REVIEW: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers was an “A-picture,” backed by Hal B. Wallis, one of Hollywood’s most influential producers in the mid-1940s. Wallis had recently made a dramatic career move, leaving Warner Bros. after clashing with Jack L. Warner in the aftermath of Casablanca’s success (which he produced), and setting up shop as an independent producer in partnership with Paramount Pictures. As the second World War winded down, Wallis was determined to make a mark, intent on discovering and promoting a new star to rival his former employer’s new leading lady, Lauren Bacall. He soon found Lizabeth Scott, who’s smokey voice and languid allure was exactly what he had been looking for. By 1945, before Martha Ivers had even begun filming, Wallis was already orchestrating an enormous publicity campaign for the young actress.

While married to Louise Fazenda, Hal Wallis was rumored to be in a long-term on-again-off-again relationship with Lizabeth Scott.

However, despite the producer’s determination to showcase his protege, Scott would not be cast as the title character in their first film together. At the top of the call sheet, Barbara Stanwyck was secured as Martha Ivers— the strong willed heiress at the story’s center. Stanwyck was a big-name, known for playing complex women. She had electrified audiences in Double Indemnity (1944), and as such, brought considerable clout and gravitas to the project.

At thirty-nine, Stanwyck was at her artistic peak— “sure, confident and unfailing,” as historians observed. Stanwyck had indirectly crossed paths with Lizabeth Scott previously. In the latter’s 1945 debut, You Came Along, her role had been originally meant for Stanwyck. Perhaps because of this, coupled with skepticism about Wallis’s intentions with the actress, the established star objected to Scott’s casting in Martha Ivers— but ultimately gave in (or was overruled) and Lizabeth Scott remained, cast as Antonia Marachek, a small-time ex-con who becomes entwined in the lives of Martha and two men in her orbit.

For the male roles, Wallis brought on two actors at very different stages in their careers. For the role of Sam Masterson, a drifter and wartime veteran who reenters Martha Ivers’s life years after they'd last seen each other as children, Van Heflin was chosen. Heflin had just returned from military service (he was a combat cameraman in Europe) and was resuming a film career that had already earned him an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actor for Johnny Eager in 1942). With his naturalistic style and everyman quality, Wallis may have seen him as someone who could portray an easy-going yet streetwise and morally-grey character.

Barbara Stanwyck was a known conservative and early member of the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals

However, the most remarkable casting choice from a historical perspective was for the role of Martha’s meek, alcoholic husband, Walter O’Neil— Kirk Douglas in his screen debut. In his late twenties, Douglas was working in theater, still using his birth name, Issur Danielovitch, when fate intervened. Lauren Bacall— the very same star who’s shadow hung over Wallis’s obsession with Lizabeth Scott— was a personal friend and former classmate of Douglas, and when she learned that Wallis was seeking fresh talent, she gave his name to the producer.

Wallis traveled to New York to see Douglas perform and was sufficiently impressed, offering him a screen test. Overnight, Douglas found himself in a high-profile picture alongside one of the biggest actresses in the business.

Unfortunately, according to Douglas himself, no one clarified that he was not hired to play Sam Masterson, the true romantic lead, until he arrived in LA. “When I got off the train,” he recalled, “I was promptly informed… that Mr. Van Heflin would be playing that part, not me.” Douglas, aware that he had still scored a massive break, swallowed his disappointment and threw himself into portraying the pathetic Walter— a character defined by his insecurity and cowardice.

Kirk Douglas noted in his autobiography that after an initially cold reception from Stanwyck, they eventually established a positive working dynamic.

These actors were supported by excellent secondary players, including Judith Anderson as Martha Ivers’s tyrannical aunt, and Roman Bohnen as Mr. O’Neil— Walter’s scheming father. Wallis hired the Oscar-winning director of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Lewis Milestone. Though he had never made a moody, noir picture like Martha Ivers, he was known for his versatile artistry. Paramount’s veteran cinematographer Victor Milner and art director Hans Dreier were hired to assist, weaving the oppressive grandeur of the Ivers mansion and the dingy streets of surrounding Iverstown. Legendary costume designer Edith Head gave Stanwyck an array of elegant, if sometimes incongruously glamorous outfits for a woman running a steel mill empire. Mikeós Rózsa was hired to score the project. The dramatic scores he had recently put together for Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and for The Lost Weekend were very much in line with the brooding and intense composition he would develop for Martha Ivers.

The shoot began at Paramount’s Hollywood studios on October 2nd, 1945. The war was over, but Hollywood had been plunged into a period of labor unrest, as unions of set decorators, technicians, and others demanded better conditions after years of wartime wage freezes. Director Milestone— who was an outspoken liberal and pro-labor figure— temporarily left the set to the support the strike early on. During the days when he was absent, the production did not shut down. Instead, a cinematographer named Byron Haskin stepped in to direct several scenes, and at one point Hal Wallis himself took over.

Thankfully, Milestone’s departure was not lengthy. During one scene, he suggested Heflin’s character should perform a coin trick to emphasize his confidence. Heflin learned to roll a coin smoothly over his knuckles and continued to do so throughout the movie. Barbara Stanwyck was vigilant about not being upstaged by any gimmicks, and when she saw the coin-rolling technique, she pulled Heflin aside and told him that he “should make sure he did not do it during any of her important lines.” He complied expeditiously.

