AllMovie

An interesting case of a great deal of money and talent being used in a production that has since been almost entirely forgotten, Ivy is worthy of rediscovery. Based on a 1928 novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, the film features a stellar cast, a lavish (at the time) 1.5 million dollar budget, and one of the most impressive production designs ever put together, by arguably Hollywood's greatest production designer, William Cameron Menzies. The screenplay by frequent Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett has everything a fan of high-society thrillers could want, including poisoned brandy, inheritance scams, passionate affairs, and Joan Fontaine falling down an elevator shaft in a $30,000 wardrobe. The cast reads like a who's who of Universal stars: Patric Knowles as Ivy's secret love, Herbert Marshall as another rich fellow in her thrall, Cedric Hardwicke as the unflappable inspector, and smaller turns by Una O'Connor (The Invisible Man), Alan Napier, Sara Allgood, and Holmes Herbert. What it doesn't have, oddly, is its popular theme song, "Ivy," adapted from one of the film's instrumental passages by Hoagy Carmichael. It was used in trailers and soared up the charts, but never made it into the finished film. The other handicap was that Joan Fontaine -- who stepped into the role after her sister and bitter rival Olivia de Havilland turned it down -- hated the film and did very little to assist in its promotion. Although Fontaine looks great in the wardrobe and portrays the conniving Ivy convincingly, one wonders how much more successful the film might have been with de Havilland playing another wicked killer right on the heels of The Dark Mirror. The result is a great-looking, suspenseful film that is almost good enough to stand with such classics of its time as Rebecca and Laura, but not quite. Still, it is more than good enough to deserve another look.