Woman Obsessed (1959) User Reviews

Film Turns On Stephen Boyd

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 30 January 2011]

Woman Obsessed teams Susan Hayward and Stephen Boyd in a rugged northwestern about a widow and the farmhand she hires. Though set in Canada according to the Citadel Film Series book, The Films Of Susan Hayward the outdoor scenes were shot in Lone Pine, a location that director Henry Hathaway favored. He had shot The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine in that area over 20 years earlier.

When we first meet Hayward, she's a happy rural woman with husband Arthur Franz and son Dennis Holmes. But then Franz is killed and Susan's really up against it raising a child and trying to work a small farm. She hires a brooding Stephen Boyd as a hand.

Although not mentioned as per The Code, Hayward's got other needs that are subtly suggested and Boyd does have a superficial resemblance to Franz. But it's superficial only. Boyd is inarticulate and almost surly at times, especially around young Dennis Holmes.

This was the strength of Woman Obsessed. The plot could have gone in several directions, Boyd's very inarticulateness could have hidden great sadness, great humanity, or an incredible villainy. You really don't know until the end how it will turn out. Though Hayward is top billed, the film really does turn on Boyd's performance.

Also in the film is Theodore Bikel as the area's doctor, a very compassionate and humanitarian man and Barbara Nichols who just comes across too much as a wisecracking city dame. You don't find people like her in the rugged Northwest.

Woman Obsessed holds up well today. Canada still has rugged frontier area and people probably do still live the way Hayward and Boyd do.

uneven psychological drama

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 14 October 2010]

Susan Hayward, Stephen Boyd, and Theodore Bikel star in "Woman Obsessed," a 1959 film set in Canada.

Mary Shannon (Hayward) is a grieving widow with a young son (Dennis Holmes) who hires a man named Carter (Boyd) to help her with her farm. They eventually marry, in part to stop the town gossip. Carter turns out to be more troubled than he let on, and becomes angry with the boy, whom he considers a coward, and then violent toward Mary. When a crisis occurs, Mary learns what's behind Carter's outburst toward her son and the resulting violence toward her.

The acting in this film helps the movie, which is slowed down and cut up by too many establishing shots of beautiful scenery. Hayward does a good job as a strong woman who attempts to put her grief aside and move on, but finds it difficult. And Boyd is excellent as a man in great pain who faces rejection from the people he loves; the more he's rejected, the more angry he becomes.

Slow moving. It's a shame we lost Boyd so early on - he was a strong actor and very handsome.

Woman Obsessed

[CinemaSerf · 6/10 · 12 November 2023]

I found the title of this film slightly misleading as Susan Hayward shuns her glamorous looks to play "Mary". She lives happily with her husband and young son "Robbie" (Dennis Holmes) until a forest fire renders her a widow and she really begins to struggle to maintain their small farm. Things might improve though when "Fred" (Stephen Boyd) arrives on the scene. He had been working at a local lumber mill but the conflagration put paid to that. For C$80 per month, he agree to stick around the place and help out. He sleeps in an annexe to the barn and as time passes it becomes clear what's going to happen next... "Fred" has something of the "Jekyll" to him though, and as he struggles to relate to the youngster and increasingly to his new wife, we discover that he has some baggage of his own and that is seriously compromising his new family. Tempers - and the weather - flare up and soon lives are in danger. Boyd does an ok job here, but is hampered by the scope of his character. The man we see at the start of the film isn't really the violent, bad-tempered, man we see in the middle - and we only have sparse crumbs to explain this change from the rather undercooked screenplay. The production benefits from some fine cinematography, it also suffers from some clearly studio based external scenes and a snow storm that must have all but exhausted the Californian confetti supply. Hayward offers a convincing performance here as the doting mother and the film tells a story of the pioneering spirit from a slightly different perspective.

Surprisingly well-written Northwest drama

[pmullinsj · 6 April 2004]

Susan Hayward's excellence never comes as any surprise, because she could do anything. From a country preacher's wife in 'I'd Climb the Highest Mountain', to the executed (probable) murderess in 'I Want to Live', the pushy garment district broad in 'I Can Get It For You Wholesale', she also did comedy in 'The Marriage Go-Round' and played Bette Davis's nympho daughter in 'Where Love Has Gone'. These off-the-top-of-my-head roles barely scratch the surface, of course, of her peerless range.

