The Goddess (1958) User Reviews (32)

Devastating - the most complete testament to the art of Kim Stanley

[grahamclarke · 8/10 · 14 August 2006]

In "Broadway: The Golden Age", Rick Mckay's wonderful documentary, Kim Stanley receives tremendous praise from all the great actors of that time as being especially influential. With the publication of her biography there seems to be a renewed interest in her life and career.

Unfortunately very little is left in the way of documentation of her talents. She came to movies after a career on Broadway and a number of live television plays. But her film career was not to be, owing to the many personal problems she suffered from, which seemingly burnt her out.

"The Goddess" was her first film and it remains the most complete testament to her talents. As such, it really is a must for anyone who appreciates the art of acting. The title role allows for a huge range, from hopeful teenager to jaded Hollywood star. Although clearly too old to play a teenager and definitely no screen beauty worthy of the title "goddess", Stanley pulls it off with the sheer force of her acting. Her portrayal of the breakdown of the actress is devastating. It's particularly disturbing in the light of the similarity of what would become her very own fate.

Paddy Chayevsky paints a bleak picture of the Hollywood Star system as he would later do with network television in "Network". Although well written, it's not an especially astute script lacking in both scope and depth. There is good support form Betty Lou Holland and Lloyd Bridges, but the only reason to seek this one out remains Kim Stanley.

New Kim Stanley fan

[swinms · 7/10 · 27 March 2007]

I recently caught this movie on TCM and loved every second of it. Kim's accent gets a bit tiresome but the overall effect is great. Love the scene in which Patty Duke, playing The Goddess as a neglected child, pathetically tells her cat that she got promoted to the next grade in school. This movie contains all of the tried and true "money and fame aren't everything" requisites. I wish Kim Stanley had tried her hand at Tennessee Williams. She has that "Geraldine Page" affectation that Mr. Williams apparently appreciated. I remember her from "Frances". It's too bad she didn't do more movies. The Goddess is a wonderful look at late 50s Hollywood and the inherent danger in getting what you've always wanted.

Great performance by Kim Stanley!

[marlene_rantz · 8/10 · 23 December 2015]

After watching Kim Stanley give an absolutely great performance in "Seance On A Wet Afternoon", I wondered if that was a one time great performance! I recently watched "The Goddess", and I got my answer: another great performance by Kim Stanley, and so I now conclude that Kim Stanley was a great actress, and, by the way, in looks and acting style, she reminded me of another great actress: Geraldine Page! In this movie, she portrayed a Marilyn Monroe type woman who sought stardom in Hollywood, but paid a heavy price for it! The supporting cast was good! I rather liked Steven Hill's excellent performance as her first husband; likewise, Lloyd Bridges excellent performance as her second husband! Also worth mentioning was Betty Lou Holland's excellent performance as her mother! An interesting movie worth watching for Kim Stanley's great performance!

looking for love in all the wrong places

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 27 January 2010]

Paddy Chayefsky's "The Goddess" from 1958 stars Kim Stanley, one of the great actresses of our time, as a Marilyn Monroe type, a lonely, unloved girl who finds stardom in Hollywood but ultimately self-destructs. It should be noted that the movie predates Monroe's death by four years.

Chayefsky is responsible for such screenplays as "Network," "The Hospital," "Marty," among others, and, frankly, "The Goddess" is one of his weaker works. There is very little in the way of character development - events happen very quickly, skipping over years, hitting the high points, with very little in between. For instance, Emily Ann (Stanley) talks about her nervous breakdown, but we don't see it. She makes reference to past promiscuity while talking to her second husband (Lloyd Bridges), but all we see is an invitation by a studio head to come to his house.

The film is notable for the tour de force performance by Stanley who, despite the gaps in the story, creates a vivid characterization of a desperate, ambitious, easily influenced woman looking for someone to love her. Stanley absorbs all of Emily Ann's changes of mood as well as her temperament. When Emily Ann is recently home from the sanitarium, she receives a visit from a director (Werner Klemperer) and his wife. She's hyperkinetic, a ticking bomb; the next time we see them visit, she's found Jesus and acts calm and centered. One can see here that she must have been a magnificent Blanche DuBois, a role she performed early in her career.

"The Goddess" seems to have been made on a tight budget; it certainly doesn't look like a glossy Hollywood film. Stanley was 40 when she made it, and her role begins when the character is 19. There's no attempt anywhere in the film to make her look younger or like a starlet or a movie star. Yet she makes you believe the whole thing.

