WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS
Leave Her to Heaven (1945), starring Cornel Wilde, Gene Tierney and Jeanne Crain, is one of my all time favorite movies. It's an excellent example of film noir - dark, dramatic and dripping with tension.
If you've never seen it, stop what you're doing and go watch it...right now!
The story centers around Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde), a novelist in his early 30s. Richard visits an old friend in New Mexico and meets one of the other house guests, Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney), who falls instantly, madly and possessively in love with him. Ellen wants Richard all to herself...at any cost.
Dun, dun, dun!
I recently discovered the movie was based on a novel by Ben Ames Williams. Needless to say, I immediately purchased a used copy on Amazon. It's...fairly similar to the movie. There were some things I liked better - the ability to flush out the characters, have more harrowing situations: a forest fire and flash flood - but I also appreciate several changes the movie made.
In the book, some of Ellen's possessiveness is rather juvenile. At one point, right after she and Richard are married, she wakes him up while saying "pay attention to me! pay attention to me! pay attention to me!" She romanticizes their connection, forcing situations to happen instead of letting them unfold. One example - while at the ranch in New Mexico, she notices a storm rolling in while she and Richard are out turkey hunting and intentionally dawdled so they would be caught in the rain (which almost gets them killed in a flash flood). Gene Tierney's Ellen would never have pulled such a stunt. Her magnetism and sheer force of will is what drew Richard to her, blinding him to her possessive selfishness.
Ruth (Jeanne Crain) is a very similar character in the book and movie, the main difference being when she falls in love with Richard. They were always friends and grew close when Ellen was pregnant. In the book, Ellen kicks Richard out of the house every afternoon, unwilling to spend time with him while she feels so unattractive. She frequently tells him to go over to her mother's house to spend time with Mrs. Berent and Ruth, which she regrets once she realized Richard is falling out of love with her, suspecting he's falling for Ruth (he's not). After Ellen dies, Richard leaves the country, literally traveling around the world for a year, trying to outrun Ellen's memory. When he returns to the East Coast, he and Ruth pick up their friendship and begin spending a lot of time together, eventually falling in love. Ruth knew that she loved him when he arrived on her doorstep after being gone a year. In the movie, she admits on the stand during the trial for Ellen's murder that she's in love with Richard and always has been. It makes sense in the movie, given the condensed timeline, but it was nice being able to observe their slowly blossoming relationship.
In the book, Richard blames himself for Ellen's death, until he realizes she committed suicide. Ellen had suffered from fits of illness, generally brought on when she was upset (or didn't get her way). The morning of Ellen's death, Richard told her he'd finally decided to leave her. When she got sick, he thought it was brought on by her distress that their marriage was over and, since she'd been ill relatively recently, that her death was due to not properly recovering from the previous illness (thus this bout killing her). The movie does not include her propensity to gastrointestinal afflictions - again, Gene Tierney's Ellen would never have suffered from a "nervous condition."
Prior to her suicide, Ellen met with her solicitor, making arrangements that would look suspicious after her death - for example, asking to be buried in the family cemetery. On several occasions she'd made it known that she wanted to be cremated, which is what Richard did with her remains, not knowing about the change to her will. In the book, she gave the solicitor a letter that was to be sent to her former fiancé, Russell Quinton (played by Vincent Price in the movie), in the event Richard ever remarried and it was to Ruth. That's what officially kicked off the investigation - Richard and Ruth's marriage - which took place about two years after Ellen's death. In the movie, Ellen sent the letter to Quinton herself, accusing Ruth of trying to poison her and asking for Quinton's help...then committing suicide before he was able to "save her."
Speaking of Quinton - I liked the changes they made to his and Mrs. Berent's characters in the movie. In the book, Mrs. Berent was much more biting and jaded than how Mary Philips played her. She knew exactly what Ellen was doing and fought her whenever possible (always losing), while in the movie she understood Ellen and had given up trying to change her. Quinton was younger in the movie and had a larger role. Vincent Price's Quinton shows up in New Mexico and confronts Ellen after she breaks off their engagement. In the book, Quinton makes the trip, but doesn't arrive at the ranch until after Ellen and Richard have left on their honeymoon.
