Actors - Laura

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	Actors - Laura

Laura is a 1944 film noir which tells the story of a police detective, investigating a woman's murder, who falls in love with her portrait. It stars Gene Tierney as Laura, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price and Judith Anderson. Adapted from Vera Caspary's novel by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt and Ring Lardner Jr. (uncredited). It was directed by Otto Preminger. The film's first director Rouben Mamoulian was fired early in the film's shooting due to creative differences.

Plot

Laura begins with cop Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigating the murder of a beautiful advertising director Laura Hunt. McPherson interviews newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who relates how he fell under Laura's spell and used his influence and fame to advance her career. McPherson also questions Laura's fiancé, Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price); her wealthy aunt, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson); and Laura's loyal housekeeper, Bessie Clary (Dorothy Adams). Through the testimony of her friends, and the reading of her letters, McPherson comes to know Laura (Gene Tierney), and slowly falls in love with the dead woman, particularly through her portrait image. This becomes an obsession with him -- using the excuse of trying to solve the murder, he hangs around her apartment, and is at one point accused of falling in love with a corpse (by Waldo Lydecker). He falls asleep under her portrait, drunk, whereupon she enters, like a dream or a ghost. It turns out that she was not dead, but that some other girl was killed in her place. Her resurrection starts the detective plot spinning in new directions. There are indications throughout the film that the story is something of a dream or a myth, which helps explain its continuing impact, and the way it moves beyond the standard murder mystery. In particular, the theme of the image raises questions about the role of the movie (and the audience) as image creator. Various scenes conjure up Laura, or focus tightly on her face (in one powerful scene her face is interrogated by Dana Andrews wielding a harsh lamp) -- "is she only a dream"? Vertigo
is perhaps the closest film to Laura in the noir genre, with a similar death and resurrection plot and an obsessive detective in love with a woman who may be a figment of his imagination.

Awards

It won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Joseph LaShelle), and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Clifton Webb), Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White, Best Director (Otto Preminger) and Best Writing, Screenplay. The score, notable for its haunting title theme (which has since become a jazz standard recorded over 400 times), was written by David Raksin.

In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Trivia

Rouben Mamoulian directed "Laura" at first, but was replaced by Otto Preminger, who also produced the picture. He immediately destroyed all of Mamoulian's footage, including a scripted ending where everything was revealed to be a dream, and brought a new cameraman onto the set.

Jennifer Jones
was first choice for the role of Laura, but she turned it down. Hedy Lamarr
was also offered the role, but she rejected the script, later acknowledging that she would have taken the role if she'd heard the film score in advance.

Otto Preminger's original idea for the film score was to use Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady." David Raksin later composed the familiar score for "Laura" over the course of a single weekend, after being inspired by a "Dear David" letter he received from his wife.

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Actors - Laura

Plot

Awards

Trivia

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