Directed by William Russell with a screenplay by Harry Clork and N. Richard Nash, The Sainted Sisters was based on Elisa Bialk's short story The Sainted Sisters of Sandy Creek , which later became an unproduced 1944 play by Bialk and Alden Nash, intended for Tallulah Bankhead and the Theatre Guild. It languished in limbo until Paramount bought the film rights in July 1946 as a property for Betty Hutton and Diana Lynn, with Cat People director Val Lewton set to produce, and Paramount veteran director Mitch Leisen to helm. When Hutton and Leisen were assigned to Dream Girl (1948), The Sainted Sisters was put back on ice for several months until Hutton was ready. By then, William Russell replaced Leisen, and Caulfield had replaced Diana Lynn, but things were further complicated when Hutton became pregnant and was replaced with Veronica Lake.
Although The Sainted Sisters was a comedy, Lake took the role seriously and wanted to inject some realism into her costumes. When Paramount's leading designer, Edith Head, showed Lake a suit she had created, Lake complained that it looked too new for the scene, which required it to be moth-eaten. Head agreed and she and Lake ripped holes in the suit, but Lake was still not happy. To get it appropriately rumpled, she took the suit home and slept in it. When her then-husband, director Andre DeToth, came home and saw her in bed, he didn't recognize her in the outfit and thought it was one of his wife's aunts visiting, so he slept on the couch instead.
The film was premiered at the Paramount Theater in New York on May 19, 1948, with the mysterious reviewer "T.M.P." of The New York Times wrote that "Laughter being one of the scarcer commodities of the day, one perhaps should not be too critical of a picture such as The Sainted Sisters which aims to spread a little joy. [...] Most of the laughs come from visual situations, tried and true bits of business such as Miss Lake and Miss Caulfield gadding about in period undergarments and bathing suits on attempting to outfox old foxy grandpa himself. In short, The Sainted Sisters is fluffy and cloying, but so good-natured withal that its faults merit indulgence."
SOURCES: Bansak, Edmund Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career Hopper, Hedda "Looking at Hollywood" Chicago Tribune 4 Mar 47 Hopper, Hedda "Looking at Hollywood" Chicago Tribune 11 Sep 47 The Internet Movie Database Jorgensen, Jay Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood's Greatest Costume Designer Reid, John Howard Hollywood Gold: Films of the Forties and Fifties T.M.P. "'The Sainted Sisters,' With Lake, Caulfield and Fitzgerald, Opens at Paramount" The New York Times 20 May 48
By Lorraine LoBianco
