Letter to Three Wives A (1949)

Where to begin. I’d really rather not give away too much of the story-lines in this one because it’s so enjoyable experiencing each in its own right. It’s safe to read this and the next paragraph if that’s what you decide for yourself. Joseph L. Mankiewicz not only won the Best Director Oscar for this film but the Best Writing Screenplay statuette as well. The picture itself was also nominated losing to All the King’s Men (1949). Mankiewicz would win these same two Oscars the following year with the Academy Award winning Best Picture All About Eve (1950); it features an outstanding cast just like this one.

After a brief introduction to two of the wives (Jeanne Crain & Ann Sothern) during which we learn all is not perfect in suburbia (e.g. their marriages) the third (Linda Darnell) joins them at the beach where they’re about to embark on a ferry to an island for their community’s day-long 18th Annual picnic together. However just as they’re about to board a messenger arrives with a letter addressed to the three of them from an unattached “high class” socialite whom had been expected to join them and whom also has a history with each of their husbands. After debating whether to open it or not they decide to do so. The letter is then voice-over read to “us” by Celeste Holm whose voice appears uncredited as the aforementioned woman Addie Ross. In essence it says that she has just run off with one of their husbands! They then gaze longingly at the telephone booth on the docks as their ferry boats departs for the island with them aboard. (I guess this story wouldn’t work as well in the age of cell-phones;-)

We then learn about the wives’ relationships with their husbands each other and Ms. Ross in a series of three flashbacks one for each couple but which also includes the others as well (except for Ms. Ross whom though we never see her is involved or offstage in each of them). Crain was a small town girl who met and married the town’s “high class” man (Jeffrey Lynn) whom she met while they served together in the Navy (during the war?). He’d always been expected to come home and marry Ms. Ross. This is the shortest of the three segments and it basically consists of Crain being so scared of meeting her husband’s established clan of country club friends that she gets drunk and embarrasses herself during the event.

The second flashback further introduces us to Sothern and her husband (Kirk Douglas who received his first of three unrewarded Best Actor nominations in another film that year Champion (1949)). She brings home the bacon as a writer for a radio program the newest rage while he’s a highly educated school teacher (interesting role for Douglas eh?). They have twin children who are never seen such that we don’t know if they’re boys or girls and a hired cook (played deliciously as always by the marvelous Thelma Ritter uncredited). She’s prepared the home cooked meal for a big invite evening with Sothern’s boss appropriately named Mrs. Manleigh (Florence Bates) who runs roughshod over her husband (played by another great character actor Hobart Cavanaugh). Darnell and her husband (Paul Douglas) are also dinner guests. There are a series of unfortunate events which lead to a row between the couple after their guests have left. The dialogue in this segment is particularly sharp and poignant. Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer also appears briefly and uncredited as a messenger boy.

The third segment details how the “other side of the tracks” Darnell hooked her “working class” successful business owner husband by playing “hard to get”. Douglas’s character had been previously married and originally just wanted to “fool around” with his employee Darnell. This is probably the least interesting of the segments you’ve seen it all before or since but it does involve some noteworthy performances by Ms. Ritter (again) Connie Gilchrist as Darnell’s Irish mother and Barbara Lawrence as her baby sister.

The influence of Ms. Ross “over” the husbands is felt by the wives in all three segments though more strongly in some versus others. However Mankiewicz’s direction is much too clever to reveal the identity of the wayward husband … and it would spoil it if I revealed any more;-)

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