The Locket is a suspense film directed by John Brahm

John Brahm

John Brahm was a film and television director possibly best known today for directing a dozen of the original Twilight Zone episodes including the now classic "Time Enough at Last"...

, starring Laraine Day

Laraine Day

Laraine Day was an American actress and a former MGM contract star.-Career:Born La Raine Johnson in Roosevelt, Utah, to an affluent Mormon family, she later moved to California where she began her acting career with the Long Beach Players...

, Brian Aherne

Brian Aherne

Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.-Early life and stage career:...

, Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...

, and Gene Raymond

Gene Raymond

Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.-Stage and movie career:...

, and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on a screenplay by Sheridan Gibney, adapted from "What Nancy Wanted" by Norma Barzman, wife of later-blacklisted writer Ben Barzman

Ben Barzman

Ben Barzman was a Canadian journalist, screenwriter, and novelist. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, and died in Santa Monica, California, USA. He is best known as a writer or co-writer of more than 20 films, from You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith to The Head of Normande St...

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Plot

A story told in a number of flashbacks from different points of view, this psychological drama tells the story of a bride-to-be (Day) who, as a child, was falsely accused of theft. She grows up to become a kleptomaniac and eventually a murderess.

Apparently, all her misdeeds are an attempt by the woman to get her revenge on the world that has falsely accused her of stealing as a child by ruining people's lives. After splitting up with an artist (Mitchum), and her psychiatrist husband (Aherne), she becomes engaged to the son (Raymond) of the woman who'd accused her of thievery. Back in the present day, at her wedding, the young woman collapses as she walks to the altar.

Reaction and production background

Film historians Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward praise the unusual melodrama

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 in the RKO visual style. "It is distinctive in its flashbacks within flashbacks, with the story often being told by a third or fourth person removed. This device is handled effectively in preparation for the climactic flashback, which reveals the truth."

Hume Cronyn

Hume Cronyn

Hume Blake Cronyn, OC was a Canadian actor of stage and screen, who enjoyed a long career, often appearing professionally alongside his second wife, Jessica Tandy.-Early life:...

 originally bought the Norma Barzman screenplay to produce and direct the film with his wife Jessica Tandy

Jessica Tandy

Jessie Alice "Jessica" Tandy was an English-American stage and film actress.She first appeared on the London stage in 1926 at the age of 16, playing, among others, Katherine opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V, and Cordelia opposite John Gielgud's King Lear. She also worked in British films...

 in the lead role, but later sold the rights to RKO, which then assigned Gibney to rewrite the screenplay. The original Barzman screenplay is in the Cronyn-Tandy papers at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

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Featured cast

Actor	Role
Laraine Day Laraine Day Laraine Day was an American actress and a former MGM contract star.-Career:Born La Raine Johnson in Roosevelt, Utah, to an affluent Mormon family, she later moved to California where she began her acting career with the Long Beach Players...	Nancy Monks Blair Patton
Brian Aherne Brian Aherne Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.-Early life and stage career:...	Dr. Harry Blair
Robert Mitchum Robert Mitchum Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...	Norman Clyde
Gene Raymond Gene Raymond Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.-Stage and movie career:...	John Willis
Sharyn Moffett Sharyn Moffett Sharyn Moffett was an American child actor of the 1940s. Moffett, born Patricia Sharyn Moffett on September 12, 1936 to a show business family, appeared in a dozen films including The Body Snatcher , the film noir The Locket , Child of Divorce Banjo , and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House...	Nancy: age 10
Ricardo Cortez Ricardo Cortez Jacob Krantz , known by his stage name Ricardo Cortez, was an American film actor who began his career during the silent era.-Life and career:...	Drew Bonner

External links

• George Toles, "The Gift of Amnesia in John Brahm's The Locket" in the Film and the Romantic special issue, Jeffrey Crouse (ed.), Film International, Vol. 7, No. 6, December 2009, pp. 32-55.