It's a pity Stanley didn't make more films, but "The Goddess" gives us an excellent idea of Kim Stanley's magnificence as an actress.

Kim Stanley the main reason to see this one

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 7 July 2023]

"There ain't no God! Do you hear me? There ain't no God!"

Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky traces the arc of celebrity from troubled childhood, never feeling loved, being used by men, and the feeling of loneliness despite fame. He channels Tennessee Williams early on especially, with a poor teenage mother in the South dumping off her child with her brother so she's not tied down. The child grows up and searching for a connection, becomes sexually promiscuous, and marries a man who gives her an inroad into Hollywood. He's got problems of his own, and he sardonically summarizes their relationship by saying "You have a passion for respectability, I have a horror of loneliness - that's love." She leaves him and her child, ironically parroting the sentiments of her mother.

The woman (Kim Stanley) achieves fame after a second marriage to an athlete (Lloyd Bridges), posing nude and makes herself physically available to powerful men in Hollywood. All of that is just alluded to which is understandable, but it was frustrating that the rest of the woman's professional life was also described at a distance, and never shown. The result was a film that wallowed in overwrought speeches and was emotionally one-sided as it played out. Kim Stanley is the main reason to see it despite a script that languishes, and she has some fine "method" moments, especially in the charged scenes with her mother (Betty Lou Holland). Unfortunately, she's far less successful playing a teenager, not acting or looking the part in the slightest. Overall though, this is just not a strong enough vehicle for her, as interesting as she was. Terrible ending too.

A Black and White Miracle

[robertklein-ca · 10/10 · 21 November 2010]

I'm ashamed to confess I didn't know the first thing about Kim Stanley when I saw "The Goddess" Now, she is someone who lives within my psyche. To say that she's remarkable seems feeble. She is, something else, something more, unique! Her character through her got into my system and stayed there. The sadness of the story, written by Paddy Chaeffsky no less, harbors something prophetic. I can't quite put my finger in it but this was 1958 and talks about things we really start to understand now. I'm writing this review in 2010. John Cromwell (Of Human Bondage) directed, Steven Hill (Law and Order, Lloyd Bridges (Jeff's and Beau's dad), Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker) lend extraordinary support. For lovers of great acting. You can't afford to miss this extraordinary experience.

I saw this film a long time ago in New York and have wanted to see it again ever since

[lacreme · 30 December 1999]

I saw this film a long time ago in New york and have wanted to see it again ever since. I remember that Kim Stanley was, maybe, the most astounding actress I've ever seen. She had depth few actress' possess now days. Only Meryl Streep comes close. It's worth it just to see, what many of the inner circle of the New York Broadway group of the time called Americas greatest actress, do her thing.

Were all put on this earth to suffer

[kapelusznik18 · 7/10 · 27 April 2014]

***SPOILERS*** Paddy Chayefsky's thinly disguised biography of Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and what fame did to her and those close to her. Kim Stanly plays the part of Emily Ann Faulkner a local girl, from rural Maryland, who made it big in tinsel town and in the end paid for it. Working her way up in mostly non speaking parts in mostly B-movies Emily got her big brake after she married former light heavyweight champion of the world Dutch Seynour, Llyod Bridges, who in fact saw more of Emily Ann then anyone in the movie. This was after a failed marriage with son of major movie star John Towers, Steven Hill, whom she had a daughter with and who deserted them both to go overseas to fight fascism in Nazi occupied Europe wishing that he'll never come back alive. It's much later that a sober and reformed Towers does come back to Emily Ann together with the couples 14 year old daughter, Gial Haworth, but by then Emily Ann is so out of it she's in no condition to see her.

The film mirrors Marilyn Monroe's career in Hollywood where she became the biggest star in films but paid dearly in the lifestyle she lead off the screen that in the end, that's 4 years after the movie was released, ended up losing her life at the young age of 36. It's the death of Emily Ann's bible thumping mom Laureen, Betty Lou Holland, that really pushed her over the edge. We see Emily Ann slowly self destructs and become addicted to pills and booze to the point where the only thing left in life to her is the movies that she stars in that make money for the studios. We get to see Emily Ann go from a beautiful and talented actress to a bed ridden pill popping wino in less then ten years, 1947-1957, not at all caring what will happen to her in the future.

