Madame X (1966) | Lana Turner, John Forsythe

Madame X (1966) | Lana Turner, John Forsythe | "Never end on a dangling insult!"

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Madame X (1966)

	Madame X (1966) Lana Turner, John Forsythe Universal Studios, 1998 average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the Greats!

If you're looking for a rainy afternoon or late night tearjerker, bursting at the seams with impeccable style, glamour and delicious disaster, this is your film. Only Lana Turner can deliver such wistful heartbreak in the finest gowns and jewels one instant, and next be the tragic victim of misfortune, suffering as only those who fall from on high can know. To call it melodrama would be an insult, this is classic cinema, with Hollywood royalty.

"Never end on a dangling insult!"

Scandal has wreaked havoc on many a star's career, but it gave Lana Turner a third-act career boost. La Lana's audience wanted -- and got -- scenes like the one here in which she's told by her live-in-mother-in-law, Constance Bennett, "You're an unfit mother, guilty of adultery. Your prosecutor will say you killed your lover. Even if a clever attorney gets you off, the mud will cling!" (Never mind that Turner hadn't killed smoothie Richardo Montalban -- in fact, she'd been in the midst of calling him "A contemptible, rotten . . ." when he'd replied, "A contemptible, rotten what? Never end on a dangling insult!" and just then had fallen down a convenient staircase to his
death.)

To protect her son, and husband John Forsythe, from the scandal that would drag them all down, Turner agrees to fake her death and start life anew in Europe. This hoary plot has made the rounds since the silent era, but this is the deluxe edition, pumped up by its producer with gowns, jewels, and wigs, in hopes that we won't notice Turner's too old for the role. The over-the-top script keeps us laughing out loud as Turner spends the next twenty years going from man to man, drink to drink, trying to forget.

When she runs out of dough, Turner ships out on a Mexico-bound tramp steamer, where she downs absinthe with scummy Burgess Meredith, telling him "I've come a long way down. `Would you prefer the Rolls or the Mercedes this morning?' they used to ask me." Old enough to recognize this plot from earlier Madame X movies, Meredith realizes who Turner is and tricks her into returning to the United States, so he can blackmail her husband. Figuring out Meredith's game, Turner tells him, "Listen, scavenger, I crawl in the same gutter, but I'm not a beast of prey!" and then proves her point by shooting him dead.

When she's tried for murder, she's defended by her own grown son, Keir Dullea, who does not realize that she's his own mother. "I don't have much to leave my son," Turner says on the stand, "only a lie that his mother was clean and good. I killed to keep my son from knowing what I'd become. If time were turned back, I'd kill again." Turner, Forsythe, Bennett and even a jury member weep copiously throughout this speech -- there's not a dry eye on the set. Turner collapses and dies, but not before telling Dullea, "When you marry, it's important to live alone" -- as if that's how she got into this mess.

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Golden oldie!!

This is the type of movie we should all be watching.. good story and has a lesson to it. A real "tear-jerker."

Imitation of Laff

A lot of people love this movie and so do I--but probably not for the same reason. Not for nothing was this the last gasp of the Ross Hunter tearjerkers in the "Imitation of Life"/"Back Street" mode. By the mid-Sixties, this type of hokum was far more comic than melodramatic--just look at the ridiculous casting, which includes a 40-something Lana Turner (who'd just played Sandra Dee's mother/stepmother in her last few pictures) as a young bride. . . having her first child! Surrounding her with inappropriate actors like bland John Forsythe (as her middle-aged ambitious "young" husband) and veteran Constance Bennett (who somehow looks more like Lana's younger sister than her mother-in-law) didn't help realism. Cheesy production values and anacronisms (all the women are dressed in the height of Sixties middlebrow fashions--in scenes taking place thirty years earlier!) just add to the fun. A real howl, especially when an Oscar-hungry Turner goes to pot in the final reels. You'll cry alright--with laughter.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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