A Letter to Three Wives 1949

     This film is based on a John Klemner Cosmopolitan Magazine novel, A Letter to Five Wives.  Two wives were lost in the transition to the screen?   Lora May is a girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.  Actually, she lived with her mother and sister and they lived right next to the tracks.  She starts dating Porter Hollingsway and he believes she is just a gold digger but they get married.  It isn’t true that she's after his money because she loves him?  Rita Phipps makes more money writing radio scripts at night than her schoolteacher husband George.  Sometimes there is friction between them over money.  Deborah Bishop was in the Navy during WWI but she believes she will never fit into the Country Club set with her husband Brad.

     Lora May, Rita and Deborah are preparing to board a boat filled with children going on a picnic.  A bicycle messenger gives them a letter addressed to all three just prior to boarding.  The letter says that Addie Green has surprisingly just left town.  The real information is that she has left with Porter, George or Brad?  Now, all during the boat ride and picnic plus their journeys home the women try to decide in their minds who will not have a husband when they get home?  Addie is supposed to be beautiful and she has created a near breakdown for the women!!  4 (I really liked this movie) 

103 min, Drama directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz with Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Barbara Lawrence, Jeffrey Lynn, Connie Gilchrist, Florence Bates, Hobart Cavanaugh.   

    

Note:  Imdb 7.8 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 94% critic 86% audience, DVD Talk Excellent Glenn Erickson, EmpireOnline 4* out of 5* Kim Newman, Rate Your Music 3.58* out of 5* with 205 ratings, TCM Leonard Maltin 4* average user review 3.85* out of 5*, Amazon 4.6* out of 5* with 211 reviews. 

Special Note:  Filmed in Lake Mahopac, Cold Spring, Hook Mountain, New York; Beverly Hills, 20th Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles, California.  Originally the film was titled “A Letter to Four Wives.” Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph L. Mankiewicz agreed that the script was too long.  Anne Baxter would’ve been the fourth wife.  The picture on the piano that is supposed to be of Addie Green is really of Otto Preminger.  Preminger gave Linda Darnell a hard time on the set of Forever Amber of 1947.  Celeste Holm supplied the voice-over conversation of Addie.  There were contests around the country where moviegoers could guess Holm’s name as Addie’s voice.  This is one of Thelma Ritter’s first films.  In this time period, she was not credited because she was not yet famous?