Watched: 03/01/2026
Format: YouTube
Viewing: First
Director: Robert Wise
Apparently 1950 was the year Robert Wise made the jump from RKO and into more prestigious pictures, apparently handed a melodrama and what I'd loosely call as "women's picture" at Warner Bros.
Why he was tapped for this movie, I don't know. Maybe the complexity of a multi-pronged story and everything that would need to be included meant WB decided that an ex-editor like Wise was a good fit? I can't say. But for what the movie is - he makes it work.
The story is more than half flashback. The inciting incident is that a family has crashed their plane on top of a mountain, and only the five year old son has survived. No one knows his true condition, but a rescue effort is mounted to retrieve him. A bit like the 1980's incident with Baby Jessica or the soccer team trapped in the cave, the world is watching, with bated breath.
Doing some background, a reporter learns the boy is the adopted son of a couple from Southern California, and goes to find out who the birth mother is. The agency and the boys' birthday are broadcast, and three women - Eleanor Parker, Patricia Neal and Ruth Roman realize the boy could be their child. Individually, they race to the scene.
In flashback, we learn how each woman came to become pregnant, and the circumstances were that made them give up their child.
Rather than throw a "SPOILERS" banner up and then discuss each storyline, I'm going to actually recommend the movie. Uncovering what happened with each is the hook of the film, and I wouldn't want to give away the game.
Through a mix of factors (read: misogyny) women's pictures haven't always been remembered and been discussed from this period accept in academic circles and the occasional sprint on TCM. But studios weren't stupid. This movie was just five years after Mildred Pierce and five years before Douglas Sirk applied color and design like a kaleidoscope to movies for women. Studios weren't stupid, and they were in the business of making money. But it has meant movies were forgotten or not considered part of the classic film canon.
This is a big, deep-feelings melodrama with a heightened reality around it- but if I was to suggest Three Secrets, it's not just because it stars three actors at the height of their powers in Eleanor Parker, Patricia Neal and Ruth Roman (and that's a good reason, too). Instead, I'd argue that the movie takes for granted the realities of women in a pre-Women's Lib era.
To a woman, they give up their babies because - no matter where they are when the movie begins - in the flashbacks we see what being an unwed mother will do to them, and how the men in their lives treat them. Or, how their particular circumstances - career, place in life, etc... are going to be completely impacted.
Watching older movies can be a heavy reminder of the vast changes we take for granted now were hard won, and the status quo of the era in which the movie was produced is not played up for drama. Three Secrets is about the injustice and inescapable situation of three women - none of whom did anything wrong, but it turned their worlds upside down and left the men who got them pregnant as if (at least for a while) as if nothing had ever occurred.
When we look at these movies and think about what some folks with hands on the levers of power are telling us is our natural state, I would hope it would give people pause. Especially women who assume this won't ever impact them - the bottom line is that the last 50 years have been abnormal in most of Western culture.
That this movie even got made with the production code in 1950 is wild. They manage to never quite admit sex exists, use the word "pregnant" or show anyone pregnant And yet - what else could this movie possibly be about but admitting good people have sex outside of marriage and the rules around that were pretty horrendous in 1950? I guess the Catholic League was happy as long as women were miserable.
The ending of the movie is delivered with a deft hand. In sharing their stories, the women kind of join forces - and each sees the value in the other. And through that, the women are able to forge a sort of future for the child together.
Anyway - I was surprised by the movie. It sure isn't boring, maybe a lot depressing, but worth a watch. And, hey, it has Ruth Roman, so how bad can it be?
Unrelated directly to this movie - man, Ace in the Hole feels like a direct response to this movie in so many ways. My suspicion is that it's not - likely Wilder was underway already when this movie was released. But Wilder's movie about reporters hyping a story about someone in an impossible condition and the thing turning into a media circus, complete with gawkers sure looks familiar here.
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