My Forbidden Past (1951)

MY FORBIDDEN PAST does not full its punches. It is a full-blooded melodrama set in a time and place where social distinctions matter. Barbara Beaurevel (Ava Gardner) and her cousin Paul (Melvyn Douglas) live in comfortable gentility with Aunt Eula (Lucile Watson). They believe in the kind of social niceties that dictate one's choice of marriage partner, as well as one's future life; those who fail to make the grade are abruptly rebuffed. Hence when Barbara falls in love with industrious yet self-made researcher Mark Lucas (Robert Mitchum), trouble is bound to occur. Robert Stevenson's film boils up to a satisfying courtroom climax in which an inevitable deus ex machina allows a happy ending to take place.Despite the fact that the film remains relentlessly studio-bound (with only a few second unit shots denoting time and place), it makes a creditable effort of portraying a world riddled with hypocrisies, where Lucas is treated with as much disdain as the African American servant (Clarence Muse) working for the Beaurevel family. Douglas makes an eminently hissable villain with his thin pencil mustache and courtly manners, that do not prevent him from making a pass at Lucas' wife (Janis Carter) in a self-interested act of revenge for Lucas' falling in love with Barbara. Mitchum looks uncomfortable in the cloistered surroundings of a research laboratory, but becomes a formidable adversary for Douglas. Gardner doesn't have much to do, except proclaim her love for Lucas in a series of close-ups; this task she accomplishes competently. Given the constraints of her background, we cannot help but sympathize with her as she tries to escape through love.

The scandals of the old south lead to many classic novels, plays and movies, and after the triumph of "Gone With the Wind", the movies made the lives of plantation owners (both rich and broke), wealthy city residents and even those of a less than noble past a regular part of the schedule. In many ways, these characters lived much like those of mixed backgrounds in such British made classics that starred the likes of Merle Oberon, Margaret Lockwood, David Niven and James Mason. Give the audience a beautiful femme fatal, a handsome hero, and some scheming villains, and you've got the stuff that provides enough drama for years of soap opera material."My Forbidden Past" reminds me in many ways of the camp Republic classic "Lady For a Night" which focused on a wealthy saloon owner in Mephis who married her way into high society and became the target of some scheming in-laws. No Memphis Belle she, the beautiful Ava Gardner is the niece of a struggling New Orleans family who is bequested a fortune from her maternal grandmother, once a notorious beauty with a scandalous past. Her matriarchal aunt (Lucille Watson) is determined to keep the dead grandmother's name out of the family, and Watson's less than noble son (Melvyn Douglas) is determined to use the new fortune to restore the one he's lost in bad business dealings. He goes as far as keeping Gardner's doctor lover (Robert Mitchum) from receiving a goodbye letter she wrote to him and he leaves New Orleans, only to return years later with a beautiful wife (Janis Carter) who is quickly seduced by Douglas. The scandal leads to murder with Mitchum accused of the crime and a shocking revelation in court which threatens to destroy many lives.Unfolding in just over 70 minutes, "My Forbidden Past" is certainly not a classic, but is definitely enjoyable. It's lavish trash, made on a medium budget, and never gives the audience time to become bored. There's a great costume ball where Mitchum and Carter are presented to New Orleans society, where Douglas's nefarious means to an end are revealed, and where Gardner's determination to win back her former lover becomes her one and only goal. Then, there's her visit to her grandmother's grave, the shock of a young boy as he realizes why she is there, and Watson's reaction to the scandal which would bring her great personal humiliation. Watson's grand dame character is both imperious and understanding, but the understanding part of her could never survive the scandal that her old world moralities has desperately tried to keep hidden. The plot twist which leads Mitchum to being accused of criminal intent is presented pretty violently, and the final courtroom scene is almost identical in revelations to the ending of "Lady For a Night".While this will get a mixed reaction from classic film fans, you can't deny the chemistry between Gardner and Mitchum, the irony of 30's hero Douglas being so despicable here, and the lavishness of the sets, costumes and early twentieth century society where the old south strived to remain intact even though the world and history had greatly altered the way that life back in the land of cotton had moved forward since the end of the civil war some 35 years before.

While the story meanders and wavers,and at times seems like a quick spin off of "Gone with the Wind", some of the scenes and closeups with Ava Gardner are lovely and amazing.Robert Mitchum as a research physician studying at Tulane;Gardner the unrequited love who delivers a letter to him before he leaves to go up north. Mitchum returns to New Orleans with a new brassy blonde in tow. She is clearly an opportunist who wants Mitchum for his future fortune, unlike Ava who claims to truly love him.She uses an ill-gotten inheritance to tempt him, there is a scandal and she indeed reminds us of Scarlett O'Hara.This film also reminds one of "Raintree County" another imitation of "Gone with the Wind" with Elizabeth Taylor as the set-piece.ThIs film though has several nice sets of Old New Orleans,the manners and customs and varied cultures,and with the lovely Gardner in several memorable shots, is well worth a look.

My Forbidden Past has Ava Gardner as decadent New Orleans belle living with her great aunt Lucile Watson and her cousin Melvyn Douglas. She's got a yen for Yankee doctor Robert Mitchum who is doing research over at Tulane University. They break things off and Mitchum goes away and returns with a bride, slatternly Janis Carter.In the meantime Ava inherits a whole bunch of money from her grandmother who left New Orleans years ago under a cloud. Just what she did is never revealed, but her name is spoken in hushed tones. Whatever she did, she sure got rich at it.It kind of reminds me of The Road to Rio where we never do find out what those papers were that foiled the dastardly schemes of Gale Sondergaard to marry off Dorothy Lamour. As Bing concludes about the "papers" the world must never know.This film was conceived so that Howard Hughes who was crushing out on Ava Gardner big time at that point could get her over to RKO. He paid Louis B. Mayer's price and Mayer apparently threw in Melvyn Douglas.Melvyn Douglas knows full well what a clinker this is so he overacts outrageously in the best Snidely Whiplash tradition of screen villains. He's the best one in the film.My Forbidden Past should come with a warning label that if you manage to sit through this melodrama because you want to find out just what Ava's forbidden past was with grandma, you will be left hanging.