***SPOILERS*** It's a true story in many ways of how fame can destroy the person who has it and Kim Stanley does an amazing job of acting to make that point on the screen. We've seen so many similar cases in and out of Hollywood of people who seem to have the world in their hands and at their feet and then end up dead or institutionalized because of the pressure it, fame, demands of them which they can't handle.

Immortalizing Kim Stanley

[borromeot · 10/10 · 20 June 2007]

I'm a sucker for great, enormous performances. This is the ultimate expression of that. Kim Stanley was 40 years old when she made this picture, her first. Apparently Paddy Chaeffsky, John Cromwell and a group of brilliant actors decided to put their efforts together and create this vehicle for one of the greatest actresses that ever lived. I. for one, will always be grateful to them for their generous and visionary gesture. The film cost, 5.000$ but it's worth a fortune as the surviving (immortal) document of an unrepeatable personality capable and willing to drown into another. Although Marilyn Monroe was not only alive but at the top of her game at the time. This devastatingly sad story seems to reflect Marilyn's own. Kim Stanley is glorious, glorious! If you're interested in acting as art. You can't miss this extraordinary movie.

A Mixed Blessing

[rube2424 · 7/10 · 7 March 2007]

We have come, over the years, to venerate the famous, no matter how good the work they turn out. Paddy Chayevsky wrote some great works, MARTY, of course, for one. THE GODDESS is not one of the them. In order to make a "well made play", Chayevsky leaves out a great deal of much needed character development. Things happen quickly; too quickly in fact, to either have a semblance of truth or make us feel anything for any of the characters. Instead of agonizing over the rise and fall of THE GODDESS, we spend the whole time trying to piece things together to see if the main character IS based on Marilyn Monroe after all. Look...instead of a baseball player, she marries a boxer! "Is that supposed to be Joe Mankiewicz talking about her in that scene? Is that Daryll Zanuck inviting her back to his home? Is the film she's talking about supposed to be GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES? ALL ABOUT EVE? What should be a heart wrenching drama, turns out to be instead, a far from subtle, far too short and badly over written Hollywood guessing game.

The wonderful Virgil Thompson did the musical score, but here it is totally out of sync with the rest of the film. His jaunty melodies put us in mind of the WPA films he did with Pare Lorentz instead of the background to a human drama. (To see how good a score can be in illustrating the images on the screen, go to Leonard Bernstein's amazing work for ON THE WATERFRONT.)

But the acting IS good. Thank goodness we see what a fine actress Kim Stanley was. Some of her moments, especially the quiet ones, are breathtaking. Sometimes, alas, she is allowed to go over the top. At her best in this film she gives one of the screen's greatest performances; at her worst, and there are moments, she is a caricature of every Tennessee William's female character with a little Eunice from MAMA'S FAMILY thrown in for good measure. Happily, the good moments far out number the bad, and one should see THE GODDESS to see why Stanley is so justly venerated. (Lloyd Bridges and Elizabeth Wilson are also good.)

THE GODDESS should have been a masterpiece. Instead what we get is nothing more than a fairly good film. No matter how good its pedigree, THE GODDESS turns out to be no more than a mixed blessing.

"The great...ultimate ache...of desolation"

[moonspinner55 · 5/10 · 3 March 2007]

Paddy Chayefsky's monologue-heavy lambasting of the Sex Symbol mythology stars Kim Stanley as a troubled young woman from Maryland who comes to Los Angeles in the 1940s to work as an actress and becomes a star. Queasy, peculiar melodrama seems to blame show-business for the girl's plight, but we can clearly see from the beginning she's an extremely insecure person, able to attract people but not capable of keeping them. Stanley does everything she can with this role, but she looks much more mature than the men she's paired up with, and Chayefsky does her a disservice by having everyone talk about what a talent she is but never letting us see for ourselves. It's a busy, chatty movie that tries on different themes like pieces of wardrobe before discarding them (and most of the male characters follow suit). Patty Duke (pre-"The Miracle Worker") has a nice bit playing Stanley's Emily Ann as a grade-schooler, and the black-and-white cinematography by Arthur J. Ornitz is quite good. Not a success, though with flashes of interest throughout. ** from ****

One Goddess plays another

[qmax · 10/10 · 3 January 2002]

