The Picture of Dorian Gray **** (1945, George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury) – Classic Movie Review 1887

Hurd Hatfield stars in the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray as the beautiful young man who unwittingly makes a pact with the Devil to keep his youthful beauty while his portrait in the attic shows the ravages on his face and body.

Writer-director Albert Lewin’s artful 1945 movie classic The Picture of Dorian Gray gives Oscar Wilde’s one and only novel the glossy, big Hollywood treatment and exactly the smart actors it needs to work beautifully. Director Lewin proves just the person to bring Dorian Gray to the screen with his swirling baroque style and his fully indulged penchant for the bizarre and the dreamlike, conjured up amid the MGM studio’s fog and gaslights. It won an Oscar for Best Black-and-White Cinematography and two Oscar nominations, and a Golden Globe.

Main star Hurd Hatfield is splendidly weird and wasted, in a glacially icy and distant performance as the handsome, sensuous, corrupted and depraved Victorian British aristocrat Dorian Gray. He famously gains the prize of eternal youth, keeping all his youthful beauty, while the special painting of him in the attic gradually gets terrifyingly old and raddled, revealing his inner ugliness.

Top billed George Sanders is perfect as the wicked Svengali-style genius Lord Henry Wotton, spitting out Wilde’s witty epigrams with all the evident relish they require, and more. And the young Angela Lansbury, touching as the pathetic vaudeville waif Sybil Vane, won a Golden Globe and her second Oscar nomination, for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She performs ‘Good-Bye, Little Yellow Bird’ (lyrics and music by C W Murphy and William Hargreaves) hauntingly.

The gorgeous MGM studio production by art directors Cedric Gibbons and Hans Peters, with interior decoration by Edwin B Willis, John Bonar and Hugh Hunt (they were nominated for Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration), is set off by Harry Stradling Sr’s brilliant, gleaming Oscar-winning Best Black-and-White Cinematography. It’s not quite all black and white, though. Flashes of Technicolor in some sequences show the portrait that bit by bit is creepily ageing while the sinful hedonist Dorian doesn’t.

The four colour inserts in three-strip Technicolor of Dorian’s portrait are special effects, the first two inserts picturing a youthful Dorian and the second two a degenerate one.

Years later, a friend of Hatfield’s bought Henrique Medina’s painting of the young Dorian at an auction, and gifted it to him. Ivan Le Lorraine Albright’s more famous painting of the decayed Dorian Gray, which took a whole year to complete, is owned by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is on display.

Peter Lawford also stars as David Stone. The character actors from the MGM stock company include Lowell Gilmore, Richard Fraser, Reginald Owen, Lydia Bilbrook, Morton Lowry, Douglas Walton, Mary Forbes, Robert Greig, Lisa Carpenter, Moyna Macgill, Billy Bevan and Miles Mander. Sir Cedric Hardwicke narrates the movie.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is directed by Albert Lewin, runs 109 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Albert Lewin, is shot in black and white and Technicolor (some sequences) by Harry Stradling Sr, is produced by Pandro S Berman, is scored by Herbert Stothart, and is designed by Cedric Gibbons and Hans Peters.

The cast are George Sanders as Lord Henry Wotton, Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray, Donna Reed as Gladys Hallward, Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane, Peter Lawford as David Stone, Lowell Gilmore as Basil Hallward, Richard Fraser as James Vane, Douglas Walton as Allen Campbell, Morton Lowry as Adrian Singleton, Miles Mander as Sir Robert Bentley. Lydia Bilbrook as Mrs Vane, Mary Forbes as Lady Agatha, Robert Greig as Sir Thomas, Moyna Macgill as Duchess, Anita Sharp-Bolster as Lady Harborough, Billy Bevan as Malvolio Jones, Lilian Bond as Kate, Mitchell Lewis as Waiter, Reginald Owen as Lord George Farmour and Cedric Hardwicke as Narrator.

Basil Rathbone campaigned to play Lord Henry, but MGM preferred to loan him lucratively to Universal to play Sherlock Holmes.

It earned $1,399,000 in North America and $1,576,000 elsewhere, resulting in a loss to MGM of $26,000.

It was remade in 1970 as Dorian Gray with Helmut Berger, in 1973 for TV as The Picture of Dorian Gray with Shane Briant, in 2003 as Dorian [Pact with the Devil] with Ethan Erickson and Malcolm McDowell, in 2005 as The Picture of Dorian Gray with Josh Duhamel, as The Picture of Dorian Gray in 2007, as Dorian Gray in 2009 with Ben Barnes and Colin Firth, as The Picture of Dorian Gray in 2018 and again as The Picture of Dorian Gray in 2021.

Peter Firth’s first major role as an adult was the title part in a BBC TV Play of the Month of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1976), which also starred Jeremy Brett and John Gielgud. The script was based on a stage adaptation by John Osborne.

Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE died in her sleep at her home in Los Angeles on 11 October 2022, aged 96.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1887

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