The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

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The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Directed by	Delbert Mann
Produced by	Michael Garrison
Written by	William Inge (play) Harriet Frank Jr. Irving Ravetch
Starring	Robert Preston Dorothy McGuire
Release date(s)	September 22, 1960
Running time	124 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is a 1960 film with Dorothy McGuire, Robert Preston, Shirley Knight, Eve Arden, Lee Kinsolving and Angela Lansbury. It was adapted from a 1957 play by William Inge, which he reworked from his earlier Farther Off from Heaven, first staged in 1947 at Margo Jones' Theatre '47 in Dallas, Texas.

[edit] Plot summary

After losing his job as a salesman, Reuben Flood (Robert Preston) finds himself pulled in several directions at once--trying to deal with a wife, Cora (Dorothy McGuire), who shuns intimacy and mistakes his joblessness for stinginess, a shy daughter (Shirley Knight) who is trying to prepare for her first dance, a pre-teen son who runs to his mama instead of dealing with bullies--as well as trying to find a job. He tries to comfort himself with childhood friend Mavis Pruitt (Angela Lansbury), whom the town rumor mill believes is a loose woman. In addition to the themes of modernization (i.e., not enough demand for horse harness, and the impending arrival of the oil industry), Inge's characters all face one set of demons or another on their way to the film's conclusion.