This is a classic tearjerker melodrama made much better by the acting of Bette Davis and Susan Hayward and some occasional very good script writing a la older film noir. And the story leads to a serious less conventional place than most of these B melodramas go (especially by popular steamy writers like Robbins). Actually all of the acting is pretty good and the film works as a very good example of a "'bad" movie actually moving one to do some serious thinking about life, though I admit not that much. I give it an A for effort and acting and an B+ for an uneven script that manages to be very real & good at times in spite of the sexy soap formula.

When I was a kid in the 80's, every woman came to the beach equipped with three things: sunglasses, sun tan lotion, and a trashy paperback novel as big as my head. "Where Love Has Gone" reminds me of one of those novels: melodramatic, convoluted, and somewhat absurd.This is not to say it's a bad movie, but it's definitely a guilty pleasure, an acquired taste... The people most likely to watch this film today are fans of Bette Davis, fans of Susan Hayward, and Star Trek fans enjoying the appearance DeForest "Bones" Kelly before he was stationed on the Enterprise. I fit into all three categories and still I must admit I was less than impressed with the film, which tells the tale of a domineering society mother who creates and destroys her daughter's marriage for the "good of the family name." The acting is over-the-top, the dialogue is stilted, and the story is about as cheesy as they come. The movie's finale- a shocking courtroom confessional- bears little resemblance to anything that has ever happened here on Earth.But maybe that's the charm of this movie… maybe it wasn't made for the time capsule or for intense critical examination. Maybe it was only made to pass an afternoon in 1964, and maybe that's enough. Just like those paperbacks: It may not be the greatest novel ever written, but you have to admit it's great to be at the beach.GRADE: C-

This movie is regarded today as an unintentional camp classic. Having seen Edward Dymitryk's black comedy "Bluebeard", I think the director might have been in on the joke, but I'm not so sure anybody else was. As others have said, this is loosely based on the real-life Hollywood scandal where Lana Turner's teenage daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed Turner's gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato to death in a domestic violence incident. Somehow this movie manages to make the real incident even sleazier by positing an actual sexual relationship between the daughter and the gangster. Susan Hayward gives a very earnest (and, thus, unintentionally campy) performance as the Lana Wood character. She's made a scupltress here rather than an actress, which is hilarious because, while a vapid bimbo can be an actress, it usually takes some depth to be a sculptor. But even more hilarious her manager (Dr. McCoy--I mean DeForrest Kelley) claims that her "talent" is based on her behaving like an "alley-cat". Well, the real Lana Turner could reportedly alley-cat with the best of them, but it never seemed to do much for her acting.Speaking of alley-cats though, Joey Heatherton is severely miscast as the daughter. Even if she could act, Heatherton was 20 then and looked even older. (They should have cast Tuesday Weld, but a good performance would have stuck out like a sore thumb here). Heatherton was a minor sex symbol of the era, who could fill out a mean sweater and reputedly slept her way through the entire Rat Pack. I did find her kinda sexy, but I also kinda wanted to strangle her (OK, not just kinda) because she has a horrible screechy, petulant voice that make nails on a chalkboard seem sonorous (she's slightly better in "Bluebeard" where she at least busts out her bust after aurally torturing the poor viewers for the entire movie). And speaking of torture, Betty Davis gives a performance as Hayward's domineering mother that somehow manages to seem both incredibly hammy and lethargically phoned-in.The male actors really don't have a chance against three generations of scenery-chewing harpies, but they try. DeForrest Kelley gets to earnestly deliver some real unintentional howlers (between this and "Night of the Lepus" maybe he should have stuck to the small screen). Mike Connor's plays the nice-guy father/ex-husband--a character who was conspicuously absent in the real-life Turner tragedy. This is not as enjoyable as "Bluebeard" (Heatherton and her sweaters really don't make up for a whole bevy of naked Europe-babes), but if you like unitentional camp look no further.

The above phrase is how DeForrest Kelley (yep,"Bones") describes Susan Hayward's character in this film. You'll notice he doesn't use the term "beauty" or "enchantress." Those of us who have always been mystified by Susan Hayward's stardom will find no answers here, where she (over)plays a nymphomaniac sculptor whose daughter sticks a carving knife into her scumbag boyfriend. Since it's obviously based on the Lana Turner imbroglio of the late 50's, the filmmakers must have thought it appropriate to cast one lousy actress as another (but at least Lana was pretty). As a movie, it's awful. As a time capsule, it's priceless -- your jaw will drop so far you'll be inhaling dustbunnies when you get a load of the pre-Freudian view of female sexuality implied by this film.Exhibit 1: Susan's butch, blowzy nymphomaniac has intertwined drives to create and to procreate. Nothing too strange there ("eros" means to create, after all). But the film judges her harshly, punishing the woman for her free spirit much the way that Flaubert did Emma Bovary a century earlier (but at least Flaubert was a great artist). Don't tempt fate, girls -- leave the Pandora's box of female sexuality and female creativity alone! We're lucky Robbins, Dmytryk & co didn't get around to taking potshots at great, independent female artists like Isadora Duncan or Frida Kahlo, but then again, maybe their concept of "art" was limited to the Hollywood dreck that Lana Turner churned out. So we can thank our stars.Exhibit 2: Valerie, as played by Susan Hayward, was messed up by her domineering mother, portrayed by Bette Davis. This third-rate psychology was trite by the early 60s, a staple of horror films (see "Psycho"). Then again, maybe the subtext of the film is that Valerie represents a gay man . . . which might also explain casting Susan Hayward in the role.Exhibit 3 (most damning): Valerie's daughter Danielle, or "Danny" (there's a weird streak of androgyny running through this flick), played by Joey Heatherton, is fifteen years old, and no one . . . repeat, no one, not even her father . . . is horrified or even shocked to learn that she is no longer a virgin. The words "sexual abuse" and "statutory rape" are never used, not even by the psychologist who is treating the little murderess. Instead, dear old "Daddy," as played by Mike Connors, knits those massive eyebrows together (did he wash his face with Rogaine?) and wonders when she might have "made love." This kind of 19th-century attitude toward adolescent sexuality was dated by the time Nabokov wrote "Lolita," let alone the 1960s (even a sleazebag like Dean Martin didn't lay hands on Joey Heatherton, she was so young back then).So "Where Love Has Gone" is a movie more to be puzzled over and analyzed than enjoyed. Cultural Studies professors, get to work.