De Havilland's second

Today's TCM star in Summer Under the Stars is Olivia de Havilland, who won a brace of acting Oscars in her career. Both of those performances are airing in prime time tonight, although in reverse order. Her first Oscar performance, for To Each His Own is second at 10:00 PM ET; kicking the night off at 8:00 PM is the movie that won Olivia her second Academy Award: The Heiress.

De Havilland plays the title role, that of heiress Catherine Sloper. It's the 1850s, and Catherine is a young woman on the verge of becoming a spinster because her widowed father (Ralph Richardson) has been at best overprotective, at worst manipulative. Things change when Catherine meets Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift). He's an heir himself, but he's fallen on hard times, having squandered all of his inheritance in Europe. The two fall in love, but father thinks that Morris isn't a good match for Catherine, and that he's in it only for the money. To that extent, he changes his will to disinherit Catherine if she marries Morris. Catherine will still have a nice inheritance from her mother, but what her father could leave her is even more. Still, Morris and Catherine plan to elope, but at the last minute, Morris gets cold feet....

Several years pass, during which Catherine's father dies. All of a sudden, Morris returns, claiming to have worked his way out west and then worked his way back. The implication is that he wanted to prove to Catherine that her father was wrong about him, and that he wasn't a fortune hunter in it for Catherine's money. Catherine still hasn't married, and is now faced with the difficult question of whether or not Morris is honest in his intentions....

The Heiress is an excellent, yet underrated movie. I think that's partly because it's one of the many Paramount movies for which the TV ended up being controlled by Universal; as such, it doesn't show up on TV as much as movies from MGM or Warner Bros. Secondly, the movie doesn't have anything obviously memorable. Unlike a disturbing movie like The Snake Pit or a great comedy or historical movies with lots of action, The Heiress depends upon its dialogue and portrayals, not really providing easily noticeable visuals. That, and it's the sort of movie that requires the viewer to think and be engaged. Having said that, the performances are quite good, not only from de Havilland, but from Richardson, Miriam Hopkins (playing Catherine's aunt), and even Clift; the last despite the fact that he really wasn't the best casting decision for a movie set in the 1850s. He's much better than John Lund in To Each His Own, however.

The Heiress has been released to DVD.