Madame X

Filmed at least seven times, this big-budget Hollywood version of the Alexandre Bisson saga is generally reckoned to be the most impressive. Lana Turner finds herself facing a murder charge, with her young lawyer not realising that she’s his long-lost mother., A woman married to a wealthy socialite, is compromised by the accidental death of a man who had been romantically pursuing her, and is forced by her mother-in-law to assume a new identity to save the reputation of her husband and infant son. She wanders the world, trying to forget her heartbreak with the aid of alcohol and unsavory men, eventually returning to the city of her downfall, where she murders a blackmailer who threatens to expose her past. Amazingly, she is represented at her murder trial by her now adult son, who is a public defender. Hoping to continue to protect her son, she refuses to give her real name and is known to the court as the defendant, “Madame X.”, A fallen woman commits murder to protect her son and husband from scandal., This melodrama, based on the well-known French play, begins when a diplomat’s wife disappears, abandoning her family to avoid a scandal that would threaten her husband’s career. Years later, having descended into a life of prostitution, she is arrested for murder and discovers the defense attorney is her long-lost son., Updating of the old tear-jerker. Lana Turner has some fine moments as a fallen woman who commits murder to protect her son and husband from scandal. John Forsythe, Constance Bennett, Keir Dullea, Burgess Meredith, Ricardo Montalban. Elaborately produced., (1966) Lana Turner stars as Holly Parker in the seventh film version of this dramatic melodrama. Unhappily married to a respected diplomat, Holly begins an affair with playboy Phil Benton (Ricardo Montalban). But during an illicit assignation, he falls to his death from a balcony, and a scared Parker turns to her spiteful mother-in-law (Constance Bennett) for advice. That advice is to disappear and she ends up working as a prostitute in New Mexico where, years later, her past comes back to haunt her when a blackmailer (Burgess Meredith) tries to extort money from her husband. She kills him in anger, is put on trial and finds that her public defender is her son (Keir Dullea), who she abandoned when she fled. In her last starring role, Turner turns in a tour-de-force performance in David Lowell Rich’s melodrama. Turner also stars in Imitation of Life , tomorrow.