Hot Spell

I don't know whether it's Shirley Booth's uniquely pathetic acting persona, or simple typecasting, but I always mix this movie up with her other dramas from the 50s, particularly Come Back, Little Sheba. Similarly, I repeatedly misremember this movie as a scenario by William Inge. It is 50s drama at its dankest and Inge-iest, the story of a sad family who live in a frame house in nowheresville, with a Shirley Booth mother who fears losing her husband, feels guilty about not having been a showpiece of a wife, and most of all yearns for a golden past that is probably imaginary. I wonder whether the whole thing isn't really just a recombinant pastiche of TV-playhouse clichés from the early and mid -50s: not only derivative of William Inge but with a generous dose of Paddy Chayefsky and some Tennessee Williams thrown in for good measure. The people who made this film were manufacturing a product to satisfy what they perceived as a popular taste. But I wonder if anyone could have enjoyed it or recommended it to their friends. More likely they felt depressed and unclean and eager to forget the whole thing.