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Has any sequence better symbolized the treatment of Kim Novak than the opening of Jeanne Eagels? A wide-eyed beauty with dreams of performing, she’s paraded around with the empty promise of a crown, before cruelly being thrown to the sidelines. The parallels to Novak practically write themselves.
There’s another scene where she’s asking, no begging and demanding for the chance at something meatier than being a cheesecake model, shot down, thrown to the hungry masses, and coolly performing the seductive motions while waiting for something better. The lines between the upcoming starlet and the doomed star blur repeatedly throughout, and this tension and synchronicity between the two keeps Jeanne Eagels engaging even when it drips into formulaic territory.
Shame that Novak’s strong work here is overshadowed by a script that is by turns engaging, frustrating, melodramatic to a fault, and generic formula drivel. The truth of Jeanne Eagels’ life was fascinating, but the script is happy to take a two-thirds-fiction/one-third-fact approach to her life. We never get a sense of the contradictory, driving forces beneath her glamorous star persona, and the film treats her as unlikable to a dangerous degree.
Any sympathy we engineer for her is purely from Novak’s work, a favorite performance of the actress and with good reason. Sure, she’s a little awkward as the innocent-but-driven ingénue, but once she becomes a destructive grand dame the placid surfaces of Novak’s face practically shine with glee at getting to tear into juicy dramatic incidents. She quakes with palpable vulnerability in a scene where she places a child’s hat upon his head, and turns feral in numerous scenes of Eagels’ drunken antics. Her death-walk to the stage is harrowing and haunting in equal measure, with her features turning mannequin-like and the light dimming from her eyes. She also looks sensational in the period costumes and makeup, with the heavy, smoky makeup accentuating one of Novak’s best features as an actress, her limpid, mercurial eyes.
Jeff Chandler and Agnes Moorehead do solid work with limited roles. Chandler is stuck as the long-suffering love interest, the man who stands by as Jeanne destroys herself with booze, pills, and other men, rushing to swoop in as a white knight. Chandler and Novak have numerous scenes of tangible erotic chemistry and romantic pull, even when the script fails their love affair, the actors at least invest some time and energy in making it somewhat palatable. Moorehead swoops around numerous scenes as Eagels’ acting tutor and surrogate mother-figure. By this point in her career, Moorehead could do this role backwards, with her eyes closed, and half-asleep. She invests more energy and dynamics into it, as she should befitting an actress of her caliber, with a scene where she fights with Jeanne Eagels about her drug abuse a particular standout.
Director George Sidney normally known for his musicals and comedies, and he equips himself well with the heavy dramatics of this story. Sidney keeps the film moving and crafts a few scenes which linger strongly in the memory. Jeanne’s horror at the discovery of an older, washed-up actress’ suicide is a tense examination of the price of fame and a strong contender for best-in-show. Pity so much of the script never lives up to these high-points, but Jeanne Eagels is an entertaining enough movie. There are far worse films to spend two hours with, and it’s one of Kim Novak’s more intelligent and fully-realized roles.
