This outlandishly bad racial drama comes from MGM Studios, the movie factory which once proclaimed that it had more stars than there were in the heavens. Louis B. Mayer would certainly be spinning in his grave if he were to see the type of films such as this one that the studio he work hard to move to the top was putting out. Even with two Oscar winning films in a row ("Gigi", "Ben Hur"), MGM had plenty of dreck, and this is one of the worst of the lot. It's an embarrasment of amateur cliche's, suffering from a hideously rotten script that can only be described as a dime store novel on celluloid, so obviously exploitive that you wonder how such classy actors as Agnes Moorehead and Edward Andrews could acknowledge being a part of it.
The stars are Julie London and John Drew Barrymore, facing a harsh world simply because of the revelation that she has a teeny, tiny bit of black in her racial makeup. Yes, I realize that this was the late 1950's so certainly there would be cause for concern, and certainly, a wealthy San Francisco society matron like Moorehead's character might object. Moorehead isn't an outright obvious meddlesome mother, and her passive/aggressive nature is revealed slowly. She has obviously coddled her two sons (Barrymore and Dean Jones) a bit too much, but she's very welcoming to London at first, even lending her a fur stole to wear out for the evening. Suddenly, she's ranting on the phone about the newspaper headline exposing London and having Barrymore committed to a sanatarium when neighbors file assault charges against him and London. This leads to the most absurd annulment trial where Moorehead's attorney (Edward Andrews) tries in his most obnoxiously cocky manner to discredit London in every way possible. Only the great James Edwards here shows any dignity as London's counsel, the one human element in this whole fiasco outside London and Barrymore.
As old friends of London's, Anna Kafshi and the great Nat King Cole underplay their roles of advisers against London fighting to get Cole back, making themselves nearly as nasty as Moorehead and Jones. The scene where Barrymore gets out of the sanatarium simply by slugging two large guards is way beyond unrealistic. Edwards cones up with a ploy to have London strip completely to prove there's no way she could hide her race during a nude swim, leading to the most ludicrous way of snapping Barrymore out of his manipulated conclusion. Moorehead is forced to utter some extremely nasty lines (asking London if her son proposed to her in a cotton field, while Andrews seems to be revealing his disgust with the script by saying all his lines through a sneer. This is a true bomb, saved only by the determination of the cast to add a teeny amount of dignity to a film they obviously knew couldn't be saved.
The stars are Julie London and John Drew Barrymore, facing a harsh world simply because of the revelation that she has a teeny, tiny bit of black in her racial makeup. Yes, I realize that this was the late 1950's so certainly there would be cause for concern, and certainly, a wealthy San Francisco society matron like Moorehead's character might object. Moorehead isn't an outright obvious meddlesome mother, and her passive/aggressive nature is revealed slowly. She has obviously coddled her two sons (Barrymore and Dean Jones) a bit too much, but she's very welcoming to London at first, even lending her a fur stole to wear out for the evening. Suddenly, she's ranting on the phone about the newspaper headline exposing London and having Barrymore committed to a sanatarium when neighbors file assault charges against him and London. This leads to the most absurd annulment trial where Moorehead's attorney (Edward Andrews) tries in his most obnoxiously cocky manner to discredit London in every way possible. Only the great James Edwards here shows any dignity as London's counsel, the one human element in this whole fiasco outside London and Barrymore.
As old friends of London's, Anna Kafshi and the great Nat King Cole underplay their roles of advisers against London fighting to get Cole back, making themselves nearly as nasty as Moorehead and Jones. The scene where Barrymore gets out of the sanatarium simply by slugging two large guards is way beyond unrealistic. Edwards cones up with a ploy to have London strip completely to prove there's no way she could hide her race during a nude swim, leading to the most ludicrous way of snapping Barrymore out of his manipulated conclusion. Moorehead is forced to utter some extremely nasty lines (asking London if her son proposed to her in a cotton field, while Andrews seems to be revealing his disgust with the script by saying all his lines through a sneer. This is a true bomb, saved only by the determination of the cast to add a teeny amount of dignity to a film they obviously knew couldn't be saved.