Police detective Lt. Mark Macpherson (Dana Andrews) is in charge of the investigation of the murder of advertising executive and socialite Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), whose body, face obliterated by a shotgun blast, has been found at the door of her posh New York apartment. He talks to the people closest to Laura: columnist and man-about-town Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who took Laura under his wing when she was a budding career girl and molded her into a social and business success, wealthy aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), and her sometime fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), an impoverished Southern aristocrat whose genteel poverty was relieved by frequent gifts from Ann Treadwell before he was hired by Laura's firm. Confused by his suspicions of the three, he is also disturbed by his growing obsessive attraction to Laura herself. Alone in her apartment and preoccupied with thoughts of her, he is shocked to see Laura herself, very much alive and unaware of the events of the past few days, arrive at the apartment. Now he must determine who was actually murdered, who murdered her and why.Laura had a long, tortured evolution from original story idea to finished film. Author Vera Caspary conceived the story initially as a stage play and, finding herself unable to finish the play, turned it instead into a fairly successful novel, Ring Twice For Laura, which was first published as a magazine serial and then published in book form. Still wanting to see her idea performed on stage -- particularly before any film was made -- Caspary spent a number of months attempting to adapt it for Broadway and again came up against a creative block. This time she used collaborators to help her, one of whom was Otto Preminger, who had recently left 20th Century Fox and decided to focus on Broadway stage productions. Tired of the project on which she by this point spent a number of years on, she washed her hands of it and sold the film rights to Fox, where Jay Dratler would begin to draft a script that was later redrafted with Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhardt. Preminger decided to go back to Fox and sold the project to studio head Darryl Zanuck, who attached Rouben Mamoulian to the film as director. Hedy Lamarr and Jennifer Jones were considered for the part of Laura Hunt before Zanuck okayed Gene Tierney for the part, breaking her out of a career that exploited her dark, exotic good looks by casting her in supporting roles as ethnics and half-castes -- a Polynesian, an Arab, a Eurasian, a Chinese woman. Laird Cregar was considered for the role of Waldo Lydecker before Zanuck reluctantly (because of Webb's homosexuality) agreed to the casting of stage actor, singer and dancer Clifton Webb, in his first film appearance since the silent era. Meanwhile, Preminger developed creative differences with Rouben Mamoulian and stepped in as director, reshooting all Mamoulian's footage. Even the development of the theme, which was later fitted with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and became a popular, frequently recorded pop standard, was attended by creative difficulties: composer David Raksin, frustrated over his many attempts at a satisfactory melody and distraught over the departure of his wife, propped her goodbye letter on his piano and improvised the first phrase of what would become the final version of the Laura theme.
Laura is both love story and murder mystery, a wartime film that offered a war-weary public an escape into a milieu of high society and wealth untouched by material sacrifices. Although usually filed under film noir for its murder-mystery premise and tough-guy detective hero, the film's elegant and subtle style, witty dialogue, tasteful art direction and stylish, conventional cinematography avoid noir's typical expressionist approach. Laura's consistently high level of craft and style make it a great "late-show" movie, perfect for de
ad-of-night viewing when in the mood for an old black-and-white picture. But what has made this film a cult classic as well as a golden-age Hollywood favorite is its underlying levels of perversity and decadence, its themes of necrophilia, impotence and moral corruption. Macpherson is a cynic about women who falls in love with Laura who is presumed dead and cannot disappoint his idealized picture of her. The relationship between Ann Treadwell and Shelby Carpenter is essentially that of a wealthy woman and her gigolo; Carpenter himself is a soft character with a weakness for womanizing (even when engaged to Laura, he takes a mistress) who takes money from women and pawns gifts. And there is Waldo Lydecker, a generous friend and mentor who guides Laura to success in business and social circles but also exerts an iron control over her personal life, disapproving of every young man she meets because he is, in essence, impotent and cannot possess her.Further notes on the stars:
- Although Gene Tierney (1920-1991) never regarded her own performance in Laura as more than "adequate," the film did establish her as a leading actress and she was to co-star with Vincent Price again the next year in Leave Her To Heaven as an emotionally disturbed murderess. Her subsequent career was hampered by personal tragedy, marriage and relationship problems and mental illness, making her less prolific an actress than she probably would have been otherwise.
- Dana Andrews (1909-1992) first realized his potential as a leading man in Laura, but despite other memorable performances in films such as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), he remained an underrated talent, though managed to stay busy through the early eighties.
- Judith Anderson (1898-1972) had a long and distinguished career on the stage parallel with her film career. A native of Australia, she became Dame Judith Anderson when awarded a CBE in 1960.
- Clifton Webb (1891-1966) went on to more film work as a result of Laura, mostly typecast as an ascerbic, waspish bachelor. He created the very popular character Mr. Belvedere in Sitting Pretty (1948) and went on to play him in a number of sequels.
- Vincent Price (1911-1993) became synonymous with horror film in the fifties, sixties and seventies in a seemingly endless string of roles in films like House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), to which he brought an indefatigable sense of fun and eye-twinkling good humor. His unusually sporting attitude to what most other actors would have considered a career dead-end was undoubtedly due to his off-the-set passions for fine art and cuisine. He authored or co-authored a number of books about art and cooking, lectured on art and aesthetics, and donated a number of works in his collection to East Los Angeles College for a gallery founded in his and second wife Mary's names.
(BTW: A stage version of Laura finally debuted on Broadway in 1948.)
