Although based on a John O'Hara novel, "From the Terrace" is another 'Young Philadelphians': a smart, heavy-going family melodrama, set from the late forties to the late fifties, with Newman as an angry young opportunist from Philadelphia…

Again the moral (which undoubted1y attracted him) is that the drive for wealth and power corrupts innocence and love… Here there's more of a motivation, the old reliable one: his father hates him... He tells his cold, nasty father (Leon Ames), "All I ever wanted was to be friends with you," then defiantly rejects the family's fairly substantial steel mill… He wants more—to make $5 million by age forty, to be better than his old man…

On his way up the cynical path to Wall Street, he ignores his marriage, driving his once-sweet wife (Woodward) to bitchery and into the bed of an old flame… He works intensively to become a high financier, but suddenly realizes how empty his life is; unlike Tony Lawrence ("The Young Philadelphians"), he drops out completely, leaving his failed marriage and flourishing career to marry a wholesome small-town woman…

Newman battles valiantly with incredible soap opera contrivances, crises and inflated dialog, but he loses… He's worst in his scenes with the decent young woman (Ina Balin), because the relationship is improbable, their talk about love is slow, and he's not convincing as the shy, gentle lover… We've seen him earlier as sexually confident and aggressive, and besides, Newman is not very good at expressing tenderness…

He's excellent at the beginning, indicating bitterness toward his father with contemptuous facial expressions, although here, as elsewhere, his tendency to show tension or self-absorption by blinking and looking away during conversations is overdone…

But with Woodward, he and the film really come to life… During their first meetings, as he comes on strong and she resists, the antagonism, flavored with overtones of desperate sexuality, reminds us of "The Long, Hot Summer." Then, in their marriage, the roles are reversed: he becomes immersed in business, and she becomes sexually frustrated, creating a highly-charged tension between them…

There's a beautifully acted scene near the end when, like Maggie the Cat, she pathetically flaunts her sexuality at him and he merely sits there with a world-weary look… Ironically, Woodward make the wife so vital and pathetic that it's hard to accept her as a bitch, and the ending makes little sense...

Paul Newman is doing his angry young man thing here, and Joanne Woodward is wonderful as she goes from rebellious rich brat to shrewish, slutty harridan. It's beautifully filmed with lots of sumptuous sets and it's obvious that a good part of the budget went to costumes. If you like movies with boozy, unhappy rich people who do little more than snipe at each other, you've got to see "From the Terrace."

Paul Newman has many more famous roles...but for some reason, this is one of my all time favorite movies of his. It comes on the Love Stories, AMC, or TCM cable channels every here and now...or you could just buy it like I did.

He's nice, determined, well-meaning Alfred Eaton, who starts off with lofty, wealthy ideas about what is important in life...the right woman, the right career, the right friends...and showing them all how important he can be when he has them. Ultimately, he learns that what is important is only what feels right to him alone.

I love his story of personal discovery as much as his love affair story with Natalie. Alfred and Natalie have this beautiful scene where they are saying goodbye, they're barely touching, but it's the most painfully romantic thing to see.

Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward have some excellent scenes in this movie also with real good comeback dialogue. He's the hardworking, decent man and she's the desperate-to-impress and just plain desperate society wife. She self-righteously and hurtfully accuses him of adultery with a girl with no guts when she's been sleeping with her ex-fiancee all along. She actually calls her lover and arranges a tryst while her husband is in the room!!!! She has guts!!!! Unbeknownst to her, Alfred has exhaustingly if unaffectedly (if you can look unaffected and disgusted at the same time, that is) done his best to makes her invisible in the room, but she probably just becomes invisible without any real effort on his part to make her so by that point. Their voices just have the most impactful tones...especially when they get to play off of each other. I can play their final scene over and over again where she says she won't give him a divorce and he says,"Any further communication between you and me will be through legal channels." He has the most genuine smile on that handsome face in that moment than through the entire movie!!!!!

This movie is actually pretty long, but not a moment is wasted. It all comes together in the end when Alfred finally chooses what he actually wants instead of what he's supposed to want.