Stephen Boyd is the rustic who comes to help out on the farm after Hayward is left with her son--played by an excellent, most sensitive child actor, Dennis Holmes--after her husband is killed fighting a fire. And Boyd is marvelous: strapping, rangy and handsome, crude and violent, and the plot twists around nicely on the refinements of life versus the necessities: During the first half, it seems as if Boyd's uncouthness is the only real urgency to be dissolved or removed; toward the end it seems as if Hayward has not been understanding enough. She would have been had he not been so inarticulate, of course. Nevertheless, this film is complex enough in terms of relationships and matters of making judgments and searching for compromises that are tolerable for different kinds of sensibilities--there are intelligent moments in which the local doctor seems to serve as psychoanalyst for both husband and wife.

It is a shame that these two weren't also paired as Oliver Mellors and Constance Chatterley: they look the parts (and could have certainly done them well) far more than any versions thus far made (and it's hard to imagine any more will be needed.)

Another recapturing of something I missed 45 years ago, when one Sunday afternoon I couldn't "go to the show" and had to go to my aunt's far older husband's birthday party, or it was their anniversary in their house in Ozark, Alabama...I hated it, but seeing this finally after all these years--and the nature of the film itself has something to do with this too--has made me happy I saw my ancient old uncle, who had once been a probate judge--and I saw him but one more time. I'd been unkind. And only now can I remember how important I know it was for him that I be there.

This was one of the most worthwhile of my childhood/teenage movie deprivations. The scene toward the end in which Robbie (Holmes) tries to kill Frank (Boyd) by leading him into the quagmire (advertised so many times previously in the film I thought the title of the film was going to be about how Robbie fell into the quicksand and Sharron (Hayward) actually became OBSESSED! since her grief for her first husband's death and her disgust at her new husband's crudeness would have been just cause if then combined with the death of her son, too; she does have a miscarriage, but that is not quite the same)and then helps him pull himself out with a tree limb--this is a truly touching and tender moment.

The only really unconvincing thing about this movie is the title: Hayward's character is under great hardship, but her reactions to the rough nature of Boyd's character are normal to say the least. She makes some mistakes, but she is just NOT a WOMAN OBSESSED. This ranks as perhaps the most misleading title I have yet encountered.

The photography, in the Canadian Rockies, is often breathtaking.

Barbara Nichols is perfectly refreshingly racily divine as a gossipy town blonde babe.

A Lyrical Hathaway Film

[kalendjay · 7/10 · 7 January 2012]

When Henry Hathaway put his mind to it, he could endow a film with lyrical naturalism -- "Niagara" and "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" come to mind. This qualifies as such a film, although it has a 50's feel that reminds one of Disney, with an aura of respectable hominess and contemporality. (Apparently it is set no sooner than 1945 because we see a jeep in the film, although the surroundings seem to be more primitive than that) This is a pretty good story about the failure of a man and a woman to communicate their feelings, or to master nature, both inner and in the natural world. Mama Bear Susan Hayward needs to nurture and protect her son, but master the controlled nature of a farm (the boy must even master the realities of cleaning a rabbit hutch, and she, shodding a Clydesdale!) Steven Boyd gives up the controlled life of a woodmill to care for her. Love is incidental, but he has a law of the jungle mentality which puts them in direct conflict over the boy.

Reviewers think it incredible that Hayward would ever live happily ever after with such a brute, but this is a story of archetypes and natural impulses, such as the desire for love and kinship that transcends rationality. I find the performances ultimately gentle and believable in conveying this fact.

Lovely rustic locales, infernally stubborn characters...

