Susan Slade *** (1961, Troy Donahue, Dorothy McGuire, Connie Stevens) – Classic Movie Review 6821

Writer-producer-director Delmer Daves’s plush and effective coming-of-age weepie is based on Doris Hume’s novel The Sin of Susan Slade and centres on precocious Susan Slade (Connie Stevens), a teenage daughter who gets pregnant, after a fling with handsome mountain climber Conn White (Grant Williams), who promptly dies.

Susan and her parents (Dorothy McGuire, Lloyd Nolan) move to California, and the movie focuses on way that they all cope with the new arrival. Two locals like the look of her – horse wrangler Hoyt Brecker (Troy Donahue) and nice rich boy Wells Corbett (Bert Convy).

Daves’s movie is an enjoyable if slushy melodrama well served by the photographic skills of cinematographer Lucien Ballard (The Devil Is a Woman, The Lodger, The Killing, True Grit, The Wild Bunch), shooting in Technicolor. Director Daves gives the events a stylish patina, though there is little discernible going on beneath the film’s shining, soapy surface.

The young Stevens is very appealing, while McGuire and Nolan are expectedly stalwart.

The pretty-boy teen idol Troy Donahue plays criminal’s son Hoyt Brecker and falls for Stevens’s Susan Slade with some conviction, and so does Bert Convy as her other suitor Wells Corbett, her dad’s boss’s rich son. And the movie is topped off with plenty of strong support from a cast of very dependable actors.

Also in the cast are Brian Aherne, Natalie Schafer, Kent Smith, Guy Wilkerson, John A Alonzo, Bob Baker, Robert Cleaves, David L Davis, Joan Dupuis, Martin Eric, James Peter Farmer, Everett Glass, Robert Glover, Gerald Hamer, Ramsay Hill, Jean Paul King, Miguel Angel Landa, Fred Marlow, Robert Totten, Giselle Verlaine, John Vick, Martin Walker and Maurice Wells.

Susan Slade is directed by Delmer Daves, runs 116 minutes, is made by Warner Bros, is written by Delmer Daves, based on Doris Hume’s novel The Sin of Susan Slade, is shot in Technicolor by Lucien Ballard, is produced by Delmer Daves, is scored by Max Steiner and is designed by Leo K Kuter.

Daves directed Donahue in four successive films: A Summer Place, Parrish, Susan Slade, and Rome Adventure.

Parrish, Susan Slade, Rome Adventure and Palm Springs Weekend are all available on a Warner Bros Romance Classics Collection DVD.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6821

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