This Is My Love dating history

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By 1954 Linda Darnell's career was slowly declining but when given the right role she could still shine. This Is My Love (1954, RKO) is a neat little color noir that also stars Faith Domergue, Rick Jason, Dan Duryea, and Connie Russell. The film is mostly forgotten today since its never been released on dvd. Based on the novel "Fear Has Black Wings" by Hugh Brooke, filmed in Pathécolor by cinematographer Ray June, produced by Allan Dowling and directed by Stuart Heisler and with a lush score by Franz Waxman. The film deals with: sexual repression, deception, heartbreak, sibling rivalry, strife and murder. The film begins with Vida Dove (Linda Darnell) seated at her typewriter, one tear rolling down her face as she types "...THREE WEEKS AGO..." (all in caps) then flashback. Linda Darnell stars as Vida Dove, a sexually repressed spinster living with her vivacious sister Evelyn Myer (Faith Domergue) and Faith's wheel-chair bound husband Murray Myer (Dan Duryea) in a small town. Lonely and full of bitterness at having to live with her sister, both actresses were well cast since their features are similar. Evelyn and Vida wait tables at Murray's roadside restaurant, the Circle Inn. Sister Evelyn married Vida's former flame Duryea who were professional dancers at one time but now is confined to a wheelchair due to a car accident. Darnell's boyfriend Eddie brings a friend to the diner where she works a good-looking guy Glenn (Rick Jason) who's an old army buddy. Glenn and Vida are immediately attracted to one another and decide to go on a date. Later when returning home from evening out together Rick tries to kiss her... she plays hard to get - too hard that Rick turns to her married sister Evelyn for comfort and understanding. Everybody is in agreement that Linda's finest work was as Lora Mae Hollingsway in A Letter To Three Wives (1949, 20th Century-Fox) but her performance in this film is astonishing. The climax comes when Darnell and Duryea finally have it out when he calls her an old maid who never put out. Vida then unleashes a lifetime's worth of frustration and disabling rage straight into Murray's face, a speech that comes out of Darnell in heaving bursts, like an oxygen deprived person gulping for air as she layers it with pent-up resentments seething just below the surface. It's as good a piece of dramatic acting as Darnell ever offered, her character alternates the emotions of hatred and sympathy both at the same time. After giving Duryea the poison Darnell takes some sleeping pills and forgets about Murray, who goes into convulsions. Next morning, she finds him dead. A police investigation, however, shows that Murray received a fatal injection of poison before he died, and Evelyn immediately becomes their prime suspect. Vida refuses to help her sister, and Glenn comes to hate her for it. However, she seems to have a change of heart, and in the last scene Darnell is seen walking towards the police station. Comparing Linda to Bette Davis may sound amazing but it's awfully hard not to see what I mean. Darnell's Vida is a cross between Charlotte Vale of Now, Voyager (1942, Warner Brothers) and the ruthless Regina Giddons of The Little Foxes (1941, Goldwyn) especially when Vida listens as Duryea dies screaming from the poison she gave him. All three protagonists are only half-alive in a claustrophobic house of hate, recrimination and regret which boils over, not unlike Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? One couldn't ask for more from the lady. This portrayal shows what Linda learned after 15 years in Hollywood, where beauties like Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr also learned to act in due time. Dan Duryea's performance comes perilously close to going over the top but just try and look away. Howard Hughes' discovery, Faith Domergue, isn't too bad trying to please everyone while making the best of a god-awful marriage and when a little happiness comes her way in the form of Rick Jason, it's hard to begrudge her. Rick Jason is OK in a Tom Tryon kind of way as the tall, dark Adonis who hits town and ignites the fuse. Connie Russell is on hand to sing the title song: lyrics by Hugh Brooke and music by Franz Waxman.