Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman ***½ (1947, Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Eddie Albert, Marsha Hunt) – Classic Movie Review 5500

Director Stuart Heisler’s effective 1947 melodrama stars Susan Hayward as fast-rising nightclub singer Angie Evans, who becomes a smashed-up woman and hits the bottle when her singing career goes flat, while her songwriter husband Ken Conway (Lee Bowman) hits the high notes in his career as a chart-topping radio crooner.

[Spoiler alert] But a just-averted tragedy brings them closer together and gives her the strength to kick the alcoholism habit.

Hayward does commendably well with John Howard Lawson and Lionel Wiggam’s rather stolid, flawed screenplay adapted from an original story by Dorothy Parker and Frank Cavett. It has its share of soapy showbiz clichés and obvious statements about alcoholism and relationships that do not exactly help to make the material seem fresh.

Nevertheless, the movie is more than worthwhile for Hayward’s Oscar nominated performance, as well as Stanley Cortez’s film noir-style cinematography. Also, Marsha Hunt and Eddie Albert play the ‘other woman’ and ‘sympathetic friend’ respectively, and, though fighting stereotype characters, both are first rate.

There were Oscar nominations for Hayward as Best Actress (her first) and for Dorothy Parker and Frank Cavett for Best Original Story. After three further nominations, Hayward finally won the Best Actress Oscar for I Want to Live! (1958).

Also in the cast are Carl Esmond, Carleton Young, Charles D Brown, Janet Murdoch, Sharyn Payne, Robert Shayne, Ernie Adams, Erville Alderson, Brooks Benedict, Larry J Blake, Fred Browne, Virginia Carroll, Tom Chatterton, Dorothy Christy, Jan Cravan, James Craven, Matt Dennis, Laurie Douglas, Alice Fleming, Bess Flowers, Joan Fulton, William Gould, Al Hill, Richard Kipling, Connie Leon, George Meader, George Meeker, Ralph Montgomery, Frances Morris, Noel Neill, Vivian Oakland, Steve Olsen, Ruth Sanderson, Jeffrey Sayre, Lee Shumway, Clarence Straight, Nanette Vallon, Robert Verdaine, Ethel Wales and Barbara Woodell.

It runs 105 minutes, is made by Universal, is shot in black and white by Stanley Cortez, is produced by Walter Wanger, is scored by Frank Skinner and Daniele Amfitheatrof, and is set designed by Alexander Golitzen.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5500

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