Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman

Plot synopsis:
In a hospital, Angie Evans (Susan Hayward), her face bandaged, recounts the events that brought her here.
A nightclub singer, Angie becomes involved with another singer, Ken Conway (Lee Bowman), whose career has yet to take off. Her agent Mike Dawson (Charles D. Brown) helps get Ken and piano accompanist Steve Anderson (Eddie Albert) a spot on a radio show singing cowboy songs. Ken sings a ballad on the day Angie, now his wife, gives birth to their daughter. The attention he gets leads to a new career opportunity.
Ken soon is a big success, gaining popularity and wealth, while Angie stays home, her career at a standstill. She begins to drink. Ken counts on her to present a sophisticated image for his new high-society friends and contacts, but her alcoholism worsens, so secretary Martha Gray (Marsha Hunt) comes to Ken's aid.
It isn't long before Angie is certain an affair has begun with Martha and her husband. Steve tries to intervene on Angie's behalf, but he can see Martha has fallen in love with Ken.
Angie neglects the child, continues to drink, then creates a scene at a party. Ken asks for a divorce and custody. A fire starts from a lit cigarette of hers, shortly after she kidnaps their daughter from a nurse, results in Angie's suffering serious facial burns while saving the child.
There may be no hope, but Ken tries to stand by his wife as her life hits rock bottom.

Tags: melodrama, romantic, flashback

Review:
Allegedly, Susan Hayward got this breakthrough role because every other Hollywood actress turned it down, due to the fact that it is the story of Bing Crosby's wife, Dixie Lee. Whatever, it got Susan an Oscar nomination and put her on the road to meatier parts.As other comments have pointed out, this was probably considered very hard-hitting back in the day.
Here, Hayward gives up her own successful singing career to be the stay at home wife of Lee Bowman, whose career takes off.
(In Bowman's dubbing, they even give him those mellow, rounded Crosby-like tones.) Boredom, feeling left out, and jealousy lead her to consume more and more alcohol, although it's clear from the beginning of the film that she drinks for courage before performing.Her downward cycle and the ending of the movie are all a little too pat, but Hayward does a good job with the material she's given.
This is more the fault of the script and the direction, however.Eddie Albert is charming and gives an honest performance as partner and concerned friend.Recommended if you want to see a young Susan Hayward in a meaty role..
Unfortunately, Miss Hayward was later given an Oscar for her WAAAAAY over the top performance in I WANT TO LIVE, whereas she only was nominated for this film.
Perhaps she lost since she was a relative newcomer.The reason I liked the film so much was that it was an excellent study of alcoholism as well as the contribution an enabling spouse can have on the drinking.
In most ways, SMASH-UP was a better film (though the scenes of Ray Milland having DTs were incredible).By the way, if you liked this film and want to see an even better film on drinking and a destructive relationship, try DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES--perhaps the best study of alcoholism ever put on screen..
A successful singer Angelica Evans (Susan Hayward) gives up her career and marries unsuccessful singer Ken Conway (Lee Bowman).
In the Citadel Film Series, The Films of Susan Hayward, the authors put forward the proposition that if The Lost Weekend had not come out the year before and carried all the awards it won, Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman might have garnered a lot more acclaim and maybe an Oscar for Susan Hayward.As it is the film got two Oscar nominations for Best Story by Dorothy Parker and Frank Cavett and for Best Actress for Susan Hayward.
Rounding out the field were Dorothy McGuire for Gentleman's Agreement and Joan Crawford for Possessed.At the time Smash-Up came out there were hushed rumors going around that this film was based on the troubled marriage of Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee. Having just read a biography of Gene Autry that came out last year an equally good case can be made for it being modeled on his first marriage to Ina Mae Spivey.
Especially since Lee Bowman's character starts out as a cowboy singer and branches out as Autry was doing right about that time.In any event the story has Susan Hayward as a lounge singer who falls in love with another singer Lee Bowman and marries him and they have a daughter.
Even though he doesn't notice her, she sure gets Hayward's back up and they have one outstanding chick fight in a powder room.Still the film belongs to Susan Hayward as the girl from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn was taken seriously as an actress for the first time in her career.
Although it looks dated now and obviously was not a big budget Hollywood film, but this was Hayward's breakthrough performance and deservedly earned her a first Oscar nomination..
Loretta Young, that years surprise winner for "The Farmers Daughter" said years later that she had herself voted for Susan Hayward and not Her own performance or that of the favorite and Loretta's best friend Roz Russell.
Susan Hayward justly could have won Three Oscars: "Smash Up", "I'll Cry Tomorrow" and of course "I Want To Live" when she finally did win her Oscar to thunderous applause and a curtain call she thanked "Walter Wanger without whom none of this ( her career) would have been possible" Great Hayward won the Oscar at least once.
Dorothy Parker was co-writer of the original story and you can just about make out her contribution in the character played by Susan Hayward, a singer who sacrifices her career for that of her husband, Lee Bowman, then hits the bottle as she plays second-fiddle losing him to vampish Marsha Hunt.
Susan Hayward's fine performance, for which she is deservedly well-remembered, is easily the best reason to watch this feature.
Her ups-and-downs, her battle with alcoholism, and her fears about her relationships all provide good material for Hayward to work with.As the husband, Lee Bowman is quite bland and one-dimensional, so much so that it almost looks deliberate.
Eddie Albert helps out as the husband's partner, and Marsha Hunt gives a good performance as Angie's cold-blooded rival.
She got an Oscar nomination for this role and it's no wonder.The leading man was probably chosen for his silky rich voice, but Lee Bowman is a very natural actor, and he keeps up his end of the relationship.
It isn't long before she is a slave to the drink and her life is falling down around her.A handful of films have tried to put alcoholism on screen  The Lost Weekend, Leaving Las Vegas to name two, but some are more successful that others.
By the time the film gets to the `well, you see Ken..' moralising ending I'd lost interest in this person and wanted a more realistic view of alcoholism.Hayward is OK  she's not as hammy as she could have been, she could have gone all Betty Davis one us!
Smash Up: Story of A Woman is Great Susan Hayward Pretest ****.
Susan Hayward turned the page in Hollywood when she received her first nomination for this film in 1947.While reading the other reviews, I am very surprised that no one else mentioned the many similarities between this film and the classic "I'll Cry Tomorrow," which came 8 years later and again paired Hayward with Eddie Albert.
Albert had a larger role in this 1947 film but was much more memorable in 'Tomorrow'.Right away Hayward is clamoring for a drink.
These were all definite pretests for her role as Lillian Roth 8 years later.While Lee Bowman was adequate here as her husband, the part should have gone to Eddie Albert, the friend in the film instead.Marsha Hunt is excellent in the role of the conniving worker of Bowman's.Susan Hayward exhibited that vulnerability, that weakness that would lead to her depiction of an alcoholic in both films.
"Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman" was the role to jump start this career turn.
Anyone who passes up the chance to see Susan Hayward in "Smash-Up" because they've already seen her play a drunk in 1956's more popular "I'll Cry Tomorrow" are missing out on a great performance from the star.
But when husband Lee Bowman's singing career takes off, she feels forgotten and falls back on her main weakness (always a little shy--maybe anti-social--she hits the sauce).
Eddie Albert is very good as Bowman's accompanist (he helped Hayward out in "I'll Cry Tomorrow" too) and Marsha Hunt is fantastic as an executive with eyes for Bowman (her designs are subtle, but Susan catches them, leading to a great catfight).
Beautiful alcoholic Susan Hayward (as Angelica "Angie" Evans) wakes up bandaged in a hospital bed, trying to recall what led to her "Smash-Up" - "The Story of a Woman" is told in flashback A rising young singer, though lacking some confidence, Ms. Hayward gives up her career to serve as wife, mother, and party hostess to radio crooner Lee Bowman (as Ken Conway).
He and his career take off, leading Hayward to fill her emptying life with alcohol.
Still, there is more than one kind of alcoholic, Hayward does an excellent job with the role, and the message about this woman's need for her own career is clear.
