"If Bramwell Fletcher divorced Helen Chandler because she was dreamy and forgetful - his marriage to Diana Barrymore plunged him into a living nightmare"!!! I read this quote somewhere and it made me chuckle, Helen Chandler being a favourite of mine. Errol Flynn was magnificent in this movie, apparently he was great friends with John Barrymore and because having first hand knowledge of alcoholic suffering was able to capture Barrymore's essence, his wittiness, insouciance and devil-may-care ness. My favourite scene is at the start when a young Diana (Dorothy Malone) visits her father for the first time in many years - her chattiness puts him on edge and when in a drunken stupor he falls overboard, decides to swim to Rio with his friends!! He really lifts the film up and when he is not in it it is just another distorted biography.
Nostalgia for the past has him begging his former wife Michael Strange (Neva Patterson) to come out to Hollywood to share his renewal of fortune but her rejection has him reaching for the bottle once more. Unfortunately he dies midway through the film and it is left to Diana to take up the dramatics - and she does, drinking to erase the memory that she is somehow responsible for her father's fall from sobriety. In reality, Diana Barrymore had decided to live a riotous lifestyle even before she became an actress but the standout performance she gave in "Nightmare" proved she had inherited the Barrymore acting talent. Oddly enough in the movie there is a scene where they are all standing in a cinema lobby, desperately wondering how they are going to salvage the movie and Diana's performance - the movie being Humphrey Bogart's "All Through the Night", a film that wasn't a flop and Diana was never in!!! Again, in reality, the film Diana was making when she learned of her father's death was "Between Us Girls"!!
The movie does the right thing by her husbands. She marries Vincent Bryant (Efrem Zimbalist Jnr.) an older actor who needs to prove his independence by supporting himself (in real life it was Bramwell Fletcher, who starred in "Daughter of the Dragon" and "The Mummy"). She then picks up amateur tennis player, John Howard (Ray Danton) who just happens to be a leech and a parasite. Drunk and broke they both descend on her mother who kicks them both out when she cannot cope with their spendthrift ways. Diana tries to turn over a new leaf, kicks John to the kerb and goes back to work in summer stock. Of course she turns up at the little town completely drunk but is sobered up and able to go on that night thanks to fellow actor Robert Wilcox (Ed Kemmer), who also happens to be a recovering alcoholic. The film does follow real life as Diana and Wilcox quickly slide off the wagon and the rest of their marriage is an alcoholic haze of bloodied fights and reconciling over bottles of booze.
The ultimate degradation - working in a sleazy strip club and winding up in a psycho ward has a happy ending when she is visited by a literary agent who wants to collaborate with her on a book about her life. If only Susan Hayward had been ten years younger and available for the part, what a marvelous performance she would have given. She would have matched Errol Flynn's performance, that's for sure. As it was, she had probably had her fill of those "inebriated" type of roles. Dorothy Malone did give an excellent performance but, to me, she was just too old to be playing a young girl and she also looked nothing like the pretty, pixie looking Diana Barrymore.
There is a very interesting interview between Diana Barrymore and Mike Wallace that took place when "Too Much, Too Soon" was published in 1957. He asks some very hard hitting questions, he questions why she wrote the book and whether she was serious about staying sober (he seemed to doubt it). They also talk at length about suicide - which made for very sad reading, considering she killed herself in 1960.
Highly Recommended.
Nostalgia for the past has him begging his former wife Michael Strange (Neva Patterson) to come out to Hollywood to share his renewal of fortune but her rejection has him reaching for the bottle once more. Unfortunately he dies midway through the film and it is left to Diana to take up the dramatics - and she does, drinking to erase the memory that she is somehow responsible for her father's fall from sobriety. In reality, Diana Barrymore had decided to live a riotous lifestyle even before she became an actress but the standout performance she gave in "Nightmare" proved she had inherited the Barrymore acting talent. Oddly enough in the movie there is a scene where they are all standing in a cinema lobby, desperately wondering how they are going to salvage the movie and Diana's performance - the movie being Humphrey Bogart's "All Through the Night", a film that wasn't a flop and Diana was never in!!! Again, in reality, the film Diana was making when she learned of her father's death was "Between Us Girls"!!
The movie does the right thing by her husbands. She marries Vincent Bryant (Efrem Zimbalist Jnr.) an older actor who needs to prove his independence by supporting himself (in real life it was Bramwell Fletcher, who starred in "Daughter of the Dragon" and "The Mummy"). She then picks up amateur tennis player, John Howard (Ray Danton) who just happens to be a leech and a parasite. Drunk and broke they both descend on her mother who kicks them both out when she cannot cope with their spendthrift ways. Diana tries to turn over a new leaf, kicks John to the kerb and goes back to work in summer stock. Of course she turns up at the little town completely drunk but is sobered up and able to go on that night thanks to fellow actor Robert Wilcox (Ed Kemmer), who also happens to be a recovering alcoholic. The film does follow real life as Diana and Wilcox quickly slide off the wagon and the rest of their marriage is an alcoholic haze of bloodied fights and reconciling over bottles of booze.
The ultimate degradation - working in a sleazy strip club and winding up in a psycho ward has a happy ending when she is visited by a literary agent who wants to collaborate with her on a book about her life. If only Susan Hayward had been ten years younger and available for the part, what a marvelous performance she would have given. She would have matched Errol Flynn's performance, that's for sure. As it was, she had probably had her fill of those "inebriated" type of roles. Dorothy Malone did give an excellent performance but, to me, she was just too old to be playing a young girl and she also looked nothing like the pretty, pixie looking Diana Barrymore.
There is a very interesting interview between Diana Barrymore and Mike Wallace that took place when "Too Much, Too Soon" was published in 1957. He asks some very hard hitting questions, he questions why she wrote the book and whether she was serious about staying sober (he seemed to doubt it). They also talk at length about suicide - which made for very sad reading, considering she killed herself in 1960.
Highly Recommended.