Movie news on your iPhone today!
Advertisement
Sign in
Username   Password         Forgot password?
Wanna join? Sign up
Find movies you'll love
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
  • 0
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Rate this movie.

Rent it, watch it, find it

Advertisement
Synopsis
Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry. And McGuire's sister Eve Arden is stuck in a loveless marriage with spineless Frank Overton. Robert Eyer plays the young alter-ego of William Inge, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play on which this film is based. Eyer's fear of the "dark at the top of the stairs" is meant to be symbolic of the other characters' inner demons, a fact that Inge drives home every three minutes or so. In typical Inge fashion, an unlikely happy ending is reached just before "The End." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cast

Eve Arden Lottie Lacey
Robert Eyer Sonny Flood
Lee Kinsolving Sammy Golden
Shirley Knight Reenie Flood
Angela Lansbury Mavis Pruitt
Dorothy McGuire Cora Flood
Frank Overton Morris Lacey
Penney Parker Flirt
Robert Preston Rubin Flood

Production Crew

Leo K. Kuter Art Director
Harry Stradling Cinematographer
Max Steiner Composer (Music Score)
Marjorie Best Costume Designer
Delbert Mann Director
Folmar Blangsted Editor
Russell Llewellyn First Assistant Director
Gordon Bau Makeup
William Inge Play Author
Michael Garrison Producer
Harriet Frank, Jr. Screenwriter
Irving Ravetch Screenwriter
George James Hopkins Set Designer
Stan Jones Sound/Sound Designer
Year: 1960
Runtime: 123
Country: USA
MPAA Rating:
Category: Feature

Genre
Drama

Produced by
Warner Brothers

Release
by Warner Brothers

Awards
1960 - Best Picture - National Board of Review
1960 - Best Picture - National Board of Review