Cinema: The Legend of Lylah Clare

At some point in the filming of Lylah Clare it was apparently decided to turn it into a spoof of those Holly-wooden melodramas about moviemaking, like The Carpetbaggers or Harlow. Perhaps the film was always meant to be funny. On the other hand, perhaps its producers wanted to broaden the humor because the script was enriched with such heady verbiage as "I'll rummage through your soul like a pickpocket through a stolen purse." Or because one way of dealing with Kim Novak's acting is to pretend that it was meant to be that way. In any case, the decision to spoof it up was the only course possible, short of dropping the whole project.

The trouble is that instead of being outrageously funny, The Legend of Lylah Clare is merely outrageously silly. The cliches don't click, though they are all there. They include the egomaniacal director (Peter Finch) who tells Star Novak: "You're an illusion. Without me you don't exist." And the tyrannical studio head (Ernest Borgnine) who has monograms even on his toilet seats. And even the lesbian pass—made in this case by Italy's Rossella Falk, whose slinky version of a dope-shooting dyke is the best bit in the film. Director Robert Aldrich, who cut close to the Hollywood bone 13 years ago with The Big Knife, moved on to more forthright mayhem with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte and The Dirty Dozen. Even in this company, Lylah Clare doesn't make it.