This Is My Love (1954) User Reviews

Raven-haired Darnell & Domergue do "Fear Has Black Wings"

[melvelvit-1 · 8/10 · 7 October 2006]

Linda Darnell stars as Vida, a sexually repressed spinster living with her vivacious sister Faith Domergue and Faith's crippled husband Dan Duryea in this quasi-noir romantic potboiler. Vida's a dreamy small-town Emma Bovary with unrealistic writing aspirations and a boring beau she barely tolerates and when handsome Rick Jason comes to the family diner where she and her sister work, he asks her out. Vida ruins every chance for happiness she ever had and this time is no exception because her self-pitying and depressing personality drives him into the arms of her married sister. This in turn tears the heart out of Duryea who's deeply in love with Faith but only half a man thanks to a terrible accident that ended their professional dancing career. He's become an embittered male shrew who delights in torturing Vida and this cuckold blames her for his wife's infidelity in a particularly vicious fight which drives Vida to go running for the medicine chest poison. Clever -and no slouch in the vindictive department herself- Vida's dark side sees a way to get even with Duryea and frame Domergue for his murder at the same time...

Based on the novel "Fear Has Black Wings" and filmed in garish color by producer Allan Dowling and released by RKO, THIS IS MY LOVE comes as a nice little sleeper surprise for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Miss Linda Darnell. Comparing Linda to Bette Davis may sound amazing but it's awfully hard not to see what I mean. Darnell's Vida is a cross between Charlotte Vale of NOW VOYAGER and the ruthless Regina Giddons of THE LITTLE FOXES -especially when Vida just listens as Duryea dies screaming from the poison she gave him. All three protagonists are only half-alive in a claustrophobic house of hate, recrimination and regret which boils over, not unlike WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?. Linda Darnell does excellent work here. Bloated but still youthful, she encodes her character with the beauty Vida must have had in the bloom of youth and layers it with pent-up resentments seething just below the surface. One couldn't ask for more from the lady. This portrayal shows what Linda learned after 15 years in the fabulous Dream Factory called the Studio System where beauties like Hayworth, Tierney, Turner and Lamarr also learned to act in due time. Many feel A LETTER TO THREE WIVES is Darnell's best but some of the characterization depends on the lady's hard gloss/hard-bitten glamor but her Vida in THIS IS MY LOVE doesn't and she's also given stellar support. Alternately evoking hatred and sympathy in the audience, the much beloved character Dan Duryea comes perilously close to going over the top -but just try and look away. Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose", Faith Domergue, isn't too bad trying to please everyone while making the best of a god-awful life and when a little happiness comes her way in the form of Rick Jason, it's hard to begrudge her. Cast and audience are torn as sympathy must go to Linda's Vida also. Duryea was Vida's beau back in the day until Faith took him and after living together for years, something wretched was bound to happen. Rick Jason is OK in a Tom Tryon kind of way as the tall, dark Adonis who hits town and ignites the fuse. Great as slice-of-life Americana, the film has 1950's vignettes galore; there's a few colorful dance palace scenes as Jason takes both sisters out for a whirl and glimpses of every-day Americans working/living at the diner. Stand-out is an old biddy with nothing better to do than come in, order apple-pie and eavesdrop on other people's love lives.

Highly recommended. You'll see why after you see it.

Jerry "Leave It To Beaver" Mathers, his look-alike sister Susie Mathers, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer ("The Little Rascals"), William Hopper (Hedda's son and "Perry Mason" regular) and Ed Wood Jr.'s frequent leading lady Dolores Fuller all appear in small roles.

Linda, as most fans know, died as a result of burns sustained in a fire in 1965 and Dan Duryea died of cancer in 1968. Faith died from cancer in 1999 (in England) and Rick Jason shot himself in 2000.

One of Linda Darnell's best performances

[alfrneuman · 7/10 · 26 October 2021]

Strong performances but Darnell, Duryea, Domergue and Jason make this worth watching but you get the feeling that this could have been much better. Part of the blame is in the direction and part in the script.

