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.

Trash comes in many appearances, and no matter how you disguise it, it still remains trash. In the case of this Ross Hunter soap opera, over-produced after the success of "Magnificent Obsession" and "Imitation of Life", the result is a re-tread of what star Lana Turner had done (much better) in the original "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Here, she is again married to a much older man, the possessive Lloyd Nolan, a bed ridden tyrant intent on making her life miserable. He has her followed everywhere and violently objects when she wants to learn how to drive so she doesn't need to utilize their chauffeur (a wasted Ray Walston). What comes very apparent is that the bored Turner is having an affair, with Nolan's own doctor (Anthony Quinn), whose obsession with Turner borders on insanity. A syringe filled with air quickly dispatches Nolan, and Turner and Quinn spend the rest of the film trying to keep their affair secret while dealing with an apparent blackmailer.Who could the blackmailer be? Dour housekeeper Anna May Wong (who suffers racial indignities at the hands of Walston, the most obvious suspect), Nolan's attorney Richard Basehart, the young son of a former business rival (John Saxon) or his daughter from his first marriage (Sandra Dee) are the apparent suspects as the party sending the hand-written letter. While it is all attractive looking and Turner is still lovely, Quinn is totally off-putting in this role, constantly reminding himself of his Hippocratic oath and citing moral laws he's already broken. The screenplay is too self-conscious of its own moral flaws and keeps trying to manipulate you into empathizing with the lovers because of the horrid husband Turner had to suffer with.Usually, I like these types of films in a guilty pleasure sort of way; The trashier, the better. However, in the case of this film, it somehow feels artificial, like someone took a pulp novel, transported it into a screenplay as originally written, found a bunch of available major stars and threw it together without regards to adding in any quality. The acting is badly melodramatic, the characters feel one dimensional, and the whole feeling is of a soufflé that is about to be touched and collapsed without being serveable.

Adultery, murder, blackmail, and Lana Turner, what more could one ask of a Ross Hunter production? Perhaps a good script, but that would spoil the fun. "Portrait in Black" will have lovers of camp in stitches at dialog that makes daytime soaps seem Shakespearean. The overwrought emoting and melodramatic scenes are often unintentionally funny, and the plot requires Olympian leaps to cross the credibility gaps.Lana is having an affair with Anthony Quinn, the doctor who is attending her terminally ill husband, Lloyd Nolan, a shipping magnate. Nolan's company, Cabot Lines, is evidently quite successful, because Lana's daily expenditures on wardrobe, coiffures, and makeup would likely sink a ship. The couple's palatial San Francisco home is a Ross Hunter fantasy whose upkeep could sink yet another Cabot Line vessel. Nolan's daughter from a first marriage, Sandra Dee, evidently has her stepmother's taste in clothes and manicure, while the son from his marriage to Lana has to make do with a toy airplane. Throw in a greedy business associate played by Richard Basehart; Dee's suitor, John Saxon; a chauffeur, Ray Walston; and a housekeeper, Anna May Wong; and you have a delicious cast of potential suspects to populate an Agatha Christie mystery. However, "Portrait in Black" is not a whodunit, but rather a "who knows they dun it." Lana is the ultimate drama queen, and she is in peak form. She suffers, she screams, she cries; she is the empress of high camp. Anthony Quinn, who should have read the script before he signed the contract, plays down to his part and seems to know he has had and will have better parts. Sandra Dee appears to be studying for future Lana Turner roles, while Walston and Wong play their parts with the necessary ambiguity to keep viewers guessing their secrets.However, despite the overacting, bad writing, and soap opera direction, "Portrait in Black" is great fun for those who love their melodramas with big budgets and great style. Even the obligatory mirror smashing has been incorporated. The movie is enormously entertaining for its sometimes howlingly funny situations, absurd lines, and the sheer pleasure of watching Lana looking and emoting at her best.

The plot outline of PORTRAIT OF BLACK makes it sound like it would have been a great '40s melodrama for someone like Barbara Stanwyck, who might have given it the grittier touch it needs to succeed as a suspenseful piece about blackmail and murder. But Ross Hunter has given it a luxurious look, filling it with lavish sets and some stunning costumes for LANA TURNER to wear as she and ANTHONY QUINN conspire to kill her obnoxious husband LLOYD NOLAN.The cast too is full of glamorous Hollywood names--SANDRA DEE, JOHN SAXON, RICHARD BASEHART, VIRGINIA GREY, RAY WALSTON and ANNA MAY WONG. No expense has been spared to give the story whatever production values Hunter could throw at it, including a score by Frank Skinner (who did the music for Turner's MADAME X). But nothing hides the fact that it's just a routine tale of a plan to commit the perfect murder that backfires in time for the sort of ending Hollywood demanded for its killers, even if they were stars of Turner's caliber.Lana did better work earlier in her career than she does here, but she looks gorgeous and SANDRA DEE (as her step-daughter) gets to wear some nifty outfits too. It's eye candy for Turner fans, but if it's solid entertainment you're looking for, this is only passable. Even ANTHONY QUINN looks a bit uncomfortable in his underwritten role.