Portrait in Black (1960)

Film: Portrait in Black (1960)

Stars: Lana Turner, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart, Sandra Dee, John Saxon, Ray Walston, Anna May Wong

Director: Michael Gordon

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sandra Dee: click here to learn more about Ms. Dee (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I missed last week for Sandra Dee (I was traveling out of town and didn't quite have time to get this written as I was having too much fun on my trip), so we'll find a way at some point this month to make up with a double feature on a Saturday, but not today.  Today we're going to talk solely about Portrait in Black, a movie that was part of an effort for Dee to be taken more seriously as an actress.  Coming after her success with Imitation of Life, she was teamed with Lana Turner (this time playing her stepmother) in another glossy sudser, but critical success did not come to Dee.  Like most of her attempts at drama, critics didn't want to sign up for the film, and they wanted her to be more like Gidget, not getting the dramatic fare that some of the other young actresses at the time (like Natalie Wood) were getting that came with Oscar nominations.  Instead, she got more financial success-Portrait in Black was a big hit, getting her into the Top 10 biggest box office draws of the year, and led to her eventually renewing her contract with Universal (which would give her the eventual distinction of being the final major star under contract to a studio under the old Hollywood system).

(Spoilers Ahead) Portrait in Black is a classic soap opera movie, one that would go out of fashion as actual soap operas became more prominent.  Turner plays Sheila Cabot, a trophy wife caught in a loveless marriage to a dying, wealthy old man.  She's having an affair with her husband's doctor, David Rivera (Quinn), and the two eventually plot to kill him, making it look like an accident.  The only problem is that she's being blackmailed-someone seems to know that they knocked off the old man & are planning on running away together.  Is it Sheila's stepdaughter Cathy (Dee) or perhaps Howard Mason (Basehart), the other man that's madly in love with Sheila, or her servant Tawny (Anna May Wong, in her final screen performance).  More murder and soliloquies follow, until we get the bizarre kicker that it was Sheila herself, worried that David was going to leave her, who started the blackmail plot that would lead him to kill again...and eventually fall off the roof to his death in a fit of madness.

Portrait in Black is not a great movie-critics of the era got it right.  But I have kind of a soft spot for this type of melodrama, all torrid embraces & fashionable crime, and so I was into it.  I tend to really like Lana Turner, even if she's not a great actress, and this uses her well, giving us a fashionable, aging beauty who will do anything to get what she wants...though maybe a little bit more malice would've made this a proper femme fatale sort of figure, which is what the role is begging for it to turn into.  Anthony Quinn is less my cup-of-tea, but this fits-his tendency for hammy overacting lean into David's need to clear his conscience, which ain't happening given he, well, killed someone.

As for Dee-she's good, though not great.  This isn't the type of part that generally gets you plaudits (Turner & Quinn get better roles as the leads), but she does find some interesting corners to this character.  She's so naive, I really wanted more scenes between she and Sheila, giving us two generations of beauties, but one that (due to the virtues of youth) is the more desirable one in the construct of the story, and would feed Sheila's jealousy.  Weirdly that's not where this goes-Cathy is meant to be more plot point than hurdle, but Dee does make sure we know by the end that she's an option for David, the writing just isn't good enough to go there.