1. No release was necessary. The state had decided to tear the house down and no permission from Charlotte or Miriam was needed. Charlotte couldn't conceive of the state being able to do that without her permission, which is why she referred to "signing a paper" at the beginning of the film.
2. If you're referring to the killing of Drew and Miriam, she really can't prove herself innocent, although I've always felt she would tell the police that the huge vase fell off the balcony on its own, killing Miriam and Drew in a freak accident. It's conceivable she could have gotten away with that. If you're referring to John's murder, the note Mr. Wills handed her at the end of the film was a note from Jewel Mayhew, confessing that she, not Charlotte, had killed John.
3. No blood relation is mentioned between Drew and Charlotte or Miriam, and he had a prior (and present) romance going on with Miriam, lessening the chance they were related.
4. She can't prove Miriam and Drew were culprits in Velma's death or in the attempt to drive her mad, but she can prove, via the note mentioned above from Jewel, that she was innocent all along of John's murder.
5. See item 2 above. It made her happy because she learned for the first time that Jewel, rather than her father, had killed John, and she was also no doubt happy to have written proof of her own innocence.
6. She didn't really go of her free will. She was ordered to leave, and of course, with Drew and Miriam's bodies being found on the property, she had to leave anyway for the invesitgation into their deaths. Either way, she had no choice but to go.
7. No one took the blame for Charlotte. According to Sheriff Luke Standish's conversation with Wills at the film's beginning, there simply wasn't enough evdence to convict her, even though everyone seemed to believe she did it.
8. Read the father's tombstone date at the beginning, when the kids pass by the graveyard in route to the house, and you'll see a grave marked "Sam Hollis 1928", which was one year after John's murder. He certainly didn't die of the death penalty, so it looks like it was natural causes.
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moosefeathers
15 years ago
she kept the house to hide the secret (in her mind of course) that her father had killed John. that's what she told his portrait.
also, in south, being cousins didn't mean a thing, drew and miriam could ver well have had a relationship being cousins.
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lastmidnite2
15 years ago
So many people have posted over the years that they don't understand what's in the letter that Charlotte reads at the end. My theory is that these people leave the room for a snack or a bathroom break during the scene where Jewel gives Willis the letter. They probably wrongly think it's not an important scene. A shame, because Mary Astor is wonderful in that scene!
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Harold_Robbins
15 years ago
"A shame, because Mary Astor is wonderful in that scene!"
She certainly is.
"Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke."
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15 years ago
[deleted]
lastmidnite2
14 years ago
Years ago I read that the original script mentions that he committed suicide because of the scandal, but for some reason, this was cut.
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