Lonelyhearts

Lonelyhearts (1959)

SOME WIVES CHEAT BECAUSE THEIR HUSBANDS DO... AND SOME BECAUSE THEY'RE JUST NO GOOD!

Burdened by a family secret, Adam White lands a job as a newspaper advice columnist. Little does he realize that it's all part of a nasty desire by cynical editor William Shrike to crush the souls of his underlings. Adam feels his readers' pain, and eventually, he takes an assignment to meet with Faye Doyle, who is exasperated by her crippled husband. When Faye tries to seduce Adam, he must choose between his job and his girl.

Date of release
1959-03-04
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (22)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Vincent J. Donehue

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Lonelyhearts, also known as Miss Lonelyhearts, is a 1958 American drama film directed by Vincent J. Donehue. It is based on the 1957 Broadway play by Howard Teichmann, which in turn is based on the 1933 novel Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.

Production

Dore Schary had been fired from head of production of MGM in 1956. He moved to New York and wrote the hit play Sunrise at Campobello. He then decided to return to filmmaking. He saw Miss Lonelyhearts, bought the rights, and set up the film at United Artists.

Director Vincent Donehue had worked on Sunrise. He had read the book and went to see the play Miss Lonelyhearts and "thought the novel was a very passionate, emotional and moral statement, and when I saw the Howard Teichmann play based on the novel I felt that its main difficulty lay in an alteration of the tone, which made it a very cerebral statement. The opinion coincided with Schary’s own views. He asked me to direct the film."

Schary wrote the script in collaboration with the director. There were two weeks of rehearsal prior to filming.

Myrna Loy said Montgomery Clift and Robert Ryan agreed to make the film at less than their usual fees because they admired the project. Loy agreed to make it because she believed in Schary who was a close friend. However "I questioned the attempt to film a movie in which the main character is actually a Christ figure. It could only be done as a bizarre sort of fantasy, which general audiences were not ready for in 1959.

Maureen Stapleton called the script "incredible - except for a ridiculous 'happy' ending."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended