FAQ

No one has answered this question yet.

Bud Corliss (Robert Wagner), an ambitious University student, has plans to marry Dorothy Kingship (Joanne Woodward), the daughter of wealthy Leo Kingship (George Macready), in an attempt to get after their mining fortune. When Dorothy gets pregnant, however, it is certain that her moralistic father will disinherit her, so Bud looks at other ways of getting rid of the problem, murder included.

A Kiss Before Dying is a 1953 novel by American author Ira Levin. The novel was adapted for the movie by screenwriter Lawrence Roman. A remake, also titled Un baiser avant de mourir (1991), was released in 1991.

No, the movie was filmed in Tucson, Arizona. The girl takes a dive off the 10-story Valley Bank Building downtown (then Tucson's tallest building). The other campus shots are from the University of Arizona. The mine shots are from around southern Arizona

No. After Dorothy is murdered, Bud lays low for a few months, surfacing in Phoenix, Arizona where the Kingships live. It is then that he takes up with Ellen Kingship (Virginia Leith).

Ellen realizes that Dorothy had put together an outfit consisting of something old (a blouse), something new (a pair of gloves), something borrowed (a friend's belt), and something blue (a handkerchief), and concludes that she went to the Municipal Building to get married, not to jump off the roof. This starts Ellen on a search to find out who her sister was dating at the time.

The morning after the engagement party, Bud and Ellen drive to the smelter. Having been informed the night before by Gordon Grant (Jeffrey Hunter) that Bud knew Dorothy when they were students together at the University in Lupton, Ellen asks Bud why he didn't tell her. Bud makes up an excuse about going out a few times with her sister and not wanting the shadow of her death to come between them. Ellen begins putting together the pieces of the puzzle, while Bud continues to deny each piece. It isn't until Bud refers to Dorothy as 'Dorie', a name only he used for Dorothy, that Ellen is certain she is looking at Dorothy's murderer. When Bud realizes that he's been found out, he tries to push Ellen off a cliff, but she fights him, so he tries to toss her into the path of a moving dumptruck. The driver swerves and, rather than hit Ellen, he hits Bud, knocking him off the cliff. In the final scene, Leo and Gordon drive up, Gordon hands Ellen a handkerchief, and they all get in the car to drive home.

Probably the biggest difference is that there are three sisters...Dorothy, Ellen, and Marion...and Bud runs through them all. (Marion was left out in the film.) In the movie, it is apparent up front that Bud is Dorothy's boyfriend and killer; in the book, his name is left out until halfway through. In the novel, Bud dies by falling into a vat of molten copper, not off a cliff as in the movie.