The biggest difference between the two is that in the book, Richard knows Ellen let Danny drown the entire time. He watched from a hillside path as Danny went down and Ellen did nothing to save him. Once they've found Danny's body and are transporting him back to the cabin, Ellen tells Richard that she's expecting*, hoping to distract him from losing Danny, as well as binding Richard to her more tightly. She was betting on Richard not turning her in if she's carrying his child, which is what happens. Richard makes up a story to cover Danny's death, blaming/"justifying" Ellen's inaction to himself as a kind of "pregnancy insanity" (I kid you not). It's not until Richard tells Ellen that he knows she let Danny drown and gets her to admit to killing their unborn child (an intentional miscarriage) that he finally decides to leave her. In the movie, her possessiveness escalates to the point that he begins to suspect and then gets her to admit to both deaths.
I found Leave Her to Heaven on YouTube, because oddly it's not on Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. As I said earlier, if you've never seen it, watch it now! I own a hard copy and am always willing to watch it, so that's also an option! 😊
Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
In looking up background on Leave Her to Heaven, I discovered a made-for-TV remake called Too Good to Be True (1988). It's an absolute travesty. Not only are the actors AWFUL, they completely missed the spirit of the story. Ellen is an overly sexual puffy haired (hello 80s!) blonde and Richard and Ruth begin their relationship before Ellen's death. The only "funny" thing is Baby Neil Patrick Harris plays Danny, who is Richard's son, instead of brother. I don't recommend wasting your time on it, but if you want to see just how bad it is, here you go:
Too Good to Be True (1988)
Fun Facts:
- This is the second film to feature Gene Tierney as Vincent Price's ill-fated love interest. The first was Laura (1944).
- The famous (and dramatic) swimming scene that takes place in the lake for Darryl Hickman's character was in water so cold that the young actor caught pneumonia.
- It was cited by director Martin Scorsese as one of his favorite films of all time, and he assessed Tierney as one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era.
- The title is taken from a line from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet". In Act I, Scene V, the Ghost urges Hamlet not to seek vengeance against Queen Gertrude, but rather to "leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her."
- Although Gene Tierney was nominated for an Academy award for this film, she lost to Joan Crawford who won for "Mildred Pierce."
- Features Gene Tierney's only Oscar nominated performance.
- Was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2018, by the Library of Congress for being, "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
What's your favorite movie most people haven't seen?
~ Katie Q.
*So Ellen tells Richard that she's pregnant...which she's not. She therefore needs to rectify the situation asap which works since it's a book. I call shennanigans on this for a couple reasons. #1 - there's a relatively small window each month when a woman can get pregnant, so timing-wise the stars would have to line up perfectly for her to have an insta-baby. #2 - if she were pregnant enough to know she was expecting, she'd have to be at least a few weeks along already, which would seriously mess with baby's due date once she actually got pregnant. #3 - after they take Danny's body back to Bar Harbor, Richard returns with Leick Thorne (played by Chill Wills in the movie) to Back of the Moon - the cabin & lake where Danny died. They're gone for at least a week to close everything up, since Richard plans to never return. This pushes out the possibility of conception even further, which means - best case scenario - Ellen would have had the baby at least a month "late." Practicality rant over. 😁
Music Bonus: I just switched CDs in my car (yes, I still use/purchase CDs) from P!NK's Hurts 2B Human to David Cook's Digital Vein (Deluxe Version). I'd forgotten how much I like "But You Won't."
And Lewis Capaldi just dropped a new song! I just saw him in concert when I was in Denver last month. "Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent" is my album of the year (I 💓"Someone You Loved"), so I had to see him live in concert. 😎 He's coming out with an extended version of the album that I'm resisting purchasing..."Before You Go" is one of the additions.
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