Maybe it's because it's so subtle and not at all like a "movie" that it seems to be largely overlooked by everyone except me and 20 other people. Paul Newman is one fine, naturally classy actor, I say.

This is a wonderful movie. Gorgeous Newman, bitchy Woodward, sad Loy, great performances all around, with fabulous sets and costumes. Plus a wonderful story about the marriage of two of the beautiful people, with lots of sex and scandal and romance and fun bitchiness throughout. They had to tone down the sex in the book of course, for a 1960 movie, but if you read between the lines you will be amazed how sexy this movie really is. If you like movies about the rich and how they once lived, even if it's all fantasy, you will like this. Oh yes it's all kind of silly looking at it today, but they don't make movies like this anymore. Watch it for the sheer fun of it. But don't take it seriously. Just let yourself lay back and wallow.

This engaging 1960 Hollywood production anticipated a coming decade of changing values in America. Its script teeters a bit, emphasizing a bit more the strain of the love conflict rather than the story's real essence. This is an easy mark for critics standing by with sharp knives who may then view it as superficial. However, its real drama depicts the changing generations of an America where at one time successes was measured only by the bank account and social prominence and not by integrity, the ramifications of truth in character.

Here, we see the contrasting generations in conflict. The Old Guard embraced expediency and placed the home and its values second to business success. Once in a while, a young man came along with enough awareness to see the lie in this doctrine. FROM THE TERRACE is in its pure essence the story about such a young man. This was done with a bit more success a few years before in THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT but this drama is certainly worthwhile seeing. It is well cast and played with production values that at the time were the best that Hollywood could offer. This includes an outstanding music score by Elmer Bernstein.

As a youngster, I saw Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in person, a few years after they finished this picture, in New York. They were appearing on Broadway in a comedy called "Baby Want A Kiss," and I was passing by Sardi's on 44th Street, I believe. First to come out was drop dead gorgeous Joanne, still wearing her FROM THE TERRACE hairstyle (shoulder-length pageboy flip) & dark movie star sunglasses, accompanied by two men in suits. She ignored the crowd who screamed, "Joanne, over here!" "Hi, Joanne!" Next, Paul Newman came out (two suited men on either side) as he held a cocktail glass in his hand. Obviously on his fourth or fifth drink, he looked like Alfred Eaton in TERRACE. But, unlike Joanne, he smiled and flashed the bluest eyes I've ever seen! He even toasted the screaming crowd. Women AND men were fainting unashamedly.

Personally, I loved FROM THE TERRACE. I was just fascinated by all the glamour, wealth, sex, adultery and sheer drama (especially between Leon Ames (Paul's father) and Newman.

Joanne as Mary St. John was a stone nympho, similar to Susanne Pleshette's over-sexed character in another John O'Hara book-to-film, A RAGE TO LIVE.

It was just a joy to see Woodward wear all those fabulous clothes and look spectacular in those hairdos and 60's makeup (it was all in the eyes!) After getting propositioned on the dance floor, Mary rebuked the man who knew "all about her..." donned a tremendously long white satin coat and "floated" like a regal queen to the limo (hair in a French Roll and a tiara!) Gorgeous.

Yes, she was an adulteress, but what was a "hungry" girl like her to do when her husband didn't want to touch her?

Reading the comments on this movie tells me a lot about our culture at the dawn of the 21st century. Yes, by today's standards this movie seems to move slow and a is little dull. It was made before pornography passing for entertainment was permitted. It contains lots of subtlety and innuendo. It was considered racy when it was made.

One of my favorite scenes is when Mrs. Eaton is talking to her husband on the phone about her lover. You never see the lover in the scene, but at the end, you realize he's been in the bed all along. Another favorite scene is when Mrs. Eaton meets her husband's lover for the first time. It is in the car afterward that she asks what this woman call's Mr. Eaton.

The only disappointment is the superficial way the film treats marriage. No children are involved in this marriage and it only deals with how the husband and wife consider their lives. It tries to make a case for divorce and treats the subject far too lightly.

