One thing the campy reviewer above forgot to mention was the lush score of Elmer Bernstein. Very very memorable themes, beautifully scored... tying everything together... and haunting long after the movie is over...It's a shame this film cannot be seen today on the networks... Too tame by today's standards... but representative of solid storytelling, and fine drama... never possible to be replaced by today's synthesized orchestras, computer drawn scenery, and wannabe character actors...It's also a testament to an era when big name movie stars existed - something you don't have today. Those stars are from an era gone by, and never to be repeated - thanks to our interfering government breaking up the Hollywood system!!!Today's here-today-gone-tomorrow stars just don't have it!

The question this film asks is how can a great director such as John Sturges ("Bad Day at Black Rock", "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", "The Magnificent Seven", "The Great Escape", and "Ice Station Zebra") turn around and make such a lousy film? And a secondary question is how a star as big is Lana Turner, during a particularly productive period in her career ("Peyton Place", "Imitation Of Life", "Portrait In Black", and "Madam X") get sucked into such a film, particularly one where she gets relatively little screen time.I rarely notice goofs in movies, but I sure did in this one. In a very early scene, Efrem Zimbalist tells his secretary that his wife will be home from the hospital that day. 5 minutes later he tells someone else a day or two.Oddly enough, this is a movie with an unusually strong cast. The best acting in the film -- though she got relatively low billing -- was by Barbara Belgeddes as Zimbalist's wife; she brings the scenes she is in to life. The billed star of the film is Lana Turner, who does have some good scenes, although not as much screen time as one might expect. I always liked Efrem Zimbalist Jr., although here he was criticized as being wooden...although that's sort of what the character called for, so was it him or the direction; I'm not sure. I was surprised and disappointed in Jason Robards' role here as Turner's husband; I'll excuse his undistinguished acting here by pointing out that this was only his second film. George Hamilton was very stiff here, and how he got started in movies, I'll never know. Susan Kohner, as the ward of Thomas Mitchell was not particularly good in this film, although she was in another collaboration with Turner -- "Imitation Of Life". I had a lot of sympathy for Thomas Mitchell in this film...he portrays a lawyer that is getting to old to continue...and it was about this time that Mitchell was diagnosed with the cancer which killed him about a year later; nevertheless, a fine performance. You'll see Carroll O'Connor in a small role as a policeman.There is an issue with this film. There's another film -- which I can't place at this time -- that is from the same era that uses an almost identical subplot -- an older lawyer who is shifting funds around to cover one account or another as a result of his own financial misfortune earlier in life. I can't remember the name of the other film or whether it was before or after this one, although I do recall that it was in black and white. One film or the other stole the plot line...it's simply too close.So, whose fault is it that this film seemingly lurches from one scene to another and never realizes its potential. I have to place the blame squarely at the feet of the director -- John Sturges. It's odd...his previous film had been "The Magnificent Seven"...a very successful film, and now a classic. Ah well...no one can win them all.Should you watch it. Well, it has its moments. If you like any of the actors, the watch it. If not, pass it by.

What can be more laughable than a film that attempts to skewer wasp hypocrisy and small-town stereotyping, but uses such stereotyping in it's presentation of characters? This is an unabashed attempt to gather the Peyton Place fans by bringing back Lana Turner to a New England setting in Autumn, along with the period Boy-Man of angst, George Hamilton. While Turner is so good that she can do this type of role in her sleep, and still come off well, the rest of the cast is pretty wooden, especially Efrem Zimbalist. It's easy to see why he could portray an FBI agent on TV so well.Nothing more than a turgid melodrama, so popular at the time, filmed in color with a panoramic view so that it could lure the women of 1961 away from the B&W small-screen TV daytime soap operas, to see the exact same stuff on a big screen. Pass on it and get Peyton Place instead, unless you're a Lana Turner fanatic.

Despite coming off the success of 1959's classic sudser, "Imitation of Life", and 1960's mystery/soap, "Portrait in Black", Lana Turner made a poor career choice with "By Love Possessed". Not a bad film exactly, it does pale in comparison to the other melodramas of Turner's later career. The great cast includes Efrem Zimbalist,Jr., Jason Robards, George Hamilton, Susan Kohner(the black daughter passing as white in "Imitation of Life"), and Barbara Bel Geddes. In this vehicle, Turner plays the alcoholic, pleasure-deprived wife of a handicapped lawyer(Robards). So, she begins an affair with his law partner(Zimbalist), despite the fact that he is married to Bel Geddes and has a son(Hamilton). Hamilton is involved in a lacking side plot in which he's in love with a rich, but mentally unstable local girl(Kohner). The film is super plush and has a great score. However, the character development is so lacking, that by the end of it all we don't care about them. Too bad. It could all have been so good. This movie's only worth a look if you're a big fan of Turner's.