Van Johnson & Elizabeth Taylor star in this doomed romance from 1954. It's nearing the end of WWII & Johnson, a soldier in the reporter core, meets Taylor during the liberation of Paris when she plants a wet one on his kisser leaving him a bit loopy. Meeting her properly some time later, we meet her ex-pat family, a sister, played by Donna Reed, who holds a candle for Johnson, & their ne'er do well father, played by Walter Pidgeon, who'd rather gamble for a big payday then work an honest job. Johnson continues his career as reporter but yearns to make it as a novelist & after he marries Taylor, he now finds himself enmeshed in a family waylaid by carefree ideals. When the rejection letters soon pile up, Johnson is despondent finding solace in the love of his life, his daughter, who keeps him on an even keel but the partying starts to catch up to him (& the extended family as well) as one of Pidgeon's harebrained schemes (an oil lease back in Texas he's owned for years) makes good. Even the added dimension of wealth can't soothe Johnson's emptiness & soon he & Taylor find themselves drifting apart (the excessive boozing doesn't help) w/Johnson befriending a constant divorcee, played Eva Gabor, & Taylor gaining the eye of a tennis pro, played by Roger Moore (in an early supporting role). Tragedy does strike (more of the movie kind...pneumonia from rain...I guess?) which finally centers Johnson leaving him to fight for the custody of his daughter (Reed & her hubby currently serve as guardians) when he returns to the City of Lights from the States in the final section of the film. Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we find the familiar tropes of good people letting their vices get the better of them only to come out at the end hopefully better than where they started from.
Review of The Last Time I Saw Paris
