Copyright 1955 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 4 November 1955. U.S. release: November 1955. U.K. release: 2 July 1956. Australian release: 17 May 1956. Sydney opening at the Regent. 8,716 feet. 97 minutes. U.K. and Australian release title: SECRET INTERLUDE.
SYNOPSIS: Garvin Wales (Sidney Blackmer) is the most famous writer published by John Duncan (Howard Wendell) of New York. Wales is now living in isolation on an island in the deep South, his talent failing, going blind. When Duncan receives not from Wales but from his dominating wife, Lucy (Marjorie Rambeau), who keeps Garvin virtually her prisoner, a letter demanding $20,000 in royalties stolen, she asserts, by Philip Greene, the Company's editor who was until his recent death not only Wales' editor but his best friend, Duncan dispatches young Anson Page (Richard Egan) to Pompey's Head, the refuge of the Waleses, to unravel the mystery. The choice is not accidental. Anson Page, though a transplanted New Yorker with an adoring wife, Meg (Dorothy Patrick Davis), a family and a life in New York now, is originally from Pompey's Head.
NOTES: Fox's 43rd CinemaScope film gained no critical plaudits or awards. Despite an extensive advertising campaign centering on the phenomenally bestselling (at least in the United States) Hamilton Basso novel, the movie returned only a modest profit to the studio. Lack of star power as well as lukewarm-at-best reviews (in many of which the movie was unfavorably compared to the book) contributed to the general lack of public enthusiasm. In England and Australia, where the novel was little known, the movie did so little business, I doubt if it recovered its advertising and distribution costs.
I could never figure out what it was but I suspect Richard Egan must have projected at least one star quality. Certainly Fox executives pulled out all stops in their efforts to promote him as a major star. That he didn't succeed wasn't for lack of studio enthusiasm. But what did Egan have to offer? That's what I'd like to know. Just look at him! And don't think the stills cameraman has caught him unawares. No, that's Dick Egan all right, typically stiff as a board. The other players at least look more relaxed and more in character. But not our Dick. I wonder why Fox persisted with him for so long. Maybe he had a good agent. Goldstone-Tobias, to be exact.
As for the movie itself. Well the combination of the zombie-like Egan with an impeccably dull scriptwriter/director like Philip Dunne is not exactly calculated to generate much fire. And just to make doubly sure the picture never lifts off, Dunne has reduced the many- stranded plots of the novel to just two: an incredibly boring I-met- my-adolescent-love-again-but-nothing-happened romance between Egan and the appropriately-named, frosty Miss Wynter; and a slightly more interesting tale of a blind author, his shrewish wife and a missing $20,000. (Or at least it would have been a slightly more interesting tale if you hadn't already read the solution to the mystery in the newspaper advertisements or on the posters outside the theater). Sidney Blackmer is reasonably forceful as the author, Marjorie Rambeau is perfectly cast as the demanding wife.
SYNOPSIS: Garvin Wales (Sidney Blackmer) is the most famous writer published by John Duncan (Howard Wendell) of New York. Wales is now living in isolation on an island in the deep South, his talent failing, going blind. When Duncan receives not from Wales but from his dominating wife, Lucy (Marjorie Rambeau), who keeps Garvin virtually her prisoner, a letter demanding $20,000 in royalties stolen, she asserts, by Philip Greene, the Company's editor who was until his recent death not only Wales' editor but his best friend, Duncan dispatches young Anson Page (Richard Egan) to Pompey's Head, the refuge of the Waleses, to unravel the mystery. The choice is not accidental. Anson Page, though a transplanted New Yorker with an adoring wife, Meg (Dorothy Patrick Davis), a family and a life in New York now, is originally from Pompey's Head.
NOTES: Fox's 43rd CinemaScope film gained no critical plaudits or awards. Despite an extensive advertising campaign centering on the phenomenally bestselling (at least in the United States) Hamilton Basso novel, the movie returned only a modest profit to the studio. Lack of star power as well as lukewarm-at-best reviews (in many of which the movie was unfavorably compared to the book) contributed to the general lack of public enthusiasm. In England and Australia, where the novel was little known, the movie did so little business, I doubt if it recovered its advertising and distribution costs.
I could never figure out what it was but I suspect Richard Egan must have projected at least one star quality. Certainly Fox executives pulled out all stops in their efforts to promote him as a major star. That he didn't succeed wasn't for lack of studio enthusiasm. But what did Egan have to offer? That's what I'd like to know. Just look at him! And don't think the stills cameraman has caught him unawares. No, that's Dick Egan all right, typically stiff as a board. The other players at least look more relaxed and more in character. But not our Dick. I wonder why Fox persisted with him for so long. Maybe he had a good agent. Goldstone-Tobias, to be exact.
As for the movie itself. Well the combination of the zombie-like Egan with an impeccably dull scriptwriter/director like Philip Dunne is not exactly calculated to generate much fire. And just to make doubly sure the picture never lifts off, Dunne has reduced the many- stranded plots of the novel to just two: an incredibly boring I-met- my-adolescent-love-again-but-nothing-happened romance between Egan and the appropriately-named, frosty Miss Wynter; and a slightly more interesting tale of a blind author, his shrewish wife and a missing $20,000. (Or at least it would have been a slightly more interesting tale if you hadn't already read the solution to the mystery in the newspaper advertisements or on the posters outside the theater). Sidney Blackmer is reasonably forceful as the author, Marjorie Rambeau is perfectly cast as the demanding wife.