Directed by Vincent J. Donehue (his first and one of his only), and based on the Howard Teichmann play and Nathanael West novel with a screenplay by its producer Dore Schary, this slightly above average drama is notable for providing character actress and eventual 4-time Academy Award nominee Maureen Stapleton with her first Supporting Actress Oscar nomination in her screen debut. The rest of the cast, which is outstanding, includes Montgomery Clift, Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy, Dolores Hart, Jackie Coogan, Mike Kellin, Frank Maxwell, and Frank Overton (among others).
Clift plays Adam White (nee Lassiter), an idealistic writer who gets his first job working as a Dear Abby-Ann Landers type responder at a newspaper run by a cynical editor William Shrike (Ryan), who hires Adam to see if exposure to reality will make the 'young' (actor Clift was 37-38 years old!) man crash and burn. Stapleton plays a key role in Adam's education.
Ambitious unemployed writer Adam meets and then uses Florence Shrike (Loy) to get an introduction to her husband William in hopes of securing a job at the editor's newspaper. Shrike, who believes all people are fakes, is surprised at Adam's naiveté, but hires him to be the paper's anonymous "Miss Lonelyheart" columnist, who answers the letters of people that write asking for advice in personal matters.
The editor wants to test the mettle of his newly hired writer, whom he somewhat openly hopes is corrupted by the experience (e.g. to prove his own personal beliefs). Apparently his wife was unfaithful to him with a young man 10 years earlier and Shrike wants to break Adam to make an example of him. Coogan and Kellin plays Adam's co- workers, entertainment writer Ned Gates who actually wanted the job (Adam was hired for) and sportswriter Frank Goldsmith, respectively.
As it turns out, Adam is secretly already a fake because he lies to everyone, including his girlfriend Justy Sargent (Hart), that his parents are dead when in fact his father (played by Onslow Stevens) is actually in prison serving time for murdering his wife and her lover when Adam was three. Overton plays Justy's understanding father, presumably a widower who also has two sons; his daughter takes care of all of them.
Adam 'feels' for everyone whose letters he reads, getting more and more involved in their lives from a distance such that he thinks he's unworthy for the job. Shrike, who notices that it's taking Adam longer and longer to complete the column, encourages him to find out if indeed all the letter writers are fakes. So Adam contacts Fay Doyle (Stapleton), who'd written that her husband Pat (Maxwell) suffers from an injury that hasn't allowed them to have sexual relations for the past eight years of their eleven year marriage.
Miss Lonelyheart (Adam) and the letter writer meet, and one things leads to another, causing (allergic to alcohol) Adam to experience getting drunk for the first time in his life; he'd learned that Fay had manipulated him into the affair and wants it to continue!
Unfortunately, two contrivances - the fact that Fay had previously seen Adam and that Adam later meets Pat, who's aware of the affair but not Miss Lonelyheart identity, during the column writer's bar hopping binge - are responsible for making the story less credible. However, there is still some compelling dialog in the film's final scenes which include Shrike learning as much (or more) from Adam, and partly Justy too, as the 'young' writer eventually does.
Clift plays Adam White (nee Lassiter), an idealistic writer who gets his first job working as a Dear Abby-Ann Landers type responder at a newspaper run by a cynical editor William Shrike (Ryan), who hires Adam to see if exposure to reality will make the 'young' (actor Clift was 37-38 years old!) man crash and burn. Stapleton plays a key role in Adam's education.
Ambitious unemployed writer Adam meets and then uses Florence Shrike (Loy) to get an introduction to her husband William in hopes of securing a job at the editor's newspaper. Shrike, who believes all people are fakes, is surprised at Adam's naiveté, but hires him to be the paper's anonymous "Miss Lonelyheart" columnist, who answers the letters of people that write asking for advice in personal matters.
The editor wants to test the mettle of his newly hired writer, whom he somewhat openly hopes is corrupted by the experience (e.g. to prove his own personal beliefs). Apparently his wife was unfaithful to him with a young man 10 years earlier and Shrike wants to break Adam to make an example of him. Coogan and Kellin plays Adam's co- workers, entertainment writer Ned Gates who actually wanted the job (Adam was hired for) and sportswriter Frank Goldsmith, respectively.
As it turns out, Adam is secretly already a fake because he lies to everyone, including his girlfriend Justy Sargent (Hart), that his parents are dead when in fact his father (played by Onslow Stevens) is actually in prison serving time for murdering his wife and her lover when Adam was three. Overton plays Justy's understanding father, presumably a widower who also has two sons; his daughter takes care of all of them.
Adam 'feels' for everyone whose letters he reads, getting more and more involved in their lives from a distance such that he thinks he's unworthy for the job. Shrike, who notices that it's taking Adam longer and longer to complete the column, encourages him to find out if indeed all the letter writers are fakes. So Adam contacts Fay Doyle (Stapleton), who'd written that her husband Pat (Maxwell) suffers from an injury that hasn't allowed them to have sexual relations for the past eight years of their eleven year marriage.
Miss Lonelyheart (Adam) and the letter writer meet, and one things leads to another, causing (allergic to alcohol) Adam to experience getting drunk for the first time in his life; he'd learned that Fay had manipulated him into the affair and wants it to continue!
Unfortunately, two contrivances - the fact that Fay had previously seen Adam and that Adam later meets Pat, who's aware of the affair but not Miss Lonelyheart identity, during the column writer's bar hopping binge - are responsible for making the story less credible. However, there is still some compelling dialog in the film's final scenes which include Shrike learning as much (or more) from Adam, and partly Justy too, as the 'young' writer eventually does.