In 1950 and then again in 1951, Joseph Mankiewicz won the Oscar for both Best Director and Best Screenplay. Unless I miss my guess, that had never happened before or since. Now, over fifty years later, while few casual film goers remember Mankiewicz's name, the legacy of the film that won Mankiewicz his Oscars in 1951 remains intact. All About Eve has a well deserved reputation as one of the greatest movies ever made. It ranked as number 16 on the AFI's 100 years, 100 movies list and an argument could be made that it's even better than that. Featuring career-best work from Bette Davis, Celeste Holm, Anne Baxter, and George Sanders as well as a small hilarious cameo by Marilyn Monroe, All About Eve has one of the most quotable scripts ever written (from "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" on...) and has been referenced in and ripped off by countless subsequent films. If you love movies, you love All About Eve. It's just that simple.

But the year before, Mankiewicz won his Oscars for one of those classics that time has largely forgot, A Letter to Three Wives. The film lost the Best Picture Oscar to All The King's Men and as a result, probably lost its place in cinematic history, except as a footnote involving Mankiewicz's achievement.

And nobody would accuse A Letter To Three Wives of being a superior film to All About Eve, but in many ways they're excellent companion texts. Even totally divorced of the context of the classic that came one year later (remarkably Mankiewicz directed two films in between) A Letter To Three Wives is a nifty social satire full of humor and excellent performances. Because one of the eponymous three wives is a total bore, one part of the story sags, but that section comes first, so if you make it past, the film picks up, making its way to a climax which, if you think about it, may raise more questions than it answers.

Deborah (Jeanne Crain), Rita (Ann Sothern), and Lora Mae (Linda Darnell) are three friends living in an upper middle class neighborhood of an unnamed small town just twenty miles from an unnamed large city. All three women live socially involved lives, balanced with their marriages to Brad (Jeffrey Lynn), George (Kirk Douglas), and Porter (Paul Douglas). One summer afternoon, the three women are about to embark on a day's excursion for a picnic with less fortunate children when they get a letter from their friend, Addie Ross (the voice of Celeste Holm). Addie writes that she's leaving town, never to return again. But that she won't have to miss the town too badly because, well, she's run off with one of their husbands!

As framing devices go, it's a classic. The three women spend the rest of the day (when they're supposed to be supervising the children) wondering if they'll return home to find a lack of husband. And as the day goes along, each woman realizes, reflecting back on their marriage in flashbacks, that their husband might well be the unfaithful one. Because even as they all thought their marriages were fine, there are strains all around and for each of their husbands, in some way, the unseen Addie Ross is a dream woman.

Deborah is a farmer's daughter, the only one not from this small town originally. She enlisted in the Navy at 18 and in the service, she met Brad and they fell in love. She returned with him to his hometown, but had trouble at first feeling like she belonged. This is the dullest of the three sections and it's almost as if Mankiewicz knew that, putting it first. Deborah's story involves an embarrassment at a spring ball and it isn't really funny.

Rita's story is much better. Rita and George were childhood sweethearts and had a perfect marriage until Rita got a job writing for the radio and began making more money than her schoolteacher hubby. Suddenly they have different values and everything comes to a head when Rita forgets George's birthday and invites her stuffy boss over for a dinner prepared by the family's maid Sadie (the incomparable Thelma Ritter). Hilarious hijinks, as they say, ensue.

And best of all is Lora Mae's flashback, her memories of how she won the heart of local chain store giant Porter Hollingsway. Some girls were born on the wrong side of the tracks, but not Lora Mae. She was born almost literally *on* the tracks, in a house that shakes, rattles, and roles several times daily whenever the train passes by. We see how Lora Mae enticed Porter to marry her, a marriage which certainly appears to be more of a financial deal than a love match.

The women spend their day worrying and arrive home to only gradually discover the truth. But some things I prefer not to spoil.

