Cause for Alarm! (1951) on Netflix
Approved19511h 14mCrimeDramaThriller
Ellen Jones nurses her bedridden husband George through a heat wave in their suburban home. Delirious, George comes to believe she and his doctor, Ranney Grahame, are plotting to kill him.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.4/102,974 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
During the war Ellen nursed at a naval hospital, where she was seeing Ranney Grahame, a military doctor, and met George Jones, his pilot friend. She and George married. Years later, at home in the suburbs, George lies gravely ill with a heart condition and cannot leave his bed. Ellen looks after him with Ranney, who has become George's physician, through George's growing hostility. In the heat wave his mind gives way, and Ranney decides he needs help for his mind. George wrongly believes that Ellen and Ranney are lovers who intend to kill him by giving him too much of his heart medicine. He sets down the accusation in a letter addressed to the district attorney and gives the envelope to Ellen to post. She mails it, taking it for insurance correspondence.
Cast
- Jack Daleyas Elderly Man
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Cause for Alarm! (1951)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Tom Lewis first considered Judy Garland for the lead in Cause for Alarm! but gave the part to his wife, Loretta Young, who played Ellen Jones.
- Director Tay Garnett prepared his cast and crew so thoroughly that the film was shot in 14 days, a tight schedule for 1951; Loretta Young reused the same preproduction technique on her television series years later.
- Cause for Alarm! is one of several 1950s MGM films that fell into the public domain when their copyrights went unrenewed in the 1970s; Turner Entertainment owns the elements, and Warner Bros., which spoofed the title in its 1954 cartoon Claws for Alarm, handles distribution.
