Daisy Kenyon *** (1947, Joan Crawford, Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Ruth Warrick) – Classic Movie Review 6741

Joan Crawford has a great, overwrought time in 20th Century Fox’s 1947 romantic-drama film Daisy Kenyon, a heated melodramatic story of a romantic triangle.

The starry cast of Joan Crawford, Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews and Ruth Warrick, and a top director in Otto Preminger give a boost to this clumsily written, sappy 1947 tale of Daisy Kenyon, a New York fashion artist and her two lovers. David Hertz’s screenplay is based on the 1945 novel by Elizabeth Janeway.

Crawford has a great time in an enjoyably overwrought performance as the heroine who has an affair with the married lawyer Dan O’Mara (Andrews) behind his wife Lucille (Warrick)’s back, but eventually weds the goodhearted wartime sergeant Peter Lapham (Fonda), back from World War Two to resume his boat-designing job. Then the trouble really begins.

Crawford’s tour-de-force is the making of the movie, though the two men do not seem very comfortable playing second fiddle to the virtuoso star. Neither of them liked the script but made the film to fulfill their contracts. Crawford was 42 but Daisy is 32, so a make-up artist and shadowy cinematography came to the rescue.

Also in the cast are Martha Stewart as Mary Angelus, Peggy Ann Garner as Rosamund O’Mara, Connie Marshall as Marie O’Mara, Nicholas Joy as Coverly, Art Baker as Lucille O’Mara’s attorney, Robert Karnes, John Davidson, Victoria Home, Charles Meredith, Roy Roberts, Griff Barnett, Tito Vuolo and George E Stone.

Newspaper reporters Walter Winchell, Leonard Lyons, and Damon Runyon, as well as John Garfield, make cameo appearances.

A dismissive Preminger stated that he had forgotten that he had made the film.

It cost $1,852,000 and earned $1,750,000 in US rentals, so it was not a hit. But the dismissive reviews of the time have given way to a reappraisal and it now has a small cult following.

Naturally, the Motion Picture Production Code administrators attacked the screenplay’s ‘lack of regard for the sanctity of marriage’, as well as other issues, such as concerns over alcohol, so the characters pour alcoholic drinks in several scenes but don’t drink them.

Surprisingly there were no production problems, apart from the maintenance of a temperature of 50°F to ease Crawford’s hot flashes. Ruth Warrick stated: ‘She was always in tennis shorts and a thin blouse because she was so hot, while I had to wear a fur coat to keep warm.’ Crawford gave Andrews and Fonda long underwear as appeasement.

Director and star were friendly. Ruth Warrick stated: ‘With Otto and Joan, we had two tyrants on the set, and that may have kept both of them in line.’ She said that Preminger ‘carried himself like an army officer and behaved like a general moving the troops.’

Ruth Warrick as Emily Monroe Norton, the bride of Orson Welles’s character, Charles Foster Kane, in Citizen Kane (1941).

Ruth Warrick’s film debut is as Emily Monroe Norton Kane in Citizen Kane.

Daisy Kenyon is directed by Otto Preminger, runs 100 minutes, is released by 20th Century Fox, is written by David Hertz, is shot in black and white by Leon Shamroy, is produced by Otto Preminger and is designed by David Raksin, with Art Direction by George W Davis and Lyle R Wheeler.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6741

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Movie Queens: Joan Crawford by Graeme Jukes.