Back Street (1961)

Douglas Sirk left Hollywood after making Imitation of Life. Thankfully, producer Ross Hunter stayed, giving us overheated movies like the 1961 version of Back Street.

Susan Hayward stars as Rae Smith, a woman living with her widowed sister Janey (Virginia Grey) in a house in Omaha, NE, working as a buyer of some sort for the family's old department store which is all hers now. One night while she's going to see a client in a hotel, the client tries to accost her. Thankfully, US Marine Paul Saxon (John Gavin), just back in the States after World War II, had met Rae in the lobby and is in the room next door, so he comes to her rescue.

The two start a relationshp while Paul is waiting to get back home (you may remember demobbed military having to wait for transit planes in the opening of The Best Years of Our Lives). There's one catch, which is that Paul already has another woman, so trying to keep the relationship going is going to be difficult, and Rae isn't certain she wants to do it. Finally, Paul buys Rae a plane ticket to go with him, and she ultimately accepts, but just too late to get to the airport on time.

So Rae moves to New York and starts working in the garment district, having dreams like Mahogany of becoming a designer. Her boss Dalian (Reginald Gardiner) is less than sanguine about the prospect, but Rae is so forward about getting what she wants that she eventually becomes Dalian's partner. Meanwhile, one day, what should happen but she runs into Paul again?

Fast forward a few more years, and Rae is transferred to Rome, running a glamorous European operation there. Eventually, Paul shows up to handle the European operations of his family's department store. It's here that we finally see the other woman, Mrs. Liz Saxon (Vera Miles). And boy is she nasty. She's an inveterate drunk, and they have two children, but she vows she's never going to leave him or let him have any happiness. Paul doesn't care, and starts seeing Rae again.

Somehow, both Rae and the Saxons wind up moving to Paris, and the same exact pattern that had gone on in Rome continues here, except that it's gone even further in Paul's having bought Rae a place out in the country. Liz, for her part, finally comes up with a way to get back at Rae....

Back Street is overheated, and the whole time I was watching it, I couldn't help but feel like there was something terribly wrong with the movie. Like all the Douglas Sirk movies (some of which Hunter produced), this one is funny, but not intentionally. The dialog is overripe, and a lot in the movie made me think of other movies. I mentioned Mahogany; there's also Vera Miles' over the top alcoholism that made me think of Deborah Kerr in Edward, My Son. As for the fashion, I couldn't help but think this was the sort of movie being parodied in What a Way to Go! when Shirley MacLaine talks about one of her marriages being like a "Lush Budgett" production.

So sit back, watch with amazement, and laugh and talk back at the screen as you watch Back Street.