Of Human Bondage * (1964, Laurence Harvey, Kim Novak, Nanette Newman, Roger Livesey, Jack Hedley, Robert Morley) – Classic Movie Review 9156

Henry Hathaway began the direction, and the film’s screen-writer Bryan Forbes took over for one week (uncredited), and then Ken Hughes took over as rescue to finish the shooting of the 1964 third film version of the W Somerset Maugham novel Of Human Bondage, following the 1934 Of Human Bondage and the 1946 Of Human Bondage.

This time Laurence Harvey plays the wealthy, handicapped Philip Carey who pines for the trampy cockney waitress Mildred Rogers (Kim Novak), in this faltering, unconvincing, trivial third movie of the Somerset Maugham story Of Human Bondage.

Different players would help: Harvey looks far too wily for hopeless longing, and the role stretches his acting, and Novak doesn’t seem nasty and greedy enough as the trashy waitress, and she is stretched too. Also colour would help: it is shot in black and white by Oswald Morris. In any case, the Victorian-era story material was way out of its time in the British realist film-making era, and this film cannot make it seem relevant again.

Of Human Bondage is directed by Henry Hathaway, Bryan Forbes and Ken Hughes, runs 100 minutes, is made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios and Seven Arts, is released by MGM, is written by Bryan Forbes, based on W Somerset Maugham’s novel, is shot in black and white by Oswald Morris, is produced by James Woolf, is scored by Ron Goodwin and is designed by John Box.

It is shot in Ardmore Studios, Herbert Road, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland.

Okay, so it was a troubled production. Hathaway wanted Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift to star. That could have been interesting. Later Sue Lyon was considered. And that could have been interesting too. Hathaway claimed he quit after just one day’s filming with Kim Novak, who found Harvey arrogant and conceited, and couldn’t stand acting with him. After being called in to finish shooting of the movie, Hughes said he did not want to hear about the film again or watch it. He could not bear Novak, and later, while driving his car, he saw her walking on the pavement and took a toy gun, put it through the window, pointed it at Novak and shouted ‘tat-tat-tat-tat-tat’. How handy to have a toy gun with you just when you need it! On the other hand, Robert Morley was happy to be directed by Hathaway, whom he found ‘so sweet, so kindly with actors, such an old gentleman’. But then Hathaway quit.

Also in the cast are Nanette Newman, Roger Livesey, Jack Hedley, Robert Morley, Siobhan McKenna, Ronald Lacey, Brenda Fricker, Olive White, Norman Smythe, David Morris, Anthony Booth, Terry Clinton, May Cluskey, Brendan Matthews, Peter Nash, Danny O’Shea, Helen Robinson, Leo McCabe, Robin Lepler and John Sutton.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9156

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