Stories within stories. The 2002 movie "Far From Heaven" was dedicated to "Bompi", the director's grandfather, who was a union organizer and a Communist who left studio work during the blacklist era.

For the score, director Todd Haynes brought in composer Elmer Bernstein - who studios had refused to hire during the blacklist era.

And the film was inspired by the 1950s melodramas of another famous director. In an interview, director Haynes remembered the life of Douglas Sirk. "His second wife was Jewish, and he had a difficult time getting her out of Nazi Germany.

"Meanwhile, his first wife, a Nazi sympathizer, made their son a star of the Nazi youth cinema. Because she wouldn't let him see the child, he had to watch propaganda films to keep abreast of his little boy, on the screen wearing Nazi regalia. When the child died, the Nazi cinema was his last connection to his son..."

You have to wonder if his life influenced his work. Here's how the director is remembered now.

"Sirk recoiled at the studio's insistence on happy endings, finding them unrealistic conclusions to the conflicts that preceded them. Thus, Sirk's films are filled with some of the unhappiest happy endings ever recorded on film. Technically, life goes on and the assumption is that everyone lives happily ever after, but any thoughtful observation of the story's dynamics will alert the viewer to the unlikeliness of that ever occurring."

Interesting trivia: The 2002 Far From Heaven apparently owes some of its plot to Sirk's 1955 film All that Heaven Allows, "When widowed Jane Wyman wants to make it with younger and Thoreau-quoting gardener Rock Hudson..."

And during the filming of Far From Heaven, Julianne Moore was pregnant!

2:08 PM