A Slice of Mid-Twentieth Cinematic American Suburban Home Life-Joseph Mankiewicz’s A Letter To Three Wives

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A Letter To Three Wives, starring Jeanne Crain, Ann Southern, Linda Darnell, 1949

No question, at least in retrospect, and at least on the screen, the 1950s in America were something of a “golden age.” A golden age if your dreams were middle-class and you had the wherewithal to stand up to your dreams, dreams to move a step or two ahead of your parents, the ones who came “from hunger during the Great Depression and slogged through World War II rations and hard fighting (with their blessing, no question). And that golden age, an age when people expected, somewhat wispfully, to prosper with hard work, some luck, and some connections in order to get a fleet of cars, a suburban home (complete with washer and dryer, all kinds of kitchen gadgetry, and even a place to grill) to park those cars in and kids and a dog to park in the house is the subtext of the film under review, A Letter To Three Wives.       

Of course a strictly sociological study of mid-20^th century American trends could have been left in the hands of somebody like the late journalist David Halberstam or the Harvard professor David Riesman or C. Wright Mills but in Hollywood they mix that knowledge up with a little plot. The plot here being a letter, as advertised in the title, by one Addie, an unseen Mayfair swell type (as far as we know since, unseen, we have placed her at the country club and other 1950s Mayfair spots and not let’s say Jimmy’s Tavern, Ladies Invited all in neon telling a candid world there are tables fit for woman companion and not just a roustabout bar with guys nodding their heads on the counter) who had all the boys gathering around, all the boys being the three husbands of the three wives in the title.

And the letter’s contents, well, get this, old heartbreaker, home-wreaker Addie had run off with one of the husbands conveniently not saying which one, leaving the trio of wives bewitched and befuddled. Now a woman today running off with a guy (or a woman), a husband or not, would be a yawner, would be a plot that wouldn’t get pass the studio guardhouse, but in up and coming country club set of the 1950s this is the equivalent of the last draw, and the cause of nothing but big time angst by the three wives.                    

See they all have anxieties, have reasons to believe that their respective husbands could be the unfaithful one. Especially with Addie who was the belle of the ball and cause for plenty of sniping, as well as having known the boys for ages. Now this theme, this running away with some errant husband rightly or wrongly, told right from the beginning would make a very short film. So using the old familiar plot-builder flashbacks the three women each get themselves into a tizzy by magnifying whatever difficulties they were having in their marriages.

One didn’t think she was pretty enough, poised enough, wore the right clothes, for her up and coming husband since she was nothing but from “jump street” and had been upwardly mobile via the military and nothing else. Another worried that her desire for a time-consuming career as a radio soap opera scriptwriter, taking time away from the homemaker’s drudgery and catering to hubby’s whims, was off-putting enough to have him stray from the straight and narrow. The third who was strictly “from hunger,” strictly from the wrong side of the tracks (literally since in some at home scenes they had the house shaking when trains passed by) had made a bad bargain with the devil, her husband, to get that wedding ring on and easy street and nothing but bickering and acrimony ever after figured she had made a runaway worthy mistake with hubby. So the possibilities multiply and in the meantime this Addie fixation, this Addie this and that gets under all their skins, gets under the husbands’ skins to. The husbands by turn are more than happy with that ex-military wife, encouraging of the wife’s career and deeply in love with that “from hunger” wife, bickering and acrimony aside. But which one strayed from the connubial course. Well if you have a spare hour and one half watch this one to figure who Addie lures into her web.