Hollywood has always had a real problem with biopics. Most of them are factually laughable (Night and Day, Words and Music, Rhapsody in Blue, W.C. Fields and Me, Gable & Lombard, etc.)... the best of the bunch might be 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy and 1955's Love Me or Leave Me (with Doris Day as Ruth Etting), but even they play fast and loose with facts. Jeanne Eagles is utterly frustrating. It features a top notch director, George Sidney and top notch period set design. Icy Kim Novak, who looks right for the title role, is all over the map. Some of her scenes are merely competent, in too many others she's chewing scenery (reminding me of Elizabeth Berkley's god-awful performance in 1995's Showgirls). Her performance was severely panned in the contemporary press reviews--- in my opinion, justified. The film gets a few things right: Eagles' 18-month Actor's Equity suspension, roughly sketches her rocky marriage to ex-football hero Ted Coy (here transformed as "John Donohue") but emphasizes Eagles' alcoholism over her wildly suspect heroin addiction. Many other facts are ignored (Eagles was never a carnival performer, and she'd been previously married). Interestingly, a reference to her "taking dope" is only mentioned once in the film, by Eagles herself. Most seriously, the script errs in attributing her death at age 39 as a suicide. Jeanne Eagles was undoubtedly a mess and a polyglot substance abuser, so in a perverse way it's fitting the movie suffers a similar fate. Kudos to art directors Bill Kiernan (who later did Funny Girl and The Cowboys) and Alfred E. Spencer; their work substantially contributed to making this watchable. Novak would recover and go on to immortality in Vertigo. Co-star Jeff Chandler (his part is total fiction and he's somewhat miscast here) would make 11 more films only to die unexpectedly of blood poisoning after back surgery in 1961 while his final film was in post production. Jeanne Eagles is not the worst biopic you'll ever see... it just should've been so much better with another star (Kim Stanley perhaps?). 4/10.
Review of Jeanne Eagels
