Alimony (1949) User Reviews

Not what a father wants to here

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 7 June 2016]

Alimony is a cheapie from the short lived Eagle-Lion Studios and it has some shoddy editing and a cop out ending. But the story is not a bad one and some interesting players give some nice performances.

The whole thing is narrated by John Beal who is now a successful composer telling Paul Guilfoyle, the father of Martha Vickers about his daughter who was just released from prison. It's not stuff a father wants to hear about his daughter.

Beal is married to Hillary Brooke and at one time all three were boarders at Marie Blake's rooming house. Brooke is the good girl and Vickers who was best known for being Lauren Bacall's sister in The Big Sleep is the bad one.

Vickers is the inspiration for a hit song that Beal wrote for his first big break. She latches on to him, but this is a girl who keeps her options open.

One of those options is an Alimony racket. She's the come on in staging phony situations for bottom feeding divorce attorney Douglass Dumbrille. It's what leads to her downfall.

Dumbrille really does this part with relish. He's the poster child for shyster attorneys. Clearly the best one in the film. There's also a nice performance by Leonid Kinskey who is Beal's agent.

This one considering its defects is not too bad. Maybe at Warner Brothers with Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland in the parts that Vickers and Brooke have this might have been a good film. Certainly a major studio might have corrected the defects present here.

Film Noir Lite Has Some Bite.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 16 March 2013]

A young songwriter (John Beal) tells his story of his relationship with a missing young woman (Martha Vickers) who was part of a shady alimony racket where young women marry men they don't love and manipulate the husband into divorcing them so they can share the alimony with the shyster lawyer (Douglas Dumbrille) representing them. Vickers is a tough cookie who claims she influenced Beal into writing the song that made him a success, stealing him away from his girlfriend (Hillary Brooke) with the intention of fleecing him.

This fast-moving "B" film ranks slightly higher than an exploitation movie, yet is actually very entertaining. The future "Blossom Rock" (Marie Blake) is extremely amusing as Beal's and Vickers' advice-giving landlady with Dumbrille appropriately smarmy as a lawyer using young women to meet his own ends. Vickers goes over-dramatically ballistic in one scene with Brooke but for the most part, she is a cool cat with claws sharpened for that waiting pounce. It is easy to see why Beal could be manipulated by her. While Brooke isn't necessarily naive enough to see through Vickers, she isn't given the opportunity to stand up to Vickers beyond a simple warning. Still, she's believable, and her nobility isn't played as stupidity or wimpiness. The result is a fun scam-related noir drama that may not be classic but is a step above the usual poverty row pot-boilers.

mediocre, but slightly lurid, melodramatics

[goblinhairedguy · 4/10 · 8 May 2004]

Produced by the obscure Equity Pictures, this tale of woe features a decidedly third-string cast, and a disjointed, unfocused and under-motivated script -- possibly the result of avoiding the wrath of the Breen office, or possibly plain incompetence. Zeisler was one of the more interesting directors working on Poverty Row, and manages to keep the story moving, instilling it with his usual arid fatalism. However, he fails to emphasize some of the key plot developments, and a clever last-minute twist is pretty much wasted. Many of the background details are patently ridiculous; e.g., Beal's overenthusiastic songwriter thumps on the piano all night in his boarding house's salon without eliciting complaint from his fellow boarders, and his girlfriend is absurdly forgiving of his two-timing indiscretions. Martha Vickers, dolled up like a waxworks, makes one of the least alluring femmes fatales in history, Beal must have been a desperation choice for a leading man, and the original songs are incredibly verbose. Despite its shortcomings, B-movie aficionados will be intrigued by the surprisingly overt depiction of unscrupulous women luring unsuspecting husbands into compromising positions to extract alimony. There's some good support from Laurie Lind as the cynical golddigger friend of the lead character, and from Hollywood's favourite stereotype East European eccentric, Leonid Kinskey, as a song plugger.

Good Cast, Spotty Script

[dougdoepke · 3 November 2015]

If you can get past the sappy ending and a few plot stretches, this is a pretty good programmer. Seems Dan's (Beal) a struggling songwriter who takes inspiration from Kitty (Vickers) such that he comes up with a popular hit. Trouble is he's had a long relationship with good girl Linda (Brooke) that now comes unglued as Kitty schemes to get a share of the windfall. Thus the narrative follows the romantic and calculating travails of the boardinghouse trio.

It's a cheap production. However, the acting is good even if the story seldom leaves movie sets. This is a chance to catch two of the 40's premier vixens in the same frame. Brooke is cast against type, all sweetness and light, yet managing to bridge the strained abruptness of Linda's romantic turnarounds. At the same time, Vickers hides her scheming under a pretty face that's hard to resist. To me, the non-handsome Beal is perfect for the beleaguered composer, his disheveled appearance quite appropriate to the role. And too bad this was the only screen appearance of Laurie Lind (Helen) whose mop of hair and distinctive looks are career worthy. Then too, it's a colorful touch casting the so-called mad-Russian, Leonid Kinskey, as the harried music producer. He lends an exotic contrast to the more conventional others.

It's also worth noting how radio dominates the movie's entertainment scene. However, 1949 was a year when TV was making inroads into the popular media including film, but no hint of that here. Anyway, the distinctive cast makes this contrived story worth a look-see.

