Classic Films in Focus: A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949)

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives (1949) sets up its domestic drama with a perpetually absent antagonist who forces a trio of women to consider the central problems of their marriages. This approach makes the homewrecker as mysterious as she is troublesome, but it frees up the screen time for our three heroines, played by Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern. For husbands we have Kirk Douglas, Jeffrey Lynn, and Paul Douglas, while the supporting cast consists primarily of memorable character actresses like Florence Bates, Connie Gilchrist, and an uncredited - but excellent - Thelma Ritter. Although some of its marital conflicts seem dated and even sexist today, A Letter to Three Wives offers a serious and insightful exploration of the hard work of maintaining a marriage, and its performances reveal the many fears and grievances that can cause a relationship to crack.

The unseen Addie Ross leaves town with a farewell note to her "friends" announcing that she has run off with one of their husbands, but the women won't learn which one until they return from a day long outing with a group of schoolchildren. Former Navy WAVE Deborah (Jeanne Crain) suspects that her uneasiness in the upper class society of husband Brad (Jeffrey Lynn) might have caused him to abandon her, while radio soap writer Rita (Ann Sothern) thinks that her schoolteacher spouse, George (Kirk Douglas), might have grown tired of her higher salary and late nights at work. Lora Mae (Linda Darnell) pretends that she only married Porter (Paul Douglas) for his money and doesn't care if he's gone, but her memories of their relationship reveal that she feels more for him than she cares to admit.

Each wife has a different kind of relationship to her husband and a different problem. Deborah is the most naive of the three, a Cinderella who has married her prince but doesn't know how to handle her new social status or the passive routine of her role as a wealthy man's wife. The film underplays Deborah's frustration at losing her independent, active life in the Navy, but it pulses beneath the surface nonetheless. She seems to pine for a purpose to restore her pride in herself, something her husband can't really give her. Rita has that purpose as a writer of radio programs, but her higher salary wounds her husband's ego, and he bristles at the concessions she makes to her demanding boss. Oddly, Rita and George are the only couple presented as parents, but we never actually see their twins; the movie can't handle the idea of a dual income household actively raising children as part of their juggling act. Like Deborah, Lora Mae is a poor girl who has married into money, but Lora Mae has done so with eyes wide open about the importance of status and wealth. Her husband, Porter, doesn't seem like much of a catch without his fat wallet, but the movie tries to make up for that with a sudden, unselfish act at the end, meant to show that the boorish businessman has a good heart after all.

With its small scope and little action, A Letter to Three Wives depends entirely on its performances, particularly by the three leads. Darnell has the most complicated character to play, and she succeeds admirably, making us understand Lora Mae's pragmatism and prickly nature. She's a beautiful girl in a man's world, and she'll do what it takes to escape the rattling shack by the railroad tracks, even if that means selling herself for a wedding ring. Crain rises above the pathetic quality of her character toward the end, but Deborah can be a bit of a sob sister, and we don't really see enough of her relationship with Brad to understand their marriage. Ann Sothern and Kirk Douglas probably speak the most to modern viewers with their performances; Rita and George are the most like us, striving for a partnership but not always getting there. Douglas has the most to do of the three men; he's more physically present in the story and more compelling than either of the others, and that helps us be more involved in the story of Rita and George. It's worth noting that the film also provides us with three older women to act as foils to our three young ones; Sadie (Thelma Ritter) is a single working woman, Lora Mae's mother (Connie Gilchrist) is a working class widow, and Rita's boss (Florence Bates) is a domineering career woman with a milquetoast spouse. None of the older women seem like models that the younger ones want to imitate, but they show how women have to make do and live on long after youth and love are gone.

A Letter to Three Wives won Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay and picked up a nomination for Best Picture. For more from director Joseph L. Mankiewicz try The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), All About Eve (1950), and The Barefoot Contessa (1954). Jeanne Crain appears in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Pinky (1949), and People Will Talk (1951), and Linda Darnell has memorable roles in The Mark of Zorro (1940), Hangover Square (1945), and My Darling Clementine (1946). Ann Sothern, who started her screen career in 1927, went on to star in Maisie (1939) and its sequels, but don't miss her final, Oscar-nominated performance in The Whales of August (1987).


PS - Happy 100th Birthday this month to star Kirk Douglas, who celebrated a century of life on December 9! For more of his work from the 1940s see THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946) and OUT OF THE PAST (1947).

Classic Films in Focus: PEOPLE WILL TALK (1951)

Cary Grant is best remembered today for a long list of great films, including comedies like Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Hitchcock thrillers like Notorious (1946) and North By Northwest (1959). Although not as well-known as those undisputed hits, People Will Talk (1951) is a warm and very funny romantic comedy about the human side of the medical profession. Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the movie stars Grant as a sympathetic doctor who insists on the individual humanity of each of his patients, even though his concern for them often goes far beyond the limits of his professional obligation.

Grant plays Noah Praetorius, a successful physician with a habit of collecting people who need him, from the mysterious Mr. Shunderson (Finlay Currie) to the desperate Deborah Higgins (Jeanne Crain). His popularity and success make him the target of a jealous colleague (Hume Cronyn), who hopes to discredit Praetorius by dredging up the secrets of his previous work, his unconventional methods, and his unusual associates.