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 16 April 2010]

Producer Sydney Boehm also adapted John Mantley's book for the screen, an emotionally-tangled tale of a widow and her young son in Saskatchewan who advertise for help running their farm; a rugged yet oddly child-like logger (and an acquaintance of the widow's late husband) takes the job, while gossiping tongues wag back in town. Seems the logger has a chequered past and a mercurial temper, which should send warning signs to our heroine (Susan Hayward)--who ends up doing what all simp-heroines in soap operas do, she marries him! The opening prologue of about 12 minutes could have been dispatched with just two or three lines of dialogue, while the mix of on-location photography, studio shots and intermittent nature footage causes the film's visual sense to look mighty inconsistent. The exteriors are very pretty, yet the human drama at the forefront is blobby and unformed (particularly with Stephen Boyd's character). Hayward is less domineering than usual (and she seems to fall down a lot around horses!), but playing Mommy doesn't appear to be her forté. **1/2 from ****

The story of three screwballs who really could use a LOT of psychotherapy!!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 9 September 2023]

"Woman Obsessed" is a film about a blended family which really works out poorly for most of the movie. Fortunately, by the end, these three misfits manage to work things out...but it's very rough going until then!

The story is set in the Canadian wilderness. Shortly after it starts, Mr. Sharron is killed while working to put out a forest fire. Now, his wife and son are alone and the going is tough. Fortunately, Fred Carter (Stephen Boyd) comes to work for Mary Sharron (Susan Hayward) and helps her keep the farm going. Things seem to be going well and Mrs. Sharron's young son seems to really like Fred. Now surprisingly, soon Fred and Mary get hitched...and then it turns out to be a marriage made in hell!

What's wrong with the marriage? Well, all three have no idea HOW to be part of a healthy and functional family. Fred is a bit of a screwball...and his past really makes him an angry and poor father. Mary is a mess and it's obvious when she tells her son that "she'll never love anyone as much as she loves him (her son)"! Talk about setting up the marriage to fail! Talk about creating an Oedipal Complex! And as for the boy, he's REALLY a classic Oedipal son...and he doesn't want Fred touching or kissing HIS mom! It's all pretty wacky and all three could use a lot of therapy...but in this film, it's not like a psychologist has put up a shingle in the Canadian wilderness! So how is this all going to work out? Well, rocky...but what else?

The story is interesting and worth seeing. My only big complaint is that although the new family is a completely dysfunctional mess, everything is worked out too quickly and nicely by the end.

Keeps you guessing

[HotToastyRag · 7/10 · 7 February 2021]

Stephen Boyd had a very busy 1959. He played an alcoholic magazine editor in The Best of Everything, one of the most famous villains of all time in Ben-Hur, and a romantic do-gooder in Woman Obsessed. Quite a break for a young Irishman!

In this one, he's up against last year's Academy Award winner Susan Hayward. She's a happy wife and mother in a cute little log cabin in the Canadian Rockies, until a terrible fire takes her husband's life. Struggling to maintain her property and raise her son, she welcomes the mysterious stranger who knocks on her door. The handsome and charming Stephen Boyd gives his condolences and offers to help her out with all the manly chores. He stays in the shack by the barn, and her son takes a shine to him. Is a romance brewing? Suzy is still grieving, but soon she sheds her black mourning clothes in favor of colorful patterns. Stephen is very shy and worries about scaring her away if he reveals her feelings. He keeps his brown contacts in this movie, to keep you wondering if he's secretly the bad guy. After all, this is Messala we're talking about! Or is it Mike from Fabian Publishing? Will I tell you? Of course not. You'll have to rent Woman Obsessed to find out.

Not quite there

[railspike · 5/10 · 17 November 2021]

While the movie was competently directed and acted, Miss Hayward was wonderful as always and SB intense, the script lacked one additional real time tragedy or the like to deliver it to the next level. As an edgy family drama, there was the early accidental death of a minor character and the later miscarriage, with several near death experiences and revelations about the past, but the second half of the movie needed something more, along with an alteration of the abrupt happy ending. That said, I can still definitely recommend a viewing of the film for fans of SH, SB and director HH.

Susan Hayward: Great Movie Star

[adventure-21903 · 9/10 · 22 November 2019]

Susan Hayward had a contract with 20th and this film was done at 20th right after Susie's great sensational hit movie I Want To Live!

This film along with Demetrius and The Gladiators, White witch Doctor, and Soldier Of Fortune play all the time on the cable package I subscribe to, so a new generation of film fans can see Ms. Hayward for her beauty and acting talent.

Henry Hathaway directed this film and Stephen Boyd co-strs. Boyd died far too young, as did Susan Hayward.

