East Side, West Side

Plot synopsis:
The series centers on Scott in the role of Neil Brock, a New York City social worker who worked for the private agency Community Welfare Service, with his secretary, Jane Foster, played by actress Cicely Tyson. Episodes of East Side/West Side covered topics relevant to the inner city, with many controversial issues explored. A typical example came in the first two episodes, when Brock investigated a prostitute and her child ("The Sinner"), followed by a story involving statutory rape (“Age of Consent”).
In an effort to open up the number of possible stories, Brock resigned from his job in the latter portion of the 1963–64 season to work for a New York congressman, Charles W. Hanson (Chiles). The characters played by Elizabeth Wilson and Cicely Tyson soon disappeared and Barbara Feldon is introduced as Brock's girlfriend. However, despite the high quality of both the writing and acting, the show's penchant for taking on touchy topics forced many potential advertisers to avoid sponsorship of the show, while a number of local stations across the country also chose not to present the program to their viewers. It is said that CBS programming head James Aubrey clashed with Scott regarding the direction of the show, which also was a factor in the cancellation.
The December 23, 1963 episode, "Creeps Live Here," was originally scheduled to be broadcast on November 25, but was postponed as CBS wrapped up their four-day coverage of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
East Side/West Side ran in the 10 p.m. Monday time slot opposite ABC's medical drama about psychiatry, Breaking Point and NBC's Sing Along with Mitch starring Mitch Miller. The show's executive producer, David Susskind, began a letter-writing campaign to government officials, newspaper editors and other prominent individuals. Susskind's request was an attempt to elicit positive feedback to encourage renewal of the series. However, the effort failed when the show was cancelled on January 28.

Tags: murder, melodrama

Review:
Sheer professionalism keeps the unremarkable story afloat, with all concerned more than equal to their assignments.`East Side, West Side' is told from the point of view of a lady of leisure (Barbara Stanwyck) whose husband (James Mason) is a habitual adulterer.
Their relationship blossoms, but when Gardner turns up dead and Mason and Stanwyck are suspected, it falls to Heflin to sort things out.There's nothing here that hasn't been done before, but it is handled with such style and finesse that it's impossible to dislike, and the story is surprisingly involving.
Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin are >united on screen once again (The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers) >with an unbelieveable supporting cast.
Gale Sondergaard, Ava >Gardner, Cyd Charisse and Nancy Davis make up the bevy of head- >liners and head-turners in a film about love, lust and morality.
Her scene with Gardner is a standout -- both actresses are well matched; Gardner's feline beauty and laissez-faire romantic approach nicely complements Stanwyck's humane fatalism  -- and Stanwyck and Van Heflin are an appealing couple.
Mason is rather a chump, however -- he seems to be underplaying to the point of lethargy, though his handsome charm surfaces here and there; yet he and Stanwyck, though matched in terms of age (she was younger by a couple of years) are not the type for each other; he doesn't suit her, screen-wise.
Costumes, though late 1940s, seem a bit recherche, as if the designer hadn't left the 1930s, with the women's gowns too ornate for such a sophisticated post-war milieu.Not a great picture by any means, but a highly enjoyable one; a viewer wishes the director and screenwriter -- the talented Isobel Lennart, who later wrote "Two for the Seesaw," among many others -- had trusted more in the chemistry between Heflin and Stanwyck, and discarded some of the Marcia Davenport source material, juicy as it must have been.
"East Side, West Side," which stars Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner, James Mason, and Van Heflin, also leaves out valuable source material.
The result is part melodrama/part murder mystery, with mixed results.Stanwyck and Mason star as married couple Jessie and Brandon, and at the beginning of the film, despite a lovey-dovey scene in a taxicab, we can see what the problem is.
Jessie, however, wants her husband, and is panicked when she learns that the woman who nearly ruined their marriage, Isabel (Ava Gardner) is back in town.
Brandon is obsessed with her - and Isabel knows it.Heflin and Stanwyck make a great pair, and the audience wants them together right away.
One bit of casting that is interesting is Charisse, as she bore a resemblance to Gardner, so the initial attraction Mason has for Rosa bears out his obsession with Isabel.Gardner provides all the excitement in "East Side, West Side" as a purely sexual being who lives off of men and enjoys exerting her power over them.
Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner were unique screen goddesses who had the whole package - beauty, body, voice, and an erotic sensuality.Stanwyck is sympathetic in a familiar role for her, and Heflin's energetic performance is juxtaposed against Mason's, making one wonder why Stanwyck is wasting her time.
