The Shrike is a 1955 film based on the Joseph Kramm

Joseph Kramm

Joseph A. Kramm was an American playwright, actor, and director. He received Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1951 for his play The Shrike, later adapted into a motion picture of the same title in 1955....

's play, The Shrike

The Shrike (play)

The Shrike is a play written by American dramatist Joseph Kramm. It debuted on Broadway at the Cort Theater, on January 15, 1952, with Jose Ferrer as the producer, director and star...

. José Ferrer

José Ferrer

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...

 directed and starred in Ketti Frings

Ketti Frings

Ketti Frings was an American author, playwright, and screenwriter.-Early years:Born Katherine Hartley in Columbus, Ohio, Frings attended Principia College, began her career as a copywriter, and went on to work as a feature writer for United Press International.-Career:In 1941 her novel Hold Back...

' screenplay adaptation.

Characters and story

Successful stage director Jim Downs (Ferrer) is driven to a mental breakdown by his domineering wife, Ann Downs (June Allyson

June Allyson

June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...

). Institutionalized, he confides in Dr. Bellman (Kendall Clark) and Dr. Barrow (Isabel Bonner), and he finds a kindred spirit in Charlotte Moore (Joy Page

Joy Page

Joy Page was an American actress best known for her role as the Bulgarian bride Annina Brandel in the film Casablanca ....

). Edward Platt

Edward Platt

Edward Cuthbert Platt was an American actor best known for his portrayal of "The Chief" in the 1965-70 NBC/CBS television series Get Smart...

 portrays his brother. Other patients are Will Kuluva, Herbie Faye

Herbie Faye

Herbie Faye was an American actor who appeared in both of Phil Silvers's CBS television series, The Phil Silvers Show and The New Phil Silvers Show ....

, Martin Newman and Billy Greene.

Reviewing for The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, A.H. Weiler wrote:

José Ferrer, the director and star of the play, again is portraying the Broadway director who struggles to be released from the confines of the psychiatric ward even though it means a return to a hateful marriage. And, in making his debut as a film director, Mr. Ferrer proves that he is as expert behind the camera as he is across the footlights. Since he obviously is no stranger to his source material, his performance is at once polished, powerful and moving. And many of his principals, who are re-enacting the roles they created on stage, forcefully enhance the stark vista of life in a mental ward... As our sorely beset hero relates in flashback to probing psychiatrists, it was a happy union at first, full of love and companionship. It deteriorated slowly but inexorably, as did his career, when her insatiable yearning for the life of an actress and her meddling in his affairs reached a point of no return... Backstage and hospital sequences have a documentary authenticity heightened in effect by Mr. Ferrer's portrayal. His scenes in the nightmarish world of the mental ward and his climactic session with the psychiatrists as he tearfully and desperately agrees to return to his wife, is acting of a rare order... Although The Shrike has changed its tune it still is an unusual and immensely interesting film drama.

Production

The music score was by Frank Skinner

Frank Skinner (composer)

Frank Skinner was an American composer and arranger.Skinner was born in Meredosia, Illinois. A graduate of the Chicago Musical College , 16-year-old Frank found employment in vaudeville and began playing in local areas with his brother Carl on drums...

. Ferrer composed "Conversation (The Shrike)", recorded by Pete Rugolo

Pete Rugolo

Pietro "Pete" Rugolo was an Italian-born jazz composer and arranger.-Life and career:Rugolo was born in San Piero Patti, Sicily, Italy. His family emigrated to the United States in 1920 and settled in Santa Rosa, California...

 on his 1955 album New Sounds (Harmony HL7003). The opening title sequence was created by Saul Bass

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences....

.