The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing is a 1955 American film directed by Richard Fleischer from a screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett, and starring Joan Collins, Ray Milland, and Farley Granger. The CinemaScope film was released by Twentieth Century-Fox, which had originally planned to put Marilyn Monroe in the title role, and then suspended her when she refused to do the film.

Plot

The film relates the fictionalized story of Evelyn Nesbit. Nesbit was a model and actress who became embroiled in the scandal surrounding the June 1906 murder of her paramour, architect Stanford White, by her husband, rail and coal tycoon Harry Kendall Thaw.

Cast

• Ray Milland as Stanford White
• Joan Collins as Evelyn Nesbit Thaw
• Farley Granger as Harry Kendall Thaw
• Luther Adler as Delphin Delmas
• Cornelia Otis Skinner as Mrs. Thaw
• Glenda Farrell as Mrs. Nesbit
• Frances Fuller as Mrs. Elizabeth White
• Phillip Reed as Robert J. Collier
• Gale Robbins as Gwen Arden
• James Lorimer as McCaleb
• John Hoyt as William Travers Jerome
• Robert F. Simon as Stage Manager
• Harvey Stephens as Dr. Hollingshead
• Emile Meyer as Hunchbacher

Production

Writer Walter Reisch claims the film was his idea; he says 20th Century Fox were enthusiastic in part because producer Charlie Brackett knew Stanford White as a boy. Reisch estimates the film was 70% fact and 30% fictionalised. They tracked down Nesbit to get permission to make the film. Nesbit agreed in exchange for money although she was reluctant to do publicity for the film.

See also

• Ragtime, a 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow and a 1981 film also treating the story of Nesbit, Thaw, and White

References

External links

• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing at IMDb
• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing at AllMovie
• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing at the TCM Movie Database
• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films