The Hollywood strike of 1946 led to significant violence and property destruction, including tear gas and fire hoses used against strikers, and culminated in the passage of the federal Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted union authority.

In contrast to Stanwyck’s seasoned control, Kirk Douglas spent the shoot finding his footing in the new medium. By his account, he was extremely nervous, especially given that Martha Ivers was a big production and he was working alongside luminaries. But Milestone provided valuable advice on how to calibrate his performance for the camera, influencing the restraint that would appear on screen. Douglas’s interpretation of Walter includes one memorable line where he drunkenly tells his wife, “You’re insane. You’re out of your mind. Me, too!”— spoken as he realizes how trapped they both are by the same crime, the core conflict. This line, later highlighted by critics, encapsulates Walter’s pathetic nature.

Wallis, for his part, kept finding ways to “pad” Scott’s role and insert additional shots with her. An infamous clash occurred late in production. As the film was being edited, Wallis decided he wanted additional closeups of the actress and ordered Lewis Milestone to reconvene and shoot more footage focusing on her face. Milestone, who was likely chafed by then at Wallis’s peculiar intrusions, flatly refused— telling the producer to shoot it himself if he wanted it. So he did.

Scott's role in the film, peripheral in the script, comes across disproportionately prominent in parts as a result, with lingering shots that exist chiefly to bring attention to her. Some critics then and now have pointed out that the narrative flow is, to some extent, hampered by these indulgences. To be fair to Scott, others have said she acquits herself well in the expanded role, exuding sincerity as the only relatively innocent character. She nearly functions as a foil of goodness to Martha’s corruption— and Rózsa gives her a sweet, romantic violin motif.

Janis Wilson, who portrayed the teenage version of Martha Ivers, had a short career consisting of seven films, before retiring from acting early.

The content of what was filmed was not just shaped by these behind the scenes stories however, but also the “Hay’s Code,” which imposed strictures on adult content. The filmmakers, for instance, had to be careful about matters like extramarital liaisons and violent comeuppance. The script, for example, merely “strongly implies” that on one fateful night in 1928, when young Marta and young Sam ran off to the circus, they became each other’s first lovers— the adult versions of the characters simply hint they “lost something” that night. Additionally, it’s been noted at Sam and Antonia’s conversations are laced with “laborious dialogue” to get their sleeping arraignments past the censors. The killing of Mrs. Ivers, Judith Anderson’s role, by the teenage Martha is shot in a shadowy, indirect way— the camera doesn’t show the gruesome impact, but it’s clear what happened, she fell down the stairs and snapped her neck.

After filming wrapped in December 1945, post-production work proceeded through early 1946. Editor Archie Marshek cut the film to a final run time of just under two hours. Paramount then gave The Strange Love of Martha Ivers a prestigious rollout. It premiered in New York City on July 24th, 1946 in prime summer season. A general U.S. release followed on September 13th, 1946, allowing the film to reach theaters nationwide as autumn began. 1946 would end up being one of Hollywood’s biggest years in terms of cinema attendance, and one stuffed with remarkable films. Martha Ivers found itself up against The Best Years of Our Lives, It’s a Wonderful Life, Gilda, Notorious, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, but was generally well-received by critics and generated solid returns— grossing about $3.25 million in U.S. theater rentals. It also garnered a Best Original Story Oscar nomination for screenwriter Robert Rossen at the 19th Academy Awards and was shown at the first Cannes Film Festival held after the war, in 1947, and was nominated for the Grand Prize.

Barbara Stanwyck continued to reinforce her legacy as a leading actress in the years that followed. Notably, she reunited with Van Heflin in East Side, West Side in 1948 and B.F.’s Daughter that same year, during which she earned an Oscar nomination for her gripping turn in Sorry, Wrong Number. She would transition into smaller roles by the mid-1950s, then in her mid-40s, and after that she embarked on a successful television career.

Lizabeth Scott, by contrast, experienced perhaps the most intense and brief flash of stardom among the cast. Martha Ivers marked her introduction to general audiences, and thanks to Wallis’s continued patronage, she rapidly became one of film noir’s most recognizable stars. She was cast alongside screen legend Humphrey Bogart in Dead Reckoning and headlined Desert Fury in 1947, then starred alongside Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in I Walk Alone in 1948.

Born Emma Matzo in Scranton, Penn., Lizabeth Scott had Ukrainian-born parents and, in 1946, became the first Hollywood star to visit Britain since the end of WWII.

However as the golden age of moody, dark films began to ebb in the early 1950s, Scott’s career did as well. In 1954, Confidential Magazine infamously insinuated that she, perhaps due to her status as an unmarried and fiercely private individual, was involved in Hollywood’s “underground lesbian” subculture. Scott was mortified by this attack and sued for libel. Although the case was eventually dismissed, the damage to her wholesome image was done. It had occurred at the worst inopportune of times as well, with McCarthy-era suspicion at its height. She made her final notable film in 1957, Loving You, opposite Elvis Presley— playing a hardened publicist at the “ripe old age of 35,” as one observer dryly noted.