Leave Her to Heaven
Encyclopedia
Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox
Technicolor
film noir
motion picture
starring Gene Tierney
, Cornel Wilde
, Jeanne Crain
, with Vincent Price
, Darryl Hickman
, and Chill Wills
. The story revolves around a femme fatale
who entraps a husband and commits several crimes motivated by her insane jealousy.
The story was adapted for the screen by Jo Swerling
, having been based on the best selling novel of the same name authored by Ben Ames Williams
. The film was directed by John M. Stahl
. Tierney received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress in a Leading Role
for this film. The film grossed over $5,000,000 and was Fox's highest-grossing picture of the 1940s.
Ellen is already engaged to another man (Vincent Price), but she jilts him and rapidly marries Richard, who at first is fascinated not only with Ellen's beauty, but with her exotic and intense manner. It gradually becomes apparent however that Ellen is pathologically jealous towards any other person and any other activity that her husband cares about.
Two tragedies strike Richard: the "accidental" drowning death of his younger disabled brother, whom he dearly loved, and the "accidental" death of Richard's unborn son when Ellen "trips" and falls down a flight of stairs. The husband starts to suspect that his wife is directly responsible for these two deaths. When Ellen confesses to him what she did and why she did it, he leaves her. She then decides to kill herself with poison, making sure that in doing so she frames (for the apparent crime of murder), her foster sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain), a sweet and wholesome woman whom Richard is very fond of.
Ellen's ex-fiance is the prosecutor
for Ruth's trial. The trial is going very badly for Ruth, who under pressure has admitted that she does in fact love Richard, a fact she had previously kept hidden. Then Richard testifies about Ellen's insane jealousy and her confessions to him. Ruth is acquitted, and Richard is sentenced to 2 years in prison for his part in the two murders (he had become an accessory to the crimes by virtue of withholding knowledge of Ellen's actions).
The flashback ends, and we see Richard being welcomed home with a loving embrace from Ruth.
. 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."
magazine gave the film a positive review, writing, "Sumptuous Technicolor
mounting and a highly exploitable story lend considerable importance to Leave Her to Heaven that it might not have had otherwise...Tierney and Wilde use their personalities in interpreting their dramatic assignments. Crain's role of Tierney's foster-sister is more subdued but excellently done. Vincent Price, as the discarded lover, gives a theatrical reading to the courtroom scenes as the district attorney."
More recently, Lou Lumenick, film critic for the New York Post
, wrote, "John M. Stahl's masterful Leave Her to Heaven (1945) sounds like a contradiction in terms - a film noir in eye-popping Technicolor, with its most chilling scene taking place not in a dimly lit back alley but on a lake in Maine. But make no mistake - the gorgeous Gene Tierney's homicidally jealous Ellen Berent is the fatalest of femmes in this gorgeously restored classic, beginning a one-week run at Film Forum today." It was cited by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese
as one of his favourite films of all time and assessed Gene Tierney as one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era.
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on sixteen reviews.
Nominations
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
motion picture
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
starring Gene Tierney
Gene Tierney
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed as one of the great beauties of her day, she is best remembered for her performance in the title role of Laura and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven .Other notable roles include...
, Cornel Wilde
Cornel Wilde
Cornel Wilde was an American actor and film director.-Early life:Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary , although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City...
, Jeanne Crain
Jeanne Crain
Jeanne Elizabeth Crain was an American actress.-Early life:Crain was born in Barstow, California, to George A. Crain, a school teacher, and Loretta Carr; she was of Irish heritage on her mother's side, and of English and distant French descent on her father's...
, with Vincent Price
Vincent Price
Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...
, Darryl Hickman
Darryl Hickman
Darryl Gerard Hickman is an American film and television actor, former television executive, and child star of the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:...
, and Chill Wills
Chill Wills
Chill Theodore Wills was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.-Biography:Wills was born in Seagoville, Texas in 1902. He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s...
. The story revolves around a femme fatale
Femme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...
who entraps a husband and commits several crimes motivated by her insane jealousy.
The story was adapted for the screen by Jo Swerling
Jo Swerling
Jo Swerling was an American theatre writer and lyricist and a screenwriter.Born in Berdichev, Russian Empire, Swerling was a refugee of the Czarist regime who grew up on New York City's lower East Side, where he sold newspapers to help support his family...
, having been based on the best selling novel of the same name authored by Ben Ames Williams
Ben Ames Williams
Ben Ames Williams American writer who published over thirty novels, including All the Brothers Were Valiant ,Come Spring ,The Strange Woman , House Divided , Leave Her to Heaven and The Unconquered...
. The film was directed by John M. Stahl
John M. Stahl
John Malcolm Stahl was an American film director and producer.Born in New York City, New York, he began working in the city's growing motion picture industry at a young age and directed his first silent film short in 1914. In the early 1920s Stahl signed on with Louis B...
. Tierney received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress in a Leading Role
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for this film. The film grossed over $5,000,000 and was Fox's highest-grossing picture of the 1940s.
Plot
The film starts by showing us the novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) who has been released and is traveling home after two years in prison. In a flashback (which runs for almost the whole duration of the film) we see how Richard meets beautiful socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) on a train. Ellen falls in love with him, mainly because he so closely resembles her recently deceased father, to whom she was obsessively attached.Ellen is already engaged to another man (Vincent Price), but she jilts him and rapidly marries Richard, who at first is fascinated not only with Ellen's beauty, but with her exotic and intense manner. It gradually becomes apparent however that Ellen is pathologically jealous towards any other person and any other activity that her husband cares about.
Two tragedies strike Richard: the "accidental" drowning death of his younger disabled brother, whom he dearly loved, and the "accidental" death of Richard's unborn son when Ellen "trips" and falls down a flight of stairs. The husband starts to suspect that his wife is directly responsible for these two deaths. When Ellen confesses to him what she did and why she did it, he leaves her. She then decides to kill herself with poison, making sure that in doing so she frames (for the apparent crime of murder), her foster sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain), a sweet and wholesome woman whom Richard is very fond of.
Ellen's ex-fiance is the prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
for Ruth's trial. The trial is going very badly for Ruth, who under pressure has admitted that she does in fact love Richard, a fact she had previously kept hidden. Then Richard testifies about Ellen's insane jealousy and her confessions to him. Ruth is acquitted, and Richard is sentenced to 2 years in prison for his part in the two murders (he had become an accessory to the crimes by virtue of withholding knowledge of Ellen's actions).
The flashback ends, and we see Richard being welcomed home with a loving embrace from Ruth.
Cast
- Gene TierneyGene TierneyGene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed as one of the great beauties of her day, she is best remembered for her performance in the title role of Laura and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Actress in Leave Her to Heaven .Other notable roles include...
as Ellen Berent Harland - Cornel WildeCornel WildeCornel Wilde was an American actor and film director.-Early life:Kornél Lajos Weisz was born in 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary , although his year and place of birth are usually and inaccurately given as 1915 in New York City...
as Richard Harland - Jeanne CrainJeanne CrainJeanne Elizabeth Crain was an American actress.-Early life:Crain was born in Barstow, California, to George A. Crain, a school teacher, and Loretta Carr; she was of Irish heritage on her mother's side, and of English and distant French descent on her father's...
as Ruth Berent - Vincent PriceVincent PriceVincent Leonard Price, Jr. was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.-Early life and career:Price was born in St...
as Russell Quinton - Mary PhilipsMary PhilipsMary Philips was an American stage and film actress.-Biography:Born in New London, Connecticut, she was the only child of Anna Hurley and Charles Philips of New Haven. She was educated in New Haven at what was then St. Mary's Academy. In 1920 she made her stage debut as a chorus girl...
as Mrs. Berent - Ray CollinsRay Collins (actor)Ray Bidwell Collins was an American actor in film, stage, radio, and television. One of Collins' best remembered roles was that of Lt. Arthur Tragg in the long-running series Perry Mason.- Biography :...
as Glen Robie - Gene LockhartGene LockhartEugene "Gene" Lockhart was a Canadian character actor, singer, and playwright. He also wrote the lyrics to a number of popular songs.-Early life:...
as Dr. Saunders - Reed HadleyReed HadleyReed Hadley was an American movie, television and radio actor.Reed Hadley was born Reed Herring in Petrolia in Clay County near Wichita Falls, Texas, to Bert Herring, an oil well driller, and his wife Minnie. Hadley had one sister, Bess Brenner. He was reared in Buffalo, New York...
as Dr. Mason - Darryl HickmanDarryl HickmanDarryl Gerard Hickman is an American film and television actor, former television executive, and child star of the 1930s and 1940s.-Early life:...
as Danny Harland - Chill WillsChill WillsChill Theodore Wills was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.-Biography:Wills was born in Seagoville, Texas in 1902. He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s...
as Leick Thome
Background
The title is a quote from William Shakespeare's HamletHamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
. 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."
Reception
Critical response
The staff at VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine gave the film a positive review, writing, "Sumptuous Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
mounting and a highly exploitable story lend considerable importance to Leave Her to Heaven that it might not have had otherwise...Tierney and Wilde use their personalities in interpreting their dramatic assignments. Crain's role of Tierney's foster-sister is more subdued but excellently done. Vincent Price, as the discarded lover, gives a theatrical reading to the courtroom scenes as the district attorney."
More recently, Lou Lumenick, film critic for the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, wrote, "John M. Stahl's masterful Leave Her to Heaven (1945) sounds like a contradiction in terms - a film noir in eye-popping Technicolor, with its most chilling scene taking place not in a dimly lit back alley but on a lake in Maine. But make no mistake - the gorgeous Gene Tierney's homicidally jealous Ellen Berent is the fatalest of femmes in this gorgeously restored classic, beginning a one-week run at Film Forum today." It was cited by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
as one of his favourite films of all time and assessed Gene Tierney as one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era.
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on sixteen reviews.
Academy of Motion Pictures Awards
Wins- Academy AwardAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
: Oscar, Best CinematographyAcademy Award for Best CinematographyThe Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
-- Color, Leon Shamroy ; 1946
Nominations
- Best Actress in a Leading RoleAcademy Award for Best ActressPerformance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
, Gene Tierney. - Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, ColorAcademy Award for Best Art DirectionThe Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
, Lyle R. WheelerLyle R. WheelerLyle Reynolds Wheeler, , was an Academy Award-winning American motion picture art director....
, Maurice RansfordMaurice RansfordMaurice Ransford was an American art director. He was nominated for three Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction.He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana and died in San Diego, California.-Selected filmography:...
, and Thomas LittleThomas LittleThomas Little was a United States set decorator on more than 450 Hollywood movies between 1932 and 1953. He won a total of 6 Oscars for art direction and received 21 nominations in the same category...
. - Best Sound, Recording, Thomas T. MoultonThomas T. MoultonThomas T. Moulton was an American sound engineer. He won five Academy Awards in the category Sound Recording and was nominated for eleven more in the same category...
(20th Century-Fox SSD); 1946.
Adaptation
- Too Good to Be TrueToo Good to Be True (film)Too Good to Be True is a 1988 American television film starring Loni Anderson, Patrick Duffy, Daniel Baldwin, Glynnis O'Connor, Larry Drake, Neil Patrick Harris, James Sikking, and Julie Harris....
(19881988 in televisionThe year 1988 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1988.For the American TV schedule, see: 1988-89 United States network television schedule.-Events:-Debuts:...
TelevisionTelevision movieA television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
version).
External links
- Leave Her to Heaven film trailer at Reelz ChannelReelz ChannelReelzChannel is a digital cable television channel owned by Hubbard Broadcasting that airs programming about movies as well as syndicated programming. It features news and information on movies currently in theatres as well as information on movies released on DVD and airing on cable television...
- Martin Scorsese discusses Leave Her to Heaven at 45th New York Film FestivalNew York Film FestivalThe New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...