OVP: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Film: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Judith Anderson
Director: Lewis Milestone
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 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 Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Lizabeth Scott became a star by the sheer force-of-will of mega-producer Hall Wallis.  Unlike virtually every other star in our series, Scott didn’t really have a wilderness or supporting part period-she made 22 films in her career and 21 of them she got star billing.  The reason for that is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, a film that she got to be ranked alongside Barbara Stanwyck & Van Heflin despite being a virtual unknown (to underline point here, below-the-line but with nearly as large of a part is Kirk Douglas in his screen debut, who without Wallis pushing him wasn’t given the same level of publicity as Scott).  Barbara Stanwyck at the time protested (she didn’t share star billing with anyone that wasn’t her equal), but Wallis insisted, and Martha Ivers delivered enough to make Scott the star that Wallis wanted.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a well, strange, movie.  The film hearkens back to a young Martha (played by Janis Wilson as a child, Stanwyck as an adult) trying to run away with Sam (eventually to be played by Van Heflin).  The problem is she’s the richest girl in town, and her aunt (Anderson) is cruel & domineering of her.  Martha attempts to escape one night with Sam but in the process accidentally kills her aunt.  Certain to be sent to jail and see her life ruined, she is convinced by a greedy tutor (Roman Bohnen) that he’ll keep her secret, and eventually pushes Martha onto his son Walter (Douglas) who will then inherit her family fortune and political power.  The film cuts to the characters’ adulthood, where Sam is going through town and learns that Martha is still there, successful as ever, and befriends she and Walter, who find Sam suspicious and try to run him out of town (or even have him killed) as they assume he saw Martha kill her aunt and will tell that they let an innocent man go to the chair for Martha’s crime.  The movie eventually ends with a murder-suicide between Martha & Walter, and Sam runs off into the sunset, letting this chapter of his life go.

You’ll notice two things in that description-one, it sounds normal but it’s not.  Martha is diabolical, and more than willing to dispose of people in order to get what she wants.  The film feels a bit gimmicky in Stanwyck’s performance, letting her play Martha as wild-eyed as she possibly can.  It kind of works because she’s such a good actor she can do scenery-chewing with great aplomb, but it’s not particularly strong acting, especially when you consider that Stanwyck is capable of a role like Phyllis Dietrichson, the grand teton of femme fatales.  Arguably the best performance in the film comes from Kirk Douglas, playing a sniveling man capable of both murder and being totally whipped by his hot wife.  Douglas rarely played this kind of weak character in a career that would find him most identified with Spartacus or western heroes, but he’s really good in the part.

The second thing you’ll notice is that I don’t talk about Scott’s character at all, and that’s because she’s totally unnecessary for the actual film.  She plays the love interest for Van Heflin’s Sam, Toni.  Toni has some petty crime under her belt, and is blackmailed by Walter to get to Sam, but she’s ancillary to the main showdown between Martha, Walter, and Sam, and it’s easy to see how Scott would’ve gotten lower billing if it weren’t for Wallis. Her performance is…fine.  It’s a throwaway part, and she doesn’t elevate it the way that Douglas does, but as I’ve read about Scott, she became famous so fast that she struggled with learning how to act while getting to headline proper films (with her beauty & husky voice, she was unkindly compared to Lauren Bacall).  We’re going to get to some of the peak Scott performances in a few weeks, but this week-and-next we’ll be staying in the earliest reaches of her career, where she starred with luminaries like Stanwyck & Douglas, and struggled to stand out.