>From The Terrace (1960)
Grade: 53
This movie is one long soap opera. It is well enough done to be watchable, with the script and plot carefully executed.
Leon Ames is the owner of a large steel factory. Myrna Loy does a good imitation of Shelley Winters as his drunken, unloved, pathetic wife. Ames's eldest son died of spinal meningitis as a child, somehow making Ames bitter towards the rest of the family. Young, angst-ridden son Alfred (Paul Newman) returns from World War II, in time to quarrel with his father and beat up his mother's boyfriend. Refusing to work for his father, Newman instead partners with a friend designing aircraft.
Barbara Eden makes an obvious pass at him, but Newman only has eyes for Joanne Woodward, despite being engaged to ever-present Jim Roper. She treats Newman coldly, but smugly enjoys the attention. Newman keeps working her until they are married. On the wedding day, Newman and Ames have an argument. Ames has a heart attack and dies. Myrna Loy is not to be seen from again.
Woodward still treats Newman poorly, and cheats on him with Roper whenever he is away, which is often due to his workaholic ambitions. Newman is impatient with his aircraft design job, and leaves it to work for a zillionaire executive, whose grandson he dramatically rescues from a fall into a half-frozen lake. His success at the firm draws the rivalry of Howard Caine, who will stop at nothing to show Newman up.
Newman falls for a doe-eyed dark-haired daughter (Ina Balin) of a client. The audience is supposed to approve of his affair but not his wife's.
Newman's boss is high on family values, and it will ruin his career if he gets a divorce. Woodward starts being nice to him again, and it turns out that it is because he is to be made partner. But Caine has taken photos of Newman and Balin in a hotel bedroom and tries to blackmail him. Newman is given the promotion before the board of directors. Newman delivers what begins as an acceptance speech, then transforms into a missive complaining about how terrible wealth and ambition is, etc. He then hails a taxi, ignoring Woodward who is still trying to keep him, and goes to live in the country with Balin, where they are seen having a blissful reunion as the music sweeps and the credits roll.
http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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