The romantic angle depends on Praetorius’ evolving relationship with Deborah, a single young woman who attempts to kill herself when Praetorius tells her that she’s pregnant. The doctor saves her life and lies to her in order to prevent a second attempt, but somewhere along the way he falls in love with her, too. Grant balances the serious and comic aspects of this situation perfectly, and Jeanne Crain gives the troubled heroine a powerful appeal. The idea of a romance building around an unmarried woman’s pregnancy seems surprising, even shocking, for the time, but the movie handles it with delicate sympathy, with the details about Deborah’s dead lover calculated to make a contemporary audience forgive her transgression and deem her worthy of the hero’s unconditional acceptance.

Several especially engaging character actors provide ample support for the romantic leads and help to steer the movie back into comedic territory. Finlay Currie proves a real scene-stealer as the simple-minded Shunderson, whose history turns out to be both pitiful and bizarre. Hume Cronyn is delightfully petty and vindictive as Grant’s chief antagonist, Professor Elwell, and Margaret Hamilton has a great uncredited appearance at the start of the film as a former housekeeper who knows something about the good doctor’s past. Walter Slezak and Sidney Blackmer round out the cast as some of the doctor’s loyal friends, and there’s a wonderful scene in which the three men act like children in their enthusiasm over a toy train set.

Try Holiday (1938), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) for more Cary Grant comedies. You’ll find Jeanne Crain in Leave Her to Heaven (1945), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), and Pinky (1949). A four-time Oscar winner, Joseph L. Mankiewicz also directed memorable women’s pictures like Dragonwyck (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), and All About Eve (1950). Look for the wonderful Scottish actor Finlay Currie in I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), Great Expectations (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959). Finally, catch Hume Cronyn in Lifeboat (1944), The Seventh Cross (1944), and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Examiner.com.

Classic Films in Focus: CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (1950)

Tolstoy might have thought that happy families are all alike, but he didn't live during the era of Hollywood family films like Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), where the sheer diversity of happy families generated picture after picture about different domestic clans with their own unique stories. Thus we have movies like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Life With Father (1947), and I Remember Mama (1948), as well as many others, often adapted from non-fiction memoirs or thinly veiled autobiographies. Cheaper by the Dozen is no exception; based on the popular memoir by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, the original movie has nothing beyond its title in common with the purely fictional 2003 remake starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, and it certainly outshines the later picture in charm, poignancy, and inoffensive family amusement. While Cheaper by the Dozen is not among the greatest classic films ever made, it offers a very entertaining view of family life in the 1920s that both children and adults can enjoy, and its nostalgic presentation of parents as thoughtful, funny, and understanding people provides a welcome tonic to the way in which mothers and fathers are so often depicted in "family" films today.

Directed by Walter Lang, the movie stars Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy as the Gilbreth parents, whose own work in industrial engineering and efficiency has not prevented them from generating a family of twelve children, six boys and six girls. Jeanne Crain plays their eldest daughter, Ann, whose transition to womanhood creates some drama and humor within the family, as poor Ann is the first of the offspring to have to persuade her parents to let her grow up. The story of the family's life, leading up to a major event that alters it forever, is told through a series of vignettes spread out over several years.

Like many films of this sort, the vignette model for story-telling leaves something to be desired in the plot department; the sketches that we see are interesting and funny but don't really build the story's tension to a climactic height. If you have seen a number of family stories, or if you already know the history of the real Gilbreth family, you can see the major event of the movie coming, but the earlier parts of the film don't necessarily emphasize a movement in that direction, and the film uses the event as an endpoint rather than a climax. Some of the best scenes are the shortest and least consequential ones, like the father's interview with the principal at the children's school or the family's acquisition of a dog in spite of their patriarch's objections, but they demonstrate the family's love for one another and the father's intense pride in and devotion to his numerous brood. Even the smallest families will recognize the affectionate truth about parents and children living together in these scenes, and they may well prove productive starting points for conversations about important family decisions and situations.

Classic movie fans will appreciate Cheaper by the Dozen primarily for its leads; this is a chance to see Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, both strong performers with illustrious careers, in some rather different roles. Webb rose to fame as the urbane villain of Otto Preminger's noir hit, Laura (1944), but he was also well known in the late 1940s as the snippy title character of the Mr. Belvedere films (which inspired the later television series). Webb's performance as the benevolently eccentric Frank Gilbreth makes for an interesting contrast with these other roles, and his version of the old-fashioned pater familias rounds out those of Leon Ames in Meet Me in St. Louis and of Willam Powell in Life With Father.

Loy, who began her career in silent films, was a major star in the 1930s whose biggest role came when she played Nora Charles opposite William Powell in The Thin Man movies. By the end of the 1940s, she had aged out of the vampish parts that opened her career and was playing more mature characters, including the loving war wife of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and the career-minded older sister in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). As the Gilbreth matriarch, Loy combines her ladylike bearing and visible intelligence with the soft, angelic vision of maternity so often associated with motherhood in these sorts of films. That she does it without becoming a wan sort of martyr to domesticity is a testament both to her own acting talent and to the real Lillian Gilbreth, who held a doctoral degree in industrial psychology and was tremendously influential in her field, so much so that she is sometimes called "The First Lady of Engineering" and even had a US postage stamp issued in her honor as a Great American in 1984.

If you enjoy movies about large families or Americana, Cheaper by the Dozen offers a good choice that the entire family can watch together. If you find yourself really interested in the story of the Gilbreth family, you'll be happy to know that the first film was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), adapted from the follow-up memoir written by the Gilbreth children. Both of the memoirs are currently available in print, and those who want to know more about Lillian Gilbreth might enjoy Jane Lancaster's 2006 biography, Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth - A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen." For more from director Walter Lang, try the Shirley Temple version of The Little Princess (1939), the musical classic, The King and I (1956), or the Tracy and Hepburn comedy, Desk Set (1957).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.