The first appearance in her long, eventful career is one of the most unusual in cinema history. “Thanks to Providence,” Shirley MacLaine murmurs laconically, “now it’s over with Harry.” Harry is the dead man sprawled on the ground in front of her in the Vermont forest with its magnificent autumn red leaves. That was in 1955, in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry. Shirley MacLaine plays a single mother, Harry was her husband, a groper and creep, who left her and suddenly appeared at her door again – and to whom she gave a strong, possibly fatal blow with a bottle. “He’s sleeping,” she explains to her little son who finds the body, “a deep, wonderful sleep.” Then the two, widow and son, go home to make a wonderful lemonade.
Shirley MacLaine on her 90th birthday: love, mascara, confetti – culture
