cinema obscura: "Two Loves" (and other lost Shirley MacLaine titles)

MGM's "Two Loves," directed by Charles Walters in 1961, is a lost Shirley MacLaine film co-starring Laurence Harvey and Jack Hawkins. Filmed on location in New Zealand and based on a Sylvia Ashton-Warner novel titled "The Spinster" (also the film's working title), the film casts MacLaine against type as a repressed teacher of native children whose methodical, cloistered world is upset when she is sexually challenged by randy drifter Harvey and an intimidating Hawkins, who plays the headmaster of her school.

Other lost MacLaine titles from the same era include Daniel Mann's "Hot Spell" (1958), starring Anthony Quinn and Shirley Booth - it was prominently (and surprisingly) featured in MacLaine's most recent film, Garry Marshall's "Valentine's Day" - and Joseph Anthony's "Career" (1959), co-starring Dean Martin, Anthony Franciosa and Carolyn Jones. Jack Cardiff's "My Geisha" (1962), long unavailable, was finally made availalble on DVD a couple of years ago. All three titles are Paramount films.