RED Summary and Reviews

RED
by Laguardia

RED
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Book Summary Information

Author: Laguardia
Edition: Board book
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1985-06-01
ISBN: 0025672304
Number of pages: 260
Publisher: Scribner

Book Reviews of RED

Book Review: Failed to persuade me that her reputation has suffered unfairly
Summary: 2 Stars

According to the authors, "many young people associate the name of Susan Hayward with lavish Hollywood trash. That is a terrible injustice". That may have been true, at least in America, when this book was first published twenty years ago, but today most young people, unless they have a particular interest in the history of the cinema, would not associate the name of Susan Hayward with anything at all. That may or may not be an even more terrible injustice, but the fact remains that Hayward, although a household name in the forties, fifties and sixties, has long since ceased to be one, whereas some of her cinematic contemporaries and co-stars, such as Ingrid Bergman, John Wayne, Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner are much more vividly remembered today.


The authors may consider it an injustice that Hayward is remembered more for her weaker films than for her better ones, but even by their own critical analysis she was not a great actress. Their assessment of her career is, roughly, that she made two great films ("I'll Cry Tomorrow" and "I Want to Live!", both from the late fifties) and several dozen bad or indifferent ones. Whether that analysis is fair is difficult for me to say, because there are many of her films that I have never seen. (The likes of "My Foolish Heart" and "White Witch Doctor" are not exactly staples of the British TV schedules, even on specialist movie channels). Certainly, the two films which Laguardia and Arceri single out are good ones (although I am not sure that they merit the label "great" when compared to others of the period such as "On the Waterfront", "Bridge on the River Kwai" or "Rebel without a Cause"), and both have an excellent performance by Hayward at their centre. Nevertheless, few if any of the other Susan Hayward films I have seen can compare in quality. "The Conqueror", for example, which she made between "I'll Cry Tomorrow" and "I Want to Live!", verges at times on the ridiculous, with a particularly inept display of acting from Hayward herself making a bad film even worse. (She made the film unwillingly, under pressure from her studio bosses, and it shows).


Given her background, it is perhaps not surprising that some of Hayward's performances seemed rather amateurish. She was born in 1917 to a working-class Brooklyn family, her original name being Edythe Marrenner. (That is the spelling the authors use throughout, although other sources spell her surname as "Marrener"). Prior to taking up acting, she worked for a time as a model. Like many of the stars of the "Golden Age" she secured a film contract (initially with Warner Brothers) without having any formal training as an actor or any previous acting experience. Film acting was a profession which one learned upon the job; the Hollywood moguls often distrusted professional actors, who had found it difficult to adapt to film-making during the silent era, and even during the early days of sound in the 1930s looks and personality counted for more than technical acting skills. (In some sectors of the industry they still do even today).


The authors tend to concentrate more on their subject's personal life than on her career, although even her private life was not particularly noteworthy by the standards of some film stars. She does not emerge from this account as a particularly attractive personality- she had a fiery temper and a serious drink problem, and could often alienate those close to her. She quarrelled, for example, with most of her family, and was estranged from her elder sister Florence. (The roots of this estrangement may have lain in sibling jealousy- as a young woman Florence had show-business ambitions of her own, which never came to much). Nevertheless, she was never involved in any major scandals and her love life, with only two husbands and a handful of extra-marital lovers, was almost monastic by Hollywood standards.


Her first marriage, to fellow film-star Jess Barker, came to an end largely because of his jealousy that her career had proved more successful than his. The authors speculate that her performance in "I'll Cry Tomorrow"- a biography of the singer and actress Lillian Roth- was so convincing precisely because the film was made at a time when Hayward's personal experiences- marital breakdown, a struggle against alcoholism and a failed suicide attempt- closely mirrored the experiences of the character she was portraying. Her second marriage, to the Georgia lawyer and landowner Eaton Chalkley, with whom she was deeply in love, was, on the surface, more successful. According to the authors, however, there was an underlying problem even here. Chalkley was a devout Catholic, but was divorced from his first wife, and his remarriage to a woman who was herself a divorcee had the effect of cutting him off from the sacraments of his Church. The spiritual torment this caused him was a continuing cause of tension in their marriage, one that was not resolved until Chalkley was reconciled with the Church shortly before his premature death from liver disease.


It is perhaps significant that the longest chapter in the book is the final one, which deals with Hayward's final illness and her own death from cancer in her late fifties. It is as if the authors, having set themselves the difficult task of trying to interest their readers in a film star whose reputation has faded and whose acting was all too often second rate, decided that the best way of making her interesting would be to try and arouse sympathy for her as a plucky lady who faced death bravely. The book, however, although it contains some useful biographical information, never succeeded in persuading me that Hayward's reputation has suffered unfairly.



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