See You in Hell, Darling

There are some movies that aren't very good, but that received an Oscar nomination in the Best Original Song category, so TCM could run them in 31 Days of Oscar. A good example of this is An American Dream.

Stuart Whitman plays Stephen Rojack, a war hero who came home and got a TV talk show in Los Angeles, which is a crazy sort of show that has him ranting to a couple of guests who don't seem allowed to get a word in edgewise, while taking phone calls from the home audience. But he never actually puts the viewers' voices on air, just throwing out rapid-fire rejoinders based on what the viewers are supposedly saying.

One of those viewers is Deborah (Eleanor Parker), who just happens to be Stephen's estranged wife. She's waching from her bedroom in a penthouse apartment in a building her father Barney Kelly (Lloyd Nolan) built for her, while carrying on an affair with a guy who's in bed with her. She calls in not to talk about tonight's topic, which is police corruption and how they're letting the mobster Ganucci get away with mayhem; instead, she calls to taunt Stephen, she just having returned from Europe.

Stephen has decided that he's going to file for divorce since this is clearly a loveless marriage, and goes to Deborah's penthouse after the show. She absolutely does not want to grant a divorce, and tells Stephen this most histrionically, continuing to taunt him, throw things at him, and even break a liquor bottle and threaten him with that.

The struggle continues from Deborah's bedroom out to the balcony after Stephen stupidly tries to wash his face in the fountain out there rather then just getting the hell out of the apartment. She throws more stuff at him, and in the struggle, Deborah ends up on the railing. Eventually she goes over, falling to her death 30 stories below, in an incident that looks as though it might have been an accident Stephen could have prevented, or possibly getting pushed by Stephen -- make your own judgment.

Up to this point, An American Dream has been spectularly, hilarity-inducingly awful. Unfortunately once Deborah falls off the balcony the movie switches to being just tediously bad. Stephen gets down to street level where Deborah's body has been run over by a car... containing Ganucci (Joe De Santis), who for whatever reason returned to California despite having a subpoena to testify before the grand jury hanging over his head. Also in the car is Ganucci's nephew Nicky (Les Crane), and Nicky's girlfriend Cherry (Janet Leigh), who just happened to be Stephen's old girlfriend before he knocked her up and left her for Deborah and her fabulously wealthy father.

The police investigate and think that Stephen murdered Deborah, while he bizarrely claims suicide, and bizarrely doesn't clam up and request a lawyer the moment he's brought in for questioning. Stephen tries to ask Deborah for help, but her mob boyfriend and his friends are pissed with Stephen first for railing against Ganucci and then being the reason why Ganucci got brought in for questioning as well.

This material was based on a novel by Norman Mailer that I haven't read. In theory there's some interesting stuff here, but somehow it went way off the rails, which is a surprise considering the cast. Now, if it had been Skidoo or Valley of the Dolls-level bad, it would be fun. But as I said, it doesn't keep up that level once Eleanor Parker's character dies, and that's a shame. The movie understandably bombed at the box office, thanks in part to scathing criticism. Warner Bros. responded by renaming the movie See You in Hell, Darling, but that didn't help.

You can now watch An American Dream on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive.