Details

Release year: 1957

Storyline

Elizabeth Barrett's tyrannical father has forbidden any of his family to marry. Nevertheless, Elizabeth falls in love with the poet Robert Browning.

Top credits

Directors

Sidney Franklin

Writers

Cast

Jennifer Jones — Elizabeth
John Gielgud — Barrett
Bill Travers — Robert Browning
Virginia McKenna — Henrietta

See all 28 credits →

Did you know

• MGM originally considered Grace Kelly for the lead role, but she was on suspension at MGM and was replaced by Jennifer Jones. For Jones, playing the role of Barrett on film was the realization of a long-standing dream from her days as a drama student, when she had persuaded husband-to-be Robert Walker to play Robert Browning to her Elizabeth in a scene from Rudolph Besier's play for their audition for readmission to a dramatic academy. Her idea worked, and both were invited back.

• Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna got married in September 1957, after the January 1957 release of this film. Travers plays the role of poet Robert Browning, Elizabeth's love interest, and McKenna plays Henrietta, Elizabeth's younger sister.

• Edward Barrett promptly disinherited all three of the Barrett children (Elizabeth, Henrietta and Alfred) who married during his lifetime. The movie depicts Edward as being a selfish heartless man, and he may well have been, but part of his motivation was Victorian standards of the era. Social standards required him to support his daughters, to the level at which they'd become accustomed, while single or married should their spouses be financially incapable of doing so. The financial burden that four daughters could place upon him is hard to imagine.