Letter to Three Wives [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Three suburban wives board an excursion boat to chaperone an all-day outing with a group of school children. Just before the boat leaves the dock a messenger arrives with a note for the three of them. It's from Addie Ross, an old friend who may not be much of a friend. "Dearest Debby, Lora Mae and Rita," she writes. "As you know, by now, you'll have to carry on without me from here. It isn't easy to leave a town like our town, to tear myself away from you three dear, dear friends who have meant so much to me. And so I consider myself lucky to be able to take with me a sort of memento, something to remind me of the town that was my home, and of my three very dearest friends, who I never want to forget, and I won't. You see, girls, I've run off with one of your husbands. Addie" For the next few hours, unable to get to a telephone, each of the three women can only reflect back on her marriage and wonder if she is the one who has just lost her husband. Only that afternoon when they return will they learn which husband Addie made off with.

There's Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain) married to Brad (Jeffrey Lynn). She was a small town girl swept away by a glamorous officer, who now lives a life of country club complacency. She has never lost her insecurity. There's Rita Phipps (Ann Southern) married to George (Kirk Douglas). She and her husband started out as school teachers. He still is but she is carving a successful and well-paid career as a radio soap opera writer. There's Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell) married to Porter (Paul Douglas). She wanted away from the other side of the tracks, and managed to make a marriage happen with the town's biggest businessman.

As they flash back, we learn a lot about each one of them and the state of their marriages. Hovering over everything is the presence of Addie. "That's Addie, for you," gushes Brad at one moment. "Always the right thing at the right time. Thoughtful and generous." "Generous to a fault," agrees George. "To a fault. That's Addie," say Rita, making a face. We never meet Addie, never even see her, but she keeps up a voice-over commentary with us that is amusing, a little malicious and wise about the ways of husbands.

By the end of the movie the three couples have learned a good deal about themselves and what's important. Addie indeed had run off with one of the husbands. And nonetheless the movie has a happy and satisfying ending.

Many critics think this is Joseph Mankiewicz' best movie after All About Eve. He won Oscars for best screenplay and best direction (and then repeated the next year for Eve). There are any number of good things about the film. The situation could have degenerated into melodrama but Mankiewicz' writing is so amusing and sophisticated it raises the game. It crackles with commentary on any number of issues, and most are still pertinent today. "I'm a school teacher," George Phipps says. "That's even worse than being an intellectual. School teachers are not only comic they're often cold and hungry in this richest land of ours." Try substituting "television writing" for "radio writing" and hear the zingers snap home as George offends a radio advertising executive. "The purpose of radio writing," he says, "as far as I can see is to prove to the 'masses' that a deodorant can bring happiness, a mouthwash guarantee success and a laxative attract romance." Mankiewicz' brief satire of a radio soap opera, "Another Day in the Notebook of Linda Grey, Registered Nurse," is almost as good as some of Bob and Ray's stuff.

All the actors do fine jobs, but particularly appealing, I think, are Ann Southern as Rita, Linda Darnell as Lora Mae and Paul Douglas as Porter. Unbilled and stealing scenes is Thelma Ritter as the Phipps' maid. Also unbilled but a key element in the movie is Celeste Holm. She does Addie's voice...warm, low pitched, amused, and not to be trusted if you're a wife.

In 1942 eleven million men left for war, and the women they left behind took up new and challenging roles at home and at work. When they came back, the GIs found America a transformed country. Its women had matured and taken more responsibility; and whether it wanted to or not, Hollywood had to reflect the changed state of affairs. The studios knew from their market research that of the couples and groups of friends who formed the great majority of cinema-goers, it was more often than not the/a woman who chose the picture.

In this knowledge, A Letter to Three Wives was conceived as a fairly lavish `woman's picture'. It deals with three married women (Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern) who, under possible threat of desertion by their husbands, cast their mind back in flashback to key scenes in their married life for an inkling as to whether threat will become reality.

This type of drama tends to stand or fall by its script, especially for the contemporary viewer who is living in very different social times and who will be impatient with something dated, and this one by Joseph Mankiewicz (who also directs) is funny and sharp but also has a warmth that seems to recognize the continuing dilemmas of its characters in a way that raises the interest of the film from that of a particular time and place (1940s USA) to the universal.

The acting is skilled. Jeanne Crain is marvellously good-looking but no mere clothes-peg; Linda Darnell is convincingly waspish; Ann Sothern, who at 40 is 15 years older than the other two, has perhaps the most interesting role, switching easily from comedy to anxiety. Kirk Douglas, before he became a star, has few of the annoying mannerisms that he adopted later, and handles light badinage really well.

Recommended as a classy studio production to which the `woman's picture' tag does little justice.

The way this film shows 3 seperate stories that link into the main act is superbly executed. I loved this film the first time I saw it when I was a teenager and I still have to watch it at least twice a year.

Linda Darnell and the other stars put in intelligent, brilliant performances and the story of a letter from an unseen women saying she has run away wih one of their husbands as they are helping out on a scouts picnic in the days before mobile phones, keeps you thinking all the time till they arrive back on the mainland.

I highly recommend this film.