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Poster for Written on the Wind
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Released
1956 · FILM

Written on the Wind

A principled geologist in a Texas oil dynasty must clear his name and win the love of his boss’s tormented wife before a vindictive sister’s false murder accusation destroys both his career and their family empire.

This woman in his arms was now the wife of the man he called his best friend!

Directed by
Runtime
99 min
Drama
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

Mitch Wayne is a geologist employed by the Hadleys, a wealthy oil family from Texas. The family patriarch, Jasper, is focused on building and maintaining the family's business, while his son, Kyle, lives a reckless lifestyle as an alcoholic playboy. Kyle's sister, Marylee, is known in town for her promiscuous behavior. Mitch is secretly in love with Lucy, Kyle's unhappy wife, a situation that puts him in danger when Marylee, driven by jealousy, accuses him of committing murder.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 17

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Russell F SchoengarthShot by Russell MettyScored by Frank Skinner

Box Office

1956 · Box office

Made its money back — grossed 3.3× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$4.3M

Budget$1.3M
Worldwide gross$4.3M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • In den Wind geschriebende
  • Écrit sur du ventfr
  • Come le foglie al ventoit

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