Jane Wyman and All That Heaven Allows

Time has added some latter-day ironies to All That Heaven Allows, and not just the revelation that its star Rock Hudson was gay. There’s also the political career of Ronald Reagan, the ex-husband of Hudson’s costar, Jane Wyman—built on the gospel of the American family, something that Douglas Sirk’s exquisite film, which uses one romance to show how hard it was to break free in 1950s America, ruthlessly paints as a fraud. The pair’s eight-year marriage broke up, by Reagan’s own account, in part because his wife was so fiercely ambitious. Watching her play Cary Scott—well-off, well-bred, a housewife who’s always behaved as others expect her to—it’s easy to forget that Wyman wasn’t much like her greatest role. At the time of filming, Wyman was at the tail end of a career-best run of films, and nearly a quarter of a century removed from any life outside show business. Yet she slips under the skin of this sheltered widow as though she too had always lived in a circumscribed world of immaculate houses, self-involved children, dull parties, and duller companions. Sirk spells out his themes with meticulous clarity, as always. But there is great subtlety in this movie, and it is in Jane Wyman’s performance. Look at the opening, after a pillar of the local country club, Sarah (Agnes Moorehead), has dropped off a large set of dishes she borrowed. Cary is struggling to get them to her tasteful patio. Up comes her young gardener Ron (Rock Hudson) to lend a hand. Cary’s glances at him keep getting a tiny bit longer as she builds up to asking if he wants to have lunch. She pours him coffee, he sets it down and pulls out her chair. At once, there’s a change in Cary—her already lovely posture gets a touch straighter, and she does a graceful, charm-school slide into the proffered chair. And then, as she offers some rolls, Wyman locks eyes with Hudson, in a way she certainly didn’t do with Moorehead.