OVP: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Film: A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
Stars: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Jeffrey Lynn, Paul Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Thelma Ritter
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Oscar History: 3 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Adapted Screenplay*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Linda Darnell-click here to learn more about Ms. Darnell (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

It's occasionally difficult to know where to end our months with each star-do we go with their final major success, as we did with Ann Sheridan & Alice Faye, or do we go to the depths of their film careers like Virginia Mayo and Cyd Charisse?  Considering how tragic Linda Darnell's life ended up being, with her eventually going into bouts of alcoholism and being burned alive in one of Hollywood's most horrific deaths, it felt wrong to wade through the final stages of her career, when she would have the occasional lead role, but was perhaps most well-known in the 1950's for the part she didn't get (despite a love affair with Jopeph L. Mankiewicz, it was Ava Gardner who won the lead in The Barefoot Contessa even though Darnell was certain she would be its star and her life may have profoundly changed if she'd gotten the part in the picture which was a smash hit for United Artists).  We will instead leave her at arguably the professional peak of her career, the Best Picture-nominated A Letter to Three Wives, featuring what many consider to be her finest performance.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around the lives of three friends: Lora Mae (Darnell), Deborah (Crain), and Rita (Sothern), all of whom are frenemies with a woman who is never seen but has made passes at each of their husbands at some point named Addie Ross (an uncredited Celeste Holm does the narration, recalling in many ways Mankiewicz's magnum opus All About Eve).  All three women are chaperoning a school field trip when they receive a letter from Addie Ross, cattily pointing out to them that she has decided to skip town...and is taking one of their husbands with her.  The movie progresses with each woman wondering, silently, on the trip whether or not their husband is the one who ran away with the woman, and recalling scenes from their marriage that could have led to such infidelity.  Rita, after all, is a career woman (considering it's 1949, this is handled with less sexism than you'd think though it's obviously still there), Deborah is a bit dowdy & doesn't fit in with her husband's friends, and Lora Mae's husband thinks she's just a gold-digger, waiting for her chance at his fortune.  None of the marriages seem to be in particularly strong shape, though it's pretty clear that Rita's to George (Kirk Douglas, when he was still taking supporting roles of a sort) is in the best shape, and they lay down the cards pretty quickly that he isn't the culprit.  It turns out that, despite Deborah's husband not showing up at the country club dance, it was Lora Mae's Porter (Paul Douglas, who was only in his first year of moviemaking at the time despite being 42) that had run off with Addie, only to change his mind.  The film ends with Lora Mae & Porter admitting that they love each other, and a happy ending, with Addie saying "good night" to the audience as they all dance.

The movie is charming from start-to-finish.  It's hard not to make easy comparisons to All About Eve, not only because it shares several cast members (Holm, of course, and Thelma Ritter in a role so early in her career she didn't even get onscreen billing despite a substantial part that might have won her an Oscar nomination a few years later), but because it's the rare classic Hollywood movie that genuinely just puts women out in front, with all of the male actors relegated to supporting roles.  Eve is better, but that's an impossible bar to compare to, and this is a rich screenplay filled with witty asides (Darnell, Sothern, Ritter, & Holm all bat the one-liners out of the park), and is equally funny and dramatic.  The movie never shies away from the stakes here-the women all are in troubled marriages, and all don't want their marriages to end, but are aware that this isn't an ideal situation.  I liked that Mankiewicz didn't just go around blaming these three women for the problems in their partnerships, having the men own up to such things as well as the female characters, and while it just missed the Best Picture win to All the King's Men, it certainly would have made a worthy capper to the 1940's.

It's impossible not to compare the three lead actresses.  At first, I liked Sothern the best, as she was having the most fun with Mankiewicz's dialogue and in the first half it's hard to tell why Darnell's Lora Mae seemed so distant compared to the other actresses' closeness.  As the film goes on, though, we find that Lora Mae is the most interesting part of the three, and Darnell (in the best performance we've chronicled from her all month) aces it.  Lora Mae isn't a gold digger, but she is someone whom men just see as cheap and there "for a good time."  Ravishingly beautiful, but a poor girl, she's someone Porter thinks can be had for a steak dinner or a promotion, but in fact she wants something real and isn't afraid to lose him to get it.  That's what makes the stakes of the ending so great-Lora Mae is the only one of the three women who hasn't admitted to herself how much she loves her husband (and how much she loves him), and as a result is the only one of the three women you could see being abandoned before the curtain ends in a melodrama.  That she doesn't isn't a fault of the film, and actually to its aid, and one has to assume that Darnell was close to an Oscar nomination for this part, perhaps only missing out because she was splitting the vote with her costars (surely she would have campaigned correctly as a lead, but in our era of category fraud, she now would've gone supporting).  Darnell proved here with her superb comic timing & strong dramatic work that she was more than just a pretty face, and should be remembered not just for her beauty, but for being a damn fine actress.