For an actor with a Passion Project, it must be nice to be married to David Lean. Like Ann Todd, newly married to the master director and obsessed with this famously unresolved Glasgow murder.* She’s Madeleine Smith, finally afianced to a fine upstanding, if slightly dull, gentleman, now needing to bury her longstanding relationship to a debt-ridden French roué and retrieve all those incriminating love letters. The cad refuses, then turns up dead, unquestionably poisoned by cyanide. But by whose hand? Was it suicide or murder? Posh, meticulous and a wee bit dull. Something Lean tries to circumnavigate with tricky flashbacks of court testimony loaded into final summations. It’s nicely done, but not enough to really care about. Fitting into the Lean oeuvre much as THE PARADINE CASE does for Alfred Hitchcock. A film which also featured Ann Todd, but as loyal wife rather than possible murderer.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: *Todd even did a play on the subject in London the year before. And the famous case was used (loosely) as source material for DISHONORED LADY on B’way. A property M-G-M bid on, but balked at the 50G price tag, instead buying a novelization of the case for a tenth the amount: LETTY LYNTON/’32 with Joan Crawford. Wildly Pre-Code with Joan’s mom, mother-in-law to be and bridegroom Robert Montgomery lying thru their teeth to help Joan get away with murder. Playwrights Ned Sheldon & Margaret Ayer Barnes sued for plagiarism and won half a mill mid-1930s dollars, then finally sold the play in 1947: DISHONORED LADY with Hedy Lamarr. In this version, strict Production Code enforcement forced a new character in as surprise killer. And still plenty of plagiarism! Now in settings & characters which were lifted from, of all things, the Moss Hart/Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill musical LADY IN THE DARK’44. One day, someone may actually make that play.
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