Written on the Wind

1956 • 95 minutes
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About this movie

Written on the Wind is a 1956 American Southern Gothic melodrama film directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone. It follows the dysfunctional family members of a Texas oil dynasty, including the complicated relationships among its alcoholic heir; his wife, a former secretary for the family company; his childhood best friend; and his ruthless, self-destructive sister.
The screenplay by George Zuckerman was based on Robert Wilder's 1946 novel of the same title, a thinly disguised account of the real-life scandal involving torch singer Libby Holman and her husband, tobacco heir Zachary Smith Reynolds, who was killed under mysterious circumstances at his family estate in 1932. A film version of the novel was optioned by RKO Pictures and International Pictures in 1946, but the project was shelved because of threats from the Reynolds family. Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the novel after absorbing International Pictures, and began developing the film in 1955.