The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

Joan Collins is Evelyn Nesbit, the beautiful "Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" in this 1955 film also starring Ray Milland, Farley Granger, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Frances Fuller, and Glenda Farrell. The film purports to tell the story of the White-Nesbitt-Thaw triangle that ended with the murder of White, the arrest of Thaw, and the testimony of Nesbit.

The facts are there, but as others have pointed out, the personalities are not. White (Milland) in fact was a notorious womanizer, and Evelyn was but another conquest. And while it may surprise people that beautiful, sexy "Dynasty" star Joan Collins could play demure and innocent, Evelyn probably wasn't. The unbalanced Thaw (Granger) was also a drug addict, not mentioned in the movie.

This film, which initially was to star Marilyn Monroe and later Sheree North, should have been much more exciting, given a) the story and b) the money spent on it. Unfortunately, the lack of character development holds it up. The White character remains elusive; Milland never loosens up. Granger does an excellent job as Thaw. Collins is absolutely beautiful and does a good job with the character, but the character as written doesn't give the film much of an edge.

The scene on the swing between Evelyn and White is dizzying and dazzling; and the end of the film is one of the best things about it.

Evelyn Nesbit overcame the trial, rejection by Thaw's family, suicide attempts, alcoholism, and addiction to morphine, living until the age of 82 in 1967. She served as an adviser on this film.

Richard Fleischer remains one of the most underrated of the American directors.His influence is huge,particularly in Europa:Chabrol's last movie "La Fille Coupée En Deux" is a disguised remake of "girl on the red velvet swing" -and not nearly so good.His movies dealing with criminal affairs are all interesting and form,in spite of their differences ,a well-knit group:"Follow me quietly" "Compulsion" "Crack in the mirror" and his more accomplished works "Boston strangler" and " 10 Rillington PLace" ."The girl on the red velvet swing" ,in spite of its costume drama side,belongs to the genre too.We're told since the beginning it's a criminal affair.The title is a transparent metaphor:Evelyn is not only caught between two men;she is a proletarian ,close to French writer Colette's "Gigi" in the world of the wealthy and the mighty.One of her men doesn't want to divorce and to marry her ,not because she is young enough to be his daughter but because the world he lives in is not prepared to accept such a monstrous union.If she were a rich heiress ,the daughter of one his rich customers who have him built desirable mansions ,all would be forgiven .And if the girl marries a millionaire ,it's only because he is impotent ,under an over possessive mother's thumb :in an amazing scene the mother recognizes the facts.People who know Mankiewicz's "The barefoot Contessa" will notice the similarities between the two "rich" marriages .

Like Max Ophuls' "Lola Montès" ,when her family-in -law denies her,it only remains for her to make a spectacle of herself in a theater ,a place she should never have left.The two scenes in which the girl is on the swing are the most impressive ,with a dazzling camera:there's something disturbing in the first one,when the girl asks for the moon (true and figurative sense)..But "it's only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea...it's only a canvas sky..hanging over a muslin tree"

If you made a completely factual account of the famous Thaw-Nesbit-White triangle which scandalized the folks of the Theodore Roosevelt era, I suspect none of these people would be regarded as innocent. But with 20th Century Fox entitling their film about the case The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing you know the accent will be on Joan Collins as Evelyn Nesbit as a wronged woman.

Collins with her involvements first with the married Stanford White played by Ray Milland and later marrying the homicidal Harry K. Thaw played by Farley Granger is shown as a girl just in over her head before she realizes it. In real life pushed by an ambitious stage mother, chorus girl Evelyn was well aware of her spectacular beauty even as a teen and it was as a teen that she met Stanford White who seduced her.

White on the other hand was a notorious rake, a fact his wife in the film played by Frances Fuller realizes and accepts. In the beginning he sees her off to Europe and Ray Milland is off to fun and frolic. If you see a picture of the real Stanford White he had a huge handlebar mustache which no doubt tickled many fancies. Milland plays him clean shaved.

And Harry Thaw was definitely a candidate for the rubber room. Of the three in the triangle Farley Granger more closely captures his character than either Milland or Collins. What is not shown is that in addition to his psychological problems, Thaw was also a drug addict. That was not something discussed in polite society and in fact a subject rarely brought up by Hollywood during the rule of the Code. The same year The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing came out, Hollywood finally an honest film about dope addiction with Otto Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm.

