The Other Love ** (1947, Barbara Stanwyck, David Niven, Richard Conte, Gilbert Roland, Joan Lorring) – Classic Movie Review 6693

‘What Woman Dares Live The Other Love… What Man Dares Give The Other Love!’ What are they even talking about? Director André De Toth’s 1947 romantic melodrama stars a cast of notable actors in Barbara Stanwyck, David Niven, Richard Conte, Gilbert Roland and Joan Lorring.

Despite the publicity, The Other Love should have quality written all over it but it misses by miles and ends up deliciously campy and good for many a sneaky laugh as a secret guilty pleasure. Barbara Stanwyck is the wrong star and De Toth the wrong director for this material.

The Other Love is fun, kitsch, over-played melodramatic tosh, with Stanwyck starring as the seriously sick TB-sufferer concert pianist Karen Duncan, who is living the high-life in the fast track with racing driver Paul Clermont (Conte) while being romanced by Dr Anthony ‘Tony’ Stanton (Niven), the nice doctor who is treating her in a Swiss sanitarium.

Though based on a short story, Beyond, by Erich Maria Remarque, the serious-minded author of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), it is the ripest of nonsense but there are plenty of ripe lines for the game cast – many of them totally miscast – to get their teeth into. The always tough-seeming Stanwyck remains throughout in robust good health in a role that probably needed Greta Garbo to make it work.

Also in the cast are Gilbert Roland, Joan Lorring, Lenore Aubert, Maria Palmer, Richard Hale, Edward Ashley, Natalie Schafer, Jimmy Horne, Mary Forbes, Ann Codee, Kathleen Williams, Mary Fields and Michael Romanoff.

The Other Love is also known as Erich Maria Remarque’s The Other Love and is also known as Man Killer when it was re-released in 1953.

The Other Love is directed by André De Toth, runs 95 minutes, is an Enterprise Productions production, released by United Artists, is written by Ladislas Fodor and Harry Brown, shot in black and white by Victor Milner and Alfred Keller, produced by David Lewis, scored by Miklos Rozsa, Rudolph Polk and Mort Glickman, and designed by Nathan Juran.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6693

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