And here, the character played by Ava Gardner is never referred to is Isabel but always, always, by both names.I first saw this movie on TV as a teenager and assumed that life in Manhattan would be like this, just as thought the publishing world would be as it's portrayed in "The Best of Everything."This has very chic settings -- the East side locations much more believable than the brief excursion into the West side area ostensibly the scene of Heflin -- and Stanwkyck's -- childhood.The acting is good.
All the style comes from the presumably Sutton Place location and the elegant interiors and from the fabulous cast of real movie stars, with James Mason a suave cad prefiguring his brilliant Humbert Humbert a bit more than a decade later.Gale Sondergaard is amusing as Stanwyck's elderly mother.
At one point, she says, "I'm 55 years old." Interesting, as in real life she was only eight years older than Stanwyck, who was 42 when this came out.Still and all, this movie has stuck in my head for many years as the epitome of chic.
One interesting point about this movie that has not been mentioned - the only scene between Barbara Stanwyck and Ava Gardner had pure tension.
According to Robert Osborne (Turner Classic Movies Film Historian and biographies on Stanwyck and Gardner), Stanwyck was great friends with Nancy Sinatra, Frank's first wife.
Also, Stanwyck knew that Gardner had an affair with her husband at the time, Robert Taylor during an earlier 1940s film.
New York City socialite Barbara Stanwyck loves and trusts investment counselor husband James Mason--even though he has a penchant for disappearing after-hours and returning home at four in the morning.
Van Heflin does wonders with a shapeless role as a war correspondent/ex-detective who ends up in jilted Stanwyck's kitchen, flirting with her in Italian, while Gardner is offered some juicy repartee (when Mason calls her "cheap", Ava replies, "That's what you like about me.").
A country square-dance is curiously transplanted to a Manhattan penthouse, and Beverly Michaels' supporting performance congeals into high camp; still, Barbara and Van have an immediate rapport--one that is not apparent in her scenes with Mason (who doesn't help his cause by portraying the cad-husband like a petulant boy).
This is an splendid "film noir", and the whole cast are excellent with Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner and Cyd Charisse especially extraordinaries.
Barbara Stanwyck was a great actress over a long and distinguished career and this is an enjoyable drama about the lives and loves of upper income New Yorkers in the late forties.
But as much as she delivers her usual sterling performance, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her as she is upstaged in the glamour stakes by both Cyd Charisse and Ava Gardner who are both at the apex of their beauty.
The film begins with James Mason at a nightclub trying to make time with a young lady (Cyd Charisse).
It seems that Ava Gardner had, in the past, had an affair with Mason--and he wanted nothing to do with her again--as she was clingy.You then find out that Mason's sad wife is Barbara Stanwyck and she knows about this previous fling with Gardner.
And so, while he's VERY interested in Stanwyck, he also has a chance to help out by figuring out who committed the crime.This film has a terrific cast--Barbara Stanwyck, Van Helfin, James Mason and Ava Gardner.
Without giving the plot away, note the treatment of Gardner's character for contemporary views of women like her.The action firmly grinds to a halt with Stanwyck and Mason's boring (for us and them) marriage.
Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Ava Gardner, and the ever-underrated Van Heflin --wow!
The woman who encouraged his infidelity, Ava Gardner, returns to town, threatening to dislodge their new solidarity.The character being studied is Mason's.
In this one, Jessie (Stanwyck) confronts her husband's mistress Isabel (Ava Gardner).
Some amazing, big time co-stars - Van Heflin, Nancy Davis Reagan, Cyd Charisse, Gale Sondergaard.
Anyway,the stellar cast (also featuring Gale Sondergaard who almost outshines all the other actresses in her few scenes ,particularly her last one,Barbara Stanwyck,Van Heflin,Cyd Charisse,who could ask for more?)makes the movie worth of your time .The story of this posh NYC society people is rather derivative and you do not have to be Hercule Poirot to guess that the husband did not kill the runaround girl.It does not compare favorably,though,with Le Roy's earlier works such as "I'm a fugitive from a chain gang" "they won't forget" or "Waterloo bridge" .Very moral ending..
As everyone knows, I don't like Ava Gardner, so usually if I like one of her movies, I say I like it "in spite of her." East Side, West Side is fantastic, including Ava, not in spite of her.James Mason is married to Barbara Stanwyck, and in the 1940s, it was unusual for Hollywood to cast a woman past per prime as the lead.
