Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The best thing about this 1964 is Henry Mancini's title song.After giving brilliant performances in "Summer and Smoke," and "Sweet Bird of Youth," Geraldine Page portrays Evie Johnson, an outspoken postal worker from Ohio coming to a New York convention and finding love with salesman Glenn Ford who is engaged to Angela Lansbury, a widow with a very quirky son.Ford passes himself off as already married man. Is Page believable as Evie, methinks not.Alice Pearce is reduced to telling everyone to go to bed and Richard Deacon is denied the lines that made him in pictures-often standoffish and dictatorial. Even the usually funny Mary Wickes has little to do here.The story in itself is difficult to believe. Evie is the Helen Trent of her times.

Dear Heart (1964) is right up there with the dearest movies on record. This film has the best of everything - great script, cast, director, song, and more. I saw Glenn Ford in The Gazebo and Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth. They were both so good that I gave this movie a try. From the time I heard the song of the same title to Page's first 10 seconds of screen time, I was absolutely captivated. I have read that Meryl Streep adored her. Page was a chameleon of an actress who thoroughly engrossed herself into her part. I can see her influence on Streep. I've seen few actresses as good as Page, and I've only racked up 2 films so far!! I'm not sure if I would have appreciated this film as much as a younger person, but I'll never know since I'm now in my 40's. It was so easy for me to picture myself in Page's character's shoes had I not found love and a wonderful husband and family. The opportunity for love and a satisfactory career for the middle-aged spinster in the 1960's was not very promising. Page portrays her juxtaposition of loneliness and friendliness with such vulnerability that only a knowing eye, which is the audience, can see. Glenn Ford resists Page at first, but somehow she softens him with her dear personality. There is really no need to go on. If you want to experience a film that will be dear to your heart forever, then this one is it.

Dear Heart finds Glenn Ford and Geraldine Page as a pair of late thirty somethings who find true love at a New York convention. The convention is one Geraldine's attending, she's the postmaster of her small Ohio town and it's a Postmaster's convention. By the way at that time these were political positions in every postal area of the USA so in 1964 Geraldine would have to have been a good organization Democrat in her town.Glenn's a traveling salesman, greeting cards is his line and he's spent his young years just on the road and now wants to settle down. He thinks he's found what he wants in Angela Lansbury, a widow with a son from Altoona.Almost a third of the film goes by before Ford and Page even meet and we get a good background into their character. Makes what happens in the film almost inevitable. Although this is far from the exotic setting of The African Queen, Dear Heart is like that film showing that love can certainly come at any age. And in this case from unexpected quarters where you least expect it.The code was still in place or the postmistresses played by Ruth McDevitt, Alice Pearce, and Mary Wickes would be far more explicitly lesbian. The three of them eye Page as possibly a member of the fraternity. As for Page she gets an offer from Charles Drake with whom she had a fling before she found out he was married and a more crude offer from Ken Lynch in the hotel elevator.The very lovely title song of the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. A whole flock of people recorded it back in the day, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, and Jack Jones come immediately to mind. It lost to Chim Chim Cheree from Mary Poppins, but while that song is known it certainly can't be separated from the film it came from. I think Dear Heart has more staying power.And I think the film Dear Heart has a lot more staying power as well.

Busy, theatrical sentiment with Geraldine Page memorably neurotic as a lonely spinster who sends herself messages and has her own name paged in hotels...just to feel thought of; Glenn Ford is the family man whom she falls in love with. Stagy piece from writer Tad Mosel has a central character not too far from one of Tennessee Williams' heroines, and Page brings the part to life with a vivid portrayal. Henry Mancini's score sparkles and the black-and-white cinematography is good, but Ford walks through his part (he fills the bill and nothing more) and Michael Anderson, Jr. is way over-the-top as Ford's beatnik son (an embarrassing role for any actor). Smart talk, a few strong scenes, and Page's touching, annoying, amusing performance nearly makes this sudser worth seeing. ** from ****