This Is My Love was made near the end of Darnell's Hollywood career. She kept getting better as a actress but never learned how to market herself in a business where the studio system was collapsing. I'm reading a book which claims Darnell's millionaire second husband offered to make her a producer so she could choose her own scripts and costars but she turned him down and got a divorce instead. A shrewd businesswoman would have taken the deal and extended her film career but I guess we all have to be true to ourselves in the end. You have to feel sorry for actresses like Darnell that had the talent and beauty to be megastars but ended up on the B list instead.

I love my love

[timshelboy · 10/10 · 26 January 2010]

This is my love the love I thought would be These are my tears that you will never see..."

an unheralded gem of a romantic melodrama. Not really noir - but not that far away either - and Linda Darnell is popping up this month...

As soon as Franz Waxman's lush score swelled up over the credits I knew this one would deliver - and I wasn't disappointed. Vida (Linda Darnell) is a "spinster" who slings hash in her Brother in Law's diner and is engaged to the world's most boring man. Into the diner wanders her fiancée's army buddy - foxy Rick Jason - a "gas station casanova", and when left alone together Rick comes on to her... she plays hard to get - so hard to get in fact that Rick turns to her married sister Evelyn (Faith Domergue) for comfort, and the stage is set for resentment, deceit, adultery, jealousy, sibling rivalry.. and murder. This one really deserves to be better known. I'm not sure whether the lurid greens and purples that dominate the colour scheme are symbolic of the jealousy and anger simmering below the surface, and mark out Stuart Heisler as an neglected auteur... or it was just a lousy print. Connie Russell sings the tune with lyrics as Darnell and Jason go out dancing. Dan Duryea is a bitter cripple. and Darnell is absolutely heartbreaking here - never knew she had it in her. Its everything I wanted from Douglas Sirk or late period Minnelli and never got. Absolutely delicious from start to finish and highly recommended. 9/10 (on my fourth watch now in one week!)

want a DVD of this

[judy-k-huddleston · 17 February 2013]

anyone know where i could get a copy of THIS IS MY LOVE . rick jason is great. he was lt. hanley in the COMBAT TV series. loved his voice. wonder why he did not become a bigger star, linda darnell was also a great actress and i read she died in a fire when she went in to get a child. wish that other rick jason stories were available as he not only could act well, he was very handsome. rick jason wrote in his autobiography that linda darnell was excellent to work with and played her role very well. rick jason is a fox in a henhouse. darnell and married sister both want him, and who can blame them. but this leads to trouble. tensions build and come to a climax, i especially liked jason taking darnell dancing. well worth seeing.

Rick Jason is good, but mawkish script, rest of cast are bad

[Marta · 1/10 · 13 June 2001]

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I hate to say any film is terrible, but this one almost fits the bill. Linda Darnell and Faith Domergue are sisters; Darnell single but engaged, and Domergue married to Dan Duryea, a dancer who was in a bad car accident and is now a paraplegic. They own a restaurant, where all the plot lines conveniently converge.

Everything about the film screams early 50's potboiler/soap opera, and everything in the film is written to conveniently accommodate the plotline, which was outdated even then: Duryea was a fabulous, sexy dancer (which was the only reason Domergue could find to love him), but is now confined to a wheelchair and vents his anger on everyone he sees, setting up the plot point for her to have an affair; Darnell has a fiance, but she keeps putting marriage off so she can write her fantasies; Darnell's fiance brings a friend, Rick Jason, to meet her, and then just happens to go off and leave the two of them alone numerous times, pointedly making references about how the friend is going to steal his girl; the same song is played far too many times as Rick tries to make love to Darnell; the list of coincidences just goes on and on.

Rick Jason gives a thoughtful, restrained performance in only his 3rd film role, and is the one good thing about this movie. Everyone else in the film seems to have gotten their Masters degree from the Bill Shatner School of Overacting, and passed all their classes with flying colors. And, in a film crowded with hamminess, Dan Duryea wins the award for most flagrant, over-the-top performance in any film, ever; he yells, grimaces, convulses, accuses his wife of infidelity in a shrill falsetto voice, uses his wheelchair to dance to a sonata while everyone watches in intense discomfort (the audience included), and does god knows what else to make the film a virtual nightmare to endure.

If you are a fan of any of these actors, and especially Jason, you can probably sit through this film and enjoy it on a minimal level. Anyone else will never make it, and if they do they deserve an award of their own. It's unavailable on video or anywhere else, which is a blessing in disguise and is completely understandable once you see the film.

