Betrayed ** (1954, Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Victor Mature, Louis Calhern, O E Hasse) – Classic Movie Review 6,665

MGM’s 1954 romantic spy drama film Betrayed stars Clark Gable as a wartime Dutch spy boss who recruits Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner) to liaise with dashing Resistance leader The Scarf (Victor Mature).

MGM’s creakily old-fashioned 1954 romantic spy drama film Betrayed stars Clark Gable as a wartime Dutch spy boss who recruits Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner) to liaise with dashing Resistance leader The Scarf (Victor Mature).

Producer-director Gottfried Reinhardt’s creakily old-fashioned 1954 MGM romantic spy drama film Betrayed stars Clark Gable as Colonel Pieter Deventer, a wartime Netherlands spy boss who recruits Carla Van Oven (Lana Turner), a woman working for the Allies to act as liaison with a dashing Dutch Resistance leader called The Scarf (Victor Mature) over the British attack on Arnhem.

But then Deventer is left having to discover if resistance worker Carla Van Oven is actually working for the Allies or is in fact a traitorous Quisling. The studio mounted some of its big name acting guns – Gable, Turner, Victor Mature, Louis Calhern and O E Hasse – but largely in vain, for this movie is an often unconvincing disappointment, with the stars struggling in miscast roles. This material might well have worked much better with original choices Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark and Ava Gardner.

The screenplay by Ronald Millar and George Froeschel is based on the story of turncoat Dutch resistance leader Christiaan Lindemans, also known as King Kong.

It was made on location in Holland (and England), which helps to explain the neighbouring British-based support cast of Wilfrid Hyde White, Ian Carmichael, Nora Swinburne, Anton Diffring, Niall MacGinnis, Roland Culver, Leslie Weston, Christopher Rhodes, and Brian Smith.

Location shooting took place around Maastricht in Limburg, Netherlands. The interiors were shot at MGM’s Elstree Studios near London.

Gable quit MGM after this critical flop film (his contract ended in March 1954), though even so it was a box office hit, costing $1,674,000, grossing in $1,970,000, for an overall take of $4,270,000 worldwide. MGM recorded a profit of $821,000, so they must have been sorry to see Gable go.

Betrayed runs 108 minutes, is written by Ronald Millar and George Froeschel, is shot in Eastmancolor by Freddie Young, and is scored by Walter Goehr and Bronislau Kaper, with Art Direction by Alfred Junge.

Release date: September 7, 1954.

It is spoofed in the 1984 Val Kilmer film Top Secret!

It is the fourth and final pairing of Gable and Turner, and their third set during World War Two, playing comrades as well as lovers in all three. They also appeared in Honky Tonk (1941), Somewhere I’ll Find You (1942) and Homecoming (1948)

Diana Coupland dubs Turner’s singing voice for ‘Johnny Come Home’.

Also in the cast are Glyn Houston, Thomas Heathcote, Carl Jaffe, Peter Martin, Ferdy Mayne, Arthur Mullard, Reggie Nalder, Mona Washbourne, Richard Anderson, Basil Appleby, Wolf Frees, and Theodore Bikel.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,665

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