Daisy Kenyon

This film is a great vehicle for Joan Crawford, and one of my favorites from the middle portion of Joan's career . In fact, I can't imagine any other actress in the lead. Daisy Kenyon (Joan Crawford) plays a commercial artist who is the strong independent type. She has fallen in love with a married man of means (Dana Andrews) who has a clingy and emotionally unstable wife (Ruth Warrick) and a couple of daughters that he knows he will lose access to if he gets a divorce. In other words, he is permanently married and he and Daisy's relationship is going nowhere. Enter Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda), a widower recently back from World War II. Both men love Daisy, but only one can "do right" by her - Peter. Unfortunately, he is not the man she loves.

The resulting love triangle, the idea of any of this being particularly scandalous even to someone aiming for public life, and in particular the then quite backwards divorce laws of the state of New York might seem quaint to a modern audience, but the private situations and emotions of the characters still ring true. Who does Daisy choose in the end? The man willing to give her up. I'll let you watch the film and find out which of the two men that is.