The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) on Netflix
NR19461h 53mCrimeDramaRomanceThriller
Frank Chambers, a drifter, takes a job at Twin Oaks, the roadside diner Nick Smith runs with his young wife, Cora. Frank and Cora fall for each other and plot Nick's murder.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.4/1025,174 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
District Attorney Kyle Sackett gives Frank Chambers a ride and lets the drifter off at Twin Oaks, a diner and service station on a country road in the hills near Los Angeles. Frank takes a job there. Nick Smith runs the place with Cora, his much younger wife, who dislikes her marriage and would rather own the diner herself. She and Frank begin an affair and try to run away together, but Cora realizes a divorce would leave her with nothing. They come back so she can retrieve the goodbye note she left for Nick in the cash register. Cora then talks Frank into killing Nick so the diner can be theirs.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Waiting for the weather to clear caused director Tay Garnett, a recovering alcoholic, to fall off the wagon and hole up in his hotel room; worried MGM would fire him, Lana Turner and John Garfield visited, and Turner alone convinced him to go to Los Angeles for treatment.
- Joel McCrea was offered the role of Frank Chambers but turned it down and Gregory Peck was also considered; John Garfield was borrowed from Warner Bros. for the part, while Cecil Kellaway was borrowed from Paramount to play Nick.
- In early 1934, before James M. Cain's novel was published, RKO executive Merian C. Cooper submitted a synopsis to the Production Code Administration, which persuaded RKO to abandon plans to film the story and called it "definitely unsuitable for motion picture production."
- MGM bought the film rights to Cain's novel twelve years before the film came out, paying publisher Knopf $25,000; Cain received half that amount and it was the only money he ever got from the movie or its remake.
- In the novel the character Madge was a lion tamer, and Tay Garnett filmed a scene in which she introduces Frank to her cats; during shooting a tiger sprayed the two stars, prompting John Garfield to jokingly ask for stunt pay.
- Lana Turner's Cora Smith wore all white in every scene except three, in which she wore all black: contemplating suicide with a knife in the kitchen, returning from her mother's death at the train station, and calling a taxicab to leave Frank.
- According to actor-director Vincent Sherman, a friend of John Garfield's, Garfield and Lana Turner had a brief affair while making the film; Turner was the only co-star Garfield ever became romantically involved with.
- This was the third filming of Cain's novel but the first to use its original title and the first in English, following Le Dernier Tournant, made in France in 1939, and Ossessione, made in Italy in 1943.
