The Chapman Report (1962)........continues the Hollywood tradition of transforming trashy, junky bestselling books into high-gloss, all star trashy, junky technicolored soap operas......
Of course Warner Brothers couldn't keep their hands off this one, Irving Wallace's grossly fictionalized version of the Kinsey report on sexual relations.......filled to the brim with the scientific survey's participants describing their....uh.....sexual proclivities and activities.......
Woo hoo!
The movie does boast a top director, George Cukor and the four starring roles went to four top-of-the-line actresses.....(Jane Fonda, Claire Bloom, Shelley Winters and Glynis Johns). But curiously, the bulk of the all-important supporting roles (the men in their lives) fell to a dull collection of indifferent, uninteresting Warners contract players who were sitting around on the studio payroll anyway.
So we're off to the naughty races as the authoritative Dr. Chapman (that tower of authority, Andrew Duggan) plies his trade with a well-heeled community filled with desperate housewives......
Then we quickly establish the four semi-steamy case histories this movie will deal with....
First up, a frigid young widow (Jane Fonda) still living in the shadow of her test pilot late husband and her still breathing domineering dad. You'll have to suspend all belief to swallow the idea that Fonda could get thawed out by Dr. Chapman's colorless assistant (the Warners bland TV show journeyman Efram Zimbalist Jr.)
For soapy angst, the film presents a restless hausfrau (Shelley Winters) carrying on a clandestine affair with a suave, obvious heel (another Warners clock-puncher, Ray Danton). Winters again trots out her well worn clueless, delusional shtick, but manages to survive without drowning as in "A Place In The Sun" or throat cutting as in "Night Of The Hunter......
And now we come to the high drama, Oscar-bait member of this quartet.....Claire Bloom acting up a storm as a drunken nympho lookin' for love in all the wrong places......(which includes "Rebel Without A Cause"s Corey Allen, who sort of half slurs, half purrs his dialogue like a pre-curser to Mark Ruffalo). Even a gang rape barely slows Claire's tireless pursuit of self-destruction.....
Heavy stuff, huh? Lucky for us there's comedy relief in the form of two pompous, culture-vulture dilettantes (played for laughs by Glynis Johns and John Dehner). The throaty-voiced Glynis, revering high art, pretentious poetry and physical perfection, tries a hook-up with a brainless beach boy (the Warners young stud-in-residence, Ty Hardin.) Things pan out for her the same they do for Lucille Ball in her 50's TV show......so all's well....
There you have it, folks......and we'll leave to you to discover which of these four beauties comes close to anything resembling a loving, romantic relationship.......
But if you're as familiar as we are with glossy sudsy Hollywood versions of door-stop New York Times best sellers, you'll have little trouble figuring it out. We can't help ourselves watching being deep in obsession for 1960's potboilers like this one.
For this kind of movie, it's a full course meal.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).......(and we really got a kick out of casting the imperious, ice cold character actor Henry Daniell as a critic of Dr. Chapman's.....demanding 'where's the love in all this data?' Where indeed, Henry......
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