Ross Hunter veers into suspense and melodrama. For the only time in one of his large scale soap operas there's no happy ending for the leads. Considering what they did, there should not have been.
Portrait In Black has Lana Turner married to a crippled and dying Lloyd Nolan who is the head of a shipping line operating out of San Francisco. Lana was his second trophy wife and they've got a son young Dennis Kohler. There's also Sandra Dee Nolan's daughter by a first marriage.
The picture we get of Nolan is that he was one tough and ruthless businessman and a mean man to cross. Such things impotency were not dealt with in films much, in fact only three years earlier it got dealt with at all The Sun Also Rises. No doubt Nolan can't deliver the goods any more, so Turner has been seeing Nolan's physician Anthony Quinn and the doctor has the prescription.
But impatience to get their hands on the fortune and she just can't stand living with him any more Quinn kills him.
These two are having a lot of guilt and Turner wants to keep a hold on him. That is a key to a lot of the bizarre events that follow when someone else dies, someone else is nearly strangled and in the end our protagonists pay dearly.
Quinn especially is a study in paranoia triggered by the guilt. Turner is now more frightened of the Frankenstein monster she's created in Quinn. Mind you this is a promising doctor with what was a bright future ahead of him.
Some other notable roles are Anna May Wong in a farewell performance as the housekeeper in the Nolan/Turner house and Ray Walston who is the chauffeur and a bit of sleazeball, but nothing like what Quinn and Turner have become, and John Saxon who is the son of a business rival of Nolan's who the cops have a their primary suspect.
For a darker, almost Hitchcockian Ross Hunter tune into Portrait In Black.
Portrait In Black has Lana Turner married to a crippled and dying Lloyd Nolan who is the head of a shipping line operating out of San Francisco. Lana was his second trophy wife and they've got a son young Dennis Kohler. There's also Sandra Dee Nolan's daughter by a first marriage.
The picture we get of Nolan is that he was one tough and ruthless businessman and a mean man to cross. Such things impotency were not dealt with in films much, in fact only three years earlier it got dealt with at all The Sun Also Rises. No doubt Nolan can't deliver the goods any more, so Turner has been seeing Nolan's physician Anthony Quinn and the doctor has the prescription.
But impatience to get their hands on the fortune and she just can't stand living with him any more Quinn kills him.
These two are having a lot of guilt and Turner wants to keep a hold on him. That is a key to a lot of the bizarre events that follow when someone else dies, someone else is nearly strangled and in the end our protagonists pay dearly.
Quinn especially is a study in paranoia triggered by the guilt. Turner is now more frightened of the Frankenstein monster she's created in Quinn. Mind you this is a promising doctor with what was a bright future ahead of him.
Some other notable roles are Anna May Wong in a farewell performance as the housekeeper in the Nolan/Turner house and Ray Walston who is the chauffeur and a bit of sleazeball, but nothing like what Quinn and Turner have become, and John Saxon who is the son of a business rival of Nolan's who the cops have a their primary suspect.
For a darker, almost Hitchcockian Ross Hunter tune into Portrait In Black.