The Legend of Lylah Clare ** (1968, Kim Novak, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine) – Classic Movie Review 8463

The 1968 drama The Legend of Lylah Clare is an unloved, bizarre and unbelievable film from director Robert Aldrich, in which a sexy starlet (Kim Novak) is supposed to be the dead ringer for a bossy movie-maker (Peter Finch)’s dead actress wife, Lylah Clare. He gets her to Hollywood to make a film of the wife’s story and falls for her.

The Legend of Lylah Clare is a bit of an extended, way over-long shaggy dog story, and, although Finch is OK, Novak (who plays both women) is not really up to the demands Aldrich makes of her. Hitchcock previously used her to much better advantage in a not dissimilar way in his 1958 Vertigo.

The Legend of Lylah Clare is a rare flop from Aldrich, who in addition to seeing the film’s rapid disappearance, also suffered the added insult of people laughing at it at the premiere. The kind view is that this luridly overheated, eye-poppingly kitsch tale from Hollywood’s dark, wild side is worth a re-evaluation as a flamboyant, entertainingly sloppy, sometimes unintentionally funny junk treasure from the man who gave us What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Killing of Sister George.

The screenplay by Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol is based on Robert Thom and Edward DeBlasio’s 1963 US TV play.

Also in the cast are Ernest Borgnine, Milton Selzer, Rossella Falk, Gabriele Tinti, Valentina Cortese, Michael Murphy, Coral Browne, Lee Meriwether, Robert Ellenstein, Nick Dennis, and Dave Willock.

The Legend of Lylah Clare is directed by Robert Aldrich, runs 130 minutes, is made by The Associates & Aldrich Company, is released by MGM, is written by Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol, based on Robert Thom and Edward DeBlasio’s teleplay, is shot by Joseph F Biroc, is produced Robert Aldrich, is scored by Frank De Vol, and is designed by George W Davis and William Glasgow

It had no UK cinema release but it was shown at London’s National Film Theatre in an Aldrich season in the Seventies, and screened twice by Channel Four in the Eighties and Nineties.

Aldrich’s next film is The Killing of Sister George, also with Coral Browne.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8463

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