Alimony

[CinemaSerf · 5/10 · 6 February 2024]

Sadly, it's only the musical career of "Dan" (John Beal) that is very promising in this rather disappointing, run-of-the-mill, marital melodrama. He has the misfortune to meet the money-grabbing "Kitty" (Martha Vickers) who has one goal, and one goal only - to get rich quick. She inspires him to write one hit and things look set fair. Except, well it seems that might be his only flirtation with success and pretty soon she has dumped him and moved onto a wealthy businessman. "Dan", meantime, returns to his decent fiancée "Linda" (Hillary Brooke) and that might have been the end of it. Thing is, "Kitty" only married "Burt" (Douglass Dumbrille) for his money and when she starts to make noises about divorce and substantial alimony, he discovers a litany of corrupt activities from his venally motivated wife that drags poor old "Dan" back into a toxic mix of greed and duplicity. The cast actually delivers adequately here, but the story is thin and over-scripted and at times it comes across as a radio play with pictures - and not very inspired pictures either. The characterisations are all too shallow and, to be honest, Vickers makes for a rather unlikely seductress. They do their own singing, to be fair, but otherwise there's very little here to recommend it, sorry.

Men are fickle - or is love fickle?

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 22 November 2021]

"Alimony" from 1949 is a low budget film that nevertheless sports a good cast: John Beal, Hillary Brooke, Martha Vickers, and Leonid Kinsky.

Beal is a composer, Dan, who narrates his story in flashback when he is visited by Kitty (Vickers) father, who is trying to find her. Dan admits that he hasn't seen Kitty in a couple of years.

Dan lives in a convivial rooming house along with his fiancee Linda (Brooke) though they don't share a room. It's 1949 after all. Dan stays up until all hours of the night playing his piano, but no one ever complains.

Kitty comes along, and, once she hears Dan's compositions are going to be used in a new Broadway musical, decides that he's all hers. And Dan falls for her. He breaks up with a heartbroken Linda.

The musical falls through, and Kitty is out the door. Dan is left to try to win Linda back. No problem. She succumbs in no time. Dan, however, in the throes of amore, has written a song for Kitty. It becomes a big hit, and now the two are inextricably linked, even touring together, to Linda's disgust. But she decides to fight for her man and get him back. Again.

Not much point to this. I met John Beal some years ago. He was a lovely man and better than this!

Even The Love Song Is Blah

[boblipton · 4/10 · 11 May 2020]

Martha Vickers comes to the big town to make some money. Swimsuit modeling requires no skill, and she soon becomes a specialist in being the 'other woman', framing husbands in compromising situations for wives who want a divorce. She decides to steal aspiring songwriter John Beal away from his wife, and inspires him to pen a hit love song. She learns to sing and tours with him as his Inspiration: a floozy chanteuse, taking him for as much money as she can get, while his royalties dry up.

it's a cheap, sordid little story, with no real point except that men are dogs and need to chase cars and make messes on the living room rug . The performers take it all seriously and do their best, but there isn't much to it. It's from Eagle-Lion, and looks like the script was pulled out of the PRC vault.

Martha & Hillary

[Cristi_Ciopron · 6/10 · 7 January 2016]

This sensationalist, almost sleazy, certainly cheap cautionary tale has been offered a good cast: Martha Vickers plays the adventuress, Hillary Brooke the endearing wife, Dumbrille has a supporting part, Leonid Kinskey plays the kind impresario, Beal is the hesitant songwriter, whose switch to the temptress comes mostly from his habituation with the concubine he knew from their childhood; conveniently, the script skips Linda's fight for her husband, who only comes back to her a 2nd time because his muse Kitty kicks him again. If the facts seem plausible, the script is meager. Genuine tenderness inspires songs less good than those given by infatuation. Anyway, the songwriter's breakthrough should of been the show that got canceled (while he was celebrating with his newfound muse).

Martha plays convincingly a seductress, who's not heartless, wicked or mean, but shallow, groundless, misguided, more of a deluded girl, the shapely Hillary Brooke plays a dependable, reliable woman, the domestic muse, who won't inspire hits, but songs that earn a modest living.

Kitty makes an attempt at good living: 1st by trying modeling, where she resents being manhandled, etc., then by taking part briefly in a frame-up business, with a crooked lawyer, afterward she shares in the songwriter's sudden fame; she even claims being fond of the tycoon she married, the industrialist, and it was a leading role for the actress, though the script offers no one a good role. The script is obviously interested mainly in the social trend, not in the characters or drama.

The storyline for an exploitation movie was ready; with a good script and a better director, this one could of been a drama.

The story of a conniver.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 25 February 2017]

The film begins with Dan talking to Mr. Klinger about the exploits of Klinger's daughter, Kitty. What follows is a very lengthy flashback. It seems that Kitte was interested in getting rich fast. She worked for a while as a girl who would help blackmailers. When a mark came into the room with her along, she'd strip off much of her clothes and grab the guy...while her partner snapped incriminating photos! Tired of this racket, she now set her mind to bigger game and eventually this meant Dan. While Dan was happily dating Linda, Kitty schemed to seduce him away from her...all because she thought Dan was destined for riches. And, when this didn't pan out and Dan's musical career didn't appear to be paying off, she dropped him and was on to the next scheme.

In many ways, this is like the great Pre-Code film, "Red-Headed Woman"...but more sanitized and without the great style of this earlier film. Now I am not saying it's bad...but "Red-Headed Woman" is so amazing and entertaining that it's no disgrace to not be as good as this scandalous film. Overall, a decent low-budget film...enjoyable because Kitty is so darn awful!

By the way, the landlady in the film is Marie Blake (also known by the stage name 'Blossom Rock'). That's Jeanette MacDonald's older sister...and Grandmama from the TV show "The Addams Family".