Where Love Has Gone *** (1964, Susan Hayward, Bette Davis, Mike Connors, Joey Heatherton, Jane Greer, George Macready, DeForest Kelley) – Classic Movie Review 6284

Director Edward Dmytryk’s lurid 1964 drama is an unseemly but suitably overwrought version of Harold Robbins’s best-selling novel, doubtless sparked off by the real-life story of Lana Turner’s daughter Cheryl killing Lana’s lover in 1958. (She was acquitted at her murder trial.)

Here Joey Heatherton plays teenager Danielle ‘Danny ‘ Miller, who is accused of killing the latest boyfriend of her divorced sculptress mother Valerie Miller (Susan Hayward).

Bette Davis and George Macready co-star as the grandparents, the domineering Mrs Gerald Hayden and Gordon Harris, Mike [Michael] Connors plays Major Luke Miller and DeForest Kelley plays sleazy art critic Sam Corwin, while Jane Greer and Anne Seymour are other welcome cast members as concerned probation officer Marian Spicer and psychiatrist Dr Sally Jennings.

It is shamefully tacky, soapy, exploitative material, but there is plenty of spit and fire in the acting, especially from Hayward and Davis, who while filming apparently found it easy to show hatred of each other.

The Jimmy Van Heusen (music) – Sammy Cahn (lyrics) title song Where Love Has Gone (sung by Jack Jones) was Oscar nominated as Best Original Song.

Also in the cast are Willis Bouchey, Walter Reed, Ann Doran, Bartlett Robinson, Whit Bissell and Anthony Caruso.

It is written by John Michael Hayes, shot in Technicolor by Joe MacDonald, scored by Walter Scharf and designed by Hal Pereira.

Understandably, it was repeatedly denied at the time that the film and novel were based on the Lana Turner / Johnny Stompanato case of 1958.  The jury accepted Cheryl Crane’s defence that she feared Stompanato was going to kill her mother.

Davis refused to film a last-minute addition scene where her character goes insane and commits suicide, considering it out of character.

Edith Head’s costumes cost $200,000.

Producer Joseph E Levine had just produced a hit film of Robbins’s The Carpetbaggers.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6284

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