A FILM TO REMEMBER: “THE HEIRESS” (1949) (2025)

Before I get into this, I want to make mention “A FILM TO REMEMBER” will be a series about films that have reached a milestone anniversary since their origin in being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The articles will contain the film’s plot outline, director, cast, a compilation of trivialities, various photos, movie trailer, critical reception and more. So, let’s start:

We are here to mark the celebration of the 70th Anniversary of William Wyler’s “The Heiress”. Let’s take an inside look at the film:

PLOT OUTLINE:

A young naive woman falls for a handsome young man who her emotionally abusive father suspects is a fortune hunter.

STUDIO:

Paramount Pictures

DIRECTOR:

William Wyler

CAST:

• Olivia de Havilland … Catherine Sloper
• Montgomery Clift … Morris Townsend
• Ralph Richardson … Dr. Austin Sloper
• Miriam Hopkins … Lavinia Penniman
• Vanessa Brown … Maria
• Betty Linley … Mrs. Montgomery
• Ray Collins … Jefferson Almond
• Mona Freeman … Marian Almond
• Selena Royle … Elizabeth Almond
• Paul Lees … Arthur Townsend
• Harry Antrim … Mr. Abeel
• Russ Conway … Quintus
• David Thursby … Geier

GENRE(S):

Drama | Romance

TAGLINE:

When a Woman Loves a Man…She Doesn’t Want to Know the Truth About Him!

The film is known for being a powerful and dramatic compelling, bleak tale of crushed, heartbroken expectations and incisively harsh retribution in a meticulous reproduction of the Victorian scene, so faithful to its mores that it is a museum piece. Director William Wyler, a master of romantic period dramas, puts us in the middle of the dramatic/romantic conflict without specifically telling us how we should feel about it. While finding the most telling angles with which to observe his characters as they get lost in kindness that hides cruelty and abuse with unimpeachable intentions that’s sharply honed in through the efficiently mounted cast of performances by Montgomery Clift, Miriam Hopkins, along with a chillingly restrained Ralph Richardson and most strikingly, Olivia de Havilland who displays masterfully transformative qualities and the spine-chilling coldness, hardness and strength exhibited in this stylish, cultivated, engrossing and entertainingly historical dramatic tour de force. The film is based from the play of the same name which was adapted from the novella “Washington Square” by Henry James, it captured universal critical acclaim but its reputation wasn’t recognizingly regarded until over time as its notoriety only grew in eventually becoming a cinematically renowned classic.

Here’s what some of the critical receptions have been for the film over the years:

Keith Phipps from A.V. Club says: “William Wyler’s film version of a stage play based on Henry James’ ‘Washington Square,’ it isn’t the dulling of Olivia de Havilland’s beauty that carries her performance, but the intensity of her work as an awkward young woman remade by love and heartbreak.”

Emanuel Levy from EmanuelLevy.com says: “William Wyler’s superlative rendition of Henry James’ novel Washington Square is meticulously mounted with great acting from Olivia De Havilland, Monty Clift, and particularly Ralph Richardson, dark-noirish lensing, and powerful score from Aaron Copeland.”

Time Out Staff from Time Out says: “William Wyler’s version of Henry James’ ‘Washington Square’ (based on a play adaptation) is typically plush, painstaking and cold — It’s all highly professional and heartless.”

Leonard Maltin from TCM.com says: “Adapted by Ruth and Augustus Goetz from their stage play. Henry James’ novel ‘Washington Square’ receives superlative screen treatment with Olivia de Havilland as spinster wooed by fortune- hunter Montgomery Clift in 19th-century N.Y.C., despite warnings from her cruel father, Ralph Richardson.”

Bosley Crowther from New York Times says: “The film crackles with allusive life and fire in its tender and agonized telling of an extraordinarily characterful tale. Mr. Wyler has given this somewhat austere drama an absorbing intimacy and a warming illusion of nearness that it did not have on the stage. He has brought the full-bodied people very closely and vividly to view, while maintaining the clarity and sharpness of their personalities, their emotions and their styles.”

As you can tell by the critical reactions, the film received widely critical acclamation but to everyone’s surprise, Paramount was besieged by letters from outraged patrons (mostly Clift fans) who complained that the film didn’t have a happy conclusion for its suitors. Regardless, this austere narrative of doleful and pensive possibilities, and penetratingly coarse retaliation as Wyler injects notions of post-war feminist empowerment throughout this themed account of the relationship between love and money in this quasi-tragic period drama. The film focuses more on the characteristic relationships than it does on plot as it doesn’t force its characters into unbelievable situations and allows them — to come full circle in their desires through an ideally strong troupe of Clift, Hopkins, the crawly constraint of Richardson and in particularly, de Havilland with a deft and nuanced turn in this Victorian stylized, emotionally engaging and dramatically compelling showpiece. But I’ll let you decide…

So, to get a better look at the film, here’s a link to the movie trailer of William Wyler’s “The Heiress”:

