Magnificent Obsession **** (1954, Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Barbara Rush) – Classic Movie Review 3435

Douglas Sirk’s magnificently melodramatic 1954 romantic film Magnificent Obsession finds the perfect stars in Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson and Agnes Moorehead.

Cult director Douglas Sirk’s magnificently melodramatic 1954 American romantic drama film Magnificent Obsession finds the perfect stars in Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson and Agnes Moorehead. Produced by Ross Hunter, it is a remake of the 1935  Irene Dunne – Robert Taylor weepie film Magnificent Obsession, based on the famous Lloyd C Douglas tearjerker novel

Hudson stars as drunken, spoiled rich man playboy Bob Merrick, who becomes a respected surgeon in order to restore the sight of a woman Helen Phillips (Wyman) he blinded in a car smash.

Robert Blees’s screenplay stays close to Lloyd C Douglas’s original novel and the production is polished into a showy style object in Russell Metty’s Technicolor and SuperScope cinematography. Inspired stars Wyman, Hudson and Moorehead play it for all it’s worth and then some. Wyman was Oscar nominated as Best Actress and the film delighted Fifties audiences, taking $5.2 million at the US/ Canada box office.

Wyman lost to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954), who also won over the favourite Judy Garland in A Star Is Born (1954), Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones (1954), and Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954).

Wyman won a Best Actress Oscar for Johnny Belinda (1948), and was also nominated for The Yearling (1946) and The Blue Veil (1951).

The new CinemaScope anamorphic lens process was considered, but the production started in a flat widescreen process at an aspect ratio of 2:1, Universal’s standard ratio.

Also in the cast are Barbara Rush, Otto Kruger, Gregg Palmer, Paul Cavanagh, Sara Shane, Judy Nugent, George Lynn, Richard H Cutting, Will White, Helen Kleeb, Rudolph Anders, Jack Kelly, Lisa Gaye and Mae Clarke.

The screenplay by Robert Blees, Wells Root (adaptation) and Finley Peter Dunne (uncredited), is based on the 1935 screenplay by Sarah Y Mason and Victor Heerman, and the 1929 novel Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C Douglas, whose story Sirk claimed was based distantly on the Greek legend of Alcestis, a princess known for her love of her husband.

Jeff Chandler turned down the role of Bob Merrick because he thought the film’s story was too soppy. But producer Ross Hunter knew a good thing when he saw it and quickly re-convened the director and three stars for All That Heaven Allows (1955).

Wyman appears as herself on the film’s trailer to narrate it. In a goof at the accident scene, as the taxicab door closes, there is no damage to it.

Second-unit shooting at Lake Tahoe began filming on September 14 1953 and production began on September 21 at Lake Arrowhead.

Sirk’s previous film Taza, Son of Cochise, a 3D Western, also starred Rock Hudson, and they had worked together before that on 1952’s Has Anybody Seen My Gal?.

Wyman said the young Hudson was very nervous and some of his scenes had to be reshot 30 or 40 times. Years later Hudson met Wyman and said: ‘You were nice to me when you didn’t have to be, and I want you to know that I thank you and love you for it.’ The more experienced Wyman was widely felt to look too old for her character or as love interest for Rock.

Wyman might have been nice to Hudson, but what Hudson did not know was Wyman an FBI informer under the code name T-10, providing the names of movie actors she believed to be communist sympathisers. Her husband Ronald Reagan shared the same FBI informant code.

Charles Bickford was originally cast as Randolph, but left to play studio head Oliver Niles in the 1954 A Star Is Born, and was replaced by Otto Kruger.

Frank Skinner composes the score, and the film’s title theme song with lyrics by Frederick Herbert. The Four Lads recorded the song with the Percy Faith orchestra. Skinner’s score relies on arrangements of works by Chopin (Nocturne No. 7 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1 and Étude in E major, Op. 10, No. 3 “Tristesse”), Beethoven (“Ode to Joy” theme from 9th Symphony), and Johann Strauss II (Wiener Blut).

The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in June 1954, and opened on August 4 1954 at Loew’s State Theatre in New York City, whare audiences were greeted in the lobby by Agnes Moorehead. It was then released on August 7 1954 in the US, and in the UK on November 18 1954 (London).

it runs 108 minutes.

The cast are Jane Wyman as Helen Phillips, Rock Hudson as Bob Merrick, Barbara Rush as Joyce Phillips, Agnes Moorehead as Nancy Ashford, Otto Kruger as Randolph, Gregg Palmer as Tom Masterson, Paul Cavanagh as Dr Giraud, Sara Shane as Valerie, Richard H Cutting as Dr Dodge, Judy Nugent as Judy, Helen Kleeb as Mrs Eden, Rudolph Anders as Dr Fuss, Fred Nurney as Dr Laradetti, John Mylong as Dr Hofer, Jack Kelly as First Mechanic, Alexander Campbell as Dr Allan, Mae Clarke as Mrs Miller, Harvey Grant as Chris, Joseph Mell as Dan, George Lynn, Richard H Cutting, Will White, and Lisa Gaye.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3435

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/