American Movie Classics dug through their vault and showed this one today, interminably interrupted by commercials and those inane promotions for their future broadcasts (Where do they find all those unattractive people - presumably actors...nonactors should never be required to embarrass themselves so abysmally - to pretend that they know the first thing about a worthwhile movie viewing experience?), and, as is AMCs almost inevitable wont now, non-letterboxed. Why, now that so many more households have a large-screen TV as the focus of their entertainment "centers," is Turner Classic Movies the only reliable cable network showing widescreen films in something close to their original ratios? Before big screen TVs became affordable, AMC much more often showed CinemaScope and Panavision films in a letterbox format, but no more!

Warning: possible mini-SPOILERS may follow -

Anyway, this film is an example of what the major studios passed off as "adult" entertainment, with the shackles of the Production Code becoming a thing of the past and a bit before audiences were thought to demand ever more frank depictions of the physical aspects of male-female relationships. John O'Hara's novels with their limning of the amorality of the privileged strata, couched in prose that sometimes won critical praise, preceded the trashier pulp of Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann, Jackie Collins and those other ultra-successful panderers to the reading public's baser cravings. O'Hara was a favored source of material for the moviemakers of the time when this film was produced and the results were usually sumptuously produced with "A'-list ingredients.

It could be that Paul Newman's rather stiff performance in this one might have had something to do with his being uncomfortable, as a young man of Jewish origins, portraying an avid WASP climbing the East Coast social ladder and ascending to a lofty perch on Wall Street. Then, too, he might have been uneasy opposite his real-life wife, Joanne Woodward, enacting a married socialite whose focus seems to be entirely her enjoyment of the marital bed. Ms. Woodward attacks her role with what can only be described as gusto, flatteringly made up and coiffed (as a platinum blonde), gorgeously gowned by William Travilla, and lit and photographed by that Hollywood master, Leo Tover (who manages to make the rest of the cast look very handsome as well.) Mr. Tover has an amazing filmography, with dozens of credits, including many prestige productions, and yet it appears he went undeservedly Oscar-less.

The direction by Mark Robson extracts the best from most of his cast, including venerable old Felix Aylmer, intent upon preserving a much higher ethical standard than we witness on Wall Street today; Myrna Loy, injecting a sad and very human note as an alcoholic wife and mother; and the appealing Ina Balin as Paul's true love. The incredibly prolific Elmer Bernstein bathes the proceedings in an exceedingly lush score. One can be sure that, when a piano is featured against the full orchestra in rhapsodic high tide, as it often is here, that the composer was relied upon to supply most of the emotional oomph.

All in all this film is a frigid rendering of the vicissitudes of the privileged class, warmed by some incongruous elements that ameliorate our sneaky pleasure in observing matters that should best be somewhat less exposed.

I guess they butchered the book to keep the movie within 2 hours. The book has subtleties and plots that make this an INTERESTING chronicle of life in the 20th century for a typical upper class white male. This movie is not interesting. This features a good cast -- Newman and Woodward and Patrick O'Neal. Newman takes the harder path to success, wins the girl of his dreams (Woodward) and should live happily ever after. For some reason he falls head over heels with a girl 20 years his junior and his wife decides at the same time to return to college boyfriend O'Neal. The movie somehow manages to make Woodward look like a tramp and Newman like a long-suffering man. In reality they are both cheating. So I guess hollywood couldn't admit that there was a guaranteed network of prep school and clubs for the white protestant male. They had to rewrite the book to make it appear like Newman struggled. Then the entire WW2 sequence so important to the plot of the book is skipped which means we have a happy ending instead of a man who ends up a pathetic loser.