Susan Hayward was Gabo's fave actress and Garbo made a visit to Hayward's home in Los Angeles. Katharine Hepburn also paid visits to Hayward as Susan was dying of brain cancer. Barbara Stanwyck was also a close friend. Roz Russell, Olivia De Havilland, Loretta Young also were friends of Hayward as were Bill Holden, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clark Gable.

A Star Is A Star Is A Star1

Susan Hayward At it Again!

[edwagreen · 25 December 2005]

After seeing Woman Obsessed, I realize that the Hollywood film industry lost such a talent when the great Susan Hayward died in March, 1975.

She epitomizes troubled women in one film after another. She was so good at it and Woman Obsessed is no exception.

As a remarried woman, still haunted by the tragic death of her first husband, Hayward shows mighty grit in this film with an on par terrific performance by Stephen Boyd, so great that year as Massala in Ben-Hur.

Boyd, as the second husband, appears bully-like in the treatment of Hayward's young son, who turns in quite a performance himself.

What made this flick so good was the wonderful compelling ending where reconciliation and good judgment come together.

***1/2 for a very good film.

Another Very Good '50s Film

[csmith-99615 · 9/10 · 5 May 2019]

In a relatively unknown film, Susan Hayward and Stephen Boyd give outstanding performances as a grieving single mom and a drifting handy man. The story is a simple one about grief, friendship and love. There's also the familiar step dad step son conflict but it's done in a very professional way. I think the '50s are my favorite decade of movies, not necessarily because there were that many great films made but because there weren't very many bad ones Definitely worth a watch.

Hayward becomes bride to broody Boyd

[DJK-5 · 1 July 1999]

This neighbors to the North melodrama was released by 20th Century Fox after Hayward's Oscar win for "I Want To Live!" It isn't a terrible film, but it isn't terribly good either. Hayward's Mary Sharron is widowed early in the story when her husband is killed by a falling flaming tree during a forest fire. Hayward grieves. Tries to run the farm herself. Is forced to hire moody Fred Carter (Steven Boyd). Hayward watches him chop wood in a tight white tee shirt and eventually marries him. Her son Robbie (Dennis Holmes) - a dreamy kid who hangs out by a quicksand pit and enjoys watching stock footage fauna frolic in the woods, has some difficulties with Carter - especially when Carter kills a deer and forces Robbie to watch the gutting. Carter gets tougher and touchier and more and more moody - he's a ball of psychological sturm und drang roiling with anger centered on his mamby pamby brother.... Carter's Canadian accent grows thicker as the plot careens toward rain and resolution. Carter rapes Mary - she becomes pregnant - Carter moves out to the barn - and threatens to leave altogether. Rain arrives, signaling: (as it always does) change. Carter carries Mary miles in the torrential downpour to town so that she can deliver her baby safely. She eventually learns of this selfless endeavor and her heart softens again. But, Carter is redeemed only after Robbie pulls him from the foreshadowed quicksand sinkhole. Unfortunately Hayward doesn't get much of a chance to crackle but fun performances and a decent amount of melodrama make this a fair one to catch.

Susan Hayward Stars!

[arsportsltd · 8/10 · 11 June 2013]

Susan Hayward was a great beauty and a great actress and was at the pinnacle of her fame during the production of this film having just won the Oscar for her legendary performance in I Want To Live.

Ms. Hayward was under contract to 20th Century Fox but was allowed outside films ( two of her finest were I'll Cry Tomorrow at MGM and I Want To Live at United Artists). 20th wanted to cash in on the Hayward fame and cast Susan in Henry Hathaway's drama Woman Obsessed co starring 20th's contract male star Stephen Boyd who matches the dynamic Hayward in a fine drama. 20th even established as a PR campaign a Susan Hayward dramatic scholarship.

I recommend this film.

David Barra Los Angeles

I loved this film, mainly because I love Susan Hayward. She is so beautiful and her acting is superb.

[SuzieQ · 25 October 1999]

I loved this movie because of Susan Hayward. But it is a good story, set in beautiful country. Stephen Boyd shows his devotion to both the mother and the son. The story line is beautiful and although it is somewhat flowery, it is believable. This is one of those memorable movies that one wants to see time and time again. And I have.

