A WOMAN DESTROYED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 24

A WOMAN DESTROYED

(Universal-International)

es Alt the days of your life you will remember Susan Hayward in A Woman Destroyed" the disembodied voice of The Management

assures us in the blurb which precedes this picture as a sort of prologue. Apart from assessing my life and its interests at a pretty low level, this strikes me as being very poor salesmanship. The film, as it happens, isn’t a bad film; but when anybody starts in like this to soften me ‘up in advance, I am at once on my guard. I resent being verbally and visu. ally battered into a state of acquiescence. Trailers are bad enough, but at least there is a decent interval between a trailer and the picture it is selling. In this ominous new development, however, the decent interval is lost by telescoping the sales talk with the product being sold: the ultimate horror will be when we are restrained in our seats for a disembodied curtain-lecture by The Management, exhorting us to be duly grateful for having just seen a masterpiece. ; Bd * * HAT particularly irritates me about this bombastic method of drawing attention to Susan Hayward’s performance in this film is that her performance is not, in fact, particularly memorable; and such high-pressure tactics will not, in the long run, be to the advantage of this promising young player. It is a good performance, but it contains none of the enduring quality of really great acting. It is a performance which has, indeed, been given already, and given better-by Ray Milland in The Lost Week-End. For A Woman Destroyed (it was produced and released in tthe U.S.A. under the more intelligent title of Smash-up) is the story of a wife who takes seriously to whisky when her crooner husband (Lee Bowman) takes upon himsélf the mantle of a Sinatra and becomes too rich and famous to need her. At the beginning of their life together, it is she who provides the meal-ticket, singing that "Life Can Be Beautiful" in a variety of cabarets (same song, different glasses). She is happy to do.this; she is even happier to retire from night-club life to run a modest home for him, and subsequently, surprise him completely by announcing that she is about to become a mother. The film has the grace to admit that its dawn-of-fatherhood sequence is "corny"; it would have been better, in the circumstances, to have thought of a new approach or to have omitted it. Similarly with the Big Audition Sequence when the husband, through his wife’s good offices, at last gets his chance to croon for the benefit of potential radio sponsors. The earth is hushed in expectancy, the stars in their courses are halted; and then from the radio comes The Voice-whereupon the excitement is terrific, contracts fly in all

directions, and a New Sensation is created. However, though I have sat in on I don’t know how many such screen occasions, I have never known any which justified even a fraction of the furore that is generated-and Mr. Lee Bowman’s debut as a crooner is no exception, nt ‘* Bo O it will be seen that A Woman Destroyed by no means steers clear of the routine situation and the tiresome convention in telling its story. The happy ending is cast in the same artificial mould. But for the greater part of its length, this is a sharply perceptive; and purposeful film, with considerable bearing on a problem which is of more than merely academic or melodramatic interest: the problem of the wife who is burdened with too much leisure and too much luxury. For as the crooner-hus-band grows richer and more and more a public figure, he has less and less time to devote to his wife; she has no longer any need to flatter his ego, to run his house for him, or even act as nursemaid to his child. An efficient secretary (Marsha Hunt), who is also beautiful and attentive, adds the motif of jealousy to the wife’s loneliness and _ disillusionment. She turns increasingly to the whiskybottle to bolster up a self-respect which was, in fact, never very solidly grounded. Meanwhile, the husband passes through the stages of being mystified, alarmed, infuriated, disgusted, and vindictive at his wife’s behaviour-until he realises at last, but not too late, how much he is himself responsible for it. * * * ANY audience, knowing the facts, will, of course, be on the side of the wife from the start, and all the way. But while it is natural to feel every sympathy towards this unhappy character there, seems little call for us to grow tearful over her plight, since she would appear to have a remedy for it in her own hands: another baby or two would keep her busy and give her an interest in life. But none of her many kind advisers, including her doctor, thinks of suggesting this-so rigid, apparently, has the one-child convention become in the Hollywood domestic drama. However, the real reason why this film, despite its good intentions and often worthwhile accomplishment, fails to move us as it might is because Susan Hayward, upon whom falls almost the whole burden of interpretation, is, not quite equal to the task. She makes a good drunk-but a bad alcoholic. Each of her many bouts with the bottle is a realistic piece of play-acting, but it is complete in itself; she recovers and starts ‘ all over.again. There is almost none’ of that progressive disintegration of character and physical health which is the mark of dypsomania and which was such a terrifying aspect of The Lost Week-End. No, I don’t think I shall remember Susan Hayward’s performance all the days of my life-unless, perhaps, I have only about a couple of days left.