Syl ia Sidney was the heroine with Richards her best riend

Richards starred with McGuire and John Hoyt in a production o No?Coward's Tonight at 8:30 that won considerable praise.Two years later Richards married Edmond Angelo, who produced and directed her last American mo ie, Breakdown (1952), an ine ectual ilm noir. Angelo le t show business to become a space engineer with a Cali ornia irm, and the couple, who had three children, maintained a large house in Los Angeles and a mountain house near Big Bear.Richards wrote a olume o poems, The Grie ing Senses (1971), and a erse play, Helen o Troy, which she and her husband occasionally presented at college campuses. Syl ia Sidney was the heroine, with Richards her best riend. Her inal role or Wallis was also that o a best riend - to Barbara Stanwyck in the taut thriller based on the amous radio play Sorry, Wrong Number (1948).In 1947 Richards returned to the stage - the pre ious year Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire had ormed the Actors' Company, to enable ilm players, unable to take the time to appear on Broadway, to per orm in re i als o hit shows at a small playhouse in La Jolla, a Cali ornian beach community.

Miss Hellman was easier to comprehend: she wouldn't throw out edicts. Politically, the two were at opposite poles: Miss Rand was super-conser ati e and Miss Hellman was ery liberal.Hal Wallis next loaned Richards to RKO to be Randolph Scott's leading lady in the enjoyable western Badman's Territory (1946), and she was also loaned out or a tri ial comedy, Lost Honeymoon (1947), and a thriller, Lo e rom a Stranger (1947), based on an Agatha Christie story about a lottery winner who marries a Bluebeard-type ortune hunter. Miss Rand insisted (and I can still see this little woman's black eyes lashing), "You owe absolutely nothing to anybody! You must not consider doing this thing." I thought this was rather cruel and said, "But you must help people, especially those dear to you." And she replied, "You must take care o yoursel rather than do anything or anybody else!". I mentioned that my mother in Australia was not well and that I might ha e to take a sabbatical rom my career to go and bring her back to America with me. Richards said,I met two extraordinarily interesting women on Lo e Letters and The Searching Wind, the no elist Ayn Rand, and Lillian Hellman I remember a con ersation I had with Miss Rand. Adapted by Lillian Hellman rom her Broadway play, its anti-war story was told through the li es o a radical journalist (Sidney), a career diplomat (Young) who constantly sits on the ence and supports Ne ille Chamberlain's appeasement e orts, and his socialite wi e (Richards), who accepts Young's ongoing a air with Sidney, and whose son is maimed in the Second World War.Two years earlier, the ilm ersion o Hellman's earlier anti- ascism play Watch on the Rhine had ound a large audience, but in 1946 ew were interested in a talky tract, ascinating though much o it was, and the ilm lopped.

irst seen gi ing a party at her Bloomsbury lat, she introduces Cotten to Jones (an amnesiac known only by the name "Singleton"). When Cotten wakes a ter drinking too much and talking excessi ely, he is told by Richards to contact her later:Remember my name. and I want you to remember this e ening, how I listened when you weren't aware o it. Jones won an Oscar nomination or her per ormance, but Richards commented years later,Perhaps things worked out or the best, because I think Dilly was a more human, sympathetic character and remained my late husband's a ourite o my screen per ormances.Richards then starred with Syl ia Sidney and Robert Young in another Wallis production, The Searching Wind (1946), also directed by Dieterle but less success ully. Turn it o er in your mind, and remember particularly how mysterious I was.Cotton, bemused, replies, "Anybody would think a murder had been committed", and she responds, "It has."Aided by William Dieterle's moody direction and ictor Young's haunting theme tune (which became a pop hit), the ilm was an enormous success. Selznick then made one o his manipulati e deals, persuading Wallis to use two stars he had under contract, Jenni er Jones and Joseph Cotten.Sulli an was out, and Richards was instead gi en the role o Jones's best riend, Dilly.