Two female teachers who run an all-girl's boarding school face financial and personal ruin after a despicable youngster starts a rumor about the ladies, which hits too close to home for one of them. Audrey Hepburn, following up her fashionable triumphant as Holly Golighty in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and Shirley MacLaine, one year after receiving her best notices for "The Apartment", star in this lugubrious reworking of 1936's "These Three", helmed by that film's director, William Wyler (apparently going for a no-holds-barred version of Lillian Hellman's play). The complaint from the director at the time was that the material was ultimately softened with edits by order of the studio chiefs. Sadly, even in 1961, homosexuality was an extremely touchy subject for the movies, and this film shows that the times had yet to catch up with Hellman's original vision (Hepburn uses the word 'lovers', but we never hear 'lesbians'). A rather fascinating and unglamorous soaper, though one which is overstated in all the wrong ways and yet timid where it shouldn't be. Wyler manages some effective sequences, and Hepburn and MacLaine are both good under the circumstances. Karen Balkin, the beady-eyed child at the center of the story, is truly a hateful brat, but what was Wyler's point in foisting her repulsive face at us in one close-up after another? Yes, we're supposed to dislike the monstrous child, but perhaps a conniving little schemer--a ruthless girl instead of a spoiled one--might have added some compelling subtext. ** from ****