Mary Astor

Herman Wouk's bestseller about a Kentucky-born writer's spectacular rise and fall among the big-city glitterati gets the big-screen treatment courtesy of Warner Bros. master of melodrama Delmer Daves. Daves, fresh from a string of successes, recruited celebrated and storied composer Max Steiner to score the film, adding gravitas to the glitz. James Franciscus stars as the title character, a truck driver who arrives in New York City intent on making it as a writer. Aided by a friendly editor, Jeanne Green (Suzanne Pleshette), Hawke's star is on the rise, both among the intelligentsia and the jet set. Hawke inevitably succumbs to the lures of high society, breaking Jeanne's heart and eventually seeing his career destroyed by the jealous husband of one of his paramours.

Charlotte Hollis, an aging recluse deluded into a state of dementia by horrible memories and hallucinations, lives in a secluded house where, thirty-seven years before, John Mayhew her married lover, was beheaded and mutilated by an unknown assailant.

Charlotte Hollis, an aging recluse deluded into a state of dementia by horrible memories and hallucinations, lives in a secluded house where, thirty-seven years before, John Mayhew her married lover, was beheaded and mutilated by an unknown assailant.