The Wikipedia entry for this film contains a rather mercilessly pithy
description of Malone's oil-heiress character, Marylee Hadley: "Self-destructive
alcoholic ... morenymphomaniac." Geez, like that's a bad thing. Malone dyed her hair
platinum blond for the role, which sees her nursing super-icky incestuous
feelings for brother Kyle (Robert Stack) and pretty much sleeping all over
town. The fact that said town is a company town, and the company is, yup, her
dad's oil concern -- well, it doesn't do a whole lot for the moral probity of
the general vicinity. Rock Hudson as Kyle's best pal and Lauren Bacall as the New York sophisto who marries
Kyle before glomming on to just what a wreck he is represent the only pillars of
sanity in this more-delirious-than-most Douglas Sirk melodrama. A high point of
Malone's performance, which manages to be both utterly convincing and almost
hilariously over-the-top at the same time, is the scene in which she comes home
drunk, puts on a jazz record in her room, does a little hip-swaying bad girl
dance for nobody, and kicks a stuffed animal across the room, said kick
precipitating a fatal heart attack for her father, who's in another part of the
house, just absorbing all the booze-soaked perfidy.
