Guest Author - Barbara Rice DeShong, PhD.
How different is the life of a husband who marries an All-American girl-next-door from the life of a man who marries a sultry femme fatale, say a woman who looks like Marilyn Monroe? The first husband is free to work hard and fish and follow a sports team while the husband whose wife constantly exudes sexual desire and dresses the part has to be on constant alert.
“Niagara” (1953) brings two couples to the Rainbow Housekeeping Cabins at Niagara Falls; one couple is the kind anyone would love to have as next door neighbors and the other couple is the sort to make neighbors nervous. The story opens following Polly (Jean Peters) and Ray Cutler (Max Showalter) bubbling along the highway into Canada on the honeymoon they hadn’t taken at the time of their marriage three years ago. They arrive at the Rainbow Housekeeping Cabins to find that George (Joseph Cotton) and Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe), who have overstayed their reservation, blocking their entry.
Rose, in a negligee with a feathery collar, her hair platinum and her lips bright red and pouty, explains that her husband has been “ill” hinting that he is mentally ill.
On an excursion under the falls, Polly Cutler spies Rose Loomis kissing a young man and Polly begins to doubt Rose’s sincerity. While the Cutlers buzz through every sightseeing venue, in the background Rose coordinates with her lover to murder her husband. She lures him to the spot where the boyfriend is to hit him over the head with a wrench and throw him over the falls. George does not return from the spot where she had lured him and Rose drops hints that she’s very worried--sense her husband is so “mentally ill.” Rose reports George missing.
Dutifully, Rose, on receiving a call from the police, goes to the morgue to identify her husband’s body found below the falls. Only the body is that of her boyfriend, a fact she cannot afford to react to since her ploy would be revealed. Now, George, whom is presumed dead, could have walked away. The death of the boyfriend was clearly self defense, but no. George cannot allow Rose, whom he adored, to get away with what she had planned against him. He strangles her, sealing off his own options.
The ending is a chase in which George Loomis and Polly Cutler coincidentally end up together in a boat headed over Niagara Falls. Showing his true character and his recognition of Polly’s innocence compared to his wife’s selfishness, George saves Polly before going with the boat over the watery precipice.
