DISHONOURED LADY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 32

DISHONOURED LADY

(United Artists)

"MAY dear, I am not only a doctor. I am also a psychiatrist,’ says Morris Carnovsky within the first few minutes of this film to Hedy

LaMarr, who has just tried to kill herself in a motor accident. So at once we know where we are, with another farrago of psychological nonsense on our

hands, another ‘set of inhibitions and neurpses to be cured, another dire case of schizophrenia, paranoia, amnesia, or alcoholism to worry us-and probably bore us stiff-through the next six or seven thousand feet. In this case, though the film is too polite to mention it quite so bluntly, what ails the. heroine is nymphomania, This, our psychiatrist assures us and her, is a "neurotic malady of the times," like alcoholism. Plainly distressed by the diagnosis, Miss LaMarr decides to give up her expensive job with a fashion magazine and a whole string of loosely-moralled admirers (including the steely-grey-haired diamond king, John Loder), in order to take up painting in a quiet boardinghouse and "get busy growing herself a new soul." While thus engaged she meets a handsome, husky fellow-boarder with obviously impeccable morals (Dennis O’Keefe): :he is a young doctor with a research fellowship who is busy studying "the Effect of Anti-Reticular Serum on Cell Tissues." He says he got the idea for this research-which, if successful, will benefit all mankind-from the Russians during the war-a highly indiscreet admission which would seem to bring the whole picture within the scope of the current investigation of Hollywood by the un-American Activities Committee of Congress. If it does, Miss LaMarr herself may be implicated, since she helps the young doctor by drawing blood-cells with which to illustrate his thesis. Meanwhile, however, True Love has been born beside the microscope, and Miss LaMarr is more immediately implicated in a tussle between her Dark Past and her Promising Future. One of her ex-boy friends is murdered in circumstances. which point several’ fingers of guilt at her. However, psychiatry is equal to the situation; and an audience which, I was interested to notice, consisted almost entirely of middle-aged women and young girls, doubtless went home comforted and elevated. In the course of the story, somebody blithely refers to Miss LaMarr as "glamourpuss." This may seem an uncomplimentary way to dismiss a very beautiful woman who tries hard to be an actress-but a true word may be spoken in jest on the screen as easily as anywhere else.