1h 52min | Drama, Music, Romance | 19 June 1960 | Color, WS
Directors: Michael Anderson, Vincente Minnelli (uncredited)
Stars: Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Susan Kohner, George Hamilton, Pearl Bailey.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053582/
Watched online: part 1, part 2; good print on small screen.
Another overwrought melodrama with young attractive stars marrying someone they don't really love, but this ends with those legally wed back together after they learn each other's secrets and separate.
The only interesting aspect of this film is that RW has ties to the local black community, because he plays jazz trumpet, and that's where he learned. As a young adult, after NW leaves him, he lives with PB in a platonic relationship. She is not the stereotypic mammy; she's a love-sick woman about a decade+ older than TW, so sick she wants to die. But while he needs help, she wants to provide things for him, including access to music jobs since she's a singer. So we get a couple of scenes in the film with RW in a black-patronized nightclub, or at a black-attended funeral, and many scenes with him and PB. It's nice to see some integration in the new decade. Just to remind us this is long overdue, Louise Beavers, costar of Imitation of Life ('34), has a small role here.
I think my viewing was tainted by recent tabloid headlines about NW's death in '81. NW & RW were married ('57-'62, '72-'81) during this film.
I have purchased many NW films; this is not one of them.
Avon Prod., distr. MGM, dir. Anderson; 6
