More soap on a rope....typical soapie-doapie tearjerker of the late 1950s and early 60s....there were a lot of those super sudsers in that era, "A Summer Place", "Parrish", "Susan Slade", "Splendor in the Grass", "Imitation of Life" with Lana, etc. Unusual twist in this film, as Arthur Kennedy who plays Claudelle English's father and Constance Ford who was Sandra Dee's mom in "A Summer Place" are married in Claudelle English. Kennedy was Troy Donahue's dad in "A Summer Place"....guess the Warner Bros producers loved to use those recycled cast members......Claudelle English is the town vamp...a loose and fast young lady, a real lover gal. She has more boyfriends than a baseball stadium has hot dogs, and she loves and leaves em.....she loves them from 19 years old to old men in equal amounts. Sad tale though as Claudelle lives on an impoverished farm worked to the ground by her hapless dad, Arthur Kennedy. Constance Ford, the mother from hell in a "Summer Place" reprises her role in that regard in this film. Ford feels living in poverty is not for her and has an affair with the local landowner. She pushes Claudelle, her daughter to marry a rich man so she wont have to suffer like she did. A mixed bag of emotions follow as one lover after another chases Claudelle and her mom gets more jealous and frustrated at her own lack of an exciting life. She gets mixed up with a hokey landowner played by the boring Claude Akins.....in the end a surprising ending comes.....Claudelle is killed by the father of a jilted young man who is beaten up by another of Claudelle's many boyfriends. This is all the soap you would want and Dianne McBain is very beautiful in this film......surprising she never achieved the fame of another soaper Natalie Wood in this era.....they were both very hot women and actressses in the early 60s. McBain was a knockout in "Parrish" and you would have thought her career would take off...... it didn't....she played in several more mostly forgotten B films, including one Elvis flick. McBain is mostly a forgotten actress today. She like Connie Stevens, another Warner Bros starlet never achieved the fame many thought they would have. This was an era when the soap sudser made a lot of money for Warner Bros. Then very quickly the genre died for some reason. Guess Troy Donahue, Stevens and McBain did not want any more suds roles. Go figure!!!
Review of Claudelle Inglish
