. She was a homebody who liked housekeeping, but I presume this provided her with the time and the necessary rest periods to put every ounce of her being into the roles she played. And you can see it. Although almost all of her most famous roles are larger-than-life and over-the-top, there’s an energised exactitude to her expressions and movements that hardwork and a real love of performing brings about. Acting is one of the most physically gruelling careers you can have and additional partying and socialising, as fun as it is, potentially leaves one too exhausted to put your all into a performance. But this appears to have never been a problem for Ange, even despite being a chain-smoker up to her 40s. 

This is also probably why we (and by “we” I mean, me, Doug, and anyone who watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks on a near-continuous loop during the '90s) adored her so. She never disappointed in her roles, she was driven towards home and career in equal measure, and as a result, she could maintain her well-deserved image of absolute loveliness and magnificence right up until her death at the age of 96.