Gene Tierney: A Shattered Portrait. The Television Documentary

GENE TIERNEY: A SHATTERED PORTRAIT

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Gene Tierney.

Gene Tierney was blessed with great beauty and cursed with great tragedy. Gene Tierney: A Shattered Portrait works as a good primer to the life and career of this enigmatic blend of alluring and wholesome. 

A Shattered Portrait is narrated by Peter Graves as part of A&E's Biography series. On this episode, the viewer gets a standard Biography presentation that covers the subject's life and career. 

Gene Tierney was the middle child of a well-to-do family. Nicknamed "Princess", Tierny's home life was fraught due to her parents' contentious marriage. Nevertheless, she was devoted to her father Howard. She was also sheltered save for a two-year education sojourn in Switzerland. Traveling to Hollywood with her family at 17, her beauty so captured Warner Brothers' executives that she was offered a film contract at $150 a week. She was made to decline it due to a mix of her parents' objections and her age & inexperience. However, a desire for an acting career began. As a compromise, she made her society debut to fulfill her family's social obligations and then was allowed to act on Broadway.

Her debut in Mrs. O'Brien Entertains was a hit even if the show was panned. Tierney continued to work on Broadway until 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck saw her and became determined to add her to his studio's roster. She held out for a salary of $750 a week which was to be managed by her father.

Once there, Tierney was blessed with a unique ability to play both exotic women and whole all-American characters. As such, she could be cast as anything from a native girl in Son of Fury to a hillbilly in Tobacco Road. Tierney was a hard worker, forever attempting to improve. "She wanted to be a great actress, so she studied very hard", observed her first husband Oleg Cassini, one of the people interviewed for A Shattered Portrait. Tierney was disappointed in her debut film The Return of Frank James with Henry Fonda. Tierney said that she sounded like "an angry Minnie Mouse". Her work ethic was such that she would stay until sometimes one in the morning, studying scripts and watching other films to see how others acted. 

Her personal life took a turn when she met the dashing Cassini, a debonair fashion designer. Over her parents' and studio's strong objections, they married. Tierney seemed to be going from strength to strength professionally and personally. She was thrilled when she learned that she was pregnant. Tierney opted to cut back her work to prepare for her first child. She did agree to one personal appearance at the Hollywood Canteen to greet and meet servicemen and women. Here, she contracted German measles. At first, Tierney was assured that this would not affect her unborn baby.

On October 15, 1943, she found out how wrong this assurance was. Her daughter Daria was born partially blind, deaf and "severely retarded" in A Shattered Portrait's words. Shortly afterwards, she met a fan who had reminded her that they had met before. The fan informed her that she had broken quarantine to meet Tierney, her favorite actress, at the Hollywood Canteen, despite having German measles.

This was where Tierney's emotional and mental health began to unravel. The birth and fan's revelation did shatter her. As observed by film historian Jeanine Basinger if memory serves correct, Tierney carried great guilt that her fame had cost her a deep personal price. Despite this terrible setback, Tierney continued to work. She replaced Jennifer Jones as the title character to one of her best-remembered films, Laura.

On some levels, there was a split between her personal and professional life. She carried great guilt over Daria and her marriage to Cassini was frayed due to both this and his extramarital relationships. However, she also acted in some of her best work. Laura, released when she was twenty-four, was a smash hit commercially and critically. Her next film was what she felt was her best role. Her performance in Leave Her to Heaven earned her a Best Actress nomination. While she lost to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, Tierney always expressed great pride in Leave Her to Heaven.

Tierney was beloved by castmates and coworkers, always working to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, she herself could not be happy. The strain of her personal life began to slowly affect her. She had a dalliance with aspiring politician John F. Kennedy. Any fantasies of marriage were dashed when Kennedy told her that he could not marry a divorced Protestant, especially with his political aspirations. She continued smoking heavily and while there was a respite with the birth of a healthy daughter, Christina, on Tierney's twenty-eight birthday, her mental health began failing.

It was not helped by her relationship with the infamous playboy, Prince Aly Khan. Their engagement was broken only due to the fierce opposition of Khan's father, the Aga Khan. Things got worse for Tierney. She had twenty-four electric shock treatments that only made her memory and fragile state worse. One horrifying moment came when Tierney stepped out onto a window ledge for twenty minutes. She was coaxed back and had no desire to kill herself. However, she knew that something had to change.

That change came with better treatment at the Menninger Clinic. She was even encouraged to work as a salesgirl at a Topeka department store to see a different life. 1960 were a curious time for her. One of her lovers, Aly Khan, was killed in a car crash. Another lover, John F. Kennedy, was elected President of the United States. Her first husband, Oleg Cassini, became the couturiere to her former lover's wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Tierney knew also that her time as a star was fading, making her final film in 1964. 

By now, she had found love with a Houston businessman and proudly became Mrs. Howard Lee. She published her autobiography, Self-Portrait. She found some peace but was still occasionally disoriented, more so after she became a widow. Those five decades of smoking ultimately killed her. She died on November 6, 1991, a few weeks short of her 71st birthday.

Gene Tierney: A Shattered Portrait covers much ground in recounting Tierney's story. We see some of the great moments in her filmography. One gets a good appreciation for how many of her films have stood the test of time. We see her range as an actress. She could be that femme fatale of Laura and Leave Her to Heaven. She could also be the lovelorn widow in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. One would not be surprised to hear positive stories from her sister Pat Byrne or daughter Christina Cassini. Even her ex-husband Oleg Cassini speaks well of her. 

Some of her costars interviewed for A Shattered Portrait similarly express positive views of Tierney. Richard Widmark, who worked with her in Night and the City, remarked, "There was a quality about her, you can only say it was class". Her strong work ethic and great eagerness to see that her costars and crew were well-treated were also mentioned. "My mother left a very warm impression on, really everyone that she met. She was a beautiful person within and without", Christina observes.

Gene Tierney had those great highs and terrible lows. She bore them with difficulty but ultimately with strength to keep moving. Tierney gave the world great performances in great films. That, along with the shocking and deeply tragic elements that cost her years of mental anguish, should be remembered. Oleg Cassini at the end of Gene Tierney: A Shattered Portrait, I think summed up his ex-wife's life best.

"She was the luckiest unlucky girl in the world". 

7/10