Cinema: Early to Bed

A Rage to Live. “Sex is dynamite. Nobody ever whipped it,” says Family Physician James Gregory. Nonetheless, everyone takes a whipping in this formula melodrama based on the dogeared pages of John O’Hara’s novel about a sexually prominent Pennsylvania heiress.

Teen-aged Grace Caldwell (Suzanne Pleshette) is more or less raped by a friend of her brother’s one afternoon while the servants are away. She doesn’t appear offended by it, so her subsequent rapes are, at the very worst, statutory. When such indiscretions begin to tax her mother’s heart, Grace promises to have another go at virtue, confessing quite candidly that “sometimes it just doesn’t work.” It doesn’t work at all in the Bahamas, where, after a frolic with a handsome bellhop, she returns from the beach and finds mama just lying there . . .

Friends and family are greatly relieved when Grace weds Gentleman Farmer Bradford Dillman. She becomes a lovely mother and loyal wife until a corner of the barn starts to collapse and Builder Ben Gazzara comes out to have a look at the construction. He makes a lot of trouble later, after she tires of him, and particularly after he gets himself killed, leaving evidence behind. What follows is an orgy of low-cal irony, in which Grace ultimately pays the price as only a woman pays. Doing her best to infuse a vapid role with distinction, Actress Pleshette can scarcely find enough dynamite to light up her eyes. Her eyes, though, are a spectacular fringe benefit in any film—liquid dark velvet, alive with messages that Rage cannot wither.