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55th Anniversary Screening of GYPSY and Q&A with Carla Malden September 12th in West LA

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GYPSY (1962) 55th Anniversary Screening
With Carla Malden, Daughter of Karl Malden In-person
Tuesday, September 12, at 7:00 PM at the Laemmle Royal
Presented on Blu-ray. Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of GYPSY, the 1962 film adaptation of one of the masterworks of the American musical theater, with its triumphant Stephen Sondheim-Jule Styne score.

The film version stars Natalie Wood as burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, Rosalind Russell as Momma Rose, the ultimate stage mother, and Karl Malden.

The screening takes place on September 12, 7:00 pm at the Royal theatre in West LA, with guest Carla Malden, daughter of Karl Malden, and co-author of his memoir, When Do I Start?

In 1962 Natalie Wood was at the peak of her career, having been Oscar nominated as Best Actress for Splendor in the Grass (1961) and co-starring in that year’s Best Picture, West Side Story, when she was cast to portray the queen of the striptease, Gypsy Rose Lee. Rosalind Russell was cast as Momma Rose by Jack L. Warner, who bought the film rights, and the vibrant star of Auntie Mame took considerable critical heat for displacing Broadway legend Ethel Merman in the role. Malden’s part was built up for the Oscar-winning actor, and he doubled as Uncle Jocko and boyfriend-manager Herbie in the film. Other alterations included the trimming of one song, but these slight modifications did not detract from the success of the film.

Written for the screen by Leonard Spiegelgass from Arthur Laurents’ libretto, and directed by Mervyn Leroy, (Little Caesar, I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and co-producer The Wizard of Oz), Gypsy remains a faithful, brassy celluloid version of one of the greatest musicals ever staged.

The public didn’t seem to miss Merman, as the movie was a box office smash. Critics were divided at the time, but veteran scribe Joe Baltake (Philadelphia Daily News, Sacramento Bee) later wrote that Russell, “whose line readings are flawless …fleshed out the character of Rose as no one else ever has.” And as noted by Leonard Maltin, “(You) can’t lose with that Stephen Sondheim-Jule Styne score.” Nominated for 3 Academy Awards (Cinematography, Costume Design and Music Scoring).

Gypsy will screen Tuesday, September 12 at 7:00 pm at the Royal; Q&A with Carla Malden who will reminisce about her father and the making of the film, accompanied by a rare showing of the musical number cut from the film, after the screening.

65th Anniversary Screening of SUDDEN FEAR Starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, August 29th in Beverly Hills

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SUDDEN FEAR (1952) 65th Anniversary Screening
With Introduction by film historian Jeremy Arnold
Tuesday, August 29, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
Presented on DCP. Click here for tickets.

One of the dominant series in this year’s Emmy competition is Feud: Bette and Joan, which earned a near-record total of 18 nominations, and the top contender for Best Actress is Jessica Lange for her multi-dimensional portrayal of screen icon Joan Crawford.

During this Emmy season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of one of Crawford’s most memorable performances in the film noir favorite, SUDDEN FEAR.

The film earned four Oscar nominations in 1952, including one for Crawford as Best Actress, one for Jack Palance as Best Supporting Actor and another for Charles Lang’s moody black-and-white cinematography.

The ingenious screenplay by Lenore J. Coffee and Robert Smith, adapted from a novel by Edna Sherry, casts Crawford as a highly successful New York playwright who rejects an aspiring young actor when he auditions for the leading role in her latest play. Crawford insists that he lacks the charisma to be convincing as a romantic lead.

Ironically, when she later meets the actor on a train heading back to her home in San Francisco, she finds him more compelling and begins to fall in love with him. But this is only the beginning of a romantic melodrama with some startling and frightening twists ahead for both characters.

Film noir historian Spencer Selby called the film ”undoubtedly one of the most stylish and refined woman-in-distress noirs.” Leonard Maltin agreed that the film is a “solid suspense thriller with many neat twists.”

