Craig's Wife is a 1936 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 starring Rosalind Russell

Rosalind Russell

Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame...

 as a domineering wife. It was based on the Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning Broadway play of the same name

Craig's Wife

Craig's Wife is a 1925 play written by American playwright George Kelly, uncle of actress and later Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Harriet Craig was played by Chrystal Herne....

 by George Kelly (the uncle of Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly

Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...

), and directed by Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner

Dorothy Arzner was an American film director. Her directorial career in feature films spanned from the late 1920s into the early 1940s, a time period in which there were very few—if any—other women working in the field.- Biography :Born in San Francisco, California, Arzner grew up in Los...

. The film was remade in 1950 as Harriet Craig

Harriet Craig

Harriet Craig is a 1950 Columbia Pictures film starring Joan Crawford. The screenplay by Anne Froelick and James Gunn was based upon a 1925 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by George Kelly. The film was directed by Vincent Sherman and produced by William Dozier...

, rewritten (and updated) as a vehicle for Joan Crawford and co-starring Wendell Corey

Wendell Corey

Wendell Reid Corey was an American actor and politician.He was born in Dracut, Massachusetts, the son of Milton Rothwell Corey and Julia Etta McKenney . His father was a Congregationalist clergyman...

.

Plot

The plot centers on twenty-four hours in the life of Harriet Craig, and the home life she has created for herself and her husband. Harriet values objects more than her husband and goes to great lengths to protect her life as she has created it, regardless of what the outcomes are to those around her. The story's message is stated by the Craig's housekeeper, Mrs. Harold (Jane Darwell), who says that "those who live to themselves are left to themselves."

Cast

• Rosalind Russell as Harriet Craig
• John Boles
  John Boles (actor)
  -Early life:Boles was born in Greenville, Texas, into a middle-class family. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas in 1917 and married Marielite Dobbs in that same year. His parents wanted him to be a doctor and Boles studied and finally got his B.A. degree, but the stage called...
  
   as Walter Craig
• Billie Burke
  Billie Burke
  Mary William Ethelbert Appleton "Billie" Burke was an American actress. She is primarily known to modern audiences as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the musical film The Wizard of Oz. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live...
  
   as Mrs. Frazier
• Jane Darwell as Mrs. Harold
• Dorothy Wilson as Ethel Landreth
• Alma Kruger
  Alma Kruger
  -Career:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kruger had a long career on stage before appearing in films. From 1907 to 1935, she starred in many theatre plays on Broadway, mostly in Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet , Twelfth Night , Taming of the Shrew , and The Merchant of Venice .She appeared in...
  
   as Ellen Austen
• Thomas Mitchell
  Thomas Mitchell (actor)
  Thomas Mitchell was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Among his most famous roles in a long career are those of Gerald O'Hara, the father of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life...
  
   as Fergus Passmore
• Raymond Walburn
  Raymond Walburn
  Raymond Walburn was an American character actor who appeared in dozens of Hollywood comedies and an occasional dramatic role during the 1930s and 1940s.-Life and career:...
  
   as Billy Birkmire
• Elisabeth Risdon
  Elisabeth Risdon
  Elisabeth Risdon was an English film actress. She appeared in over 140 films between 1913 and 1952. An attractive beauty in her youth she usually played in society parts...
  
   as Mrs. Landreth
• Robert Allen
  Robert (Tex) Allen
  Robert "Tex" Allen was a leading actor in both feature films and B-movie westerns between 1935 and 1944.Born as Irvine E. Theodore Baehr on March 28, 1906 in Mount Vernon, New York, Allen went on to graduate from the New York Military Academy in 1924, where he rode in the academy cavalry and from...
  
   as Gene Fredericks
• Nydia Westman
  Nydia Westman
  Nydia Eileen Westman was an American actress and singer of stage, screen and television.-Career:Westman's career ranged from episodic appearances on TV sitcoms and uncredited bit roles in movies to appearances in groundbreaking films Nydia Eileen Westman (February 19, 1902 – May 23, 1970) was an...
  
   as Mazie
• Kathleen Burke
  Kathleen Burke
  Kathleen Burke was an American movie actress of the 1930s.Burke worked as a dental assistant in Chicago, before winning a talent contest sponsored by Paramount Pictures. Her film debut was as Lota, the "Panther Woman" in Island of Lost Souls , the first screen version of H.G. Wells's novel The...
  
  as Adelaide Passmore