Cheat and Charmer (2004)

This fat, talky melodrama set in 1950s Hollywood has the flash and style of a Jacqueline Susann potboiler but with smarter writing and well-turned characters. Smart, likable Dinah Lasker — briefly a member of the Communist Party in her youth and now married to a successful screenwriter — agrees to inform on fellow travelers to save her husband's career. Not that Jake Lasker deserves her devotion: He's a selfish philanderer who can't say no to a pastrami sandwich or a pretty starlet. Nor is Dinah repaid for her loyalty to her famously gorgeous sister Veevi (''a born predator with the conscience of a cat''), who moves in with Dinah and Jake following the failure of her own marriage, with predictably disastrous results. Imagine Cheat and Charmer as a juicy mid-'80s television movie starring Morgan Fairchild and Linda Evans.