Nora Prentiss
1947 film by Vincent Sherman
Nora Prentiss is a 1947 American film noir directed by Vincent Sherman and starring Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett, and Robert Alda. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The cinematography is by James Wong Howe and the music was composed by Franz Waxman. The film's sets were designed by the art director Anton Grot.
Plot
Dr. Richard Talbot, unhappy with the dull routine of his married life in San Francisco, meets nightclub singer Nora Prentiss by chance after he sees her get struck by a truck near his office. The two gradually begin to have an affair, causing disruption in Richard's home and professional lives. He tries to cool things down with Nora after he forgets his daughter's birthday, but, when Nora says she wants to break things off entirely and he is so shaken that he almost kills a patient during surgery, he realizes he is not willing to lose her. Not knowing how to ask his wife for a divorce, he seizes an opportunity to fake his death when a patient who looks somewhat like him and who he knows does not have any family or friends dies in his office.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nora Prentiss” is 1947 film by Vincent Sherman. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nora, Prentiss and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1947 film by Vincent Sherman” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7050141. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nora Prentiss” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.