Oscar nominations came out today but rather than discuss a recent movie, this post is about a 1949 Oscar winner for Best Directing & Writing. Starring the wonderful trio of Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern, A Letter to Three Wives is one of those comic masterpieces that boast powerhouse performances, a tight script packed with whip-smart dialogue, and an improbable but hilarious premise that keeps you guessing till the very end.
The movie opens with the narrator, a woman named Addie Ross who snarkily introduces us to her three so-called "friends," Debra Bishop (Crain), Rita Phipps (Sothern), and Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell in a scene-stealing performance as a poor girl trying to make it with a rich man). It's a Saturday morning and the three women are getting ready to volunteer at a children's picnic while their husbands have all begged off with some excuse or the other. When they get to the dock (they have to take a boat to get to the picnic site), Lora Mae reports the news that Addie Ross has disappeared. She rented out her house, grabbed her things, left town overnight, and no one knows why. Just as they are speculating, a messenger arrives with a letter from the missing Addie. Bursting with curiosity, the women tear it open. After some simpering declarations of how much she will miss her three best friends, Addie drops her bombshell. She has run off with one of the three women's husbands, "so that she will always have something to remind her of her three best friends."
The stunned women board their boat and head for the picnic. With no access to a phone, they are forced to wait until the Country Club dance later that night to discover whose husband won't be showing up. As their day progresses we see three different flashbacks that tell us something about each woman's marriage and why she has reason to worry that her husband might be the one who has run off with Addie. And as you see their stories unfold, you become just as impatient as they are to return home and discover who is going to be alone at that dance.
The ending is neatly tied up and is appropriately warm and satisfying, characteristic of the comedies of that era. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz won two Oscars for this movie, a feat he repeated the next year for the much more famous All About Eve. He seems to have excelled at directing movies about interesting and clever women and got great performances out of these already great actresses. The actors playing the husbands are also a fine lot, including an unrecognizable Kirk Douglas in a much lighter and comic role than usual. Ultimately this is not the dark Oscar fare we've come to expect, but a much more effervescent and charming film that will keep you entertained for a solid two hours.
This movie was featured as one of The Essentials, a weekly feature every Saturday at 8 pm on Turner Classic Movies. Look for this channel on your cable line-up if you haven't already - it's my go-to whenever I need to indulge in some classic cinema fare. The great thing about old movies is that they're widely available, so if you don't have TCM, you can still check to see if your local library has a copy on hand. And failing that, there's another ingenious option. A lot of these movies were adapted for radio and there are online archives of the original broadcasts. I made a marvelous discovery yesterday: the Screen Guild Theatre broadcast a 30-minute adaptation of this movie with Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas reprising their roles, and you can listen to the whole thing at this link (scroll down to # 342 on the media player). This archive features over 300 adaptations of other masterpieces like The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion, Laura, etc., so if you needed some audio entertainment, you're covered for the foreseeable future.
Many people scoff at old movies and their eyes glaze over at the mere sight of black & white cinema. But lack of color does not equate to lack of sophistication. The actors are stellar, the stories well-crafted, and the scripts are deft and agile. Comedies of this era had to be extra devious and witty to get by all the censors, and the scripts are often packed with double entendres that will make your head spin. If you needed any more evidence that A Letter to Three Wives is a true classic, I offer you incontrovertible proof: the movie was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons entitled, Moe Letter Blues.
I'm not saying all old movies are great. There are plenty of duds among them, just like for every Hugo or The Descendants of our modern age, we get another awful Adam Sandler "comedy". But don't be quick to dismiss all old movies, because there are true gems among them that still deserve to be seen and revered. After all, these movies were winning Oscars long before anyone named Clooney, Scorsese, or Streep came along.
The movie opens with the narrator, a woman named Addie Ross who snarkily introduces us to her three so-called "friends," Debra Bishop (Crain), Rita Phipps (Sothern), and Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell in a scene-stealing performance as a poor girl trying to make it with a rich man). It's a Saturday morning and the three women are getting ready to volunteer at a children's picnic while their husbands have all begged off with some excuse or the other. When they get to the dock (they have to take a boat to get to the picnic site), Lora Mae reports the news that Addie Ross has disappeared. She rented out her house, grabbed her things, left town overnight, and no one knows why. Just as they are speculating, a messenger arrives with a letter from the missing Addie. Bursting with curiosity, the women tear it open. After some simpering declarations of how much she will miss her three best friends, Addie drops her bombshell. She has run off with one of the three women's husbands, "so that she will always have something to remind her of her three best friends."
The stunned women board their boat and head for the picnic. With no access to a phone, they are forced to wait until the Country Club dance later that night to discover whose husband won't be showing up. As their day progresses we see three different flashbacks that tell us something about each woman's marriage and why she has reason to worry that her husband might be the one who has run off with Addie. And as you see their stories unfold, you become just as impatient as they are to return home and discover who is going to be alone at that dance.
The ending is neatly tied up and is appropriately warm and satisfying, characteristic of the comedies of that era. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz won two Oscars for this movie, a feat he repeated the next year for the much more famous All About Eve. He seems to have excelled at directing movies about interesting and clever women and got great performances out of these already great actresses. The actors playing the husbands are also a fine lot, including an unrecognizable Kirk Douglas in a much lighter and comic role than usual. Ultimately this is not the dark Oscar fare we've come to expect, but a much more effervescent and charming film that will keep you entertained for a solid two hours.
This movie was featured as one of The Essentials, a weekly feature every Saturday at 8 pm on Turner Classic Movies. Look for this channel on your cable line-up if you haven't already - it's my go-to whenever I need to indulge in some classic cinema fare. The great thing about old movies is that they're widely available, so if you don't have TCM, you can still check to see if your local library has a copy on hand. And failing that, there's another ingenious option. A lot of these movies were adapted for radio and there are online archives of the original broadcasts. I made a marvelous discovery yesterday: the Screen Guild Theatre broadcast a 30-minute adaptation of this movie with Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas reprising their roles, and you can listen to the whole thing at this link (scroll down to # 342 on the media player). This archive features over 300 adaptations of other masterpieces like The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion, Laura, etc., so if you needed some audio entertainment, you're covered for the foreseeable future.
Many people scoff at old movies and their eyes glaze over at the mere sight of black & white cinema. But lack of color does not equate to lack of sophistication. The actors are stellar, the stories well-crafted, and the scripts are deft and agile. Comedies of this era had to be extra devious and witty to get by all the censors, and the scripts are often packed with double entendres that will make your head spin. If you needed any more evidence that A Letter to Three Wives is a true classic, I offer you incontrovertible proof: the movie was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons entitled, Moe Letter Blues.
I'm not saying all old movies are great. There are plenty of duds among them, just like for every Hugo or The Descendants of our modern age, we get another awful Adam Sandler "comedy". But don't be quick to dismiss all old movies, because there are true gems among them that still deserve to be seen and revered. After all, these movies were winning Oscars long before anyone named Clooney, Scorsese, or Streep came along.
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