Claire is...

Film 912: Laura

Trivia: The character of Waldo Lydecker appears to be based on the columnist, broadcaster, and "New Yorker" theater critic Alexander Woollcott, a famous wit who, like Waldo, was fascinated by murder. Woollcott always dined at the Algonquin Hotel, where Laura first approaches Waldo.

Darryl F. Zanuck was opposed to casting Clifton Webb because of Webb's well-known (in Hollywood) homosexuality, but producer/director Otto Preminger prevailed and the 54-year-old Webb, making his first screen appearance since the silent era, was nominated for an Oscar.

The portrait of Laura is, in fact, a photograph done over with oil paint.

Vera Caspary's novel "Laura" falls into five sections and five separate voices, telling its story from the viewpoint of each of its principal characters. It was too cumbersome a structure for a 1940s mystery, so the script (by Jay Dratler and others) simplifies and concentrates the narrative for director Otto Preminger to play with.

The first cut of the film included a sequence in which Vincent Price sings a song and accompanies himself on the piano. Twentieth Century-Fox's PR department planted stories declaring that Price (who sang with the Yale Glee Club and had a song in The House of the Seven Gables) would become the next Perry Como. The number was cut, however, and Price's singing "career" never happened.