I'm not certain there are any spoilers here but I checked the 'spoiler' box just to protect myself...
Dear Heart is one of those movies where you know how you want to see it work out, but you don't know how it's going to happen - and sometimes you aren't sure that it will. But you hope...
Evie, played by Geraldine Paige, is a lady Postmaster attending a postal convention. She is over-the-top interested in everyone around her - being at once helpful and maybe a little too much so for some tastes. Harry, played by Glenn Ford, is a greeting card salesman who is going to settle down from living on the road. He is about to marry Phyllis, a woman he met not long ago. He dreams of being settled at last in a house, with family members and visitors and home cooked meals every day. Harry and Evie are staying at the same hotel.
While Harry waits for Phyllis to arrive, he meets Evie - and while her brand of involvement and caring about others puts him off a little bit at first, slowly he comes to realize that those qualities are drawing him to her. But, Phyllis is on the way; Harry is sure she is the woman he has been looking for; soon they will be married, and that will be that.
We get a couple of insights into 'adult relationships' in this movie; while of course nothing is spelled out or anything but totally proper, we do learn that Evie has been with a man - another Postmaster on the convention trip - who seems to want to take advantage of her again, but she learned that giving herself away is not how to attain the kind of happiness she wants. The man tells her (without specifically stating 'sex') that "it's that one page in the book that the whole damned world is after." She replies "But you can't read just that one page. It doesn't make any sense all by itself." Superb dialog.
When Harry's fiancée Phyllis arrives, as things develop, she makes it clear that she doesn't care whether he fools around behind her back - so long as he doesn't tell her because as she says "Then, I'll have to do something about it." Just don't say anything and all will be well. She doesn't like the apartment he has chosen for them - she wants a hotel so she only has to pick up the phone and order food. She doesn't want to cook or have company come to visit. "Phyllis," she declares about herself, "is done DOING!"
Harry realizes that he is about to make a mistake - marrying a woman who does not want the things he does, while passing by a woman whose big heart is ever more appealing to him.
Usually I like Glenn Ford best in Westerns - in real life he was about the fastest gun in Hollywood - but he is superb in this movie as is Paige. I enjoy the scene where he walks her back to her hotel room after an encounter with an elevator 'masher' - out in the hallway, they analyze what some of the other guests have left on their food trays and try to determine something about the person in the room. Harry tests Evie with some questions and he can't help being fascinated by her answers. It is right then when you see it in his face - he is falling in love with her, and she realizes it. It's a great moment in the film.
This movie ought to be seen a lot more than it is. It is truly an adult film - not because it shows "adults" ripping at each other's clothes (is that truly 'adult'?) but because it shows mature people weighing their circumstances and deciding on the course they will take. Classic.
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