The Unguarded Moment

The Unguarded Moment (1956)

THE UNGUARDED MOMENT and its shocking aftermath!

A high-school music teacher is the victim of a student who writes indecent notes and assaults women.

Date of release
1956-12-27
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (13)
Runtime
1h 35m
Genres
Crime, Drama, Thriller
Director
Harry Keller

Casting

Interesting facts

The Unguarded Moment is a 1956 American crime film noir thriller film directed by Harry Keller and starring Esther Williams, George Nader, John Saxon, and Edward Andrews.

Production

The origin of The Unguarded Moment is as surprising as Esther Williams' casting in it. According to biographer Bernard F. Dick in Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell, the story idea came from writer Larry Marcus and Rosalind Russell, as a possible vehicle for herself. (Marcus had written scripts for Russell's own production company.)

The first draft of the screenplay by Marcus and Russell (under the pseudonym C.A. McKnight, her mother's maiden name) had a working title of Teach Me to Love and was completed by 1951. In a 1951 draft of the story, Harry Graham was a fellow teacher instead of a policeman, and Leonard Bennett was revealed to be responsible for the murders, before being killed.

In 1952, the story, then called The Hidden Heart, was announced to have been purchased by Benagoss Productions, which had made The Green Glove. Herb Meadow had worked on the script and Rudolph Maté was to direct. The story was originally set in France but the setting was changed to California. Possible female stars discussed in the press included Olivia de Havilland, Loretta Young, and Teresa Wright. The movie was not made.

Russell had no time to work on the screenplay, as she became busy with back-to-back Broadway productions, including Wonderful Town, The Girl Rush, and Picnic. As a result, she did not return to the project until 1955, when Marcus and scenarist Meadow had made further revisions to the script under the working titles The Lie and The Hidden Heart.

In October 1955, Universal International announced it had purchased the script, with Gordon Kay to produce. (It was later estimated Russell and Marcus made $50,000 for their work on the film.) In November, Esther Williams signed on to play the lead in the film, by then titled The Gentle Webb (sic).

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