John O'Hara;s writings, and there are many, seldom got translated to film well. Ten North Frederick and A Rage to Live are other efforts that are not worthy of the novels. O'Hara had better luck on the stage with plays like Pal Joey but his great novels just were just too big and detailed to make the move. He had a hand in the screenplay for this movie so he does share some of the blame. His great success as a writer flows from his great knowledge of the U.S. and its sexual mores in from say 1900 to 1920. This is a time when people apparently did not have sex but O'Hara makes it plain they did and made an effort to do so. Recommend his writings but the films failed and that is just so tragic. A critic once wrote that O'Hara's novels are like huge ancient ruins that when stumbled upon, the discover can not determine why they were built. That remark was written about 20 years after his death just about the time that all artists fall out of favor before their merits are rediscovered and the value of their work is confirmed.

The original novel ran several bazillion pages and told the tale of one David Alfred Eaton, who couldn't think of anything worse than being his father, a nasty steel-mill owner, and essentially becomes him. Along the way wives, children, mistresses, and the general populations of several east-coast and mid-western states and cities are dragged into his miserable wake, all of it ending with the realization that he's a worthless bastard who might as well have died after service in WWII, the last time he was of any use to the world at large.

The film shoves events forward to the years after WWII, lops off a great deal of the book, and gives everything a happy ending. Along the way, screenwriter Ernest Lehman weaves in some bitchily-amusing dialog, Elmer Bernstein gets the Fox studio orchestra to sigh and weep appealingly, and Leo Tover's wide-screen color photography makes the whole thing look like an expensive luxury item, the sort of thing that our protagonist would buy one of the women he's ignoring, hoping that they'll shut up and leave him alone . . .

It was rather gutsy of Newman to play the role of Eaton, and play it rather honestly. He makes Eaton into a cold, snarky, insufferable bastard, determined to make the whole world pay for the fact that Daddy (Leon Ames) loved his dead brother more the he ever loved the son that survived. (The scene where Dad 'fesses up to this fact is full of creepy, incestuous overtones.) As his wife Mary, Joanne Woodward also is rather gutsy, not to mention smart and sexy, particularly as dressed by the costume designer William Travilla, who never made Marilyn Monroe look this good. Her character marries Newman's in spite of the fact that she's really in love with someone else, but makes a serious good-faith effort at the wife thing, with Newman responding once every six months, and then running to the ends of the earth, not to mention the wastes of California, Colorado, and Pennsylvania to avoid spending any time with her. When she finally takes up with the old boyfriend, the movie primes you to hate the woman; I found myself wondering what took her so long. As the Sweet, Simple, Unspoiled girl that promises Eaton a New and Better Life, Ina Balin works something close to alchemy, turning a sappy cliché into a vivid and appealing woman. A woman far too good for the creep that Newman is playing . . .

Still, the movie has one of the great tell-off scenes in Hollywood history, Newman throwing a promotion and all of the crappy business ethics that go with it back in the face of the pompous bore of a boss (Felix Aylmer) offering it to him. It's corny and hammy in a lot of ways, but Newman gives it wit and zest beyond anything it really deserves. There are few things as delightful to watch as a good actor letting rip.

Yes this is a perfectly awful late 50's movie but I watched the mess until its unbelievable ending. The film is flawed for me from the start with the period set in the late 1940's but hey look its really 1960. The clothes, hairstyles and decor are wrong and annoying for the period that the film is suppose to be set in. I know that this was the general practice of Hollywood in the 50's and 60's and it always bothers me. The film was based on a long novel by John O'Hara, which happily I never read, and the film clocking in at 2 1/2 hours is a bore and a chore. Badly directed by Mark Robson who early in his career directed some nice B movies for Val Lewton but who went on to make such schlocky as Peyton Place and Valley Of The Dolls. This one is no better. It has lots of gloss and smooth hard edges, and its always a joy to see Joanne Woodward who sinks her teeth into the role of Newman's slutty wife and is the real villain of the piece and looks great in all those fabulous late 50's Travilla's gowns and frocks. Newman basically sleep walks through the film wearing a bad hair piece and looking like he would rather be anywhere but here. The film as an able supporting cast including George Grizzard actually quite convincing playing a heterosexual sex hound, An underused Myrna Loy, the very good Ina Balin, and Ted de Corsia as her father who is cast against the type of character he usually played. Look for a bit by the great silent screen star Mae Marsh as the governess. See it if you must.

