A Letter to Three Wives **** (1949, Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Barbara Lawrence) – Classic Movie Review 2416

Writer-director Joseph L Mankiewicz (All About Eve, Cleopatra) won the Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay for his work on this delightful 1949 suburban satire, examining the thorny question of husband and wife relationships. 

Three wives, who are about to take a trip on the Hudson River, each get a delivered note from their friend Addie Ross, telling them she has just left town with one of their husbands. But she leaves them in suspense as to which one. So, in the women’s mounting anxiety, a series of flashbacks tells the story of how the three marriages have come to be so strained as each of the wives examine the shortcomings of their marriages.

Mankiewicz’s witty screenplay and good-humoured handling and the touching performing by Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern as the three wives are the keys to this movie’s very considerable success. 

Crain top bills as Deborah Bishop who was a success in the US Navy in World War Two, when she where she met her future husband Brad (Jeffrey Lynn), but fears she’ll never be acceptable to his upper-class Country Club social set.

Darnell plays Lora Mae Hollingsway, who grew up poor, not just on the wrong side of the tracks but next to the railroad track, and married her employer, the wealthy, older, divorced Porter (Paul Douglas, in his film début), who thinks she is just a gold digger.

Sothern also stars as Brad’s friend Rita Phipps, who makes as much money writing sappy radio soap opera scripts at night as her school teacher husband George (Kirk Douglas) does.

These three wives are just about to board a boat filled with underprivileged children going on a riverboat ride and picnic when a messenger on a bicycle hands them a letter addressed to all three from Addie informing them that she has run off with one of their husbands. They won’t know which one until that night. All three husbands consider Addie practically a goddess.

The film also stars Florence Bates as Rita’s boss Mrs. Manleigh, Connie Gilchrist as Ma Finney and Thelma Ritter as Ma Finney’s friend Sadie, along with Barbara Lawrence, Hobart Cavanaugh, Patti Brady and Ruth Vivian. The voiceover you hear is an uncredited Celeste Holm, who provides the voice of Addie Ross, the unseen woman who wrote the titular letter.

A spectacular success at the time of its release, the movie is adapted by Mankiewicz and Vera Caspary from John Klempner’s 1946 novel which appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Sothern reappears as Ma Finney in the 1985 TV movie remake with Loni Anderson, Michele Lee and Stephanie Zimbalist, but she will want to be remembered for this superior original.

Barbara Lawrence, who plays Georgiana ‘Babe’ Finney in A Letter to Three Wives, died on on 13 November 2013, aged 83. She also starred in The Street with No Name (1948), Oklahoma! (1955) and the 1957 sci-fi Kronos.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2416

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