Here I have provided 12 interesting and intriguing trivia facts (I wanted to keep it limited) about “The Heiress”:

• After seeing production on Broadway, Olivia de Havilland approached director William Wyler about helming her in a screen adaptation of the play. Wyler agreed and encouraged Paramount Pictures executives to purchase the rights from the playwrights (Ruth and Augustus Goetz) for $250,000 and offer them $10,000 per week to write the screenplay.
• The film was originally going to be produced by Liberty Films, Inc., an independent production company headed, in part, by William Wyler, but when Paramount Pictures absorbed the production company in 1948, the studio took on the film.
• The original idea was to re-team Olivia de Havilland with her frequent co-star Errol Flynn. Cary Grant expressed interest in the role of Morris Townsend (played by Montgomery Clift), but William Wyler turned him down as he wanted Flynn for the role but the original idea was dropped by Paramount in favor of the more subtle acting that Clift could bring to the role.
• Ruth and Augustus Goetz were asked to make the character of Morris Townsend less of a villain than he was in their play and the original novel in deference to the studio’s desire to capitalize on Clift’s reputation as a romantic leading man.
• Olivia de Havilland wisely chose William Wyler as her director, considering that such a meticulous director would be able to coax a strong performance from her. As it turned out, Wyler became a staunch supporter of his leading actress, particularly in regard to the sneering attitude that Montgomery Clift displayed toward her as he didn’t value her talents as an actress and Sir Ralph Richardson taking every opportunity to steal scenes from under her nose with his improvisations.
• To help Olivia de Havilland achieve the physically and emotionally weary and worn effect that he wanted, William Wyler packed books into the suitcases that the actress lugged up the staircase in the scene where her character realizes that she has been jilted by her lover. It was during the spiral staircase scene, Wyler made 37 takes with Olivia de Havilland. Only after the last one, when she fell of exhaustion, Wyler declared that was the one he wanted to keep in the can.

• The song sung by Montgomery Clift while playing the piano is originally a vocal romance, “Plaisir d’amour,” composed in 1784 by classical composer Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (August 31, 1741, — February 10, 1816), and was the basis for Elvis Presley’s 1961 hit “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” written for the film “Blue Hawaii” (1961).
• In his autobiography, Basil Rathbone lamented that he did not get the part of Dr. Austin Sloper (played by Sir Ralph Richardson) in this film, following his performance in the play in New York City, opposite Wendy Hiller. Had he been cast, and had Errol Flynn won the part of Morris Townsend as originally planned, this would have been a re-teaming of all 3 main stars (Olivia de Havilland, Flynn and Rathbone) from the films of “Captain Blood” (1935) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938).
• Sir Ralph Richardson reprised character role of Dr. Austin Sloper from the stage version, having played it in London’s West End opposite Peggy Ashcroft.
• Although the score is credited to Aaron Copland, William Wyler disliked it, and had it heavily re-written and re-orchestrated, possibly by Hugo Friedhofer, who had orchestrated many of Max Steiner’s and Korngold’s lush operatic Warner Bros. scores, and Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946). What distinguished Copland from the usual Hollywood brand of orchestration was the simplicity and transparency of his scoring, and it was its spareness that so disturbed Wyler. The music sounds completely unlike any other piece of music Copland ever wrote, and it is no wonder he disowned it. Alex North, Copland’s pupil, was more successful using this chamber music sound, notably in North’s first score, “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951). But Copland was ahead of his time.
• It was reported that Montgomery Clift was unhappy with his own performance that during the film’s premiere he walked out because of his displeasure of his performance in the film. Clift claimed he was better as a more contemporary male romantic lead both during the film’s making and afterwards when it premiered, of course.
• Producer Fred F. Finklehoffe planned to film a version of the play with the original Broadway cast, but that production was never realized.

To conclude, William Wyler’s “The Heiress” is one of the most unexpectedly cynical takes on romance in its era, if not, of its genre, in tale of profound characteristic relationships about conforming expectations and forlorn revenge that is both consequently a period drama and an interesting allegory, containing the matter of women’s increasing power in the postwar years as World War II had forever changed the role of women in U.S. society. William Wyler skillfully helms forming an ambiguous emotional tone, an equivocal tread through the narrative’s dark territory, never knowing for sure of its characters’ motivations or true feelings that provides a poignance and effectiveness. The film is really a rather severe, withering rumination on love (familial love, romantic love, self-love) and the injurious cost of its absence infused in the conceptual theme of love and money as it tugs at our beauty biases, our belief in Cinderella fantasies, and our weakness for ugly duckling myths that’s assisted from its strong and distinguished performers of Montgomery Clift, Miriam Hopkins, with the penetratingly reserved Ralph Richardson and more specifically, Olivia de Havilland with a remarkable metamorphosis and bravura portrayal in this Victorian-era romance of a sharp, grim, emotional and absorbing cinematic masterpiece.

NOTE: The article contains sources from IMDb and Wikipedia.

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