Joanne Woodward steals this lengthy movie. Cast as an unthinking bourgeoise daughter with no ambition other than comfortable marriage, she lands the handsome Alfred Eaton instead of her current love, a psychiatric doctor. But she's soon back in bed with him after being ignored for several years by the success-obsessed Eaton.

Woodward is pretty and witty in this role, and beautifully dressed. Sadly, she is cast as the "bad guy" because she goes to bed with her ex-lover, although she tries all the time to get Eaton into bed with her. Finally, she tries a reconciliation, secretly knowing that Eaton is to be named a partner at his bank in her presence next day. But Eaton throws a testy scene, walks out and drives off to join his young love in Mountain City, somewhere in Nevada, and make a completely different life. Poor Joanne is left shouting "Alfred" after his taxi, a pathetic role for this actress who injected the only sense of fun and adventure into this ponderous yard. No way did I reject her: I felt sorry for her!

It's not nearly as much fun as "The Long, Hot Summer", but how could it be when it's loosely based on an O'Hara novel (which means that it has to be turgid, self-important trash). But it's still fun. In some ways it's even more enjoyable to see how they've butchered O'Hara's novel, since they leave out more than half of it and cast Newman as a sort of hero (damaged by personal tragedy), instead of having him be a contemptible loser (as he was in the book). There are a lot of these late 50's to early 60's movies that were based on "organization men" stories from the 50's ("Cash McCall", "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit", and "From the Terrace" being those that pop to mind), and every one of the movies mangled the books. Interestingly, I think that the one that was closest to the book, TMitGF, was by far the worst movie. It's odd on reflection how similar these books are, and how randomly different the movies are. I don't know if all of the writers suffered from existential nausea or if it was just that this sort of thing sold books, but I never saw it get to the screen.

Not all the acting in this movie works, Paul Newman is too reserved in his acting at times and the others too; but then there are steady moments where the intelligent script addresses real issues about American Society.

Issues that are still relevant today. Chasing 'success' at what price; mixed feelings among all the players of the local play; natural attractions turning into betrayal and games. Every dumb thing that still goes on in relationships in our sadly repetitive american society.

It should get more attention now, and it should have gotten more attention when it was released, because it's a good one. I liked the script even though a little bit melancholic at times it still works. Paul Newman's performance was on a level, a classy one (there's no other way you can play this kind of character, cuz it wasn't a kind of troublemaker or a bad boy character, which is what got attention at the time this movie was released), Joanne Woodward was good too.

The Story is treated fairly, it doesn't get boring at any specific point, and the ending is a dramatic one.

The problem is that it is hard to find it, most of the people that have seen it, have done so from the cable.

And for those who have enjoyed this one i would strongly recommend Paul Newman's "The Young Philadelphians" (1959), - absolutely ignore the ratings and give it a shot.

In the mid-'50s, John O'Hara's novels were made into big movies in Hollywood, with mostly mediocre results: "Butterfield 8," "The Best Things in Life are Free," "Ten North Frederick," "View from the Terrace," and in the '60s, "A Rage to Live." His books were perfect for Hollywood: Plenty of sex, infidelity, and money. The film versions very often were vehicles for newer stars such as Suzy Parker and Suzanne Pleshette. In the case of "From the Terrace," the script benefited from having Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the leads. Unfortunately, it didn't help.

One problem with "From the Terrace" is an uncertainty on the part of the viewer as to what the story is about. It starts off with a young man returning from the service to find his mother a hopeless alcoholic (what amounted to a bit part by Myrna Loy) who has a boyfriend on the side, and a father who loved his dead son more. Oh, it's the story of a dysfunctional family, a sort of '50s "Ordinary People." A family drama of a man fighting for his father's love and his mother's salvation. Then they disappear. He meets a socialite not in his class. She's engaged to someone else. Ah, the story of a man and woman fighting her parents and class as she marries beneath her. Then the father approves the marriage. Our hero goes into the airplane business. Ah, a story of a man making good through entrepreneurship in post-war America and becoming a success despite his father's low opinion of him. Then he leaves that partnership.

