Cinema: Weepy Perennial

Madame X. This hardy old hand-wringer about a fallen woman was somewhat behind the times when Hollywood first discovered it back in 1920. Since then, the lady has been going to hell at regular intervals—in 1929 with Ruth Chatterton, in 1937 with Gladys George. It was probably inevitable that Lana Turner and Producer Ross Hunter would want to take her out of mothballs just once more. Lana can wear clothes and look worried quite fetchingly, and Producer Hunter caters almost exclusively to an audience that not only loves to see and touch the flimsy fabric of human existence but likes to turn the stuff inside out and peek at the labels.

Up in Fairfield County, Conn., the heroine starts out with her husband John Forsythe (who will one day be Governor of the state), their tiny son, and a vengeful mother-in-law, played by the late Constance Bennett. After one wifely indiscretion (Ricardo Montalban), Lana is banished by Connie from haute couture country, and begins the long, long slide into ready-to-wear. In Europe, she picks up a fur-trimmed coat and a concert pianist. Her hair loses its luster, her complexion fades to the color of driftwood, and ultimately she lands in Mexico wearing a filthy flowered wrapper and carousing with Burgess Meredith, a blackmailer. After she shoots him for threatening to reveal her identity and spoil the Governor's bid for the White House, she plays her big courtroom scene, helped along by her son (Keir Dullea), now a clear-eyed young defense attorney. He never really knows the truth but senses, somehow, that his client was once a very snappy number. Contemporary observers attending the trials of Madame X will merely note that the poor girl's hand-me-down heartaches have worn rather thin.