One Desire (1955) Reviews

• A high class soap opera.

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  Look at Eve Harrington now! Oscar-winner Anne Baxter is marvelous in this movie, in which she plays Tacey, a gambling hall hostess who tries to go straight. She falls in love with gambler Clint Saunders (nicely played by Rock Hudson), and starts life anew with him and his brother. Julie Adams plays the bad girl who steals Clint away to the hilt. Natalie Wood gives an endearing performance as Seely, an orphan who also lives with Clint and Tacey. This is a sadly underrated film which showcases the talents of some of Hollywood's most cherished stars.

• Anne and Julie square off

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  A woman's drama set in the west not a western. Anne Baxter is aces as Tacey the dance hall queen who wants a simpler life with Rock Hudson, who towers over her, and his brother in a small town until outside forces cause her no end of troubles. She suffers grandly in spangles and feathers all in rich Technicolor but manages to rein in the overheated emotions with a warm controlled performance. A performance that isn't quite as controlled and all the better for it is Julie Adams' evil rich girl. Always an excellent actress but often cast as the love interest or nice girl she is so deliciously malevolent it's a pity she didn't get a chance to chew the high grade ham more often. Natalie Wood, her next film after this was Rebel Without a Cause, doesn't have much to do but injects what there is of her part with movie star charisma and spunk. The same goes for Rock who is called upon to be handsome and rather thick. The whole film is really just there to provide a backdrop to the ladies flashy dramatics and on that basis it serves it purpose. Not available on DVD, hard to believe with any film that has Rock, Anne and Natalie in the cast, this is well worth seeking out.

• Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

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  Anne Baxter really delivers as a dance hall queen who gives everything up to pursue boyfriend Clint Saunders to a booming Colorado town. On the way, she not only raises Clint's kid brother, she rears Ceilie, beautifully played by Natalie Wood. How is her kindness rewarded? She loses both children and ultimately Clint to the senator's daughter, who is viciously played by Julie Adams, the former Mrs. Ray Danton. Adams steals the picture as a conniving woman who will stop at nothing to get and keep Saunders. The exciting ending with the underlying message of evil to him (her) who does evil is wonderful. A **** film in every sense of the word.

• No match for her wiles

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  In thinking over the title One Desire I've concluded it refers to the One Desire that Anne Baxter and Julie Adams have for Rock Hudson. Each wants the whole Rock and not just a piece of it. Baxter and Hudson play a pair of saloon denizens. She's a house madam and he's a gambler by trade. Both decide they can do much better, especially after Hudson's little brother Barry Curtis arrives with nowhere else to go. Later on the two take in Natalie Wood an orphan girl whose father is killed in a mining accident. This nice jerry built family is interrupted when Adams who is the spoiled daughter of a Senator and bank president Carl Benton Reid sets her cap for Hudson. She connives to get the kids taken from Baxter as an unfit parent and Hudson being no match for her wiles marries her and Baxter goes back to her old trade. The surprise here is Julie Adams who usually plays nice women. This was a bit of offbeat casting for her, but she pulls it off. She's as manipulative as Eve Harrington. An interesting tale, the women are fine, I could not quite grasp Hudson's character as so naive especially with his background as a gambler. You're supposed to learn to read people in that trade.

• When watched with soap opera glasses, it is a lot of fun.

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  Who's the real bad girl? The former gambling establishment owner who is trying to have a normal domestic life, or the Senator's daughter who has designs on the man who loves the former lady of scandal. The period triangle stars Anne Baxter, Rock Hudson and Julie Adams, and features Barry Reed and Natalie Wood as Baxter's two wards whom Adams manipulates into getting custody of so she can steal Rock for herself. It's all neatly calculated and very clever, but it's obvious that somehow true love will prevail and an embittered wife will be even more bitter. In true soap opera fashion, Adams' character is a spoiled daddy's girl, the daughter of senator Carl Benton Reid, and the archetype that led to popular daytime soap characters like Tracy Quartermaine, Iris Cory and Vanessa Chamberlain. She is delightfully flirtatious the moment she meets the Rock, and he is not immune to her charms. But it is obviously Baxter whom he loves, and in spite of her sordid past, she is quite noble and determined to change so she can raise his young brother and the rambunctious Wood, something that gets the local church ladies talking and puts ideas into Adams' head. Adams must have reached into her acting past when she played the role of the modern but very similar Paula Denning on "Capitol" in the 1980's. Baxter and Adams give terrific performances although Baxter tends to ovary mulch in the extremely dramatic scenes while Adams, obviously playing a shrew, is delightfully manipulative and subtle and getting what she wants. Hudson unfortunately is not a very sympathetic character, although it's easy to see why the two women would fight over him. What I did not find believable at all was Baxter's sudden desire to adopt Wood and Wood's sudden change from hellion to heroine. Betty Garde of "Caged" steals pretty much everything she's in as Baxter's feisty neighbor who becomes her closest confidante. This can really be considered enjoyable if you watch it for the camping melodrama it is.