?Salome's dance is a lascivious affront to public decency -provincial press please copy' hinted the 1953 Hollywood publicity spiel. They dutifully did, and Columbia made millions from affronted punters. Rita Hayworth shot this pot boiler at 35, to settle a debt owed to Harry Cohn by her first husband Orson Wells. Hayworth's experience of marital dalliance [Orson Wells, Aga Kahn, Dick Hames] and alcohol abuse somehow showed. Her sophisticated Salome has none of the presumed coquettishness of the 13 year-year Biblical original. Rita's pouting is that of the American beauty parlor harradin. Stewart Granger [Claudius], begins with dark temples and a gee shucks American accent but thankfully abandons both for his British, grey locked self. Despite Sir Cedric Hardwicke's efforts, his Laskey scripted Tiberius sounded like a turkey impersonation.
In spite of perhaps because of] the unswallowable proposition that Salome stripped for Him so that the Baptist might live, Badel thankfully, ended up headless. The idea that Badel the Baptist be beheaded has rarely been bettered; even the head was a better actor. Pity that the budget didn't stretch to a little more Herodian debauchery; it's so much more fun than Alan Badel's wearisome pedantry or Herodias's hammed collusion. 1953 audiences were unaware that Hayworth's arousal of gay Charles Laughton was about as possible as the arousal of Mrs. Lincoln's curiosity about the denouement of OUR AMERICAN COUSIN at Fords theatre, Washington.
Incredible too, that some of this vacuous calamity was shot on location in Israel. That actuality aside, as the Book of Wisdom should have said, since Hollywood profits ye better always have with you, tiresome Biblical exactitude can be so much improved. Saying at the end of the beatitude recitation that this was the beginning was a euphimism for ?this movie's got everything -and Rita Hayworth!
In spite of perhaps because of] the unswallowable proposition that Salome stripped for Him so that the Baptist might live, Badel thankfully, ended up headless. The idea that Badel the Baptist be beheaded has rarely been bettered; even the head was a better actor. Pity that the budget didn't stretch to a little more Herodian debauchery; it's so much more fun than Alan Badel's wearisome pedantry or Herodias's hammed collusion. 1953 audiences were unaware that Hayworth's arousal of gay Charles Laughton was about as possible as the arousal of Mrs. Lincoln's curiosity about the denouement of OUR AMERICAN COUSIN at Fords theatre, Washington.
Incredible too, that some of this vacuous calamity was shot on location in Israel. That actuality aside, as the Book of Wisdom should have said, since Hollywood profits ye better always have with you, tiresome Biblical exactitude can be so much improved. Saying at the end of the beatitude recitation that this was the beginning was a euphimism for ?this movie's got everything -and Rita Hayworth!