“There’s nothing wrong with Ellen.  It’s just that she loves too much.” – Mrs. Berent

Meet Ellen Berent – beautiful, intelligent, and beloved by her widowed mother and adopted sister.  On a train trip she meets the handsome novelist Richard Harland; they fall in love and are quickly married.  All seems idyllic until Ellen becomes strangely hostile to visiting family members.  She allows Danny, her crippled brother-in-law, to drown during his daily swim, then precipitates a miscarriage by throwing herself down a flight of stairs.

John M. Stahl directs Gene Tierney, as Ellen, in the only Oscar-nominated performance of her career.  Cornel Wilde stars opposite as Richard, with Darryl Hickman as Danny Harland, Mary Philips as Mrs. Berent and Vincent Price as Russell Quinton, Ellen’s ex-fiancé. This classic tale of obsessive love is also an unusual representative of film noir – it takes place not in the city but the pastoral wilderness of Maine and New Mexico, and it is filmed not in black-and-white, but lush Technicolor.  Leon Shamroy received an Academy Award for his brilliant cinematography.  The film also received nominations for Color Art Direction and Sound Recording.

Leave Her to Heaven was recently restored by Twentieth Century Fox and the Academy Film Archive, with funding from the Film Foundation.  After the screening, host Robert Osborne will engage special guest Darryl Hickman in an onstage discussion about his experiences on set and on location, working with a major movie star.  20th Century-Fox.  1945.  35mm.  110 minutes.  Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.