Leave Her to Heaven

My frequent dinner table companion Leslie has not been shy about telling me her favorite movie: “Leave Her to Heaven,” a 1945 film starring Gene Tierney from a book of the same name.

She urged me again and again to watch it, until I finally gave in.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Alas, it was not my favorite movie. In fact, I loathed it.

The plot involves a gorgeous woman who falls in love with, and then marries, this poor man who thereafter has to suffer endlessly due to her obsessive and savage jealousy towards anyone close to him.

She systematically murders everyone with close ties to him, in ways that appear to be accidental, then successfully frames him for her own murder when she commits suicide.

There is a tacked-on ”happy ending” when he emerges from prison many years later and finds love again, I assume with someone from a better quadrant on the “hot/crazy” matrix.

(Gene Tierney’s character was, I am sure, from the section marked, “Redheads, strippers, and hairdressers named Tiffany.”)

Ever since I delivered the above review to her, she’s teased me about it. “When you get together with your sons on Thursday, you should watch Leave Her to Heaven.”

When I was chosen as Resident of the Month at Ye Olde Folks Home, she suggested I fill out the “Favorite movie” slot on the poster with… right, you know the rest.

You know, I almost did. It would have been a good joke.

Tonight over dinner she impishly showed me one of her books that she insisted I simply must read. It was… yeah, I should have guessed.