Stolen Hours – 1963 | 88 mins | Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

This glossy tear-jerker desperately required some relief to offset the oppressive sorrow and is a pale imitation of the pre-war Bette Davis weepie Dark Victory (1939). A rich socialite with a year to live and a wasted life behind her, snatches her chance of happiness while she may.Susan Hayward is unconvincing and perhaps too old in the leading role, and Michael Craig was suitably tall and handsome, but never comfortable as a romantic lead. Regrettably the whole production is as doomed as its heroine.

Laura Pember (Susan Hayward), a rich American socialite,suffers from attacks of loss of vision and blinding headaches. Her boyfriend,Mike Bannerman (Edward Judd), a famous racing driver, brings a London doctor, John Carmody (Michael Craig), to her house-party to try to discover what is wrong.Laura is persuaded to see a brain specialist who operates. She believes she is cured but John tells Mike and her sister that she is suffering from a terminal illness and has twelve months to live.

Laura and John gradually fall in love and he proposes marriage,but when she learns the truth by chance she runs away to join Mike racing in Italy. A fatal crash in Italy offers Laura a new outlook on life, and she marries John and settles in Cornwall; where Laura finds her real self and happiness at last.