And so it goes until we get to the point - he's married to the wrong woman, he spends to much time building his career after he saves the boss' grandson from an icy death, his wife cheats on him, and he meets the woman he should have married.

It's all too long, too disjointed, and too boring. Watch until you see adorable Barbara Eden throw herself at Newman at a party (it's near the beginning), and then turn it off.

The star of this film is the acting. In particular, Myrna Loy did a great job as a lonely alcoholic and Paul Newman and the rest also were in excellent form. For the performances alone, this is a film worth seeing. And in general, it's a very interesting story but there are some inconsistencies that make this film good but definitely not great. One problem is that Newman in the first 40 minutes of the film is so different from the character he later becomes--so much so that it looks like the writers changed their mind about the script but didn't bother re-doing the first portion. While having Newman essentially re-create his mother and father's relationship is brilliant, the steps getting to it just weren't hashed out well--it was like a fairy or witch cast a spell on him since the change just came out of nowhere. Also, late in the film after Newman single-handedly destroyed his marriage and alienated his loving wife from him, the movie then takes a rather sanctimonious course. Newman is now behaving like a crusader for right and basically blames his originally long-suffering wife for half of their marital woes! This wasn't what had happened in the film--it was almost all Newman and ending it that way just didn't make sense. And implying that Newman suddenly and miraculously changed just seemed unreal--after all, he'd just spent years being a distant workaholic and now he was giving it all up?! If the movie had shown him either NEVER change or vow to change but make his second marriage mirror the first, then this would have been a much more realistic and satisfying film. As it is, it's decent but not an essential film by any stretch.

. . . oh boy, are you in trouble! As blonde tartlet Clemmie Shreve, she sashays up to Paul Newman during a party scene, asks him to dance and is rebuffed with a rude comment. Then she disappears. And so does the movie, really. Barbara's disappearance is emblematic of this film's greatest flaw -- it's centered on an inert lump, a grumpy jerk played by Paul Newman, while the more lively characters are all underexposed. In a film with both Myrna Loy and Joanne Woodward as drunken adultresses, Patrick O'Neal as an epicene society psychologist, George Grizzard as a suave but ruthless tycoon and the aforementioned Babs, who hogs most of the screen time? Newman, as a hard-driving, emotionally retarded dullard who finds his true love in the insipid Ina Balin. (If only Barbara were playing Jeannie, who could turn Newman into a ferret with one blink of her lovely eyes.) Although I've never actually seen it, I'm sure that the existential angst of an alpha male WASP can make for a decent movie -- but "From the Terrace" ain't it.

To his credit, Newman, as Alfred Eaton, looks embarrassed through most of the movie. And with good reason. His character is self-absorbed, insensitive and something of a lout, i.e. a perfect anti-hero. Newman plays anti-heroes as well as anyone, but the script posits this creep as a hero and, even worse, a victim. His parents neglected him (Elmer Bernstein provides the violins, which is good, because you won't want to) and his trophy wife Woodward isn't grateful for the fact that he spends almost no time with her (and she isn't mollified by the fact that she can afford a chic black-and-white wardrobe that matches the chic black-and-white decor of her apartment -- there are scenes that are so monochromatic you wonder why they bothered with the Technicolor).

One scene encapsulates the whole movie. Early in the film, we learn that the source of Newman's Oedipal rage is his alienation from his Dad, played by Martin Amis. Well, boo-hoo, who doesn't have problems with their father? But Amis breaks down crying in front of Newman, remembering another son who died as a little boy. What does Newman do? He just kind of stares, wide-eyed, and doesn't say a word. "What a wounded soul," we're supposed to think. "What an a--hole," we actually think. If you want to wallow in pedantic direction, outsized production values and dime-store psychology, by all means, watch "From the Terrace." If you want to respect Paul Newman, skip it.

Having not had to temper my judgment by having read the book (never read much O'Hara), I guess I still knew this movie was contrived and superficial. But, somehow, I never cared. I never believed it for a minute, but always enjoyed it. Sort of like a song you never really liked, but associated with a certain time; you still listen to it even though you still don't quite like it.

I am still puzzled as to what Alfred sees in the Ina Balin character, and what Woodward sees in the O'Neal character. Go figure. Mr. McHardy is a hoot! More like Scrooge than Wall Street.

A good example of the blandness of the 50's and early 60's.

Have read a few of the other reviews, and I am not trying to write a "review," I am trying to put in my two cents worth about a movie, so that others may take them and use them to their benefit. The actors got me right from the beginning, and they had me by the nose all the way through this. I was with a very nice young lady as we sat in the car, yes in a "drive-in movie," we were hooked, the only necking we did was during intermission when the movie was over. ALL the actors earned their pay, I don't know what the author had in mind when they wrote the story, I don't know what the director had in mind, but - I sure did enjoy what I saw. I thought the ending to be very nice, and the photographic scene to be the most shocking. Rent/buy it if you like romance and a tale about big money because, this is it. My thanks to all who worked on this movie.

that a man is promoted by saving wealth financiers (MacHardie's) grandson from drowning in a Delaware pond, then the film is watchable. Almost.

Joanne Woodward is too shrill, and I guess given this edge to demonstrate her ability to act the villain, a cheating wife married to all American Paul Newman, a man on his way up the corporate ladder. The actor who portrays Creighton Duffy is noteworthy, a corporate weasel if ever there was one.

The part Myrna Loy has is a thankless one, Newman returned from the war ready to make his mark on the world. The clichés abound, as the story evolves into workaholic, failed enterprise, meddling in-laws and faithless wife. Woodward's costumes are noteworthy, and there are a few cameos (George Grizzard and Barbara Eden) worth noting.

Overall worth watching as a curiosity of the times. 7/10.

(Flash Review)

While not a unique core plot, it is highly engaging to watch how the story of a man driven for success leaves little time for the woman in his life. Paul Newman plays a young man trying to be his own man and get out of his father's successful legacy. Kicking off his business plan to generate financial profits, he begins to work his way up the social ladder as well as mingle with high society women. Will he have a stronger relationship with his business objectives or with the opposite sex? Will any holes he digs for himself become future potholes and will his life values ever mature? Basics questions asked in many dramas but they unfold in an entertaining way as you live the high life with Newman and many interesting story subplots in this well-written and paced drama.

Screenplay based on a novel by John O'Hara in 1958. One of a dozen films Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward did as husband and wife. They stayed married until Newman died in 2008. The film cost $3 million and grossed $5 million. So it was major deal in those days but was not a runaway success. There was quite a lot of adult content for the time which was surprising. It was certainly apt for the time but all the concern about divorce makes it a period piece but an accurate period piece. I find all the filming on sets restrictive as I am spoiled by modern location and outdoor shooting. Although it is certainly not a great work. Will give it a solid 7. RECOMMEND

In this story from 20th Century Fox about a young man returning from his tour of duty after WWII and then working to climb to the top of the ladder with a top New York business firm, Paul Newman, his wife Joanne Woodward, and Ina Balin seem to perform great acting feats. In a sentence, the story is about, again, an ex-soldier, David Alfred Eaton, trying to make it to the top in the business world, but is mistreated by his boisterous, arrogant father Samuel Eaton (and Leon Ames does a good acting job here in that role) and has a rocky marriage with his sometimes hostile wife, (played by his real-life wife Joanne Woodward,)and then finds warm love in the young lady Natalie Benzinger, played by Balin. The time setting is from 1946 to the early '50's, and NYC has that look in the movie. Myrna Loy does a good acting job as Martha Eaton, David's drunk mother. In the story, while David Eaton is, again, at odds with his wife, and simultaneously does find warmth and love in another woman, you're lead to believe that while infidelity is not to be defended, neither is hostility in marriage. It does end on a warm note, and the cast lends much to it being a great dramatic feat.