Kim Stanley was the great interpreter of William Inge at the time he was the most successful playwright in America. On Broadway she played Millie, the younger sister, in his "Picnic" and Cheri in "Bus Stop" -- ironically, the role played in the movie by Monroe, the model for "The Goddess." Cast in "The Goddess", Stanley is clearly too old for the part, and not cinematically 'beautiful' enough. What she does bring to the role is an astonishing talent based on flawless technique and an emotional sensitivity that both made her career and destroyed it. I ran across the movie by accident when I was about 12 years old, and Stanley's performance has continued to haunt me for 36 years. The making of "The Goddess" was so emotionally agonizing that Stanley essentially fled from the movie business. How brilliant she would have been in dozens of roles that won acclaim for lesser talents. Many years later she played Jessica Lange's mother in "Frances" -- a similar story of a glamourous and tragic film star. She told Lange, "As soon as this movie's over, do a comedy. Immediately. Any comedy you can get your hands on." That comedy was "Tootsie" which won Lange her first Osacr.

"Kindly Omit Flowers"

[Handlinghandel · 6/10 · 14 June 2007]

That is a line from the movie and I'm afraid it fits when rating it.

Almost everything seems to be wrong with this odd movie. It seems to be Paddy Chayevsky doing a Tennessee Williams. The Southern setting is somewhat believable. The accents are too but somewhat less so.

Kim Stanley, a noted stage actress, is hard to ignore. She's very in-your-face in this role. But she seems to have been miscast: This is kind of a r variation on the story of many beauty queens who are neurotic, make it, and ... But Stanley is no Marilyn Monroe. She's no Harlow. Certainly she's attractive but the camera doesn't love her the way it has loved the great beauties of the screen.

Further: Her character is exceptionally annoying. Certainly she's meant to be difficult. But I don't think she's intended to come across as a thoroughly self-involved narcissist.

Almost every sentence this woman we're asked to feel for utters starts with "I" or addresses issues involving "me." She's hard to feel bad about or even to care about.

One aspect of the movie shines: That is the beautiful music by Virgil Thomson. It's a memorable film score.

Weird little B+ film

[funkyfry · 5/10 · 19 April 2014]

Names like Paddy Chayefsky and Kim Stanley still carry some weight -- and, in this film, they have to. It's not a terrible movie, but it is a weird little film, not the least because Kim Stanley is so completely and utterly miscast. And yet, her performance has stirring moments and the film does have a dark energy, in its early portions, that's dispersed in many vaguely wrong directions as the film winds towards its predictable conclusion.

Stanley's miscasting begins with the physical --- she was much too old for the role, even for the later parts of the film, so in the sequences where she's supposed to be a teenager it is really laughable. Sad to say, she's also simply not attractive enough to be cast as a movie star. People on this board may be comparing her to Bette Davis, but at 40 Bette still had some sexy spark. With Stanley, there's no real screen chemistry. I found myself often thinking that Betty Lou Holland, as her mother, was more attractive in her "old age" makeup than Stanley was in her "young age" makeup. There is some movie magic that can be employed in cases like this, but the producers apparently skimped.....

They also forgot to cast a compelling male in the film -- Lloyd Bridges tries awful hard here and it's probably best to just leave it at that. Steven Hill is just a stick of wood, just horrible to watch in this film.

The film came out just a few years before everybody saw what was so wrong with Marilyn Monroe, on whom the film is so clearly based. There's also a bit of Jane Mansfield in there too, perhaps. In the sense that this came out in the late 50s, instead of the early 60s (when Carroll Baker made a mini-career out of these kinds of roles), it's a prescient film. But it's not a powerful film, because none of the secondary characters are able to match up to Stanley's screen time. It's a confused and confusing movie -- I thought occasionally Chayefsky was reaching for dark humor, in the sense perhaps of Tennessee Williams' contemporary "Baby Doll" with the aforementioned Carroll Baker, but if he was reaching for this then he forgot to tell director John Cromwell, whose work here is just as remote and studied as it was on any of his big Fox productions with Tyrone Power and people like that.

AS A CHILD I WAS IN THIS MOVIE!

[bkc1019 · 24 January 2001]

As a child growing up in Ellicott City, MD. I was fortunate enough to be in this movie as part of the elementary school class. I remember doing the classroom scene and the school dismissal scene, over and over. But as the years passed, I have searched for a VHS copy of "The Goddess". Now that I have found it, I can obtain it for my children and grandchildren. Lloyd Bridges was one of the great actors of our time, but more importantly, a Hollywood role model as a family man. I guess this was the start of my "showbiz bug". Since that time I have been blessed in the entertainment industry. If you watch the movie "Urban Cowboy" and check out the soundtrack credits at the end, you will see a song called "Hello Texas"(recorded by Jimmy Buffett) which I wrote. Thank you "Goddess" for starting in me at a very young age, the love of the audience and the performance.

