From the 1950s: All that Heaven Allows

1955 Romantic Drama

From Universal-International

Directed by Douglas Sirk 

Starring

Jane Wyman

Rock Hudson

Agnes Moorehead

William Reynolds

Gloria Talbott

Virginia Grey

Charles Drake

Conrad Nagel

Hayden Rorke

Jacqueline deWit

Producer Ross Hunter, housed at Universal-International, was so thrilled with the success of director Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession in 1954 starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson that he insisted the trio line up for another.  The studio had purchased Edna and Harry Lee's novel, All That Heaven Allows, a couple of years earlier and it had been sitting on the shelf gathering dust.

Wyman and Hudson had made an interesting screen team because everyone chatted about their age difference.  The truth is that she was only eight years older than he was but she was rather matronly and mature while he was fun-loving, full of himself and identified with his youthful filmgoers.

Magnificent Obsession became a giant hit and it is responsible for turning Hudson into the major star both he and U-I had been hoping for.  It also put a little more zip into Wyman's career.

While Hunter was the producer most responsible for young Sandra Dee's career, he was more well-known for reviving the careers of older actresses by often pairing them with handsome, young, hunky actors of the day.  Wyman joined the ranks of her longtime buddies Ann Sheridan and Barbara Stanwyck and also Anne Baxter, June Allyson, Susan Hayward and Lana Turner.  While Doris Day's career did not particularly need reviving, Hunter still managed to give it a comedy face-lift.

Sirk did not want to make the film because it was not one of his choosing, as was usually the case.  But working with Hudson and Wyman again quickly lifted his spirits.  Sirk commented that it was Henry David Thoreau's Walden that inspired this film.  The book was a favorite of Sirk's and he made the philosophy of Walden the key element of the story.  He even used a shot of the book in closeup for one scene.

The premise of All That Heaven Allows is simple enough.  It concerns the family and social complications that arise when a well-to-do, smalltown New England widow falls in love with her younger arborist.  They are supported by his friends (Grey and Drake), a rural couple with no stake in wealth or status or gossip.  However, the country club set she pals around with is gossipy, short-sighted and unkind while her two college-age children are over-privileged brats with no consideration of their mother's wants or happiness.  It's all been done before but seldom as well. 

Only Wyman's best friend, Moorehead (another member of the Magnificent Obsession troop), is at all understanding among the large social contingent.  It is her home which provides a couple of large gatherings that show how small and disrespectful they all are.  Character actress Jacqueline deWit is wicked as the chief gossip.

Wyman's son and daughter, played by William Reynolds and Gloria Talbott, dislike the age difference, are rude to Hudson when they meet him and are greatly concerned with what people will say.  They are opposed to her selling the handsome family home and moving into Hudson's tree nursery.

Super brats William Reynolds and Gloria Talbott

Greatly upset at her children's resistance, she breaks up with the heart-broken Hudson.  When she visits a doctor over her frequent headaches, he suggests after ruling out several issues that it's due to her extreme unhappiness.

When she hears that her daughter is going to be married and her son is off to continue his studies in Paris, she sees the need to live for herself.  (One wishes that she seen it a little earlier but admittedly the movie would have been less fun.) 

She drives to Hudson's rural property but suddenly leaves before knocking on the door.  Hudson sees her from a precipice a short distance away and yells for her but she drives off just as he takes quite a tumble (I guess he didn't consider firing off the rifle he was shouldering.)  

A friend tells her late that night about Hudson's accident and she rushes to his house to find him unconscious.  Despite a nurse in attendance, she settles in and when he awakens and sees her, she tells him she has come home.  (I dab at my eyes.)

The acting is uniformly fine although I feel no rush to claim there were any particularly outstanding performances.  Wyman delivers a performance of quiet melancholy which she had done many times before.  Hudson, just coming into his own as box office magic, is a bit wooden (but hey, great for a character into trees) and a lot handsome.  I can see where she would fall for him (at the very minimum, wouldn't she at least be flattered by his attention?) but if I have a problem with the film, it's that I don't see where his character would be so taken with her. 

Someone says their relationship is like that of Romeo and Juliet.  I am at a loss as to see how that is unless one considers that their relationship certainly didn't last.  Might that be the case here, even though it would come outside of the story we're seeing?  They were truly two different people and once the glow of a relationship's beginning has waned, might they not have decided to go their separate ways?  Might the fact that her character is about conformity and his about non-conformity someday take its toll?

Moorehead's character is not as vapid as the other townsfolk because she puts her friendship with Wyman above all else.  It was much the same in real life.  This is the fourth of the five movies they made together.

This was the first of five films that Virginia Grey and Charles Drake made together.  They are so likable as Hudson's friends.  

I did enjoy watching the shenanigans of Gloria Talbott and William Reynolds as Wyman's two obnoxious children.  I have never understood why someone as handsome and as good at acting as Reynolds never became a major star.  His last movie was in 1966 and he just passed away this past August at 90 years of age.

I was so taken with the cinematography of Russell Metty and Sirk was, too, which is why they paired up for so many films.  The use of color is breathtaking... the beauty of autumn, the reds and golds of the leaves frequency seen swirling down the tree-lined streets, the well-appointed homes, the ever-present church steeple.

Much of the film's aesthetic beauty comes from seeing a rural tranquility and beauty through Hudson's eyes.  There's the trees, the friendly deer, the ponds, wooden bridges and most especially his restoration of the rustic old mill on his property... turning it in to a beautiful home for Wyman and representing, as I see it, Sirk's idea of the heaven of the title.

Sirk loved shining a light on contemporary America.  He dismissed the oft-repeated notion that he was the king of the weepies or soap operas.  He always countered these claims with the opening sentence in this paragraph.  It took some critics a number of years to figure out what he was up to and to fully appreciate that he gave the world one of the best views of 1950s America that one could possibly imagine.  One of Sirk's favorite missions in these Universal films was to attack pretense.  He apparently despised fakery. 

 

Sirk once said the studio loved the title All That Heaven Allows (always a favorite of mine as well).  They thought it meant you could have everything.  I meant it exactly the other way around.  As far as I'm concerned, heaven is stingy.

The movie was not so popular when it was released.  Perhaps some didn't like seeing how they were portrayed (outed) on screen.  But over the years it became more and more popular where today it is considered a classic of sorts, certainly one of the director's finest works. 

From left: Hudson, Wyman, Sirk, Moorehead

Homage was paid to the 1950s and to Sirk's film in 2002 by director Todd Haynes with his Far from Heaven.   Younger audiences likely know this film better than the 1955 version.  It opens with a shot-by-shot duplication of the earlier film.  Cinematographer Edward Lachman created the 50s look by using the same equipment as would have been used in the first film.

The colors, due to it being 2002 instead of 1955, saturate the soul in this film and Elmer Bernstein's rich score mimics the wind and the falling leaves and their swooshing down streets.  In this regard, I have rarely been more impressed.

The story has been altered/updated to show Julianne Moore in the Wyman role but married to a closeted gay man, Dennis Quaid.  She, in turn, still has her gardener but this time he is played by black actor Dennis Haysbert.  Let's give those snotty townspeople something to really talk about.

All That Heaven Allows is a profoundly felt film about class and conformity and offers viewers a keen insight into the mores of the 1950s, particularly in small-town America.  It oozes with artistry, intellectualism and period charm.

The film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1995.

Here's a trailer:

Next posting:

CM is next (oh, just try to figure out who he is)