Gloria Grahame, who made four movies in 1952, including The Bad and the Beautiful (which won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), has a juicy supporting role as Palance’s secret lover.

David Miller (Midnight Lace, Lonely Are the Brave, Captain Newman, M.D.) directed.

The screening will be introduced by film historian Jeremy Arnold, author of TCM’S The Essentials, who provided the audio commentary on the recent Blu-Ray edition of SUDDEN FEAR.

Click here for tickets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9GHtPQ7DNA

45th Anniversary Screenings of Louis Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART on Wednesday, August 16th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, Louis Malle’s irreverent and often uproarious comedy, MURMUR OF THE HEART, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay of 1972.

During the course of his career, Malle proved himself one of the most astonishingly versatile of all international directors. His movies ran the gamut from the influential French noir, Elevator to the Gallows to the sexually daring drama, The Lovers, which was charged with obscenity and eventually cleared by the United States Supreme Court; the dark screwball comedy, Zazie dans le Metro; two piercing World War II dramas, Lacombe Lucien and Au Revoir Les Enfants; and the documentary Calcutta.

In America, Malle made the controversial Pretty Baby, which introduced Brooke Shields; the scintillating two-character talkathon, My Dinner with Andre; and the bittersweet comedy classic, Atlantic City, which earned five Oscar nominations, including one for best picture and another for Malle as best director.

Murmur of the Heart was an autobiographical memoir from Malle, a coming-of-age story told with candor and exuberant wit. Set in 1954, the year that France lost control of its colonies in Indochina, the film focuses on a chaotic bourgeois family headed by a wild, taboo-breaking mother, played to perfection by Italian actress Lea Massari.

The cast also includes Benoit Ferreux as her 14-year-old son, Daniel Gelin as her gynecologist husband, and Michel Lonsdale as a somewhat hypocritical priest.

Pauline Kael called the film an “exhilarating high comedy about French bourgeois life,” and she added, “Massari is superb as Clara, the carelessly sensual mother.”

Leonard Maltin praised the picture as a “fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale” that builds to “a thoroughly delightful resolution.”

MURMUR OF THE HEART screens at 7pm on August 16th at the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse in Pasadena. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

Second Annual WESTERN WEEKEND August 18-20 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our second annual tribute to the cowboy genre, Western Weekend, a six-shooter collection of vintage sagebrush films.

This year’s round-up includes John Ford’s late masterpiece, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, Fred Zinnemann’s venerated HIGH NOON, Sam Peckinpah’s early landmark, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, John Sturges’ influential GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, and rediscoveries of revisionist oaters from Martin Ritt, HOMBRE, and Philip Kaufman, THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID.

The star-studded line-up of legendary cowboys, lawmen and outlaws features John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Paul Newman, James Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Fredric March, Robert Duvall, and Grace Kelly, among others. So saddle-up for a retro Western weekend August 18-20. Hitching posts available at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

Special guests: THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID Director Philip Kaufman, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY Co-Star Mariette Hartley, and HOMBRE Actress Barbara Rush.

Admission is $13 per film. Laemmle Premiere Card holders pay only $10 per ticket. A six film series pass is available for $60 at the Fine Arts box office.

HIGH NOON (1952) – 65th Anniversary
Introduction by Karen Sharpe-Kramer, widow of producer-director Stanley Kramer and president of the Stanley Kramer Library
DCP presentation

This seminal film in the Western canon, deftly directed by Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity, A Man For All Seasons) won 4 Oscars, including Best Actor for Gary Cooper in one of his best roles as a small town sheriff, abandoned by fearful townsfolk, who must face a desperado and his gang sworn to kill him.

The film had political undertones of the era, and screenwriter Carl Foreman (The Bridge on the River Kwai) was blacklisted after taking the Fifth amendment at the HUAC hearings.