How very film-noir!

[calvertfan · 9/10 · 3 February 2002]

Warning: possible spoilers.

I hope that anyone contemplating watching this film does not judge it solely on the weight of the other review. It is a compelling and interesting tale, one you would like if you were a fan of films such as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and the like.

"Darnell has a fiance, but she keeps putting marriage off so she can write her fantasies" is what she would have most people believe. The fact is that she does not love poor Eddie, so therefore how can she marry him? She was once in love with Murray, her sister's cantankerous paraplegic husband and she went with Eddie as if to soften the blow of losing Murray, to show everyone that she was fine.

"the same song is played far too many times as Rick tries to make love to Darnell" - Rick never tries it on Darnell. He kisses her once but only the once because she pushes him away. And after that, he meets her sister Evelyn and it becomes apparent that she is the girl he loves, not Vida (Darnell). If anything, he uses Vida to get to Evelyn!

The character Vida is quite a fascinating one. She seems such a sweet and shy little thing and even when she reveals her dark side by filling Murray's medecine bottle with poison you're on her side. She's just had a verbal war with him where all he could do was laugh in her face as she broke down, and when she sits on her bed with a bottle of sleeping pills, you really worry she's going to off herself - who'd blame her?

I would highly recommend this movie to anyone, whether you are a fan of any of the actors or otherwise. I had never even seen any of the 5 leads in any of their other films (to my recollection), and I still thoroughly enjoyed it. If you don't mind a complex drama where you have to use your mind a little, then guaranteed you'll enjoy it also.

Is this film worthy of your love?

[hitchcockthelegend · 4/10 · 16 January 2010]

Directed by Stuart Heisler {The Glass Key} and starring Linda Darnell {Vida Dove}, Faith Domergue {Evelyn Dove/Myer}, Dan Duryea {Murray Myer} & Rick Jason {Glenn Harris}, This Is My Love is a Noirish potboiler dealing in sexual repression, deception, heartbreak, sibling strife and murder. All of which sounds like the film should be a most potent piece of work, sadly the film never rises above being a ponderously paced story that's devoid of a blood pumping heart.

It's a shame this vastly underachieves as a drama since the performances of the three principal actors are very strong, especially Darnell, who as Vida Dove neatly blends a smouldering sexuality with a tinted confusion of the life she is leading. Based on Hugh Brooke's story, Fear Has Black Wings, This Is My Love is filmed in Pathécolor and theatrically released out of RKO. Never released on DVD and mostly forgotten by all but Darnell/Duryea purists, Heisler's film hints at being far more intriguing than it actually is. It's not so much that one finds themselves waiting for a plot spark that never arrives, it's the overriding feeling that the finale here will be a let down. The very nature of the piece telegraphs where these characters will end up, thus rendering the ending the damp squib it ultimately is.

It's a testament to Darnell, Domergue and Duryea that they have given the characters some substance, managing to hold the viewers attention span by way of their craft. One scene as Darnell's Vida shouts down at the wheelchair bound Murray is worth sitting thru the movie for. But it's a rare moment of heat raising as the tepid screenplay, staid direction and the woefully bland performance of Rick Jason swamp any chance of movie ignition. There's some value with Franz Waxman's score, and Connie Russell popping in to sing the title song is a bonus. But much like the sisters Vida & Evelyn Dove in the picture, I too felt boxed in, and that is something I'm sure the makers wasn't aiming for. 4/10

Jealousy painted in the darkest shades of black

[jjnxn-1 · 9/10 · 14 May 2013]

Sadly obscure film noir painted in the blackest shades. Perhaps because it was made later in the cycle of film noir in color at the lower rung Republic Studios by director of little renown Stuart Heisler the film did not receive the prominence it deserves.

It's not a classic of the genre in the Double Indemnity league but it is a well made, tightly paced dark journey of the soul with a couple of great performances at its core.

Those two amazing performances come from artists who were often undervalued for their talents, Linda Darnell and Dan Duryea.

