In Wheeler Auditorium

Admission: $2.50

“The nightmare of small-town living. Naomi Murdoch (Stanwyck) returns home to Riverdale, Wisconsin, after a failed career as an actress. Waiting: her opportunistic daughter who hopes for a career on the stage, an old lover, and her husband (a lackluster high school principal). Sirk writes, ‘Stanwyck doesn't get her love again - there is something blocking her. This was a pre-study of the “actress” in Imitation of Life. She comes back from an imitated life... with all her dreams - and she finds nothing but this rotten, decrepit middle-class American family.' The ‘happy' ending was tacked on by producer Ross Hunter over Sirk's protestations.”