A Letter To Three Wives

Review by Stella Daily - Feb 13, 2006

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I have to admit, when I first saw that the 1949 film A Letter to Three Wives was based on a story from Cosmopolitan magazine, I was a bit skeptical. But, as it turns out, Cosmo was once good for much more than stories like “50 hot new sex tricks!” — for A Letter to Three Wives is a delight.

The story begins as a trio of friends receives a letter from a mutual acquaintance, Addie, addressed to all three. Addie (who never appears onscreen) informs them that she has made off with one of their husbands. She won’t say whose husband it was. All three women have reason to worry, and since all three men are away for the evening, the ladies have several hours in which to stew until they find out which of their mates is the philanderer.

The joy of this movie is not in the story line, which contains more illustration of the various characters’ situations than a full-fledged plot, but in the beauty of its characterizations and the tensions that build when those characters interact.

The earnest Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain) is a small-town girl who’s married rich and who feels embarrassed by her country-bumpkin awkwardness in her posh new surroundings. Has her well-bred husband Brad (Jeffrey Lynn) left her for the polished, elegant Addie?

Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern), a radio scriptwriter, is the primary breadwinner in her household, and it’s a fact that bothers her far more than it does her noble-minded husband, George (Kirk Douglas). While Rita is willing to pander to her boss in order to support their lifestyle, George, who prefers to follow his passion as a schoolteacher, is troubled that his wife is willing to subordinate what she believes in to what will make money. Is it George who has abandoned his wife for Addie, who is well-educated and passionate?

Lora Mae Hollingway (Linda Darnell) was once a clerk in the chain of department stores owned by her husband, Porter (Paul Douglas). While Porter believes his wife married him as a meal ticket, Lora Mae wonders if her husband ever really loved her. Has he run off with Addie, who is an old flame, or at least an old fascination, to him?

As the viewer learns the reasons each woman suspects that she might be the one robbed of a husband, a cast of fascinating characters is developed. George, the schoolteacher, is the most highly moral of the bunch. When his wife invites her boss to dinner for an evening of brownnosing, George cannot hide his real opinion of the boss’ artistic tastes once provoked.

He says what he thinks — that the work with which the boss is obsessed, and which is turning his wife into someone he admires less and less each day — has no artistic value, that it subordinates good writing to commercialism. Yet he does not treat the subject in a way that denigrates those who make money— he merely belittles the idea of producing a storyline that twists the plot in ridiculous ways to push a product to the client’s tastes, then calling it high art.

When he discusses his job as a schoolteacher — a job his wife would dearly like him to give up for something higher-paying — he does so not in terms of altruism and service to children, but as a passion of his. If he doesn’t educate children the way he wants to see them educated, who will? George risks alienation from his wife by saying what he thinks, but he is not willing to sacrifice or hide his values, even for her sake.

Deborah Bishop is the “small town girl living in a lonely world.” She knows she doesn’t fit into her husband’s world, but she desperately wants to learn how. Deborah calls to mind Cherryl Taggart of Atlas Shrugged, who worked so hard to be worthy of the position she married into.

Deborah’s friend Lora Mae, who also “married up,” is a woman who at first seems to have chosen her much older husband on the basis of his pocketbook. Yet as the film unfolds, it becomes clear that deep down, what Lora Mae wants most is not money she hasn’t earned, but rather a man who loves her passionately for her character.

By the time A Letter to Three Wives reaches its close and the truth is revealed, you’ll be drawn into a world where the confessions of film characters aren’t dissolution and debauchery, but the conflicts that arise when moral people misunderstand each other. It’s a world that will make you wish Cosmo would publish a story this good every month.

  

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