Dorothy is willing to take the risk, but the last thing Bud wants is to be saddled with a wife and baby and live on poverty row. (The 'p' word caused quite a stir in 1956 and was actually cut out of the movie for a Chicago preview.) She, of course, wants to get married at the earliest possible moment, but Bud is afraid her father will be so disgusted by the circumstances, he will disinherit her. As the film opens, Dorothy informs Bud she's pregnant. A decorated war veteran blessed with dashing good looks and charm to spare, Bud Corliss (Robert Wagner) comes from a modest background, but his insatiable desire for the good life leads him to pursue Dorothy Kingship (Joanne Woodward), the unsuspecting daughter of a tough copper mining magnate (George Macready of 'Gilda').

And though the 1956 film adaptation of 'A Kiss Before Dying' omits a few notable episodes from Levin's book, it remains a surprisingly frank and uncompromising portrait of a ruthlessly ambitious social-climber who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.Īnd what he wants oh so desperately is money. Well, more than three decades before that heinous crime, author Ira Levin ( 'Rosemary's Baby') wrote a similar - and eerily prescient - story that won wide acclaim, as well as the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Remember the Preppie Murder Case in the 1980s? The one where that filthy rich, despicably smug college dropout, drug addict, and sociopath brutally murdered one of his teenage hook-ups during supposed rough sex in Manhattan's Central Park? It was a sad, disgusting episode that shined a beacon on the most horrific aspects of humanity, and showed how wealth and privilege often foster an exaggerated sense of entitlement that poisons and corrupts our nation's youth. Beautifully shot in cinemascope by the great Lucien Ballard (The Wild Bunch, The Killing) with top-notch direction by veteran Gerd Oswald (Crime of Passion). until the dead girl s sister begins to unravel Bud's deadly scheme. When his rich girlfriend gets pregnant and is threatened with disinheritance, Bud stages her suicide, sending her plummeting from the roof of a high-rise.

Wagner is Bud Corliss, a darkly handsome college boy so obsessed with wealth that he d do anything to get it. Based on the novel by suspense master Ira Levin (Rosemary s Baby, The Stepford Wives), A Kiss Before Dying is riveting, sure-fire entertainment you can't miss.

Robert Wagner (Hart to Hart, The Pink Panther) gambled with his clean-cut image to play the ruthless, conniving killer in this unrelenting thriller co-starring Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers), Virginia Leith (Fear and Desire), Joanne Woodward (Three Faces of Eve), Robert Quarry (Madhouse), George Macready (Gilda) and Mary Astor (The Hurricane). and killer instinct! Beneath his clean-cut looks.

A kiss before dying book summary