Some months back, TCM ran a night of movies with screenplays by Paddy Chayefsky. One that I hadn't seen before was The Goddess, so I recorded it and only recently finally got around to watching it.
The movie starts off in 1930, in the non-urban part of Maryland. Laureen Faulkner is a woman who got married much too young, and had a daughter not long after getting married. She feels herself unable to take care of the daughter, so she basically fobs the little girl, Emily, off on relatives who are strict Seventh Day Adventists. Emily can't get any love from them, in a scene where we see the juvenile Emily (Patty Duke in a one-scene role) tell the cat she got a promotion to the next grade.
We soon move to 1942. Emily is now about 16 years old and, still having no love from her family, prefers the fantasy world of Hollywood as well as going to the movie theater with boys who at least pay her some attention. And then, one night, she and some other high school kids run into a group of GIs, this being World War II after all. One of the GIs is a guy named John Tower (Steven Hill), who is the son of a famous Hollywood star but a man who couldn't handle the fame of having a famous Hollywood father. Emily doesn't much care; she's just taken with somebody who has a proximity to fame. She immediately falls for John, and the two quickly get married.
Unfortunately, Emily learns that she's way too much like her own mother. Emily gets pregnant and has the kid, but being a mother at such a young age is putting a decided crimp in the lifestyle of partying that she really wants. She doesn't want to be stuck in a small town. So one day she pretty much leaves the kid with her husband and leaves for Hollywood, because that's where the action is supposed to be.
Emily starts working her way up the ladder, having taken on the stage name of Rita Shawn. She's getting roles, and hopes to be able to impress her mother. Meanwhile, hanging on in Hollywood is retired boxer Dutch Seymour (Lloyd Bridges). He and Emily meet, and the two fall in love and get married. But he has the idea of going back to his home town to work in the family business, which is something Emily doesn't want to do since she still wants the fame and to be the center of attention.
So the two divorce, and Emily stays in Hollywood, where she does become a star, only to find that fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. She turns to drinking, becoming the sort of star all the producers worry can no longer do what's necessary to get a movie done on time and under budget.
You can be forgiven for thinking that The Goddess is the sort of movie that doesn't have much original to it. You can also be forgiven for thinking that The Goddess is the sort of material that could have been written by Tennessee Williams, if he moved his action out of the South. As such, The Goddess isn't really a movie that you watch for the story. Instead, it's more of a vehicle for Kim Stanley, who had been big on Broadway but didn't make a whole lot of movies. Even in spite of the trite material, Stanley is someone you can't really take your eyes off of, giving a ridiculous and memorable performance.
As a coherent whole, The Goddess isn't the greatest movie. Yet there's still something compelling about it.
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