Movie of the Week: Betrayed (1954)
This week’s movie is Betrayed (1954).
Clark Gable is Colonel Pieter Deventer of Dutch Intelligence during World War II. He trains Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner) to be the liaison between the British and the local resistance movement, led by a spunky rogue called “The Scarf” (Victor Mature). Before she is put into position Pieter and Carla begin a romance. The team starts to suffer heavy losses after she joins them and Pieter begins to suspect she is a Nazi spy. She suspects the same of “The Scarf” but Pieter doesn’t believe her at first.
Clark and (a brunette!) Lana teamed up again, although the romantic scenes in this one total about ten minutes. I do like a few of the lines he throws at her:
“Is that why you dyed your hair? Or is this the real one and the other the phony? Or are
you both a lie?”
“You only fell in love with your husband after they shot him dead!”
“You stupid, whimpering fool. No, I’m the fool. You are what you always were.”
Betrayed is one of Clark’s few color pictures and I actually think he looks quite handsome in it. In comparison to the following year’s The Tall Men, when his hair was dyed and extra makeup was applied to make him appear younger, in Betrayed he is graying at the temples, has a few wrinkles around his twinkling gray eyes and looks radiant in uniform and wool peacoats. It’s too bad he doesn’t have much to do other than alternatively scowl at or flirt with Lana Turner and peer suspiciously at Victor Mature. Upon my recent viewing, I was particularly struck by Clark’s handsomeness in this film.
The most noteworthy thing about this rather plodding film is the fact that it is the last Clark made for his home studio of over 20 years, Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Clark went overseas for 18 months starting in 1952 to make three films, a strategic financial move save money on his taxes (I’ll save the boring tax details on that). In succession, he made Never Let Me Go in England, Mogambo in Africa and Betrayed in the Netherlands. Clark’s family was Dutch and he made a nice vacation out of his time there.
By the time he finished filming Mogambo, Never Let Me Go had been released and flopped. This put him at a serious disadvantage in his upcoming contract negotiation. MGM flat-out refused the profit participation that Clark wanted (the re-release of GWTW made Clark sour on the fact that he never received any part of the film’s profits) and Clark wouldn’t sign without it, so his career with MGM came to an end.
The film was an enormous flop, but regardless Clark was listed among the Top 10 box office attractions due to the re-release of Gone with the Wind. Upon hearing that, Clark cracked, “You know I didn’t win that for Betrayed!” As I noted in my full review, this film came out at a time when the public was tiring of World War II pictures and wanted happy musicals.
So Clark left MGM on a low note, out the famed studio gates, never to return again. The last thing he did before packing up his dressing room and leaving was to take these portraits with Lana for Clarence Sinclair Bull:
I find this batch strange, as it implies that there is some kind of love triangle in the film, which there really isn’t. “Now, YOU hold Lana and YOU grimace at them…”
Full review is here
Nutshell review is here