A shopgirl (Lana Turner) marries above her station when she weds the son (John Forsythe) of a prestigious Connecticut social register family. But due to her husband's increased absences due to business, she has an affair with a playboy (Ricardo Montalban). When he is accidentally killed during one of their rendezvous, the mother in law (Constance Bennett) uses it to blackmail the wife out of the family, forcing her to abandon her husband and young child. Eventually she sinks into a life of alcoholism, promiscuity and murder. The 1908 soap opera by Alexandre Bisson has been made into a film at least seven times that I'm aware of. It's just a juicy role that it seems to attract actresses. In addition to Turner, the role has been played by Ruth Chatterton, Gladys George and Tuesday Weld. This one gets the lush Ross Hunter treatment with Turner wearing Jean Louis and bedecked with jewels and furs. But the film is like a Douglas Sirk movie without Douglas Sirk at the helm and it could have used him, reputedly Hunter asked him but Sirk turned him down. Turner is handicapped in the first half of the movie, mostly because she's clearly too mature to pass as a 20 something and she poses rather than acts. But in the film's second act, stripped of a glamorous wardrobe and make up, she doesn't have anything to fall back on and she does a credible job with some of her most effective acting on screen. Directed by David Lowell Rich. With Burgess Meredith, Keir Dullea, Virginia Grey, John van Dreelen, Warren Stevens, Carl Benton Reid, Joe De Santis and Kaaren Verne.
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