The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing (1955)

A young showgirl (Joan Collins) begins an affair with a well known married architect (Ray Milland). When she realizes he will never leave his wife, she accepts the marriage proposal of a wealthy but mentally unstable young man (Farley Granger) and thus the ingredients of one of the biggest scandals of its time, 1906. Based on the sensational murder and trial of millionaire Harry K. Thaw who shot the famed architect Stanford White over his wife Evelyn Nesbit who had once been White's mistress. The story is also part of the novel and film RAGTIME for which Elizabeth McGovern received an Oscar nomination playing Evelyn Nesbit. It gets the full lush 20th Century Fox CinemaScope treatment with impressive art and set direction and costumes. The screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett is pure melodrama however. One doesn't come away with the feeling that they've seen something akin to how it actually was in spite of the fact that the real Evelyn Nesbit was still alive at the time of filming and was a technical adviser on the movie. It's entertaining enough though. Directed by Richard Fleischer. With Glenda Farrell, Luther Adler, Gale Robbins and Cornelia Otis Skinner.