The Searching Wind | |
---|---|
Directed by | William Dieterle |
Screenplay by | Lillian Hellman |
Based on | The Searching Wind 1944 play by Lillian Hellman |
Produced by | Hal Wallis |
Starring | Robert Young Sylvia Sidney Ann Richards |
Cinematography | Lee Garmes |
Edited by | Warren Low |
Music by | Victor Young |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 108 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Searching Wind is a 1946 American drama film directed by William Dieterle and starring Robert Young, Sylvia Sidney, and Ann Richards. It is based on the play of the same name by Lillian Hellman. [1] It had originally been planned for producer Hal Wallis to make the film at Warner Bros., but after he left the studio he brought the project to Paramount Pictures. [2]
In 1945, after hearing of the death of Mussolini, an American career diplomat and his family reflect on his mistakes he made during the interwar years. [3]
Hellman's play debuted on Broadway in 1944 and ran for 318 performances. Montgomery Clift was in the original cast which was directed by Herman Shumlin. [4]
Hellman later said it was "The nearest thing to a political play" she had written "which is probably why I don't like it much any more. But even there I meant only to write about nice, well born people who, with good intentions, helped to sell out a world." [5]
Hal Wallis bought the screen rights for $100,000. Wallis had made a film of Hellman's Watch on the Rhine while head of Warner Bros. Hellman did the script. It was one of the first films Wallis made as a producer at Paramount. [6]
Richards' casting was announced in September 1944. Joseph Cotten turned down the male lead. [7] [8]
Filming started 13 December 1945. [9]
Variety thought the film "isn't likely to hold the run-of-the-mill entertainment-goer looking for escapist stuff" and "should earn back its coin... for though well-mounted, it nevertheless doesn't appear too heavily budgeted. The film is an improvement on the Broadway play... because it is more coherent, and better acted." [10]
Watch on the Rhine is a 1943 American drama film directed by Herman Shumlin and starring Bette Davis and Paul Lukas. The screenplay by Dashiell Hammett is based on the 1941 play Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman. Watch on the Rhine was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Paul Lukas won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Kurt Muller, a German-born anti-fascist in this film.
Love Letters is a 1945 American romantic film noir directed by William Dieterle from a screenplay by Ayn Rand, based on the novel Pity My Simplicity by Christopher Massie. It stars Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ann Richards, Cecil Kellaway, Gladys Cooper and Anita Louise. The plot tells the story of a man falling in love with an amnesiac woman with two personalities, who is believed to have killed his soldier friend.
Lillian Florence Hellman was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist views and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer questions by HUAC, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party.
Anne Revere was an American actress and a liberal member of the board of the Screen Actors' Guild. She was best known for her work on Broadway and her portrayals of mothers in a series of critically acclaimed films. An outspoken critic of the House Un-American Activities Committee, her name appeared in Red Channels: The Report on Communist Influence in Radio and Television in 1950 and she was subsequently blacklisted.
Harold B. Wallis was an American film producer. He is best known for producing Casablanca (1942), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and True Grit (1969), along with many other major films for Warner Bros. featuring such film stars as Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Bette Davis, and Errol Flynn. As a producer, he received 19 nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Lizabeth Virginia Scott was an American actress, singer and model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency, known for her "smoky voice" and being "the most beautiful face of film noir during the 1940s and 1950s". After understudying the role of Sabina in the original Broadway and Boston stage productions of The Skin of Our Teeth, she emerged in such films as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), Desert Fury (1947), and Too Late for Tears (1949). Of her 22 films, she was the leading lady in all but three. In addition to stage and radio, she appeared on television from the late 1940s to early 1970s.
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Shirley Ann Richards was an Australian actress and author who achieved notability in a series of 1930s Australian films for Ken G. Hall before moving to the United States, where she continued her career as a film actress, mainly as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet. Her best known performances were in It Isn't Done (1937), Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938), An American Romance (1944), and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). In the 1930s, she was the only Australian actor under a long-term contract to a film studio, Cinesound Productions. She subsequently became a lecturer and poet.
Dudley Digges was an Irish stage actor, director, and producer as well as a film actor. Although he gained his initial theatre training and acting experience in Ireland, the vast majority of Digges' career was spent in the United States, where over the span of 43 years he worked in hundreds of stage productions and performed in over 50 films.
Harry Cyril Delevanti was an English character actor with a long career in American films. He was sometimes credited as Syril Delevanti.
John Archer was an American actor.
Michael Strong was an American stage, film and television actor.
It's Love I'm After is a 1937 American screwball comedy film directed by Archie Mayo and starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Olivia de Havilland. Based on the story "Gentlemen After Midnight" by Maurice Hanline, with a screenplay by Casey Robinson, the film is about a couple who have postponed their marriage eleven times and who continue to plot and scheme their way to marriage. The film marked the third on-screen pairing of Leslie Howard and Bette Davis, following Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest.
Vote for Huggett is a 1949 British comedy film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Susan Shaw and Petula Clark. It was written by Mabel Constanduros, Denis Constanduros and Allan MacKinnon. In this, the third in the series of films about the Huggetts after Holiday Camp (1947) and Here Come the Huggetts (1948), Warner reprises his role as Joe Huggett, the head of a London family in the post-war years who decides to run as a candidate in the municipal election. It was followed by The Huggetts Abroad (1949).
Walter Smith Baldwin Jr. was an American character actor whose career spanned five decades and 150 film and television roles, and numerous stage performances.
Douglas Harvey Dick was an American actor and occasional screenwriter. His most famous role came in the 1948 film Rope. In 1971, Dick left the entertainment industry to work as a psychologist.
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Three Live Ghosts is a 1936 American comedy film directed by H. Bruce Humberstone and starring Richard Arlen, Claud Allister and Cecilia Parker.
Arthur Kober was an American humorist, author, press agent, and screenwriter. He was married to the dramatist Lillian Hellman.
Moon Over Las Vegas is a 1944 American musical comedy film directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring Anne Gwynne, David Bruce and Barbara Jo Allen.