The New York Times praised the film and its anti-McCarthy sentiments with a timely note still resonating 65 years later, “It bears a close relation to things that are happening in the world today, where people are being terrorized by bullies and surrendering freedoms out of senselessness and fear.”

The hit theme song won Dimitri Tiomkin two Oscars (Song and Score). The film was notable for having its running time match the story countdown to high noon, and that editing effort won Elmo Williams an Oscar. Also nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. With Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, and Lon Chaney. New York Film Critics’ Best Film of the Year; included in the National Film Registry at its inception (1989). Shows August 20 at 4:30 pm. Click here for tickets.

GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957) – 60th Anniversary
35mm presentation

A popular and influential oater that recreated the legendary 1881 shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, notable for its inspired casting of Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday and Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, who give solid performances as the iconic figures of the Old West.

Well-directed by John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape), and written by Leon Uris (Exodus), the film scored big at the box-office. Its success paved the way for the Western super-productions of the 60s, including Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven and Best Picture Oscar nominee How the West Was Won.

The sharp color cinematography is by Charles B. Lang; Music by Dimitri Tiomkin. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards (Sound and Film Editing).

The strong supporting cast includes Rhonda Fleming, Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet, John Ireland and rising actors Dennis Hopper, Earl Holliman and Deforest Kelley. Shows August 19 at 5:30 pm. Click here for tickets.

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) – 55th Anniversary
DCP presentation

The penultimate Western of director John Ford, re-teamed with frequent collaborator John Wayne, and joined by James Stewart, who had found major success in the 50s in saddles and spurs for director Anthony Mann. By this time Wayne had become a cultural icon, symbolizing the cowboy-soldier hero both on and off the screen. Stewart gives perhaps his greatest Western performance as an idealistic lawyer who brings civilization to the primitive frontier, but rises to national recognition ironically through a gunfight showdown.

Shot in black and white, and using mostly studio interiors, Ford and company (producer Willis Goldbeck co-scripting with James Warner Bellah) spin a yarn of archetypes and myths, but with new self-awareness of the lies that perpetrated the Western mythology (“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”).

Kenneth Turan applauded, “Told with a simplicity that feels almost like ritual…Liberty Valance unfolds seamlessly, without a frame wasted or out of place.”

Added to the National Film Registry in 2007. With Vera Miles, Edmond O’Brien, Woody Strode, Andy Devine and Lee Marvin as the snarling varmint, Liberty Valance. Shows August 19 at 8:00 pm. Click here for tickets.

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962) – 55th Anniversary
Actress Mariette Hartley in Person
35mm presentation

This autumnal Western dealt with many of the same themes of a changing West that John Ford explored in Liberty Valance. But young director Sam Peckinpah brought an edgier perspective to his examination of the closing of the frontier.

Western film veterans Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea play aging gunfighters confronting a new world at the start of the 20th century. Laced with irreverent humor and sometimes startling sexual candor, the film turns into a deeply moving elegy for its upright cowboy heroes. Despite a haphazard release by the studio, the film was named by Newsweek as the best film of 1962, and in his four-star review, Leonard Maltin called it a “literate, magnificent Western.” It was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1997.

This screening will be followed by a Q & A with actress Mariette Hartley, who made her film debut in the role of an innocent but spirited frontier woman. The cast also includes Warren Oates, Ron Starr, L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, and Edgar Buchanan. Cinematography by Lucien Ballard. Shows August 19 at 3:00 pm. Click here for tickets.

Mariette Hartley (right) made her film debut in this early Western by Sam Peckinpah which is still regarded as one of the director’s best

HOMBRE (1967) – 50th Anniversary
Actress Barbara Rush in Person
DCP presentation

This was one of the first of a new breed of Westerns of the 1960s and 70s that challenged the negative portrayals of Native Americans perpetrated in many earlier films. Paul Newman plays a white man raised by the Apache and embittered by the mistreatment of his adoptive tribe.