The Internet Movie Database informs me that the original novel by John Kempner was A Letter to *Five* Wives and that Mankiewicz eliminated one from the get-go and then also cut a section involving Anne Baxter because it wasn't good enough. Sortta makes one wonder, since only two of the three segments currently in the film actually seem worth the trouble. It should be noted that Jeanne Crain was nominated for an Oscar that same year for her performance as a light-skinned African-American woman in Otto Preminger's taboo-shattering Pinky. I've never seen Pinky, but there's little worth noting in her performance here. Crain and Jeffrey Lynn don't really make an interesting screen couple, so I'd just as soon ignore their part of the film.

Both Sothern and Darnell are far better. Their performances are made all the more complicated by the period's near-mandated clash between liberation and domesticity. In the period very recently after the end of the Second World War, the nation's work force was still in upheaval. The women had taken jobs while their husbands were away at war and when the war ended and the men came back and expected things to return to the way they were before, they discovered that it wasn't that easy. While we're familiar with a Father Knows Best or Leave It To Beaver version of 50s femininity, the actual reality is far closer to what we see in A Letter To Three Wives. Lots of women still were housewives and mothers, but many women were active in different sectors of the workforce. And even those women who stayed at home (or returned to the home) were sometimes willing to show a backbone that the men might not have known existed previous to 1941. All three women in A Letter To Three Wives are self-directed and independent, to a certain degree. I don't want to make this sound like a proto-feminist work of prescient genius or anything. Mostly the women are still very consumed at their cores with dependence and marriage, regardless of what kind of liberation might exist on the surface. The film is very interested in examining social mobility and the easiest route to that mobility is through the men. Sothern and Darnell are excellent as two of these slightly strong women who also need the love of their husbands for validation. Sothern is a brassy controller and perfectionist who comes to realize that her career goals conflict with her perfect marriage. And Darnell is all sultry manipulation, but did she fall into her own husband trap?

And hovering over everything, though we never see her face, is Celeste Holm's Addie Ross. Forgive the Sesame Street reference, but to the audience, she's very much a Mr. Snuffluffugus figure. Just because she isn't physically on screen doesn't mean that there aren't traces of her everywhere. Holm provides a smart, teasing voiceover, but the relics of Addie are what really create the character. Porter has a framed portrait of her on the piano in his den, his unattainable muse. And George receives a touching gift from Addie even though his own wife forgot his birthday. Addie Ross always is in the right place at the right time and she always knows the perfect gift for the perfect occasion and she always knows how to push her friends' buttons. And that's pretty impressive for an invisible woman.

If the women are slightly less than their Eve counterparts, A Letter To Three Wives gets a major boost from the performances of Kirk and Paul Douglas, who are in every way superior to the relatively bland and anonymous men who populate the backgrounds of All About Eve. This film is early in both of their careers, but they're both lots of fun to watch, producing distinctive characters. Paul is like a big gruff bear, while Kirk is a snappy whippet. It's a fun contrast of styles. Both men are unified by the fact that even if they love their wives, they may also love the mysterious Addie Ross.

A Letter To Three Wives is a technically handsome production, combining Mankiewicz's skill with intimate character pieces (he of course also went on to direct Cleopatra, which isn't really an intimate character piece). The film has to walk a fine line between the snappy dialogue and funny characterizations and the fact that these three women's lives are in the balance. Everything is funny, but it's also right on the edge of sad. Cinematographer Arthur C. Miller (How Green Was My Valley and The Cheat) and composer Alfred Newman are two of the all-time greats and the film benefits from their talents.

A Letter To Three Wives also takes some cute stabs at the other media of the time. Kirk Douglas's character's rant against radio dramas is priceless, while Paul Douglas is mocked by his wife for owning a TV (the first in town!) even though they can't get a single channel.

But mostly the satire is directed (lovingly) at the characters, just as it was in All About Eve. The catty exchanges, arch performances, and cutting commentary is shared by both films. So if you've seen Joseph Mankiewicz's better know classic, perhaps you should take a look at A Letter to Three Wives. Sure, it's not as good a movie, but how many things are? It's pretty good in its own right.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD