OVP: The Silver Chalice (1954)

Film: The Silver Chalice (1954)
Stars: Virginia Mayo, Pier Angeli, Jack Palance, Paul Newman
Director: Victor Saville
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Virginia Mayo-click here to learn more about Ms. Mayo (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

It seems cruel to end Virginia Mayo's run as Star of the Month on such a low note, but, well, it's kind of where her career ended, and where oddly enough the career of another, much more famous star's began.  The Silver Chalice, a gigantic flop for Warner Brothers in the mid-50's (they lost over $1 million on the biblical epic), is most remembered today for being the screen debut of Paul Newman, then just a spry 29-year-old making his big-screen debut.  Newman famously hated the film, and once took out ads in the trades when it was going to air on television urging people not to see it (which of course had the opposite affect).  But it also marked the last film that Mayo did as a contract player at Warner Brothers, and really the last signficant film of her career.  While she'd get leading roles opposite Robert Ryan and Alan Ladd in the years after this, there would never again be a film of note in Mayo's career, even if that note was notorious, and she'd soon be following the lead of many other leading ladies of her era by doing guest work in television as the 1960's approached.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows a boy by the name of Basil, who is the gifted sculptor of a poor man who is adopted by a wealthy benefactor to be his son and heir to his fortune.  In the house, he continues to sculpt, and befriends a beautiful young girl who runs away but says she'll never forget him named Helena (as a child, played by a blonde Natalie Wood).  When the old man dies, Basil, now an adult (Newman), is denied his inheritance by his cruel uncle, and eventually is tracked to a house where he is a slave, and would have died except he is kidnapped and brought to Joseph of Arimathea, who wants him to create a silver chalice that will be modeled after the Holy Grail and feature the photos of the disciples and Jesus.  While he's there, he is torn between the adult Helena (Mayo), whom he loves and is having an affair with, and the saintly granddaughter of Joseph named Deborra (Angeli), who is a devout Christian and tries to win Basil to her side.  All-the-while, Helena's other lover Simon (Palance) has started to develop a cult-like status for his magic, and begins to think of himself as a god, as do the people of his city.  The film eventually culminates in Rome, where under Nero's Court Basil meets St. Peter (played by Lorne Greene of all people), finishes the chalice, and marries Deborra, while Simon goes mad (and essentially jumps off of a tower convinced he's able to fly), with Helena eventually being sacrificed by Nero as someone who must also jump to her doom.

The film sounds better than it is.  If you're hoping for a sudsy biblical soap opera, as that paragraph seems to have drawn, you'll find that it's more bloated than indulgent, with no one properly appreciating the camp of the film save for Mayo.  Newman, angel-faced and looking like an adonis, surely would be better in later pictures, but here is dull and listless in the lead, never entirely getting to the depth of the character he's playing; when the best thing you can say about a Paul Newman performance is that he looks good, you know it's a bust.  The same can be said for Angeli's whiny Deborra, and it's hard to tell what was going on with Jack Palance's Simon.  It's such a weird departure for the Hollywood tough man to be playing a slightly effeminate conjurer of tricks (he's straight, but you get a whisper of something else from what Palance is projecting, that perhaps he'd be willing to give it a try with Basil if the opportunity presented itself), and he can't handle it.  The last few moments where he throws himself to his doom are truly horrendous scenes from an actor who should have known better.

I have a soft spot for biblical epics, but this one falls flat.  It received two citations for Cinematography and Score, but neither of these components are all that remarkable.  There's some great shots during Simon's death scene that are interesting (the climbing up of the stairs is cool), but the blank sets, especially compared to Ben-Hur just five years later, feel pretty wooden by comparison.  The music is fine, if predictable work from Franz Waxman-there's nothing particularly melodic or individual about his work here that would make the film stand apart, and one wonders if he made it on name alone.

Arguably the best part of the film, and that's not saying as much as it should, is Mayo.  She plays Helena as a gal-about-town, the sort of creation that surely wouldn't have existed during Nero's reign, more Mae West than Mary Magdalene.  It was hard to watch this and not think of Anne Baxter two years later as the lusty Nefertari in The Ten Commandments, as clearly Baxter had to have seen Mayo in her work here as she heavily borrows from it.  Helena's defiance at the end, where she will die but with her head-held-high shows the makings of a better picture, one from her point-of-view (she's clearly power-hungry for Simon and lusts for Basil, and I love that that's not hidden in a film of 1954).  Because of her horniness she can't get through the film unscathed (it is the 1950's, after all), but there's a better picture in her work here, and it's a pity that this was, for all-intents-and-purposes, the final significant movie of Mayo's career.

Friday we'll investigate a different actress, one more known for her work in musical comedies than the dramas that featured through Mayo's work, but before we go, please share your thoughts on our Star of the Month-do you have a favorite Virginia Mayo performance?