Helen Hayes: one of the worst movie performances ever!

The movie's theme is not what makes this a truly BAD movie. It's the direction, acting, writing, editing, dialogue, photography, etc.

Hayes was extremely bad. True, she was handicapped by mediocre dialogue, but she didn't have the acting chops to rise above it, as other cast members did.

"Just because a movie is anti-Communist doesn't mean it is a bad movie."

Who said said it was?

"Some of the dialog was quite bad, but you can't blame that on Helen Hayes."

No, but I sure can blame her for her poor delivery of her lines. Walter Huston said, "Hell, I ain't paid to make good lines sound good. I'm paid to make bad lines sound good." If that held true for everybody, Helen "Hammy" Hayes would have had to work for free. Hers was without a doubt the worst performance I've ever seen--and heard--by any actress. She, being only 5' or so, apparently thought petite=cute. She was wrong.

Engrossing? Hardly. It was boring.

I don't object to the subject matter. I know what the political atmosphere was in the 1950s, and I'm sure there were many families like this one. But McCary handles the subject matter with such a heavy hand, and he lost his way directorily. Walker's untimely death certainly affected the movie's ending, but that small mess could have been tolerated, had what preceded it been better.


The film was a box office failure, during a time when anti-Communist sentiments were very high. I guess that says something.

I agree that Robert Walker was a superb actor. So was Van Heflin. His PATTERS is excellent. JOHNNY EAGER, showcasing Heflin's Oscar-winning role, is a pretty good movie and turns up often on Turner Classic Movies. He does a very fine job, worthy of his award.

I still say Helen Hayes was bad. Perhaps someone like Shirley Booth could have been credible. She certainly was a much better actress.

What this thread fails to address or even acknowledge is that Ms. Hayes was always a celebrated and revered actress of the stage, but rarely and very sporadically of the screen. The acting techniques for each of the two mediums are very divergent; the stage requires bigness, the movies do not, and while Hayes had contributed brilliance to Broadway in the 17 years just prior to MSJ, she'd been absent from film during that time. She was no beauty (except perhaps in her youth, and was 52 when MSJ was released), and never statuesque, two qualities that mattered less on the stage. I personally loved what I saw of her stage roles, but was by no means as impressed by her role in "Airport" (a bit too broadly drawn for my taste), or as the Dowager Empress in "Anastasia" (she didn't look the part, to me).

These things said, they don't excuse her from the level of overacting she's guilty of in MSJ, though IMHO they go a long way toward explaining it. I'm getting immensely tired of today's revisionist campaigns to debunk the prowess of such greats as Olivier and Hayes, largely because they can no longer prove themselves via their stage roles, at least.



"Believe not what you only wish to believe, but that which truth demands"