Leave Her to Heaven
| Leave Her to Heaven | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | John M. Stahl |
| Produced by | William A. Bacher |
| Screenplay by | Jo Swerling |
| Based on |
Leave Her to Heaven 1944 novel by Ben Ames Williams |
| Starring |
Gene Tierney Cornel Wilde Jeanne Crain Vincent Price |
| Music by | Alfred Newman |
| Cinematography | Leon Shamroy |
| Edited by | James B. Clark |
| Distributed by | Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation |
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Release date
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Running time
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110 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $8.2 million (rentals) |
Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American Technicolor film noir starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, Ray Collins, and Chill Wills. The story was adapted for the screen by Jo Swerling from the best selling novel of the same name by Ben Ames Williams and directed by John M. Stahl.
The story (told in an extended flashback that constitutes the bulk of the film) revolves around a femme fatale who entraps a husband and commits several crimes motivated by her insane jealousy over everything concerning him. Tierney received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. The film grossed over $5,000,000, Fox's highest-grossing picture of the 1940s.
The film's title is drawn from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Act I, Scene V, the Ghost urges Hamlet not to seek vengeance against Queen Gertrude, but rather to "leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her."
Novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) returns to his remote island home, called Back of the Moon, after two years in prison. His friend and attorney (Ray Collins), narrates how Richard meets beautiful socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) on a train. She falls in love with him mainly on the basis of his close resemblance to her recently deceased father, to whom she was obsessively attached.
Ellen is previously engaged to an ambitious Boston attorney, Russell Quinton (Vincent Price), who begs her not to marry Richard because of the bad press it would bring to his upcoming political campaign. However, she jilts Russell and marries Richard, who at first is fascinated not only with Ellen's beauty but her exotic and intense manner. It gradually becomes apparent however that Ellen is pathologically jealous towards any other person and activity that her husband cares about.
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