The New Pictures, Jan. 17, 1949

A Letter to Three Wives (20th Cenury-Fox) is a bright, unusual comedy that sets itself some high hurdles and clears them all—mostly with room to spare. The picture begins as three young matrons in station-wagon suburbia learn that one of their husbands has run off with a feared and envied local charmer. Leaving the runaway husband's identity dangling (neither the wives nor the audience is in on the secret at first), Writer-Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz explores each wife's marital security in three long flashbacks. Then, with considerable skill and a sort of hard-bitten humor, he pulls off an ending that is adroit but fair, surprising but credible, and warm yet not sticky with sentiment.

Mankiewicz has wisely grouped his three episodes so that the film gets better as it goes along. The first sequence, which is the only one to suffer from glossy traces of the story's slick-magazine origin, catches an ex-farm girl (Jeanne Crain) in a panic of social inferiority to her husband (Jeffrey Lynn) and his friends.

The second sequence, which has a strong satiric bite, hits a more realistic standard. It details a crisis in the home of an idealistic schoolteacher (Kirk Douglas) who rebels at the way his wife (Ann Sothern) helps earn the family living, i.e., by writing soap operas. In spite of the glass house it lives in, Hollywood here throws some viciously well-aimed stones at radio.

The final episode makes one of the screen's most refreshing matches—Paul Douglas as a hard-boiled big shot and Linda Darnell as the beautiful but shrewd shopgirl who outmaneuvers him into matrimony. Filmed with wit and insight, their courtship is the classic duel of man's will and woman's won't.

Miss Darnell, who can be a temptress without even trying, has never shown so strikingly that she can be an actress as well. But, in a picture crowded with skilled performances—by Kirk Douglas, Miss Sothern, and Thelma Ritter as an aggressively democratic maid-of-all-work—Paul Douglas' spaniel-faced portrait of a tough guy stands by itself.

In 1946 Playwright-Director Garson Kanin was looking for an actor to play the roughneck lead in his Broadway comedy, Born Yesterday. What he had in mind was someone along the craggy lines of a jowly, broad-shouldered radio announcer he had known back in the days when he was writing soap operas. ". . . You know," he would impatiently finger-snap, "a Paul Douglas type—but an actor." Unable to find a reasonable facsimile, he finally hired the real thing: Paul Douglas. It was a happy piece of casting; Douglas turned out to be as big a hit as Born Yesterday.

As an actor, Douglas was born only yesterday. For all but the last three of his 41 years he had been practically everything else—including fast shuffles as a lifeguard, paint salesman and professional football player. His first radio job was as an announcer on Philadelphia's WCAU, a $55-a-week steppingstone to a far fatter income as a sports and special-events broadcaster.

For the last two years moviemakers have been trying to lure Douglas away from Broadway, but he refused their long-term contracts. During his first few scenes in A Letter he suffered all the shakes and quivers of opening night. When the movie was completed he took a deep breath and signed a seven-year contract.