It\u2019s the tale of three childhood classmates bound together by the events of a dark and stormy evening some 18 years ago, when the title character\u2019s cruel, sadistic, and obscenely wealthy aunt took a tumble down the steps. Our recently orphaned young Martha had tried to run away and join the circus with her beau Sam Masterston \u2013 a rakishly charming kid from the wrong side of the tracks. But the two were ratted out by squirmy little Walter O\u2019Neill Jr., son of Martha\u2019s live-in tutor, a weasel with one eye on the old lady\u2019s fortune. After much ado on that staircase after hours, Masterson managed to escape with the elephants, Auntie\u2019s money went to Martha and the O\u2019Neills, and an alcoholic drifter hung for a murder he didn\u2019t commit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s nearly two decades later when Masterson (portrayed as an adult by Van Heflin) comes literally crashing back into his hometown, his car colliding with a signpost and disrupting the slumber of a hitchhiking sailor amusingly played by future Pink Panther<\/em> director Blake Edwards. In Sam\u2019s absence, Iverstown has become \u201cthe fastest growing industrial city in America,\u201d thanks mostly to his old girlfriend Martha, who turned her inheritance into a steel dynasty stretching as far as the eye can see. Not really a surprise, since she grew up to be Barbara Stanwyck, domineering the screen in her usual dazzling array of Edith Head costumes, however inappropriate for casual occasions. What does come as a surprise is that Martha wound up married to wormy little Walter O\u2019Neill Jr. He\u2019s still a spineless little rodent like he was back in grade school, only now he\u2019s played by an unknown actor in his first movie role, who had recently changed his name from Issur Danielovitch to Kirk Douglas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Top-heavy and weighed down by laborious dialogue required to get their sleeping arrangements past the Hays Code censors, the flirtation between Scott and Heflin eventually leads to him calling in a favor from his old buddy in the district attorney\u2019s office. This sends Walter Jr. spiraling into suspicious fits and jealous rages, wondering why Masterson has really come to Iverstown. For a man who would go on to play so many larger-than-life heroes, the degree to which Douglas commits to the character\u2019s weakness is shocking. Nakedly needy as he disappears into a bottle, it\u2019s the kind of study in masculine frailty his son Michael would make a career out of 40 years later, but not what one would expect from Spartacus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This leaves more room for the scorching chemistry between Stanwyck and Heflin, each riffing on the screenplay\u2019s increasingly unsubtle insinuations that these two lost their virginity to each other that night they tried to run away and join the circus. The criminal conflagrations are as avoidable as they are inevitable. Distrust and bad faith readings manifest danger where there was none, almost if we\u2019re pinned to a karmic wheel that keeps spinning back to that night on the staircase so many years ago. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers<\/em> ends the only way it can \u2013 with love, lies and bleeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” is streaming on Paramout+ <\/a>and several SVOD services<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/strange-love-1024x576.jpg\")
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The way Masterson gets mixed up again with these two schemers is a little more convoluted than it probably needed to be, thanks to producer Hal B. Wallis\u2019 obsession with starlet Lizabeth Scott. Reputed to be the inspiration for All About Eve<\/em>\u2019s Eve Harrington, Scott\u2019s story could make a pretty wild movie of its own — I\u2019ve always been amused by her claim to have dropped the \u201cE\u201d from her first name as a patriotic gesture to conserve precious ink during wartime. But her small, supporting role in Martha Ivers<\/em> as a drifter with whom Heflin becomes infatuated is padded out of all proportion by a horny executive coming up with extraneous scenes to look at her in various states of undress. (At one point during post-production, it\u2019s said that Wallis ordered Milestone go back and shoot more close-ups of Scott. The director told him to go do it himself. Which he did, I imagine quite happily.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n