Screenplay
Screenwriter Peg Fenwick wrote the screenplay for All That Heaven Allows based on the 394-page novel of the same name by Edna L. and Harry Lee. Notations made on various pages of a copy of the original screenplay owned by the New York Public Library indicate that the script was written in August 1954.
Some scenes in the script differ from those in the finished film. For instance, in the screenplay Rock Hudson's character, Ron Kirby, lies on the grass eating his lunch, but in the final cut of the film, he has lunch with Jane Wyman's character, Cary Scott.[5]
Sirk considered having Hudson's character die at the end of the film, but Ross Hunter, the film's producer, would not allow it, because he wanted a more positive ending.
Development
After the success of Magnificent Obsession in 1954, Universal-International Pictures wanted Sirk to make another film starring Wyman and Hudson. He found the screenplay for All That Heaven Allows "rather impossible", but was able to restructure it and use the big budget to film and edit the work exactly the way he wanted.[6]
Wyman was 38 when she played the film's "older woman", who scandalizes society and her grown-up children by becoming engaged to a younger man. Hudson, "the younger man", was 29 at the time.
Filming
Some exteriors for the film were shot on "Colonial Street", a studio backlot built by Paramount Pictures on the property of Universal Studios four years earlier and used in the film The Desperate Hours.[7] The set was re-designed to mimic an upper-middle class New England town. The film contains only one visible crane shot, when the camera scans over the fictional town of Stoningham during the opening credits. Tracking and dollying shots were used frequently for interior shots. The set was later featured on the television series Leave It to Beaver.[7]
Music
The music that recurs throughout the film is Consolation No. 3 in D-flat major by Franz Liszt, along with frequent snatches of the finale to Brahms's First Symphony, the latter re-scored and sometimes elaborated.[8] Also heard intermittently is "Warum?" (German for "Why?") by Robert Schumann, from the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12.
