A Letter to Three Wives (1949) - film review

One bright Saturday morning, three friends, Deborah, Rita and Lora, are about to take a party of school children on a riverside picnic when a messenger hands them a letter.  The letter is from their mutual friend, Addie Ross, who simply states that she has just stolen one of their husbands.  Each woman has reason to think her husband may want to leave her.  Deborah is anxious that she cannot live up to her husband’s expectations at social occasions.  Rita knows that her husband resents her pursuing a career as a writer for lowbrow radio shows.  And Lora has long suspected that her husband felt she only married him for his money.  Their daytrip over, the three wives make a hasty return to their homes, where one of them will have an unpleasant surprise...

A Letter to Three Wives is a marvellously witty and incisive study of marital strife, scripted and directed with great flair by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, one of Hollywood’s most talented writer-directors.  The impeccable script is replete with the kind of sophisticated comic dialogue that is as rewarding to the discerning spectator as a glass of the finest claret, and it is also pretty spot on in its reading of the psychology of married couples.  The film also works as a social satire, mocking the mania of the middle classes to conform to some kind of shallow ideal of taste and respectability.  It also finds time to hammer out a vitriolic critique of popular entertainment (in this case, heavily sponsored radio shows) and a lament for society’s under-appreciation of education – things that are just as valid today.  

The calibre of the writing and direction is matched by the near-faultless performances from its magnificent ensemble cast, which includes a particularly memorable turn from the stunning Linda Darnell, who draws our attention like a precious jewel in a bed of gossamer.   Darnell’s sparky scenes with Paul Douglas are the most poignant and effective, and not just because they are the best written.  

Mankiewicz won the won Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscars in 1950 for this film, an achievement he repeated the following year with his next film, All About Eve (1950).   20th Century Fox boss, Darryl F. Zanuck, originally wanted Ernst Lubitsch to direct the film.  Zanuck would later accuse Mankiewicz of almost bankrupting the studio when his ill-conceived 1963 blockbuster Cleopatra bombed at the box office.

© James Travers 2008

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