A number of observers have credited Written on the Wind with being the forerunner of the glossy, trashy nighttime TV soap opera, especially Dallas, which also followed the scandalous doings of a wealthy Texas oil family.

Written on the Wind has the same basic source material - the death of tobacco heir Smith Reynolds during his marriage to torch singer Libby Holman - as the Jean Harlow movie Reckless (1935).

Sirk has influenced directors as diverse as Spain's Pedro Almodovar and Hong Kong action director John Woo. "I have seen Written on the Wind a thousand times,'' Almodovar said, "and I cannot wait to see it again."

American directors John Waters and Todd Haynes have also cited Sirk's influence on their work. Haynes' recent film Far from Heaven (2002) is an obvious homage to Sirk, taking many plot elements directly from All That Heaven Allows (1955).

The German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder said Sirk was the single greatest influence on his work. While he never made a direct homage to Written on the Wind, as he did when he re-imagined All That Heaven Allows as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), the imprint of Sirk and this film are evident in such Fassbinder works as Lola (1981) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979).

The success of Written on the Wind led to another project starring three of the principals - Hudson, Stack and Malone - again produced by Zugsmith, directed by Sirk and scripted by Zuckerman, The Tarnished Angels (1958), an adaptation of William Faulkner's book Pylon. Sirk said that, in a way, the picture grew out of Written on the Wind. "You had the same pair of characters seeking their identity in the follow-up picture; the same mood of desperation, drinking, and doubting the values of life, and at the same time almost hysterically trying to grasp them, grasping the wind. Both pictures are studies of failure. Of people who can't make a success of their lives."

As with many of his films, the revelation of Hudson's homosexuality years later brought an additional layer of irony to aspects of this picture, particularly his character's frequent, determined rejection of sexual advances by Dorothy Malone's character. Film critic Roger Ebert reported that at a London screening in 1998, the audience, mostly maintaining a respectful silence throughout, snickered a little when Hudson's character is told it's time to get married and he replies, "I have trouble enough just finding oil."

by Rob Nixon