Finally adored, but still empty and alone.

[michaelRokeefe · 7/10 · 13 November 2015]

John Cromwell directs Paddy Chayesfsky's story of shame, poverty, fame and fortune. A pretty young Emily Ann Faulkner(Kim Stanley)spends her childhood knowing her mother didn't want her and boys just wanted her for one selfish reason. She grew up daydreaming of movie magazines and on a rainy night she rescued a Hollywood star's son(Steven Hill). John Tower was down and out and spent most of his time with a bottle of booze. That night he was face down on a rain soaked sidewalk, hoping to die and get away from his father's fame.

The beautiful Emily did become a star of the silver screen using her body to keep her stardom escalating. When the bright spotlight began to dim, she found drugs, alcohol and sex kept her career on a sluggish wane. Her life became little less bitter than her shameful childhood. What can you do with fame and fortune? This drama is said to be loosely based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Other players include: Betty Lou Holland, Lloyd Bridges, Gerald Hiken, Joan Copeland, Joyce Van Patten and Werner Klemperer.

Expectations are everything -- and I expect more from Chayevsky

[DonnaLevin · 6/10 · 20 January 2010]

*Marty,* *Network,* and... *The Goddess*? I was looking forward to viewing this film by Paddy Chayevsky, who I admire, and whose script was nominated for an academy award. But it plays like an adaptation of a much richer novel, or perhaps a stage play. On the plus side: Chayevsky assumes that the viewer has a certain level of intelligence, a courtesy not always offered by Hollywood. Characters deliver long, well-written speeches, trusting the viewer both to pay attention and to draw more inferences than than most modern *or* classic films allow. That said, the story feels undeveloped,as if Chayevsky was asking us to his work for him. An important character undergoes a religious conversion without explanation. Marriages end off-scene. The film moves forward choppily, superimposing the year ("1930," "1942") on screen to ground us -- but not very successfully. The camera is on Stanley for almost the entire film and very few performers can sustain our interest for that long -- at least not without a very strong script. To end on another positive note: a studio exec acknowledges that Stanley's character isn't very pretty, but that she has warmth and sensuality with which to engage her audience. The same might be said of Bette Davis or even (gasp) Meryl Streep. I appreciated that bit of honesty.

The Skyrocket!!!

[kidboots · 9/10 · 5 March 2013]

The one scene I could remember from seeing "The Goddess" just too many years ago was the "cat scene" where Patty Duke as the lonely, unloved little girl whispers to the cat "I got promoted today".She and her mother have come to visit Uncle George, her mother hoping to dump Emily Ann so she can get away and have some fun - "after all I'm only 26". Twelve years later (1942) she is still there - a religious fanatic and Emily Ann (Stanley) is the town "tramp" who desperately dreams of Hollywood fame. When she and some friends run across a drunk who just happens to be the mixed up son of a Hollywood star, she sees her opportunity but it only leads to frustration as the first part ends with Emily, a young mother, voicing the very words her mother said many years before - that she is not ready to be a mother and she just wants to have fun.

I also was unfamiliar with Kim Stanley but by the end (on viewing it recently) I was wondering who was this superlative actress. Marilyn Monroe may have been the character's inspiration but as played by Miss Stanley that was unimportant. Her extraordinary performance made the role her own and seemed to encapsulate all the hard luck, unloved actresses - Monroe, Garland etc. I do agree Stanley did look a bit old but the magic in her performance was like a sky rocket, especially in the scene where she is describing her inner most dreams to a boy who has only asked her out because he thinks she is "easy" - "but I think Ann Sheridan is a true beauty, don't you think?". He doesn't care, the same as he doesn't care when she is explaining that the only reason she has that "reputation" is because she wants to be liked. Heart breaking stuff!!

