DAISY KENYON

(director: Otto Preminger; screenwriters: David Hertz/from the novel by Elizabeth Janeway; cinematographer: Leon Shamroy; editor: Louis Loffler; music: David Raksin; cast: Joan Crawford (Daisy Kenyon), Dana Andrews (Dan O’Mara), Henry Fonda (Peter Lapham), Ruth Warrick (Lucile O’Mara), Martha Stewart (Mary Angelus), Peggy Ann Garner (Rosamund O’Mara), Connie Marshall (Marie O’Mara), Nicholas Joy (Coverly), Tito Vuolo (Dino); Runtime: 90; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Otto Preminger; Twentieth Century-Fox; 1947)
“The women’s pic is given a far better treatment than it deserved.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The weak love triangle soap opera story is greatly enriched by its three talented stars giving intelligent performances despite the slender material and it’s also enhanced by the finely crafted sober direction of Otto Preminger (“Hurry Sundown””/”Saint Joan”/”The Moon Is Blue”) who keeps it throughout on an even keel. It’s based on the novel by Elizabeth Janeway and is written with dead spots by David Hertz.

Daisy Kenyon (Joan Crawford) is a hotshot fashion illustrator for a magazine living in a quaint Greenwich Village walk-up apartment. Dan O’Mara (Dana Andrews) is a hotshot tough-talking big-time corporate lawyer, who is locked into a loveless marriage to Lucille (Ruth Warrick) and has two adolescent daughters (Peggy Ann Garner & Connie Marshall) he absolutely adores. Dan and Daisy have been having a longtime affair, but he will not seek a divorce. His wife’s father (Nicholas Joy) is his law partner. Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda) is a handsome widower, who is a decorated sergeant returning from the war and is now ready to pursue a career in boat designing. Dan is stable and exciting but calculating, Peter is a quirky innocent who is passive and dull. Preminger builds a case of equal proportion for both suitors. Though Daisy still loves Dan, she needs the security of a stable home life and marries Peter. The newlyweds move to a rustic cottage on Cape Cod, where they live part-time. When Lucille overhears a phone conversation Dan has with Daisy, she files for a divorce. After a bitter court battle the divorce comes through, and Dan now actively pursues the married Daisy. But the emotionally confused Daisy now realizes she loves Peter. It ends with Dan and Peter confronting Daisy, and she chooses the laid-back Peter.

The women’s pic is given a far better treatment than it deserved.

REVIEWED ON 1/14/2008 GRADE: B-