And, Mrs. Crosby wasn't the only Hollywood woman too dependent on drink.******* Smash-Up (3/47) Stuart Heisler ~ Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Marsha Hunt, Eddie Albert.
Marsha Hunt was strictly wooden as the part of the secretary Martha; Lee Bowman was strictly unsympathetic as the long suffering husband who knew at the beginning that is wife was a lush.
Angie's (Hayward) given up her singing career so that hubby Ken (Bowman) can shoot to the top of his.
The film Smash - Up The Story of a Woman was controversial, particularly for its time as it contravened the then strict Hays Code (1930 - 1968), which acted as a censorship and as such a moral guidance.
This left a chasm in which a film role of an alcoholic mother, wife and homemaker needed filling.The controversial nature of the role is ripe for a struggling actor, such as Susan Hayward.
The Plot.Angie Evans, fast-rising nightclub singer, interrupts her career to marry struggling songwriter Ken Conway.
Both are about a singer's downward spiral in alcoholism, both star Susan Hayward, and both feature Eddie Albert!
She's married to Lee Bowman in this film, and as his music career takes off, boredom and neglect make her take to alcohol.
Not to be outdone by Ray Milland, who had galvanized audiences two years earlier with his unprecedented depiction of alcoholism in "The Lost Weekend," Susan Hayward wanted to prove that women could be alcoholics too, and plays one in this melodrama that looks like a film noir but in every other respect is a straight up soap opera.Hayward's performance isn't exactly subtle, but at least it's subtler than the one she'd give as another alcoholic several years later in "I'll Cry Tomorrow." It's probably not fair to laugh at these old movies and their representations of conditions that we've since learned so much more about, but it's hard not to.
If anything makes this movie worth seeing now, it's that.Hayward received the first of five career Oscar nominations for her performance in this, and Dorothy Parker and Frank Cavett were nominated for writing the original story on which the screenplay was based.Grade: B-.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to pair an emotional Susan Hayward with a stoic Lee Bowman?
Angie (Susan Hayward) is a singer for whom big things are predicted but she suffers from stage fright and always needs a drink to steady her nerves before a show.
She is married to Ken (Lee Bowman - was there ever a more boring or blander leading man than Lee Bowman), a struggling singer and is anxious to give him the success she feels he deserves.He finally gets a radio spot as a singing cowboy - "Lonely Little Ranch House".
The song and Ken (along with his offsider Steve (Eddie Albert) are a huge hit and he can finally give Angie all the things he wants her to have.
Even though the rest of the film is routine Susan Hayward, as usual, delivers a powerhouse performance and acts everyone off the screen.It does get a little preachy at the end.
As the effervescent star of a family of performers (who happens to like a little drinkee now and then), Angelica lacks the ambition to continue her singing career.
Hubby, and his partner, played by Eddie Albert get jobs as singing cowboys on the radio (another mysteriously popular career in old movies), and he pens a special song  a hideously slurpy ballad called "Life Can Be Beautiful." Dispensing with the cowboy routine, hubby sings the song on his radio show one night and become an overnight success, a teen idol  this, of course, is a time when teen idols *weren't* teenagers themselves.
(Some Spoilers) Susan Heyward's spectacular performance in "Smash Up" as the helpless and self destructive alcoholic Angie Evens Conway was hindered in that it followed the Academy Award winning "The Lost Weekend" which was released two years earlier!
It took Miss Hayward some ten years to get the coveted award as the convicted murderess Barbara Graham in the far more inferior "I Want to Live" in 1958.In the film Angie is first seen all bandaged in the White Memorial Hospital after surviving a house fire that she accidentally started.
Having married struggling composer and singer Ken Conway, Lee Bowman, Angie gave up her promising singing career to become a housewife and mother.
It was Ken's success as a big time radio singing personality that drove Angie to the bottle in her feeling that she's become a has been as a singer and totally dependent on Ken. It's that deep insecurity on Angie's part that leads her to not only drink and forgo her in being a good mother to her and Ken's newborn daughter Angelica, Sharyn Payne, but have her conjure up bitter and hateful feeling against Ken's secretary Martha Gray, Marsha Hunt, who she thinks is having an affair with her husband.As Ken gets more and more successful in his both singing and radio career Angie gets more depressed and starts to hit the bottle big time.
