Overdrawn soaper has Ida Lupino managing kid sister Joan Leslie's career in the musical theater, which includes squeezing out early song-and-dance partner Jack Carson. Story begins as a growing-pains melodrama, eventually exchanging teen-tears for backstabbing backstage business. Screenplay by Daniel Fuchs and Peter Viertel uncomfortably turns Carson's character into a sap, while Lupino's eyes continue to glitter like those of a wicked queen. If director Vincent Sherman had a good sense of camp, this might have been a juicy tale; but Sherman is too square and sincere, laying on us the old stardom routine of too much, too soon. Why is it that Leslie's "Katie" is made so innocent of her sister's hard-nosed tactics? Had she been a little conniver herself, there might have been something for Joan Leslie to play. As it is, Lupino gets all the tough talk while Leslie looks stricken, the starlet who fights her own fame from the footlights. ** from ****
Review of The Hard Way
