Betrayed ** (1954, Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Victor Mature, Louis Calhern, O E Hasse) – Classic Movie Review 6,665

MGM’s creakily old-fashioned 1954 romantic spy drama film Betrayed stars Clark Gable as a wartime Dutch spy boss who recruits Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner) to liaise with dashing Resistance leader The Scarf (Victor Mature).

Producer-director Gottfried Reinhardt’s creakily old-fashioned 1954 MGM romantic spy drama film Betrayed stars Clark Gable as Colonel Pieter Deventer, a wartime Netherlands spy boss who recruits Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner), a woman working for the Allies to act as liaison with a dashing Dutch Resistance leader called The Scarf (Victor Mature) over the British attack on Arnhem.

But then Deventer is left having to discover if resistance worker Carla Van Oven is actually working for the Allies or is in fact a traitorous Quisling. The studio mounted some of its big name acting guns – Gable, Turner, Victor Mature, Louis Calhern and O E Hasse – but largely in vain, for this movie is an often unconvincing disappointment, with the stars struggling in miscast roles. This material might well have worked much better with original choices Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark and Ava Gardner.

It was made in Holland which helps to explain the neighbouring British-based support cast of Wilfrid Hyde White, Ian Carmichael, Nora Swinburne, Anton Diffring, Niall MacGinnis, Roland Culver, Leslie Weston, Christopher Rhodes, and Brian Smith.

Gable quit MGM after this critical flop film, though even so it was a box office hit, costing $1,674,000, grossing in $1,970,000, for an overall take of $4,270,000 worldwide.

Betrayed is written by Ronald Millar and George Froeschel, shot in Eastmancolor by Freddie Young, and scored by Walter Goehr, with Art Direction by Alfred Junge.

Also in the cast are Glyn Houston, Thomas Heathcote, Carl Jaffe, Peter Martin, Ferdy Mayne, Arthur Mullard, Reggie Nalder, Mona Washbourne, Richard Anderson, Basil Appleby, Wolf Frees, and Theodore Bikel.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,665

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