None of these people are candidates for sainthood. White, the most brilliant architect of his time was a rake, Nesbit was a gold digger and more than likely may berated have husband Thaw with tales of Stanny's sexual prowess and Thaw was just nuts.

So tilting this film toward Nesbit gave us the film we have which is not a bad one. Collins, a third choice to play Nesbit after Marilyn Monroe and Sheree North, was definitely great in the role. The film is more or less factually true, but it's all a question of spin.

Like the person that preceded me on this thread, I, too, saw this movie on the True Stories Channel, just this very morning. Over the years, I had seen bits and pieces of it, before, but never the whole movie in its entirety.

With that said, I must admit that I am a HUGE (!!!) Joan Collins fan, so it's doubtful that I would've subjected myself to the movie's excruciatingly slow pace had it NOT co-starred "Joanie." I mean, I've followed "Joanie's" career through muck ("Empire of the Ants") and mire ("The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing"), so I can honestly say that "Joanie" MAY star in bad motion pictures, but she NEVER gives a bad performance!

Yes, I agree with the other posters, Ray Milland DOES, indeed, deliver a VERY bland and wooden performance as architect, Stanford White. However, much the same thing can be said for Farley Granger, too, in the villain's role of Harry Thaw. While I can't speak for Granger, I feel I must stand up for Milland: In 1945, under Billy Wilder's superior direction, he won a much-deserved Oscar for his performance as an alcoholic in "The Lost Weekend." So, for his lackluster performance in this movie, I place the blame on the director, Richard Fleischer.

Look, this movie was supposed to be a break-out role for "Joanie." Alas, it wasn't to be. Sure, she'd go on to make other "A" movies, like "Land of the Pharaohs" and the rare Paul Newman clunker, "Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!" However, after the final Bob Hope/Bing Crosby road movie, "The Road to Hong Kong," "Joanie" was lucky to get work in TV shows like "Batman."

Fortunately, OUR "Joanie" is a SURVIVOR! Super-producer, Aaron Spelling, remembered her from his salad days, and cast her as the Super-Bitch, "Alexis Carrington," in his night-time soap opera, "Dynasty," and the rest - as they say - is history!

In a magazine with some of his work in it, wealthy and influential Stanford White comments on the model on the cover. When he sees her in the flesh he asks that she be brought to his house. Meeting her there he talks to her and the two quickly kiss. He asks her mother not to bring her back but he cannot help himself and soon falls into an affair with her as she falls in love with him. The young and innocent Evelyn Nesbit also attracts the attention of the newly rich but arrogant Harry Thaw, who charms her despite herself. With the attentions of two so wealthy men, it is no wonder that Evelyn is affected by it and the two men are brought into conflict, neither particularly caring for the other anyway.

The title made me think this film would be a light romantic comedy from the 1950's that would be distracting but not that interesting. Watching it proved to me why I should never turn away a film on the grounds of such sweeping judgements because I found it much more interesting, engaging and morally darker than I expected it to be. The plot is supposedly a true story and, not knowing the total truth of this I can only assume that it takes liberties in the way that any "true" film does – regardless though, it only adds to the value that it is based on a real case. It sees a sweet young girl be torn between two men who are both far beyond the level in society that she could have expected. The text after the titles give away that this story is leading up to a court case of some sort but the development is still good and I found the basic facts to be interesting and made all the better by the subtexts and character development that the script brought out. The character dynamics worked well but also the way the characters (specifically Stanford and Evelyn) grew and changed across the film.

Responding to this the cast were surprisingly impressive. Well, perhaps that is unfair to paint them all with this brush because the person that surprised and impressed me was Joan Collins. Maybe it is because I am the "Dynasty" generation but I never really rated her as an actress, so here I was quite taken by her range, her subtlety and her awareness of her character. It is not a perfect performance but she is a big part of the material working at more than just the narrative level. Milland is not as good because his character isn't as good but he is still convincing and seems bought into his character. Granger is betrayed by the character and falters as a result – the script puts him in one place at the start and leaves him there with little to do – he is the "conclusion" to the story but other than that he is of little interest. Support is solid enough but the film belongs to Collins and, to a lesser degree, Milland, and both do well with it.

Overall an engaging and interesting film that is a lot more morally complex that I expected from the period. The basic facts of the story are good but it is the character development that makes the film interesting and the main two actors respond well to it to produce a solid film that I found interesting, a bit melodramatic but well worth a look.