Academy Award recognition was further afield for Niven: after his breakthrough with the enormously popular Thank You, Jeeves! and the epic The Charge of the Light Brigade (both 1936), and the cementing of his star quality with Raffles (1940), Oscar® recognition would continue to elude the actor until Separate Tables (1958). In the interim, Niven was cast in flop after flop under his suffocating film contract: A Kiss in the Dark would not be able to break the curse. The review of the film by News of the World lamented, "With each of David Niven's current Hollywood pictures the same question occurs: 'What's going on? What on earth are they doing with that fellow's career?'"
Thankfully, production during the film was pleasant - one might even say intoxicating--by comparison; in one of Niven's memoirs, Bring on the Empty Horses, the actor recalls, "Afternoon tea became a popular feature while I was making a picture there with Jane Wyman. Towards the end of the day we made it a point to invite friends from nearby sound stages to drop over and join us at the charming ritual, I handed round little cakes while Jane from a large Rockingham teapot dispensed lethal dry martinis, and our Warner-contracted guests obtained an extra 'charge' from these clandestine sips, from the knowledge that they were enjoyed on Jack Warner's time."
Years later, the Niven biography The Other Side of the Moon by Sheridan Morley declared, "Mercifully, all he could later recall about the film was having to play a concert pianist with a real musician's hands stuck through the sleeves of his tail coat." Wyman would soon have reason to want to forget about the film, too: one harsh critic cruelly remarked of her performance in Kiss, "She should turn the face of her Oscar® to the wall." Coupled with her recent divorce from Ronald Reagan the summer before, Wyman responded to her troubled times with admirable stoicism, "I've made many friends who've respected my wishes in refusing to discuss my problems." Ever the trooper, she would go on to earn two more Academy Award nominations, including a Best Actress nod for Magnificent Obsession (1954). In the eighties, a whole new generation of viewers would get to know Wyman as Angela Gioberti Channing Erikson Stavros Agretti, the regal matriarch of the long-running melodrama Falcon Crest (1981-90).
The supporting cast of A Kiss in the Dark included Wayne Morris and Broderick Crawford. Morris, known mostly for Westerns and crime dramas, had his greatest triumph with Kid Galahad (1937), in which he played the bellhop-turned-prizefighter. Crawford won an Oscar® for his work in a film released the same year as Kiss, All the King's Men. He would have another critical success the next year, with Born Yesterday (1950). A couple of uncredited parts were played by actors with notable television credits: Phyllis Coates pioneered the role of Lois Lane on Adventures of Superman (1952), starring George Reeves, and Jimmie Dodd would be best known as the composer of The Mickey Mouse Club March, as well as all the songs associated with the popular show (1955).
Producer: Harry Kurnitz
Director: Delmer Daves
Screenplay: Devery Freeman (story), Everett Freeman (story), Harry Kurnitz
Cinematography: Robert Burks
Film Editing: David Weisbart
Art Direction: Stanley Fleischer
Music: Max Steiner
Cast: David Niven (Eric Phillips), Jane Wyman (Polly Haines), Victor Moore (Horace Willoughby), Wayne Morris (Bruce Arnold), Broderick Crawford (Mr. Botts), Joseph Buloff (Peter Danilo).
BW-88m. Closed captioning.
by Eleanor Quin
