{"id":5178,"date":"2014-02-07T13:03:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T18:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tr10023.com\/?p=5178"},"modified":"2020-05-22T12:36:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T16:36:36","slug":"the-picture-of-dorian-gray-the-wages-of-sin-is-yeccch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tr10023.com\/?p=5178","title":{"rendered":"‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’: The Wages of Sin Is Yeccch!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Original<\/a>

Original poster.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Q:<\/strong> What do you get when you cross Oscar Wilde with Louis B. Mayer and Albert Lewin?<\/em>
\nA:<\/strong> Oscar Mayer Baloney.<\/em><\/p>\n

Writer-Director Albert Lewin’s labor of love, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” was, surprisingly, Metro’s big prestige picture for 1945. It’s doubtful that Old Man Mayer would have chosen to give it the deluxe treatment if he had ever bothered to read Oscar Wilde’s extremely irritating, silly, pretentious book. The basic plot provides an excellent premise for a clammy little Val Lewtonesque shocker: the portrait in oil of a handsome young man grows old and diseased while its subject retains eternal youth — and his soul decays until it “be as damn’d and black\/As hell, whereto it goes.”<\/p>\n

The Artist at Work<\/span><\/h2>\n

Here’s the opening scene. Wonderful Cedric Hardwicke narrates wonderfully. Except for Gladys Cooper, he is the only person I’ve heard pronounce “secretive” as seh-KREET-ive. You will hear later in the scene that the equally wonderful George Sanders (who is the best reason to see this picture in its entirety) pronounces it in its conventional way. The painter, Basil Hallward, is played by an American actor, Lowell Gilmore, who is able to slice the Oscar Mayer Baloney pretty thin, but not quite as thin as the supremely droll and capable Mr Sanders.
\n