Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave TV pioneer Jeffrey Hayden (Goodyear Playhouse, The Milton Berle Show) his first - and as it turns out only - opportunity to direct a feature film with this Cinemascope/Metrocolor adaptation of the 1953 novel by Ursula Keir. In The Vintage (1957), Italian brothers Mel Ferrer and John Kerr escape a troubled past by taking work in the South of France - specifically the vineyard of winemaker Leif Erickson, whose beautiful, unfulfilled wife (Michèle Morgan) and flowering teenage sister-in-law ("shy, lovely Pier Angeli," as the film's breathless trailer proclaimed) take more than a passing interest in the handsome young strangers. Metro head of production Dore Schary had high hopes for this pastoral romance tinged with violence, to the point of purchasing an actual vineyard in Provence to serve as the film's shooting location, but shooting was hampered by unforeseen problems (including a plague of wasps that stung cast and crew alike and the slow ripening of the vineyard harvest, which required the props department to paint the grapes purple) while audience indifference and critical contumely made The Vintage a costly misstep for Metro - to the tune of over $1,000,000 in lost revenue. Though he was offered a long-term studio contract, director Hayden elected to remain a small screen freelancer, helming episodes of such popular TV series as The Loretta Young Show, Route 66, Batman, and the 1980 miniseries adaptation of From Here to Eternity.

By Richard Harland Smith