Passing out from drinking Angie drops a cigarette on the living-room carpet that sets the entire house on fire leaving her in critical condition, from third and second degree burns, when risking her life rescuing Angelica.***SPOILERS*** Despite the films depressing storyline it does in fact have a silver lining.
It brings both Ken and Angie back together in them realizing that their estrangement from each other, in him being a big singer star and her a housewife, lead to the troubles that almost destroyed both of them including little Angelica.
It was the tragedy of Angie going off the deep end and into a whiskey bottle that finally brought her and Ken to their senses before it was too late.P.S Look for Eddie Albert as Ken's and Angie's good friend and fellow musical composer Steve Nelson who composed the films theme song "Life Can be Beautiful"-Ken's signature song- that's played over and over, at least a dozen times, during the curse of the movie..
Once a rising singing star, she ended her career to be wife and mother.
As husband Lee Bowman rises in fame, she turns more to the bottle while Bowman spends less time with her and more time with his beautiful secretary, Marsha Hunt, who may or may not be predatory.
In 1947 only insiders would have connected the characters played by Lee Bowman and Susan Hayward as thinly disguised portraits of Bing Crosby and his wife Dixie Lee. It was, of course, well documented that at the time of the marriage Lee had the higher profile whereas Crosby was just getting started.
The film is, of course, built around one star part and in Susan Hayward we get someone more than capable of sinking her teeth into it with adequate support from Lee Bowman and another quietly effective performance from Eddie Albert.
The film opens with rising nightclub Angie Evans (Susan Hayward) abandoning her career and marrying - against all advice - a so far not rising singer/songwriter Ken Conway (Lee Bowman).
The two marry, Angie gives up her career to support him, and Ken and Steve Nelson (Eddie Albert) spend their days trying to write new songs.
He gives her servants that do all of her work for her, so that she has, as the song says "too much time on her hands".Now you have to remember that this is the 1940's, married women are not supposed to work, and that Angie was not raised a socialite, so that handling Ken's social obligations do not come naturally to her.
Enter Martha Gray, Ken's personal secretary, who does what little that is even expected from a wife who has absolutely nothing to do, and Angie begins to turn to drink.
Susan Hayward (in an Academy Award-nominated performance) plays an aspiring singer who abandons her career to get married, but sinks into alcoholism and depression as her husband becomes famous.
You can see why they sank into alcoholism (think Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate" and Mrs. Wormer in "Animal House").I understand that this movie is loosely based on the life of Dixie Lee. When she got married to Bing Crosby, she was more famous than him.
I'd say that Susan Hayward should've won Best Actress for the role (but make no mistake, Loretta Young's performance in "The Farmer's Daughter" was also a fine one).
Susan Hayward and Lee Bowman star in a semi-biographical treatment of the marriage problems of Dixie Lee and Bing Crosby, renamed as Angie and Ken, respectively.
The destructive influence of the decision for Angie to quit her singing career in favor of a homemaker role on her psyche, and her consequent decent into full blown alcoholism is emphasized.Besides the introduction of several new songs, the strength of the film lies in warning the viewers of the pitfalls of taking away too much responsibility or glamour on the psyche of people constitutionally ill-prepared to handle this situation.
This reason is mainly relevant to the first part of the film, before Angie foregoes her singing career.
Another reason for Angie's decent into alcoholism is her jealousy, both of her husband's sudden rise to superstardom, and of his secretary, Martha, who seems to be running his life more and more, leaving little for Angie to feel valued for.
Susan would later star in a rather similar film subject in "I'll Cry Tomorrow"., based on the life of Lilian Roth: another singer who turned to alcohol to deal with her personal problems and the pressure of her career.Susan earns her Academy Award nomination mainly in the 2nd half, when she stays smashed most of the time, feeling more and more worthless and jealous of Martha's dominant role in Ken's life.