bkoganbing By Love Possessed is your high gloss soap opera 50s early 60s style. Had it been done at Universal it would have had Douglas Sirk directing and Rock Hudson in the lead. Here we have Efrem Zimbalist starring and John Sturges who's a bit lost in this genre directing.Possibly Sirk passed on this one. The drama centers around the law firm in a most conservative small town. Senior partner is Thomas Mitchell who does not look well at all, possibly at the beginning of his final illness and his partners are son-in-law Zimbalist and Jason Robards. Zimbalist is your hail fellow well met and a bit stuck up Ivy League type, a bit thick in his dealings with wife Barbara Bel Geddes and son George Hamilton.As for Robards he's married to Lana Turner, but he's not been up to that challenge recently. This was still the era of the Omnipresent Code and impotence and its causes are not spoken of by polite movie characters. Turner turns to Zimbalist for some action.Young Hamilton repeats his sensitive youth character from his role in Home From The Hill in the previous year. He's got good, but neurotic girl Susan Kohner on the string, but his hormones cry out for the town teen tramp Yvonne Craig. She and her mother Claire Carleton are the ones you really remember from this film, their performances have some real bite to them.Efrem Zimbalist was starring in 77 Sunset Strip at the time at Warner Brothers and they were hoping to transition him to a big screen name like they did with James Garner. That was not in the cards for Zimbalist, but he did get to co-star with a screen legend in Lana Turner.Not his fault, but the way Zimbalist's role was written I could never develop a rooting interest for him to overcome and deal with his problems. Quite frankly, he's a fathead. Turner also seemed a bit off kilter for a screen sex symbol in this film.But Lana's fans will love her.

rixrex What can be more laughable than a film that attempts to skewer wasp hypocrisy and small-town stereotyping, but uses such stereotyping in it's presentation of characters? This is an unabashed attempt to gather the Peyton Place fans by bringing back Lana Turner to a New England setting in Autumn, along with the period Boy-Man of angst, George Hamilton. While Turner is so good that she can do this type of role in her sleep, and still come off well, the rest of the cast is pretty wooden, especially Efrem Zimbalist. It's easy to see why he could portray an FBI agent on TV so well.Nothing more than a turgid melodrama, so popular at the time, filmed in color with a panoramic view so that it could lure the women of 1961 away from the B&W small-screen TV daytime soap operas, to see the exact same stuff on a big screen. Pass on it and get Peyton Place instead, unless you're a Lana Turner fanatic.

blanche-2 Lana Turner, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Jason Robards, Barbara Bel Geddes, Susan Kohner and George Hamilton are - if we are to believe the title - "By Love Possessed" in this 1961 film which also stars Thomas Mitchell and Yvonne Craig. As the name of the movie indicates, this is a huge, glossy, color soap opera featuring beautiful fall scenery, huge homes and the attractive people in them, fancy cars and lots of driving scenes. The only house which isn't sumptuous belongs to the supposedly super-wealthy Helen - in her scenes, she looks like she lives in a Motel 6.BLP is supposed to be about SEX. Hamilton gets it; Lana can't get it so she rides horses; Efrem can't get it so he works late at the office; Kohner can't get it so she looks at papers in her safety deposit box; Mitchell can't get it because he's too old; Robards can't have it because he's a cripple; Bel Geddes can't get it because she's in a marriage where the couple has drifted apart; and Craig has enough for all of them.The couples -- Marjorie and Julius (Lana and Jason), Clarissa and Arthur (Bel Geddes and Zimbalist), Helen and Warren (Kohner and Hamilton) do a lot of talking and Warren and Veronica (Craig) do a lot of making out.It all adds up to a big zero that obviously was meant to cash in on Turner's big success with "Imitation of Life," as was "Portrait in Black" but in both films, they forgot to have Douglas Sirk direct.The acting is fairly superficial except for Jason Robards and Barbara Bel Geddes. Bel Geddes, a wonderful actress, creates a real character with real emotions, sticks with it, and is a success. Robards, famous for his performances in Eugene O'Neill works, is out of place here; he has no one to play off of, as he has to act with Zimbalist and Turner. The very pretty Yvonne Craig, who would have better success in television, pouts well. Susan Kohner has none of the allure she displayed in "Imitation of Life" but with the help of an ugly wig, creates a sad character nonetheless. Hamilton is in the Tony Perkins role, which Perkins would have done a lot better. Hamilton is someone I prefer as a personality who parodies himself. When he attempts to act, it's painful. Zimbalist, who always comes off as a rich society person, comes off as a rich society person here. Very handsome, with a fine speaking voice, he never has had much range. Not that he needed a lot here, but he needed more than he had.Lana Turner looks lovely, though her fashions don't register as they have in past films. She could always pull off an adulterous drunk - I personally don't think she has enough to do. There are too many other characters. If you're going to do a Lana Turner movie, I say make it a Lana Turner movie and let's see us some more Lana! The end of the film is pure Hollywood hokum. So are the beginning and the middle. This type of film is usually fun if nothing else; this one is tedious.

JasparLamarCrabb Awful. BY LOVE POSSESSED is a really horrendous movie --- a soap opera completely devoid of style and class. Lana Turner cheats on husband Jason Robards Jr. by having an affair Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Turner obviously likes good lineage, but that's still one junior too many! The characters drink a lot and ride horses and live in absurd houses on acres and acres of land. Zimbalist's ne'er do well son is played by George Hamilton. He's being blackmailed by party girl Yvonne Craig while trying to get something started with débutante Susan Kohner. The less said about Hamilton's acting the better. Turner and Zimbalist are dreadful and Robards is saddled with the absurd task of playing a drunk. He acts and acts and acts. As Zimbalist's patient wife, Barbara Bel Geddes emerges unscathed. Directed by a clearly derailed John Sturges.