That's why I think the film works best in the first half. There was a continuity - the unloved little girl becomes the promiscuous teenager who then marries and becomes her mother all over again. Unlike her mother she does escape to Hollywood and the next part finds her an up and coming starlet contemplating marriage to an over the hill boxer (Lloyd Bridges is very good). The second part falls down a bit, suddenly she is the Goddess, at the top of her profession but already having suffered a severe breakdown and now has her mother living with her. Mother (great performance by Betty Lou Holland) is even more remote and now only has time for God but Emily doesn't care, only knowing that she needs a mother's love and security. When Emily finds religion and her mother leaves, that paves the way for a descent into madness.

A very strong film remembered for Kim Stanley's powerhouse performance.

Drum-Beat of Down-Beat...Rags to Riches...Cliches Attached...Pedestrian All-the-Way

[LeonLouisRicci · 6/10 · 28 August 2023]

If One was to "Look-Up" American Southern "Slice of Life" (1930-1960) By Way of Tennessee Williams and His "Look-Alikes"...This Bitter Agonizing "Tear-Drenched" Experience would No Doubt "Pop-Up" as Template #1.

Half-Dirty, Over-Populated Environs where People "Dream of a Better Life" and an Exit to the Bleak Reality of Little Hope...

This Acre where Poverty, Barely Educated Folks Fighting the Stress, the Desire, to Make it All End.

Turning to the "Bottle", Turning to Religion, Turning on Each Other, Family and Friends and Turning on Themselves with Self-Pitiable Loneliness, Absence of Love, and No Insight about...

What to Do, Where to Go, and Who With, to Make it All Stop.

That's the Story Told Once Again Here, by Acclaimed Scribbler Paddy Chayefsky (Screen-Play Nominated for Oscar). One Guess is that in 1958 this Kind of Stuff...

through Plays, Books and Film had Not-Yet Saturated an Insatiable American Pastime, The Never-Tiring Look-See into the Daily Lives of the Less Fortunate Among Us Struggling to Survive in Barely Survivable Man-Made (forget God) Conditions.

The Booze, the Half-Failed Marriages and the Cheating, the Pills, Unwanted Pregnancies of Girls in Their Early Flowering, the Crowded Apartments and Streets, the Desperation,,,

Are We Having Fun Yet?

This Stuff was so Popular in its Day that Someone was Having Fun, it seems. Or were They just Curious, or Sadistic. This Particular Tale has Kim Stanley (at age 40) Given Heaps of Praise, and Acting Accolades. Truth be Told...She is Way to Old for the Part, Doesn't Have the Glam to be a "Discovered" Movie-Star, and Over-Acts Wildly at Times (some see this as important to lurid story),

The Rest of the Cast Sit Due and are Nothing but "Pinballs" that Stanley Bounces Off Of and Careens Somewhere Else. No Characters Last Long Enough to Care About (1st and 2nd Husbands and Her Baby),

That is Except Her Mother Who Also Comes and Goes but with Enormous Importance to What Personality Manifests in this Ever-Suffering, Neurotic who seems Incapable of Making Sense of Anything and Making Tragedy Out of Success.

A Dated Story and the Type of White-Americans Lost in the "Promised Land" that had the Middle-Class Fawning Over the Melodramatics of Those "Others".

Those Abandon by the System and God to Swim or Drown on Their Own...Not "Only in America" but God's Cruel World.

This Stuff was Beaten to Death and in the Oven So Long that Today it Seems Over-Baked....

Worth a Watch.

Great insights thanks to Oscar-nominated screenplay by Paddy Chayevsky

[beyondtheforest · 10/10 · 2 March 2007]

How some people can view THE GODDESS in the aftermath of Anna Nicole Smith's tragedy is beyond me. The parallels, not only between Smith but also Marilyn (and Jayne Mansfield) are astonishing! The film is utterly moving and, contrary to other reviews, inspires much empathy for the main character!

The film has a deep and profound insight into the mind of those famous starlets--and the rest of us, as well. This is NOT a Hollywood story; nor is it even the story of a famous woman. It is about suffering and insecurity. From a very early age, the girl is alone. Her mother doesn't want her and the men in her life are only looking for sex. She reaches out desperately for love, and yet she herself (possibly because she has been hurt so many times) is unable to give it back.

By the end of the film, she is completely alone; not able to give or receive love from others, including her daughter, and there is that great line by her first husband: "Life is unbearable if you don't love something." Her secretary tells him, "She will go on making pictures, because that is all she can do."

Hollywood. The dream factory. Places where lonely people go seeking fame--that great idea of being loved by everyone. Only it doesn't solve anything. Not for Joan. Not for Marilyn. Not for Anna.