Duryea plays a character he was known for-a cruel weasel, in this case his spirit has been twisted by his imprisonment in a wheelchair, who knows the weaknesses of those around him and takes glee in twisting the knife to ensure their misery is as profound as his. While he could play the good guy quite well his special talent was in this sort of parasite and here perhaps because he is matched against someone who can match him talent wise, Miss Darnell, his performance seems particularly sharp.

The real standout though is Linda Darnell in one of her very best performances. Often wasted through her years as a top star at 20th Century Fox as mere decoration whenever she was given the opportunity to prove her mettle she always came through and was then sent back to pretty up another minor film. A shame had she been properly utilized she had the potential to be a tragedienne of the first order. This is one of those opportunities, unfortunately it came after her peak years and didn't slow the decline of her star-she would only make four more feature films spread out over the next 11 years.

Her ironically named Vida Dove, meaning peaceful life, is living anything but. Lonely and full of bitterness at having to live with her sister, Faith Domergue, well cast since she and Linda could be sisters, who has married her former flame, Duryea now in that wheelchair. Shackled to them and tortured by him she is desperate for any way out. When she and Duryea square off it is truly an acting fireworks show. Enter handsome Rick Jason and a possible escape until he gets a look at Faith, also seeking an way out from the viperish Dan. Of course this sets the stage for unimaginable tragedy but it wouldn't be a noir if it didn't. Its all well presented but what sets it apart is the superior work of the top lined duo. Very hard to find but worth the effort.

I loved this movie!

[martest11 · 10/10 · 3 August 2013]

I have always been a Linda Darnell fan and this movie is her at her finest acting ability.I enjoyed this movie from beginning to end. It's a storyline that delves into the subject matter of heartbreak,infidelity, disappointment, and abuse. How many people are at a loss when dealing with life's complexities? It makes one think about about one's own shortcomings and vulnerabilities. I felt for her through out the movie considering everything she had gone through. It's been about 50 yrs. since I've seen it. Maybe I would see her role in a different light now.Great acting especially by Linda Darnell. At this point in her career it seems her movies ended. It was such a shame because she seemed to finally be cast in a role that could prove her ability. She was very talented and beautiful.It's too bad she was never appreciated for the great actress she was. I'm also a Dan Duryea fan and this role was made for him. His reputation for playing mean,angry,abusive men casts him in a role he sinks his teeth into. He is a very convincing actor who makes the plot come together. It was the first time I saw the actor Rick Jason and what a head turner. Also irresistible sex appeal. He was perfect in the role as a charming and handsome womanizer. The setting takes place in old Cali. The old diner gives you a sense of the Calif of back in the day. The romantic beach scenes also take one back to Calif before all the development. The channel on TV that shows old classics has a place on internet to vote for films, fans would like to see come out again. If you're interested go and vote for this one.

Coping with a hopeless domestic situation of a cripple, frustration, deceit and despair

[clanciai · 10/10 · 22 November 2021]

Linda Darnell and Dan Duryea make this film by perhaps the best performance of their careers both of them, in a play perfectly suited for them and bringing out the best of both of them, Dan Duryea as a bitter cripple, a former dancer, bringing his bitterness to a burning epitome of pathetic anger and despair, and Linda Darnell, the more beautiful of two sisters, making you wonder why she was left a spinster while her sister Faith Domergue gets stuck with two children with a later incapacitated furiously bitter husband. Of course Linda must take this "gas station Casanova" (Rick Jason) seriously when he deigns to court her, actually to get at her married sister, but as the sensitive and empathic woman she is, she takes it too seriously and realizes her mistake too late. It's a great story of frustrated love and jealousy, human fallacy and passion running amuck because of misapprehensions. To this comes the innocence of the two children, making noise by their mischief but at least pointing out their presence, and Eddie (Hal Baylor) as the clown of the drama, totally naïve and believing his jokes to be funny, while he is the only one laughing at them, which actually makes them funny for their sheer stupidity. The scenery is remarkably and consistently bleak and humdrum, a shabby restaurant and a claustrophobic home, with only some dream sequences for a relief - this is actually a drama on level with Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and others of that category. To this comes Franz Waxman's irresistible music, giving the story and the characters and their bleak world all the beauty that they are missing. It's a wonderful, tense drama which must bring about deep reflections for everybody about their own life meanings and motives.