Home Before Dark is a 1958 American drama film directed and produced by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Jean Simmons, Dan O'Herlihy, Rhonda Fleming, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.[3] The screenplay was written by Eileen and Robert Bassing, based on the novel by Eileen Bassing.

There is also a stranger in the house, a boarder, Dr. Jake Diamond (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), on temporary assignment at the college where Arnold teaches.

Bewildered, she asks, “How could love hurt me?” Charlotte struggles to adjust, but “can't get well in a vacuum”.

Hamilton “Ham” Gregory (Steve Dunne), who loves her, declares that she “hasn't been herself for weeks.” She's acting like her sister, “big personality, batting eyes, calling everybody ‘Ducky,'” She replies that Professor Bronn, who likes the way she calls him Ducky, will propose to her before the party ends.

At the big New Year's party, Charlotte “looks like herself” again, Joan is a hit in the gold dress, and Arnold obsesses about appearances.

When Bosley Crowther reviewed the film in the November 11, 1958, issue of The New York Times, he praised Simmons' portrayal of Charlotte Bronn, but little else: “For more than two hours, this hapless creature, whom the lovely Miss Simmons plays with a great deal more passion and sincerity than the hollow script justifies, tears her poor self to tatters in a situation that is slightly absurd, not only in its psychological pretense but also in the stilted way it is staged.

Fetched home from a mental hospital by her curiously chilly spouse, … she finds herself once more confronted with the same circumstances that impelled her into the asylum in the first place.

…Miss Simmons thrashes around in this unnatural situation, stifling her love and jealousy, backing away from the temptatious boarder and getting progressively worse.

Finally, after she has jumped her trolley and made an embarrassing scene in a Boston hotel, she asks the questions that have been obvious to any adult all along: "Why haven't I been taken to a psychiatrist?

While he has over-elaborated his sets, he has underelaborated his characters with the graphic glints that might make them meaningful….Happily, we are spared one superfluity…"Home Before Dark" is filmed appropriately in plain old-fashioned black and white.”[6] Variety staff wrote: “Home before Dark should give the Kleenex a vigorous workout.

(Simmons') stepmother (Mabel Albertson) and her stepsister (Rhonda Fleming)… are masterful females who could drive anyone to the edge of madness.

Her only real ally in the house is a stranger (Efrem Zimbalist Jr), who is also an alien in the setting of the inbred New England college community…The whole picture is seen from Simmons’ viewpoint, which means she is ‘on’ virtually the whole time.

It is winter, a depressingly gray winter, and the locations in Massachusetts give the picture the authentic feel.”[7] The film was nominated for three Golden Globe awards: Jean Simmons for Best Actress (drama), Best Picture (drama), and Zimbalist for Best Supporting Actor.