As does the fantastically conflicted James Mason, who gets seduced by his old flame Ava Gardner.
It's a fantastic drama that turns into so much more as the film goes on, and I'd love to read Marcia Davenport's original novel, to see if the Ava Gardner scenes are even steamier on the page.
The main theme of this movie is one that has played out so many times in movies and books (and life): a man (James Mason) cheats on his wife (Barbara Stanwyck) with a woman (Ava Gardner) who gives him the thrills she cannot.
Instead of being hurt, she eggs him on, knowing his passion is rising, and knows "that's what you're missing at home", and "you want to be rotten like me." Stanwyck plays the virtuous wife with quiet grace, though I thought she was too reserved in a showdown scene with the outlandishly mean Gardner.
There is a lot of star power here, with Cyd Charisse and Van Heflin also in the cast, and even an appearance from Nancy Davis, who of course would later be Nancy Reagan.
Mason and Stanwyck may have gotten top billing, but I think they were upstaged by Heflin and Gardner.
Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, James Mason, and Ava Gardner star in this stylish, chic look at life in the big city of New York City, through the eyes of its inhabitants, who are also Cyd Charisse, Nancy Davis (Reagan) and Gale Sondergaard.
In the acting, I give this an A, especially Stanwyck (but, of course) and Heflin (who incidentally make a believable couple together.) In the presentation, I also give it an A, for its style in creating the right mood and atmosphere and its no-expense budget in clothes and sets.
The all star cast features: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, James Mason, Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse and Nancy Davis..
I watched this film hoping to see some sizzle between Ava Gardner and James Mason.
Lush big-city melodrama from MGM, with what looks surprisingly like some on-location shooting, where highfalutin Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason's marriage is threatened by an impossibly gorgeous, impossibly evil Ava Gardner, while Mason flirts mildly with Cyd Charisse, who's hooked up with Van Heflin, who's increasingly intrigued by Stanwyck.
Screenwriter Isobel Lennart was usually good for some smart dialog, and she's reliably industrious here, though there's no truth at the center of these doings: People just don't fall in and out of love as quickly as they do here, and the plotting takes some very improbable turns, such as Charisse's gallant and uncomplaining exit from Heflin's life, Heflin's solving of a murder, and Mason's inability to escape Gardner's clutches.
The story was interesting and kept my attention the entire time.I especially enjoyed the scenes between Stanwyck and Heflin.
They had a rough time when Brandon had an affair with a lovely playgirl, Isabel Lorrison, who had been out of the way, but she returns to the scene with the idea of reviving her fling with the man that she never was able to get out of her heart.Jessica, who watches in horror as Bran's picture in the tabloids after being punched by Isabel's new beau, realizes Isabel's intentions in reappearing in her life.
Since there's already a kitchen sink  in one of those scrambled-eggs-at-midnight scenes  a mini-murder mystery was added halfway through; it amounts to no more than a subplot (though it brings in some new talent in the form of Beverly Michaels).Barbara Stanwyck returns to a lavish apartment overlooking the East River much like the one she occupied the year before in Sorry, Wrong Number.
She's the well-bred wife of a philandering husband (James Mason) who renews his affair with an old flame (Ava Gardner, at her most other-womanish).
A loyal, rich wife, a prowling husband with a slippery zipper, a murder...Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, lots of melodrama.
The best things about this movie, however, are those two other elements: Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason.
Just for the record, Stanwyck is "A," Mason is "B," Ava Gardner is "C," Van Heflin is "D," and Cyd Charisse is "E." And we shouldn't forget Gale Sondergard, one of Hollywood's great character actors who plays Stanwyck's mother.
It's hard to know whether one should feel envy or pity for Brandon Bourne, the character that James Mason portrays so effectively in 1949's "East Side, West Side." Married to wealthy socialite Jessie (Barbara Stanwyck, giving her all here, as she always did), living in a posh duplex apartment overlooking the East River, and the copartner in an upscale investment firm, "Bran" certainly does seem to have it all.
