She really wanted to live. Life is worth living. Wonderful themes to this remake of Bette Davis's 1939 vehicle "Dark Victory."
While "Summer Flight," or "Stolen Hours" is a good picture, obvious comparisons will have to be made regarding the Bette Davis film. Hayward is vulnerable here as she usually was in a career essentially about playing troubled women. When she learns her fate, she walks around in that daze just as she did when David died in "I'll Cry Tomorrow."
Davis was more exciting in the part. Her outbursts of despair were more realistic than Hayward here. Although both women settled down and accepted their fate, you felt it more with Davis surrounded by Geraldine Fitzgerald, George Brent, Bogart, Ronald Reagan and others. The supporting cast does not do that here. Diane Baker was brought in to play Hayward's sister. She doesn't have the scenes to express the emotional turbulence of Fitzgerald.
The dialogue in 'Hours' is very much predictable. When Hayward speaks to her doctor-lover, she states: "When you open my head tomorrow, make sure to put some sense into it."
How different that Hayward's dying scene is with children in the house. How ironic that the same illness would claim Susan Hayward 12 years later.
While "Summer Flight," or "Stolen Hours" is a good picture, obvious comparisons will have to be made regarding the Bette Davis film. Hayward is vulnerable here as she usually was in a career essentially about playing troubled women. When she learns her fate, she walks around in that daze just as she did when David died in "I'll Cry Tomorrow."
Davis was more exciting in the part. Her outbursts of despair were more realistic than Hayward here. Although both women settled down and accepted their fate, you felt it more with Davis surrounded by Geraldine Fitzgerald, George Brent, Bogart, Ronald Reagan and others. The supporting cast does not do that here. Diane Baker was brought in to play Hayward's sister. She doesn't have the scenes to express the emotional turbulence of Fitzgerald.
The dialogue in 'Hours' is very much predictable. When Hayward speaks to her doctor-lover, she states: "When you open my head tomorrow, make sure to put some sense into it."
How different that Hayward's dying scene is with children in the house. How ironic that the same illness would claim Susan Hayward 12 years later.