Hayward and Boyd carry this film from beginning to end

[csmith-99615 · 9/10 · 21 July 2019]

Simple story. Widow marries handy man without really knowing him and is shocked when things don't work out. There's also a seven year old boy who doesn't like to see deer cut up so he's "weak". The handy man saves the widow's life twice but almost kills the boy. The boy saves the handy man's life. Throw all this together and you've got a pretty good film with Hayward and Boyd giving stellar performances.

Drawn into the characters life, I enjoyed it.

[frdancer · 20 January 1999]

Susan Hayward, to me, played a woman obsessed with not letting go -- of her dead husband and her past life with him.By refusing to grieve and face her present life and future, she takes herself, her son and new husband to the edge of destruction. The major actors did an excellent job of characterizing individuals who are caught in a cycle of rigidity -- rigidity of emotions, personal boundaries and lifestyle. An excellent study.

Redemption

[karlericsson · 10/10 · 14 April 2012]

It's a cause for celebration when the bad fight the bad. It's also no tragedy when the good fight the bad. It's a tremendous tragedy however when the good fight the good. That is the reason that when we talk of the devil, we do not simply say that he is bad. No, we say that he lies and deceives, because that is what makes it possible that the good fight the good.

A good man overreacts towards a boy because he confuses him with someone else and cannot see the simple fact that the boy cannot see the deer he played with gutted.

A good woman overreacts towards a man because she does not ask why when the person that has saved hers and her son's life suddenly reacts strange.

Redemption lies in asking why and being terrified of only one thing, the thing that makes the good fight the good.

Our society, that is best described as "the outrageousness" or "the abomination" is a society of lies and deception. The devil's playground, in other words. It's all done by allowing secrecy everywhere so that the exploiters can go on exploiting the exploited. Business is confused with heroism instead of unmasked for the theft it really is and representative dictatorship, allowing you to choose one scoundrels amongst many, is confused with democracy. And so on ad infinitum.

Here is a film that shows how we are confused and how it results in the good fighting the good and how the only redemption lies in taking the time to seriously ask why.

Rather Man obsessed

[dbdumonteil · 21 April 2012]

The title is a misnomer :actually ,it's the male character who had a mysterious past -revealed to the doctor at the end of the movie.

Henry Hathaway has always been one of my favorite American directors :he has always been eclectic ("lives of a Bengal lancer" and "Pete Ibbbetson" the same year!);here an interesting example of the way the director has almost totally mastered the style of Douglas Sirk's melodramas (particularly "all that heaven allows" and "all I desire").

Susan Hayward was perfect as ever as the widow whereas Stephen Boyd was trying to get rid of that "Messala skin" ,a thing he could never achieve:he gives an effective performance ,very nice when he appears for the first time,then oddly turning into a crude brute before redeeming himself ;whatever he plays ,he is convincing.

In fact,the worst character is the brat :his biological father disappears in the first minutes and the relationship with his son is underwritten;thus he sometimes appears selfish and even cruel (the pitchfork);ditto for Mary:she seems to be only concerned by her own pain,and it takes the words of a doctor -who becomes a true shrink- to make her feel that others too had a raw deal in their past .

Nice use of the locations and of the animals feeling the fire in the forest.

Problems of relationships of a widow and her son with a new critical candidate for a man

[clanciai · 9/10 · 16 October 2022]

Susan Hayward was one of the greatest character actresses in Hollywood, and she never disappointed her audience. Here is another proof of her excellence, as she is partnered with Stephen Boyd as a hill-billy of the woods, but the boy will enter everyone's heart and stay there. It is a marvellous film of nature at the same time as a sharp relationship drama, and the natural sceneries with the animals, all sorts of, add important assets to the film - Henry Hathaway was not used to make such lovely pictures of wildlife. The story is simple but with grave complications underneath, as both Hayward and Boyd have difficult background stories and Boyd carrying around a horrible trauma. Both have lost their dearest beloved in fires but in different ways, Hayward losing her husband in a forest fire and Boyd losing his wife unnecessarily in a domestic fire. The tensions grow critical as Boyd has no child psychology and commits gross mistakes in hurting the boy, who promises never to forgive him, and Susan Hayward as the mother can't do much about it but suffer, which she gets reasons to do well enough. It's a crucifixion for the mother, a purgatory for Boyd and a hard education for the kid, which all three ultimately come through alive in the end, but the hardships on the way are perfectly strenuous in the very typically reliable Hathaway way.