JohnHowardReid Copyright 1959 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. U.S. release and New York opening (at the Paramount): 17 November 1959. U.K. release: January 1960. Australian release: 18 February 1960. Sydney opening at the Regent. 11,057 feet. 123 minutes.SYNOPSIS: "A soap opera about a Cinderella from London who came to Hollywood and took care of a noisy drunk." — Gregory Peck.NOTES: By late 1959 CinemaScope's box-office lure had so dramatically declined that Fox's publicity department offered a choice of advertising blocks — with or without the CinemaScope logo!COMMENT: Gregory Peck is certainly uncomfortable in the role of F. Scott Fitzgerald and doesn't sink himself into the character at all. It's just Gregory Peck reading lines — and reading them very badly. And Eddie Albert bears as much resemblance to Robert Benchley as I do to W.C. Fields. And there's a distasteful caricature of Alice Faye (played by Karin Booth) which is obviously so untrue (Faye must have been barely half the age at the time), it makes one suspicious of all the rest of the scenes in the film — though certainly the bit about Mankiewicz firing Fitz from "Three Comrades" is true enough, except for the fact that Herbert Rudley doesn't look a bit like Mankiewicz! Half-asleep direction by Henry King doesn't help this movie either!

Claudio Carvalho In 1936, the witty columnist Sheilah Graham (Deborah Kerr) leaves her noble British fiancé and travels in the Queen Mary from Southampton, England, to New York. She seeks out the editor of the North American Newspaper Alliance John Wheeler (Philip Ober) offering her services but he sends her to the Daily Mirror. Sheilah becomes successful and John offers a job position in Hollywood to write gossips about the stars. When Sheilah meets the decadent writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (Gregory Peck), they immediately fall in love for each other. Sheilah discovers that Scott is accepting any job to write screenplay to financially support his wife Zelda that is in asylum and his daughter that is in a boarding school. She opens her heart to him and tells the truth about her origins; but their relationship is affected by the drinking problem of Scott. "Beloved Infidel" is a melodramatic soap-opera based on the true romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham along the last four years of the life of the American writer. However, the screenplay is based on the book written by Sheilah Graham that is pictured as an angel that helps the decadent and cruel drunkard. I do not know the biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald but this version is shallow and not independent. Gregory Peck is weak in the dramatic parts and the lovely Deborah Kerr is too sweet even when insulted considering the profile of the controversial reporter Sheilah Graham, considered a bitch by the industry. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "O Ídolo de Cristal" ("The Crystal Idol")

writers_reign This film seems to have been vilified above and beyond the call of critical duty at the time of its initial release and a couple of posters on this page have seen fit to heave the old harpoon at a very underrated film. Though far from an expert on Scott Fitzgerald I have a strong feeling that he was around forty when he died and Gregory peck was forty three when he portrayed him so realistically that's about right; Deborah Kerr was thirty eight so that's also more or less realistic. By all accounts Fitzgerald retained a certain youthful charm even in alcoholic middle age and if you're looking for an actor who can do charm with one hand behind his back without resorting to the gauche bashfulness of a Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper then Peck is definitely your man especially if, as here, he's also required to brush the charm away as if swatting a fly and reveal the cruel and brutal streak beneath the surface. I've always had a problem with Deborah Kerr as a sex object, even in From Here To Eternity she didn't really convince me, I always found her far more believable as the repressed spinster of the kind she played so well in Separate Tables. The upshot was that I came to this as a great admirer of both Peck and Fitzgerald and someone prepared to tolerate Kerr. Perhaps because I was familiar with many of the situations - not least the episode which Budd Schulberg has written about so memorably both in his roman a clef The Disenchanted and in his own recollections of the time he and Fitzgerald left Los Angeles by train bound for New Hampshire where they had been engaged as co-writers on Winter Carnival; completely unaware of Fitzgerald's status as on-the-wagon Schulberg broke open a parting gift of champagne and shared it with Scott with hilarious/disastrous results depending on your point of view - and enjoy nothing more than movies about movie-making I enjoyed virtually every frame of this and found the moment at the very end when Scott is working away on The Last Tycoon and Sheilah is reading in the background and suddenly, magically, they both look up and smile a tender, lovers-only smile, resume what they are doing and then, seconds later, Scott slumps forward and is dead before his head hits the desk one of the most moving moments I've ever experienced in a cinema. I'd certainly add this to my DVD collection.

FutureMediaTV I thought it was fun. The acting was captivating to me. But I missed the beginning and the end. I wonder if they lived happily together for a long time. I thought the Last Tycoon was a great movie. Didn't the New York Publishers give him the advance he wanted? ; ) You think he drank too much? She was sort of a party pooper wasn't she?