MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

pointyfilippa The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

a_chinn Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner make for handsome leads in this drama, but both seem out of place in this costume drama set a post-Civil War New Orleans. Gardner is spurned by Mitchum, but when she suddenly comes into wealth, she decides to use her money to win back Mitchum and exact her revenge. Mitchum is one of my favorite actors, but this is not his sort of picture. Gardner too for that matter. The leads make this film worth watching, but just barely.

MartinHafer This film stars Ava Gardner, Robert Mitchum and Melvyn Douglas, so you'd certainly expect this to be a very good movie. Well, if that is the case, you'd be dead wrong. That's because no matter the talents of these folks, you can't overcome a terrible script...and the one for "My Forbidden Past" is pretty bad.The film begins with Mitchum and Gardner preparing to run off to sea to be with each other. However, her family interferes and she never receives a letter from him saying he will return for her. And, since their paths don't cross for some time, when they do meet again, Mitchum is married! And, Gardner is intent on some bizarre sort of revenge--as well as to break up this marriage and have him for herself.The biggest problem about the film is that it never is believable and the story is awfully hard to believe--and overly complicated. The bad dialog doesn't help, either. It's very hard to believe that they were able to hook good actors into being in this film--but somehow they did. Was it the money or did they hold various loved ones prisoner to force the actors to be in this bilge? I have no idea....all I know is that the film is pretty bad.

Rodger Alford Ava Gardner's beauty in My Forbidden Past (as any film) is intoxicating. I had read Howard Hughes was particular about accentuating women's breast's even so far as designing bras and his handiwork shows here. Ms. Gardner & Ms. Carter (Mitchum/Mark's wife) are stunning!I actually liked the movie because you will notice something new every time you watch it. The street people each had a song for their wares. Even the servant, the great Clarence Muse, who turned out the porch lamp hummed a tune that could be heard through the house. You got the feeling that, yes, jazz COULD be born here! There were poor of both races in the streets 'hustling' as we would say today, and Ava bought a memorial candle from a poor white kid who also sang of his wares. In what I remember of country-like Saturdays in NY ghettos in the 50s and 60s there were peddlers singing as they sold their wares through the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn and the South Bronx, be they crabs, lobsters, fruit or shaved flavored ice. So that alone gave the movie an air of realism for me. Just as the Gershwins' represented the South Carolinian enclave of Catfish Row with it's street peddlers in Porgy & Bess. Seems like a lot of minority extras got paid in this movie, too, and that kept some grits on the stove for families like mine. Mitchum's character seemed to be a guy who toughed his way up from the streets of NY to make something of himself in the world. He backed off of Ava's character because, beside standing him up before she gained her fortune, she spelled trouble which he'd already seen enough of. After the kiss he gave her in town and, after he made it clear at the ball that he would be faithful to his new wife, Ava gave the camera a look that would send a shiver down Cagney or Gable's spine. You knew she would make him feel her hurt. 'Hell hath no fury,...' said Mitchum. What wonderful actors they both were! I was just a little puzzled at why Mitchum's wife was 'putting the make' on sad old Melvyn. Vincent Price in that role I could understand. But Mel struck me as comical (of course she WAS a gold-digger so...) I guess it makes more sense in the book. I give the movie 2 thumbs up for settings and background and another thumb up for Ava's beauty (I'll find an extra thumb somewhere, she deserves it)! Mitchum's wife (Janis Carter/Corrine) wasn't bad either. Costuming was excellent! I was, although, a little perplexed at the outfit Gardner wore when she came to let Mitchum know of his wife's rendezvous with Douglas. Gaudy, almost to the degree of clownish, it seemed as though she had another stop to make that night or really thought she should '...look the part,' as Rhett said to Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, as he helped her choose the dress she wore to Ashley's birthday party. When Mitchum opens the door and she walks in he must've first thought she was Emmet Kelly wearing a torpedo bra (forgive me, Ava). One entire layer of pancake could have been removed in that lighting. Still loved the flick - especially the costumes.

bkoganbing My Forbidden Past has Ava Gardner as decadent New Orleans belle living with her great aunt Lucile Watson and her cousin Melvyn Douglas. She's got a yen for Yankee doctor Robert Mitchum who is doing research over at Tulane University. They break things off and Mitchum goes away and returns with a bride, slatternly Janis Carter.In the meantime Ava inherits a whole bunch of money from her grandmother who left New Orleans years ago under a cloud. Just what she did is never revealed, but her name is spoken in hushed tones. Whatever she did, she sure got rich at it.It kind of reminds me of The Road to Rio where we never do find out what those papers were that foiled the dastardly schemes of Gale Sondergaard to marry off Dorothy Lamour. As Bing concludes about the "papers" the world must never know.This film was conceived so that Howard Hughes who was crushing out on Ava Gardner big time at that point could get her over to RKO. He paid Louis B. Mayer's price and Mayer apparently threw in Melvyn Douglas.Melvyn Douglas knows full well what a clinker this is so he overacts outrageously in the best Snidely Whiplash tradition of screen villains. He's the best one in the film.My Forbidden Past should come with a warning label that if you manage to sit through this melodrama because you want to find out just what Ava's forbidden past was with grandma, you will be left hanging.