The film was created by the same team that made the Oscar-winning modern Western, Hud, four years earlier: director Martin Ritt, screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., and cinematographer James Wong Howe, in addition to Newman.

Adapted from a novel by Elmore Leonard, the plot owes a debt to John Ford’s classic Stagecoach, retooled with anti-Establishment bite. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Oscar winners Fredric March and Martin Balsam, Oscar nominee Diane Cilento, Richard Boone, Barbara Rush, Cameron Mitchell, and newcomers Maggie Blye and Peter Lazer.

As Roger Ebert wrote, “The performances are uniformly excellent.” The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther said, “Savor it for its fine ingredients…this is a first-rate cooking of a western recipe.” Shows August 20 at 2:00 pm. Click here for tickets.

THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID (1972) – 45th Anniversary
Writer-director Philip Kaufman in Person
35mm presentation

Of all the revisionist Westerns made during the late 1960s and early 1970s, this may be one of the least heralded and most inventive. The story of the last bank robbery perpetrated by the James and Younger gangs stars Oscar winners Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger and Robert Duvall as Jesse James.

Duvall’s witty portrayal of the iconic outlaw as a sly, loony psychopath is one of the most original additions to Western film lore. New writer-director Philip Kaufman mixes humor, lyricism, and breathtaking action set-pieces.

Jay Cocks of Time magazine called Northfield “the kind of first movie so rich in texture and invention that we can look forward to a lot more from Philip Kaufman.”

Indeed, Kaufman went on to direct the first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wanderers, The Right Stuff, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The supporting cast includes film veterans R.G. Armstrong, Elisha Cook Jr., Royal Dano, Dana Elcar, and Donald Moffat, along with newer faces Luke Askew, Matt Clark, and Mary-Robin Redd. Photographed by Bruce Surtees, with a musical score by Oscar winner Dave Grusin. Kaufman will make an in-person appearance on the opening night of our Western Weekend. Shows August 18 at 7:30 pm. Click here for tickets.

Twofer Tuesday: Robert Mitchum Centennial on August 1st in Beverly Hills, NoHo, and Pasadena

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series celebrate the centennial of Hollywood icon Robert Mitchum (b. August 6, 1917) with two of his best roles, OUT OF THE PAST (1947, 70th anniversary) and CAPE FEAR (1962, 55th anniversary). The two acclaimed film noirs will be shown as a double feature on August 1 as part of the popular Twofer Tuesday (two for the price of one) program at a choice of three locations: the Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Presented on blu-ray.

Click here for tickets to the 5:10pm OUT OF THE PAST and 7:15 CAPE FEAR
or
Click here for tickets to the 7:15 CAPE FEAR and 9:30 OUT OF THE PAST

Mitchum was a contract player at RKO when he starred in Out of the Past, directed by Jacques Tourneur with a script by Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring), adapting his novel, “Build My Gallows High.” Mitchum plays an ex-private eye entangled in a web of double-dealings by former criminal associates (gangster Kirk Douglas and old flame Jane Greer). Mitchum, described in the New York Times review of the day as “magnificently cheeky and self-assured,” entrenched his cynical, antihero image in this film.

Out of the Past, as author Jeremy Arnold notes in TCM’s The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter, “is the quintessential film noir. It has a tough hero, a supremely alluring femme fatale, hard-boiled dialogue, a commingling of sex and violence, expressionistic lighting…all set in an ominous world where death and double-cross are the norm.” The movie has been added to the National Film Registry.

Cape Fear came at the end of the classical black-and-white film noir period (1942-62), and stars Mitchum in his most memorable villainous role, Max Cady. In this adaptation by James R. Webb of James D. MacDonald’s novel, “The Executioners,” an ex-con plots insidious revenge on the lawyer (Gregory Peck) whose testimony sent him to prison. Director J. Lee Thompson was an admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, and paid homage to the Master of Suspense with camera angles and the use of his frequent collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann, who provided a superbly menacing score. Mitchum was so convincing in the role that co-star Polly Bergen (as Peck’s wife) said she was genuinely frightened in an improvised scene with him. Leonard Maltin calls Mitchum’s performance “believably creepy,” and the American Film Institute cited his portrayal of Cady as one of the top 30 “All-Time Screen Villains.” Martin Balsam, Lori Martin, Telly Savalas, and Barrie Chase co-star.

