cinema obscura: two with june allyson

When the eternally youthful, all-American June Allyson died at age 89 on July 8, 2006, most of the coverage was devoted to her team-spirited work at MGM and the various “wife” roles that she played in a string of biopics.

Missing from the career appreciations were two atypical Allyson titles - José Ferrer's compelling "The Shrike" (1955) and Douglas Sirk's lovelorn "Interlude" (1957), both made and released by Universal-International.

The two are impossible to see (or even find) these days, although Turner Classic Movies had "Interlude" penciled in for a couple screenings in the recent past, only to subsequently substitute another title at the 11th hour.

The disappearance of “The Shrike” is particularly odd, given its lofty credentials. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1952 play by Joseph Kramm, the stage production won two Tony awards for José Ferrer – as "best actor in a play" and "best director of a play." On stage, Ferrer co-starred with Judith Evelyn, best known as the timid Miss Lonelyhearts, spied on by James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954).

However, when Ferrer decided to transfer the play to film, his first as a director and with himself again in the male lead, he did the unforeseeable and hired Allyson to play the role of a bright, seemingly caring wife (seemingly) who relentlessly pecks and pecks away at her husband – much like the bird of the title – until she has effectively reduced him to a state of utter helplessness and frightening mental instability.

Never before had Allyson's sunniness been made to seem so untrustworthy - it's toxic actually - and she responds to the challenge with a memorably unsettling (and yet subtle) performance. With this film, Ferrer explored what the critic Richard Schickel described as Allyson’s “vaunted sweetness,” as well as the perilous state of marriage when one of its partners fairly drips -  and seduces - with venom. “It was a delicious combination,” Schickel commented in his book “The Stars” (1962) – "her surface sweetness and the inner viciousness of the role.” A great performance.

James M. Cain concocted the story for Douglas Sirk's "Interlude," which was remade a decade later in 1968 under the same title by director Kevin Billington - although, for some bizzar reason, Cain goes uncredited in the Billington version. Oddly, Cain only supplied the story to Sirk. He didn't pen the screenplay. That was done by a collection of other writers.

Both films are European-based soap operas about a young, impressionable woman (Allyson in the Sirk version, Barbara Ferris in Billington's) who falls for a married orchestra conductor (Rossano Brazzi and Oskar Werner, respectively). The heroines both suffer in achingly beautiful surroundings, although neither film is exactly an emotional knockout. And the remake is as difficult to see as the original.

Allyson playing a woman who falls for a married man and pursues an affair with him could have meant career suicide in the 1950s, especially for someone who played uncomplicated, perky woman in which Allyson specialized. But her performance here is another gentle reminder that it was foolish for one  to underestimate June Allyson.

It's interesting to compare the two versions of the material. The Sirk film, of course, has those matchless Sirkian qualities that he so freely exhibited at Universal-International during this ripe, productive period, while Billington's take on it is more realistic and kept afloat largely by the mesmerizing, mournful Werner and the lovely Virginia Maskell as his wife.

 The choice of music is also interesting. The remake has a classic Georges Delerue score. Lots of harpischords here - way over the top. Frank Skinner scored Sirk's film in a more traditional, studio-approved way.

Sirk opens his film with a song by the McGuire Sisters; Billington and Delerue use the inimitable Timi Yuro for the remake's haunting title song.

You know, I'd actually like to see "Interlude" again - both versions.

And certainly "The Shrike," which is begging for a remake of its own.

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~images~

(from top)

~Vintage June Allyson

~photography: MGM 1947©

~Poster art for "The Shrike"

~Publicity shots of June Allyson and José Ferrer in "The Shrike"

 ~photography: Universal-International 1955©

 ~Poster art for "Interlude"

~Allyson and Rossano Brazzi in "Interlude"

~photography:  Universal-International 1957©