What were Dorian's evil deeds?

I haven't seen the movie, but Oscar Wilde wrote:

"Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray's sins are no one knows. He who finds them has brought them."

In other words, it's left entirely to the reader's interpretation of how Dorian sinned.

...or do you think I'm too dumb to know what a 'eugoogoly' is?

You're right..the film makes no sense and seems to have been put together from bits and pieces of a much longer film.

Other then seducing and abandoning Sybil. Listening to that idiot George Sanders, being so vain he actually kills Basil because he saw the real picture. I don't see where he was such a terrible sinner.

It is subtly implied by Wilde that Alan (the scientist) had a homosexual affair with Dorian in the story. Wilde uses the word, "intimacy" twice to describe their relationship. Perhaps this was too much to spell out in 1945.

The Sybil Vane thing wasn't like it was in the book.

In the book, she was a gifted Shakespearean actress, performing in a cheap venue. Gray spurned her because on the night he brought his friends to see her perform, she performed badly (she'd lost her "edge" due to her love for Dorian).

Also, at the end of the film when Dorian went to the vaudeville theatre and is seen by Sybil's brother, it was an opium den in the book. I guess that hanging out in opium dens would've been considered one of his sins.


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For some reason I always pictured a donkey in the back room of the tavern?

Watching it now on TCM.

Some of his sins are implied in the flowerly language of Wilde's era:
"women who for his sake had set convention at defiance would grow pale" -- this implies he became quite the seducer of women at his own social level, promising them love and then abandoning them as he had Sybil Vale. Both in the Victorian era and in the 1940s, this constituted sin.

Others are merely hinted at, as when the men in the social clubs whisper behind his back and look on him with scorn, leaving the viewer to imagine the very worst of Dorian. Visiting the seedy haunts of Whitechapel (at the time of the story, a warren of brothels and drug dens) was shorthand for debauchery of the lowest kind, there were places where wealthy, entitled "gentlemen" went to indulge in all manner of vices away from their polished, immaculate drawing rooms and the stuffy conventions of the privileged upper classes.

His mid-film conversation with painter friend Basil alludes to many more, but obliquely so that while we're not quite sure if Dorian's explanations are true or not, his callousness about the destruction of those around him is.

Deaths he is clearly responsible for: Sybil Vane's suicide, Basil's murder.

Blackmailing Alan Campbell into helping him dispose of Basil's body - another 'sin'. We don't know what hold Dorian has over Alan, but Dorian's knowledge of a possible "scandal" might be first-hand involving relations with Alan. His suicide can be laid at Dorian's door as well.

Most of it is referred to in a subtle fashion, but you can't really miss:

1.) Stringing Sybil along, then destroying her to the point where she gives up all hope in life and commits suicide.

2.) Running around, carousing with Henry, and their implied homosexual relationship. Not that being gay is evil, but it was a scandalous thing for Dorian's time and place (19th century London high society).

3.) Smoking opium and, it is implied, doing other drugs for the sheer pleasure of the senses. He is quite indulgent with alcohol too.

4.) Killing Basil.

5.) Taking advantage of a young Gladys for his own pleasure.

This was quite a bit to put up on the screen in 1945. The film actually was banned from many places due to the implied homoeroticism alone. And even if we don't see all of his misdeeds, there is no questioning that he is doing them, and everyone is talking about them. We, as the audience, know it too, and see the painting reflect the poor lifestyle choices he is making.