Barrie Chase had other memorable roles in films of the 1960s, including Stanley Kramer’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Robert Aldrich’s The Flight of the Phoenix. She was a dancer in many hit musical films of the 1950s and co-starred with Fred Astaire in several of his top-rated TV specials.

Actress Barrie Chase will introduce the 7:15 CAPE FEAR at the Ahrya Fine Arts. Film historian Jeremy Arnold will introduce the 9:30 OUT OF THE PAST, only at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

Out of the Past screens at 5:15 & 9:30; Cape Fear screens at 7:15, at all three locations.

Q&A with MY FAVORITE YEAR Director Richard Benjamin, Co-stars Lainie Kazan and Joseph Bologna, and Producer Michael Gruskoff on Thursday, July 27 in West LA

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35th Anniversary Screening of MY FAVORITE YEAR (1982) Followed by a Q&A with Director Richard Benjamin, Co-stars Lainie Kazan and Joseph Bologna, and Producer Michael Gruskoff on Thursday, July 27, at 7:30 PM at the Royal. Presented on DVD.

Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of the popular comedy, MY FAVORITE YEAR, which earned Peter O’ Toole his seventh Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The year is 1954, and O’Toole plays an aging, dissolute movie star (a cross between John Barrymore and Errol Flynn) who creates havoc when he is hired as a guest star of a TV comedy series modeled on Sid Caesar’s groundbreaking variety show.

Mark Linn-Baker plays a young writer on the show (said to be based on Mel Brooks), and the extraordinary cast also includes Jessica Harper, Joe Bologna, Lainie Kazan, Bill Macy, Lou Jacobi, and Cameron Mitchell, with Gloria Stuart in an unbilled cameo. Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo wrote the screenplay, and Richard Benjamin made an impressive directorial debut.

Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, Robert Osborne said, “Benjamin keeps everything rolling merrily from start to finish.” Variety’s Todd McCarthy declared, “MY FAVORITE YEAR provides a field day for a wonderful bunch of actors headed by Peter O’Toole in another rambunctious, stylish starring turn.” Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner touted the film as “a comic triumph” and added, “It’s as jam-packed with invention and eccentricity as a Preston Sturges romp.”

After shining as an actor in ‘Goodbye, Columbus,’ ‘Diary of a Mad Housewife,’ ‘The Last of Sheila,’ ‘Westworld,’ and ‘The Sunshine Boys,’ Richard Benjamin made a successful transition to directing with the film. He went on to direct such others as ‘Racing with the Moon’ with Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern, and Nicolas Cage, ‘The Money Pit’ with Tom Hanks, ‘Little Nikita’ with Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix, and ‘Mermaids’ with Cher and Winona Ryder.

Lainie Kazan has had a long career as a singer as well as an actress. Her feature films include ‘One from the Heart,’ ‘Beaches,’ and the smash hit comedy ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding.’ She co-starred in the TV series ‘The Paper Chase,’ ‘The Nanny,’ and ‘Desperate Housewives.’ She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in ‘My Favorite Year,’ and Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote of her performance, “Lainie Kazan as Benjy’s mother poses a serious threat to Shelley Winters in the funniest-Jewish-Mama sweepstakes.”

Joseph Bologna has worked as an actor, writer, and director. He earned an Academy Award nomination for co-authoring the screenplay of ‘Lovers and Other Strangers,’ which was adapted from the play he wrote with Renee Taylor. He and Taylor co-starred in other films they wrote, ‘Made for Each Other’ and ‘It Had to Be You.’ Bologna has also co-starred in such films as Neil Simon’s ‘Chapter Two,’ ‘Blame It on Rio,’ ‘The Woman in Red,’ and ‘Boynton Beach Club.’

