Ladies in Retirement is a 1941 American film noir directed by Charles Vidor and starring Ida Lupino, Louis Hayward and Evelyn Keyes.

It is based on a 1940 Broadway play of the same title by Reginald Denham and Edward Percy that starred Flora Robson in the lead role.

[1][2] Ellen Creed, a proud spinster fallen on hard times, has spent the past two years as housekeeper and companion to her old friend Leonora Fiske, a wealthy retiree who in her youth had been a chorus girl "of easy virtue".

Leonora complains to Ellen, pointing out that two days have turned into six weeks and that the sisters are destroying her possessions and fraying her nerves.

Ellen refuses to allow Albert to stay and buys him a boat ticket out of the country and says that she will give him some money to make a new start.

He has Lucy sit at the piano, playing Leonora's favourite song and wearing a wig with her back to Ellen, who screams at the sight of her and faints.

Ellen smiles, dons her coat and hat, tells the sisters she's going to see some men, kisses them goodbye and departs into the fog.

[4] In a contemporary review, The New York Times called the film "... an exercise in slowly accumulating terror with all the psychological trappings of a Victorian thriller.

"[5] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, critic Edwin Schallert called the film "a dramatic and somber portrayal" that "discloses no end of pictorial interest."

"[6] In the Hollywood Citizen-News, reviewer Carl Combs called Ladies in Retirement "a mighty fine movie ... eerie, atmospheric, and charged with melodrama, not to mention a half a dozen performances of considerable dramatic voltage.