A Letter to Three Wives

A Letter to Three Wives (1949) is an American drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz took home two Oscars for it — Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay — two years before he swept the same categories with All About Eve.

Three women set out for a day trip on the Hudson River. A letter arrives just before departure from their mutual friend Addie Ross: she has run away with one of their husbands. No name given. The boat cannot turn back. Each wife (Ann Sothern, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain) spends the day in flashback — not quite accusation, not quite confession, but a slow audit of what her marriage actually is. Kirk Douglas plays one of the husbands; his scenes hit harder than the rest.

Mankiewicz's structural move — Addie narrated by Celeste Holm, never appearing on screen — turns the absent friend into a presence that shapes every scene she doesn't enter. The film holds up as a study in suspense built entirely out of anxiety, memory, and unsaid things. Stream A Letter to Three Wives (1949) on iFILM.