The original post: /r/movies by /u/Davis_Crawfish on 2025-01-01 14:38:34.

Last night, I got to see “A Letter to Three Wives” and while the three leading ladies were superb, Linda Darnell was the standout. Besides being mesmerizingly beautiful, like a Greek statue in motion, she wasn’t just a beautiful woman, she could act and her scenes with Paul Douglas and Thelma Ritter display a prowess in delivering acid-tongued one-liners with aplomb.

Sadly, her career started to falter in the 1950s, a string of commercial failures as well as being typecast in sex-symbol parts and never being challenged as an actress.

She died young in 1965, from a house fire. She was trapped on the second floor of the home by heat and smoke, as the fire had started in the living room. She was found, still alive, next to the burning living-room sofa, with 80% of her body burned. She died soon after.