Susan Hayward is front & center is this sex swap variation on A Star is Born from 1947. Hayward is a singer on the rise packing crowds in small clubs she's performs at but when her ne'er do well songwriting husband sweeps in from out of town & he hasn't even the price of cab fare, we know which direction this marriage slants. The hubby, played by Lee Bowman & his man on the piano, played by Eddie Albert, end up getting a gig on the radio playing Western tunes but when an opportunity arises during the birth of his daughter to play something more personal, he does, which strikes a chord w/the listening public which sends his career in the ascendant while Hayward, having to stay home & raise their child, begins hitting the bottle a little too heavily (her jealousy over her hubby's booking agent also plays into this uneasy mix). What follows is the standard 'how low will she go?' trajectory as the booze soon becomes a serious problem (she tends to pass out while smoking nearly causing a fire...more on that later!) but Hayward (in her first Oscar nomination & who would win in about a decade's time for her role in I Want to Live) ekes out a particular vulnerable protagonist which she always excelled at. My only gripe here is the low budget presentation maybe forced the filmmakers to speed things along to the point where they'd assume an audience's capacity for rapid story beats worked when a more leisurely paced effort would've been just fine.
Review of Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman
