They Were Sisters

They Were Sisters (1945)

A dramatic and captivating account of the love story of three young girls and the intricacies of marriage.

The story of three sisters and the men they marry: one is happily married but childless, the second promiscuously escapes an unhappy, loveless marriage, and the third is tortured by the mental cruelties inflicted by a domineering husband.

Date of release
1945-07-02
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (9)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Drama
Director
Arthur Crabtree

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: They Were Sisters

They Were Sisters is a 1945 British melodrama film directed by Arthur Crabtree for Gainsborough Pictures and starring Phyllis Calvert and James Mason. The film was produced by Harold Huth, with cinematography from Jack Cox and screenplay by Roland Pertwee. They Were Sisters is noted for its frank, unsparing depiction of marital abuse at a time when the subject was rarely discussed openly. It was one of the Gainsborough melodramas.

Background

Unlike most of the hugely successful melodramas made by Gainsborough during the mid-1940s, They Were Sisters has a near-contemporary rather than a costume setting, spanning the years from the end of the First World War, to the late 1930s. The screenplay was developed by Pertwee from a popular novel of the same name by Dorothy Whipple, published in 1943.

They Were Sisters features the spouses of both Mason and Calvert; Pamela Mason (billed under her first married name Pamela Kellino, and playing Mason's daughter, despite being only seven years younger) and Peter Murray Hill. Mason later admitted that he acted most of his bullying, sadistic role with a permanent hangover as a result of his using drinking as a means of dealing with the frustration he felt from his role and the British film industry…

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