Paddy's Goddess

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 10 December 2023]

Emily Ann Faulkner (Kim Stanley) grew up poor, southern, and fatherless. Her mother is distant. She dreams to be a Hollywood star. During the war, she marries troubled G. I. John Tower (Steven Hill), noting that he's the son of a movie star. They have a baby together. Despite that, she leaves them for Hollywood stardom and former boxer Dutch Seymour (Lloyd Bridges).

This is written by Paddy Chayefsky as a chronicle of a Marilyn Monroe type figure with all the ugliness of Hollywood and personal history. The writing is provocative and insightful. The only thing is that Kim Stanley is no Marilyn Monroe. Few people are. She was in her 30's and it's hard for her to play fresh-faced twentysomething. She's better as a worn-out mom. She does get older which Monroe was never able to do. It is more about her dark home life anyways.

Is it the role or Kim Stanley?

[JasparLamarCrabb · 5/10 · 19 January 2010]

It's NOT about the rise of a movie queen, instead Paddy Chayefsky's THE GODDESS is a grueling experience showing the disintegration of a woman into madness. Kim Stanley stars (not always convincingly) as a small-town girl who goes to Hollywoood and becomes a star, all the while being a complete lunatic. Is it the role or is it Stanley? The actress emotes and emotes and acts and acts until the viewer is just completely exhausted. Your stamina will really be tested watching this. Chayefsky's script is alternately touching and laughable. There is a very sad scene in which the title character (played as child by a very young Patty Duke) informs her cat that she's been promoted at school. Unfortunately there's far too many explosions of self-loathing by not only Stanley, but by Stephen Hill and Lloyd Bridges (as her first and second husbands respectively). Hill is saddled with quoting a lot of poets to show us he's "sensitive." There are a few terrific supporting performances; one by Betty Lou Holland as Stanley's religious fanatic mother and one by Elizabeth Wilson as a pushy caregiver. Directed, unimaginatively, by John Cromwell.

A tour-de-force as I have never seen!

[ricbigi · 10/10 · 20 November 2012]

THE GODDESS is not exactly a great film but it is a very interesting one from the point of view of the Hollywood Star System. The production had obviously a very limited budget and the Paddy Chayefsky script could have been altered to better fit Kim Stanley's screen persona (the actress is obviously too old and does not have the beauty to convincingly play a poor young country girl who becomes a highly successful movie star), but in the end that matters little. Kim Stanley's performance is so brilliant, so complex, so achingly true, that one forgets the film's limitations and what remains is a feeling of deep awe in face of so much talent. This is quite possibly the most harrowing, emotionally devastating acting job I have ever seen, along with Liv Ullman's performance in FACE TO FACE. How wonderful to be able to see it over 50 years later! And what a pity that Stanley was not in films more often!

Cheap shot at Marilyn Monroe

[kittyvista · 4/10 · 10 January 2013]

Perhaps it was because I saw the movie on television rather than on DVD and it was interrupted by too many commercials, but it seemed to be a cheap shot at Marilyn Monroe rather than a sympathetic portrait of a person who grew up empty but was envied by all. Kim Stanley failed to capture Marilyn's charm, and she appeared haggard throughout the film - a far cry from the devastating beauty that was Monroe. Her athlete husband (obviously modeled after Joe DiMaggio) was depicted as vapid, not too bright and very needy as well. The character's incredible need to be loved was revealed poignantly in one scene with her aged mother, who had come to stay with her after she experienced a nervous breakdown, but otherwise Stanley's character seemed shallow and not very likable. All in all, a really superficial and fairly petty portrayal of Ms. Monroe.

A Fine Actress's Legacy

[harry-76 · 9/10 · 21 April 2001]

In the 1950's a small number of actresses held top positions in New York as the "most promising." These included Geraldine Page, Maggie Smith, Julie Harris--and Kim Stanley.

Stanley's appearances between 1948-51 in the Philco and Goodyear Television Playhouses revealed what many were calling "America's Greatest Actress." It was a profound loss to American theater that this actress was unable to continue her work (due to personal circumstances).

However, Stanley did leave us a significant legacy in 1958: an exemplary performance in the film, "The Goddess." Ably supported by the Lloyd Bridges, in a script by Paddy Chayefsky, this film is a lasting tribute to a truly fine talent.

Like a great comet that briefly flashed across the sky, Stanley remains a unique actress. Thank goodness for "The Goddess."