Written on the Wind is a 1956 American Southern Gothic[5] melodrama film directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone.

The screenplay by George Zuckerman was based on Robert Wilder's 1946 novel of the same title, a thinly disguised account (or roman à clef) of the real-life scandal involving torch singer Libby Holman and her husband, tobacco heir Zachary Smith Reynolds, who was killed under mysterious circumstances at his family estate in 1932.

Filmed in Los Angeles in late 1955 and early 1956, Written on the Wind was released theatrically in England in the fall of 1956 before opening in the United States on Christmas Day 1956.

Insecure, alcoholic playboy Kyle and his self-destructive sister Marylee are the children of Texas oil baron Jasper Hadley.

Marylee has long been in love with Kyle's childhood friend Mitch Wayne, who is now a geologist for the Hadley Oil Company, but he sees her as a sister.

Kyle and Mitch take a business trip to New York City, where they meet Lucy Moore, an aloof secretary who works at the Hadley Company's Manhattan offices.

This news sends him into a deep depression, and he begins drinking heavily, at one point becoming severely intoxicated at the local country club and embarrassing Lucy.

Meanwhile, an emasculated, inebriated Kyle visits the local tavern, and becoming intent on murdering Mitch, returns to the house and finds a pistol.

[7] His wife, torch singer Libby Holman, and close friend Alber Walker, fell under suspicion due to conflicting accounts given about the night's events, though neither were ever formally charged with a crime.

[9] Lauren Bacall, whose film career was foundering in the mid-1950s, accepted the relatively unflashy role of Lucy Moore at the behest of her husband, Humphrey Bogart.

Dorothy Malone, a brunette previously best known as the brainy bespectacled bookstore clerk in a scene with Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), had more recently played small supporting roles in a long string of B movies.

For this film, she dyed her hair platinum blonde to shed her "nice girl" image and portray the obsessive Marylee Hadley.

The next year, Sirk reunited key cast members Hudson, Stack, and Malone for The Tarnished Angels, a film about early aviators based on William Faulkner's novel Pylon.

The men have the same improbably over-bronzed, regular faces, and wear the same outsized draped suits so dear to the heart of fiction illustrators.

"[2] In his review in The New York Times upon the initial release of the film, Bosley Crowther said: "The trouble with this romantic picture ... is that nothing really happens, the complications within the characters are never clear and the sloppy, self-pitying fellow at the center of the whole thing is a bore.

"[17] Variety praised the "outspoken drama" and said: "Intelligent use of the flashback technique ... builds immediate interest and expectancy without diminishing plot punch.

Tiptop scripting ... dramatically deft direction ... and sock performances by the cast add a zing to the characters that pays off in audience interest.

Hudson scores ... [Stack], in one of his best performances, draws a compelling portrait of a psychotic man ruined by wealth and character weaknesses.... Malone hits a career high as the completely immoral sister.

[20] In 1998, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "a perverse and wickedly funny melodrama in which you can find the seeds of Dallas, Dynasty, and all the other primetime soaps.

"[21] TV Guide described the film as "the ultimate in lush melodrama", "Douglas Sirk's finest directorial effort", and "one of the most notable critiques of the American family ever made.