I needed a palate cleanser after writing about that terrible Arnold Rothstein biopic last week. Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow Of A Doubt may be overqualified as a palate cleanser, but it will wash thoughts of The Brain out of my hair. End of Rodgers & Hammerstein reference that has nothing to do with palates or cleansers for that matter.

Shadow Of A Doubt shares stars Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright with another recent Sunday movie post, The Steel Trap. They were married in that heist flick, in Shadow, they’re uncle and niece who share the nickname Charlie and have a somewhat eerie mind meld. Was Mr. Spock involved? Dr. Spock was not.

One more commonality between Steel and Shadow is a score by the great Dmitri Tiomkin. His only mind meld was with himself…

I decided not to put Hitchcock’s name in the post title because the contributions of screenwriter Thornton Wilder are of equal importance. Wilder understood small town Americana. He was the Our Town guy, after all. Is there a theatre kid in America over 40 who wasn’t involved in a production of Our Town? I’m unsure if it’s as widely done now as in the last century when it was a staple of high school drama departments in towns large and small.

The movie is set in Santa Rosa, California in Sonoma County, the heart of today’s wine country. We had relatives there who owned some sort of farm. I don’t recall what they grew but dirt was involved.

The story centers on the Newton family. The parents are played by Henry Travers and Patricia Collinge. They have three children, among whom is Teresa Wright. Their life is uneventful until mama’s kid brother Joseph Cotten comes to town.

Suffice it to say that Cotten is suspected of being the Merry Widow Killer. He’s pursued by two detectives played by Macdonald Carey and Wallace Ford who want a picture of the charming Mr. Cotten.

Cotten dislikes being photographed. He was an old school serial killer who hoped to get away with his crimes. Oops, I just gave away a major plot point. It’s okay: the strength of the film is in the characters and their interactions.

Cotten and Wright get along swimmingly until the proverbial shadow of a doubt crosses her mind. The relationship moves from good to uncomfortable…

…to deadly:

Don’t worry about Teresa Wright: under the production code, she got to live but her uncle was a gone pecan.

Shadow Of A Doubt is full of great performances: Cotten and Wright are phenomenal as are the rest of the cast. My favorites are Henry Travers and Hume Cronyn as his nebbishy best friend, Herb.

The two are proto true crime fans forever plotting clever ways to “murder” one another. It’s time for a self-quote:

The murder buff scenes between Hume Cronyn and Henry Travers are to die for. Pun intended. Others may think of Travers as Clarence the angel, to me he’ll always be Joe Newton, true crime buff and dim patriarch.”

Travers is also terrific in the Bogart classic High Sierra as a dim but lovable patriarch. I detect a pattern or is it type casting?

Grading Time:  Shadow Of A Doubt is a stone cold classic. I give it 4 stars and an Adrastos Grade of A. I ranked it fourth on my Alfred Hitchcock Dozen. In that post, I ranked Cotten as the best Hitchcock villain.

It’s time for the poster portion of the post. We begin with side-by-side long sheets the second one hailing from Argentina:

Don’t cry for me, Teresa Wright. Cry for your movie mama, her beloved brother is a murderer.

Time for the Quad Squad to make an appearance:

FYI, Jack Skirball is the producer’s name. If I had a last name that sounded like hairball, I’d change it in a heartbeat.

On that gnarly note, let’s all go to the lobby for a soda.

I don’t do salty snacks anymore, so I’ll skip the popcorn. I never skip the lobby cards.

I told you shit got real between the Charlies.

It’s trailer time:

The last word goes to Eddie Muller with his shadowy Noir Alley intro and outro: