The Secret Heart
1946 film by Robert Zigler Leonard
The Secret Heart is a 1946 American drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and starring Claudette Colbert, Walter Pidgeon and June Allyson.
Plot
Lee (Claudette Colbert) is engaged to marry Larry Addams (Richard Derr), a spendthrift widower with two children, son Chase (Robert Sterling) and daughter Penny (June Allyson). Lee had been living in England with her guardian aunt, who didn't approve of the match since Larry was an alcoholic, and while returning to America on an ocean liner, she meets Chris Matthews (Walter Pidgeon), a close friend of Larry's. Despite her loving feelings for Chris, she marries Larry, and moves to his farm in Rhode Island. Larry's talent is playing the piano, which he teaches Penny, but he gave up this ambition to work in a bank, to please his father. This frustrated ambition has ruined his life, and over the next two years Lee tries to confront his alcoholism, while trying to win Penny's confidence. While Lee is out for the night with Chris, Larry dies, his body found at the bottom of a cliff. He had committed suicide after two years of marriage, and on his death, it is reported that Larry had embezzled money from his clients. Lee sends Chris away and moves the family away from the farm, to New York where she takes a job to pay off Larry's debts, and withholds the truth from Penny, wanting to shield her from the stigma of scandal. Penny makes a hero out of Larry, who she believes died of a heart attack, and is unable to embrace Lee, who is now left to look after them alone.
“The Secret Heart” enters the record as 1946 film by Robert Zigler Leonard. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Secret, Heart and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Secret Heart” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Secret, Heart and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q768223. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Secret Heart” 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.