Indeed, with the possible exception of her performance in "The Killers" (1946), I have never seen Ava give such a blatantly sexual performance; almost worth the price of admission alone!Besides those three wonderful actors, "East Side, West Side" gives us Van Heflin, extremely ingratiating here as Jessie's new friend, Mark Dwyer; Cyd Charisse, playing another new friend of Jessie's and doing what might be thought of as the Joan Leslie "nice girl" role (sadly, Cyd's surpreme dancing skills are not on display in this picture); the great Gale Sondergaard as Jessie's shrewder-than-expected society mother; Nancy Davis (Reagan) as one of Jessie's older gal pals (she's actually pretty darn good in her two scenes with Babs); William "Cannon" Conrad as a police detective; and William "Fred Mertz" Frawley as a bartender.
Especially coming up with a murder suspect way out of the left field bleachers.James Mason and Barbara Stanwyck are a married society couple, but Mason occasionally strays and he did so with Ava Gardner who seems to have a habit of picking up strays.
Of course that goes over great with Stanwyck and later when Gardner turns up murdered there are all kinds of suspects.Ava's fabulous here as one amoral woman, the kind Barbara Stanwyck has on occasion played on screen.
There is an element introduced in the film that made no sense at all, she's Stanwyck's mother though she's only 8 years old than Barbara, and she loathes Mason as it turns out.
Introduced and then dropped.Former first lady Nancy Davis Reagan has a small part as a Stanwyck confidante and Cyd Charisse is in this in a non-dancing role as a friend of Heflin's.Seeing a lot of dangling ends in this story, I'm sure that East Side, West Side is a lot more complex than what MGM gave us in 1949..
Instead of Elizabeth Taylor, the "other woman" is Ava Gardner (like Taylor, one of MGM's genuinely beautiful as well as talented stars), and in place of Laurence Harvey and Dina Merrill are James Mason and Barbara Stanwyck.
But the film is not about the murder; It is about the wife's fight for her marriage and how she manages to find herself in the process.If you can get past the fact that Barbara Stanwyck was only 8 years older than Gale Sondergaard (cast as her mother!), you can enjoy this lavish soaper, made for MGM's 25th Anniversary.
I was not surprised by the outstanding performance of Van Heflin as Gardner's friend who becomes Stanwyck's confidant when they pick him up at LaGuardia Airport.
Whether it was a musical ("Presenting Lily Mars"), film noir ("Act of Violence") or his award worthy performance as the man with the bomb in "Airport", Heflin was simply outstanding.I like Sondergaard in her two scenes; As a Broadway star from long ago (even though she's only 55-in real life only 50), she gave an interesting speech on society how in her day you couldn't just become a stage star to get into "Cafe Society".
Lt's talk about that cast; James Mason in his fourth Hollywood movie following a rise to the top in England, Barbara Stanwyck, at the peak of her game, Van Heflin rapidly establishing himself as a leading man after making his name on Broadway in The Philadelphia Story, Ava Gardner, showing she could turn in a half- decent acting job despite being drop-dead gorgeous, Cyd Charisse, not yet the great dancer but a more than competent ingenue, Gale Sondegaard, in a rare sympathetic role but unconvincing only as someone old enough to be Stanwyck's mother and William Conrad still fluctuating between heavy and hero.
Jessie and Brandon Bourne (Barbara Stanwick and James Mason) a couple whose marriage has been jolted by his adulterous affair with Isabel Lorrison (Ava Gardner), try to put it behind them and move forward.However Brandon has a tendency to hang around the Del Rio nightclub where he meets young model, Rosa Senta (Cyd Charisse).
Unfortunately, it's just at that moment that Isabel Lorrison arrives back on the scene and back into Brandon's life, despite his attempts to stay true to Jessie.At a party, Jessie meets Rosa's boyfriend, Mark Dwyer (Van Heflin), an intelligence operative and ex-cop turned novelist who has just returned from Europe.
Whenever he played bad, it was so against type that Academy Awards weren't out of the question à la "Johnny Eager".Although their characters are different, the presence in the same film of both Ava Gardner and Cyd Charisse, two of the most beautiful women ever in movies, seems like overkill.
As for me, I rarely appreciated Gardner's acting.Cyd Charisse is very good as Rosa Senta, but she disappears after the first half of the film, never to be seen again.
Her talking here is the most unrealistic aspect of the movie.Mervyn Leroy is noted for other films far more than this one, but this is a pretty good story with some fine acting.
**SPOILERS** Desperately trying to save his failing marriage and keep Jessie, Barbara Stanwyck, from walking out on him Brandon Bourne, James Mason, lets it all hang out telling Jessie how he loves her so much and wants her to take him back and.