A Letter to Three Wives

In Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Oscar-winning 1949 classic, three women are the joint recipients of a letter from neighborhood social goddess Addie Ross, who informs her “dearest friends” that she is leaving town in the company of one of their husbands. Each reflects on their own marriage, trying to determine if their mate might be the one. Deborah (Jeanne Crain) is a young Navy wife who feels out of place with her upwardly mobile husband's social set. Rita (Ann Sothern) is a successful writer for radio who earns more than her schoolteacher spouse (Kirk Douglas). Lora May (Linda Darnell) is a girl literally from the wrong side of the tracks who lands a store tycoon (Paul Douglas at his gruffest), but he's convinced she's a gold-digger. The flashbacks are by turns melodramatic, clever, acerbically witty (anticipating Mankiewicz's All About Eve the following year), and even blatantly comic. Bowing on Blu-ray with a sparkling black-and-white transfer, extras include audio commentary (by Mankiewicz biographers Kenneth Geist and Cheryl Lower, along with the director's son, Christopher Mankiewicz), a Biography episode devoted to Darnell, and Fox Movietone newsreel footage of Oscar night, when the film won for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Highly recommended. (D. Liebenson)