Leave Her to Heavan
D: John M. Stahl (1945); with Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price, Mary Philips, Ray Collins, Darryl Hickman, Chill Wills. If you’ve ever wondered what all the fuss about Gene Tierney was about, try this movie on for size. In it, she plays Ellen Berent, a possessively jealous woman who doesn’t want to share her new husband, Richard Harland, played by the completely un-sexual Wilde, with anyone. “There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. She just loves too much,” says her mother. But there is most definitely something wrong with Ellen, and she makes that evident very early on. Her new husband is mystified that his sweet and charming fiancée has become his scheming and overbearing wife. In his quest to understand his wife, he turns to the sympathetic arms of his wife’s sister, played by Crain, who really is sweet and charming and furthermore, she deserves a kind and devoted husband like her sister’s. The story is none too explicit, though it is shot in gorgeous Technicolor, which serves Miss Tierney very well. In fact, her entire look throughout this whole movie is spectacular, as she models one great sportswear and lounging outfit after another. She is the epitome of chic in this movie, even when she kills her crippled stepson by letting him drown in the lake from fatigue. She is perfectly accessorized in every scene, and when she casually slips on her cat-eye sunglasses right before she kills the boy, she is stunning. And isn’t that what’s most important in movies like this?Accessorizing all this action are the breathtaking locations, with an incredibly stylish (still) home on the range in New Mexico and their picturesque cottage on Back of the Moon Bay in Maine, which is so gorgeous it looks like a set, but it’s not.
This article appears in December 24 • 1999.