"A classic of the film noir school, 'Laura' is one of the most stylish and taut murder mysteries ever put on film."

Laura - The Big Picture
A body is discovered in the apartment of Manhattan socialite Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney); the corpse is assumed to be Hunt's, since its face has been obliterated by a shotgun blast. Homicide detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) has a trio of suspects--newspaper critic Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who "created" Laura with his high-society columns; playboy and fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price); and Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), Laura's socialite aunt who has been carrying on with Shelby. Just as McPherson is beginning to fall in love with a vision of the hauntingly beautiful deceased woman--in the form of an oil portrait hanging on the wall--in walks the real Laura.

Plot Thickeners
The film is unusual in that it is initially narrated by the killer, Lydecker, who has begun to write Laura's life story at the start of the film. "I shall never forget the weekend Laura died," he intones as the story opens. Like many an egotistical killer in real life, Lydecker offers to help McPherson in his investigation while simultaneously secretly taunting him. In direct contrast to the hard-boiled McPherson, Lydecker represents the superior airs of New York's high society. Writing "with a goose quill dipped in venom," he inhabits and animates a world of wit, erudition, and cleverly turned phrases.

As it turns out, it was another woman that Shelby, Laura's intended, had been seeing who was shot at Laura's apartment that night. Later, when Laura returned from her weekend retreat, her "reincarnation" shocked everyone and set in motion the dramatic murder investigation that followed, culminating in a classic finale-- a cocktail party denouement to announce the killer.

Notes and Quotes
Lydecker's characterization, written with Clifton Webb in mind, was based on the acerbic New York critic Alexander Woollcott, who presided at the famous Algonquin Round Table of writers, socialites and intellectuals. In the film, in fact, the Algonquin hotel is the setting at which Lydecker first meets Laura.

Behind the Scenes
Although Otto Preminger was nominated by the Academy for a Best Director Oscar® for the film, he was not the original choice for director. In fact, he was only reluctantly granted directorial chores after the project had begun.

Darryl Zanuck, the powerful head of Twentieth Century-Fox Studios, disliked Preminger the instant they met and in the beginning assigned him to direct several low-budget movies. "Laura" was originally intended as a "B" production, but Zanuck liked the approach Preminger's writers' had taken and decided to take over the production himself, ensuring that the film would now be an "A" feature with a considerable budget. Much to the consternation of Preminger, Zanuck hired Rouben Mamoulian to direct, although in time, bit by bit, "Laura" became Preminger's. After much footage had been shot, Zanuck finally turned the reins over to the Austrian director.

After the film was completed, and against the protestations of Preminger, Zanuck ordered the last 15 minutes of the film to be reshot. At a private screening of the film with its new ending, Zanuck's friend Walter Winchell, the famous newspaper columnist, said, "Bigtime! Bigtime! Congratulations, Darryl. Except for the ending--I didn't get it." With that, Zanuck relented and reinstated Preminger's original ending. In addition to Preminger's nomination for Best Director, the film was nominated in five other categories, and took home an Oscar® for Joseph LaSalle's stunning, high-contrast, film noir cinematography.

For Trivia Experts Only
Little did viewers in 1944 realize that when McPherson tells Hunt he "suspects nobody and everybody," he was uttering a line that was destined to become a staple in detective films for decades to come. The line was even used to comedic heights by Peter Sellers as the inept Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" and its sequels.