Michael Gruskoff produced ‘Young Frankenstein,’ ‘Silent Running,’ and ‘Pink Cadillac.’ He won Cesar Award for ‘Quest for Fire’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioyAJUCTCkQ

25th Anniversary Screenings of INDOCHINE on Wednesday, July 19th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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For this month’s screening in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 25th anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning French film, INDOCHINE.

This sweeping epic about France’s troubled history in Southeast Asia was named best foreign language film of 1992, and Catherine Deneuve received an Oscar nomination (her only one) for her portrayal of a wealthy landowner who adopts a Vietnamese orphan.

TIME Magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “INDOCHINE sprawls and enthralls. It has the breadth and intelligence of the David Lean epics,” and he added, “In Catherine Deneuve, INDOCHINE has a star of epic glamour and gravity.”

The film spans 30 years from 1930 through the war of independence in the 1950s. Director Regis Wargnier brought impressive visual flair to the evocation of this society in transition.

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film “awesomely gorgeous, both in its landscapes and in its period-perfect settings and costumes.”

Wargnier filmed on location in Vietnam and Malaysia. The cast includes Vincent Perez, Jean Yanne, Dominique Blanc, and newcomer Linh Dan Pham.

INDOCHINE screens at 7pm on July 19th at the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse in Pasadena. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

This screening is the latest installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented the third Wednesday of each month. Louis Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART is coming up on August 16th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxMoREEix6Q

PEYTON PLACE 60th Anniversary Screening and Q&A with Co-Star Terry Moore on July 12th in West LA

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60th Anniversary Screening of PEYTON PLACE (1957)
Followed by a Q&A with Co-Star Terry Moore
Wednesday, July 12, at 7:00 PM at the Royal
Presented digitally

Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 60th anniversary screening of PEYTON PLACE, the smash hit movie version of Grace Metalious’s best-selling novel. The film earned nine top Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also tied the all-time record of five acting nominations from a single film: Lana Turner as Best Actress and 4 supporting nods, for newcomers Diane Varsi and Hope Lange, along with Arthur Kennedy and Russ Tamblyn.

Metalious’s novel exposed the steamy shenanigans in a small New England town, and even in a slightly toned down version, the film tackled such once forbidden topics as rape, incest, sexual hypocrisy and repression. It opened in December of 1957 and became the second highest grossing film of 1958 after going into wide release. It spawned a sequel and a popular TV series in the 1960s.

Leonard Maltin summed up the critical consensus when he wrote, “Grace Metalious’s once-notorious novel receives Grade A filming.” Producer Jerry Wald (whose credits included Mildred Pierce, Key Largo, Johnny Belinda, An Affair to Remember, The Long Hot Summer, and Sons and Lovers) bought the rights to the novel for $250,000 and hired a classy team to bring it to the screen. Screenwriter John Michael Hayes wrote many of the best Alfred Hitchcock movies of the 1950s, including Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Director Mark Robson started as an assistant editor on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, then directed such successful films as Champion, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, and Inn of the Sixth Happiness. Oscar winning composer Franz Waxman provided the memorable musical score. The cast also includes Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Lloyd Nolan, David Nelson, Terry Moore, and Barry Coe.

The Hollywood Reporter praised all the performances but singled out co-star Terry Moore, who “shows what a forceful and moving actress she can be.” Moore made a vivid impression in 1949’s Mighty Joe Young, then earned an Oscar nomination for Come Back, Little Sheba in 1952. Her other films include Man on a Tightrope with Fredric March, King of the Khyber Rifles with Tyrone Power, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef with Robert Wagner, and Daddy Long Legs with Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. She made 77 feature films over the course of her career and also appeared in many TV series and movies.