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I love this movie. Hilarious and very well cast.

Never knew that. The actual ending was sheer genius (or maybe a delightful accident?)

@@snelgrove-c3r There is one bit where Mathau is fantasizing about how May might die in the final version. In one fantasy she is carried away by Native Americans while they're hiking. In another he himself is lugging a body and then turns to face someone who looks like a butler, and then he snaps out of his daydream. But that fantasy bit of him dragging a body was originally in May's version, and it was Jack Weston he was dragging.

I don't think that the biggest problem of the original cut is that Mathau's charakter would be much darker, because he killed two people. The victims are bad people and Henry still can't kill Henrietta because she is such an innocent girl. Much darker comedies have been released where the protagonist isn't really punished for being a murderer. But the original cut is just too long. This isn't a western or another epic movie with long shots of beautiful landscape and it hasn't enough comedy of slapstick in it like "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" or "The Great Race", so the public would probably been bored to death with the original cut. The movie is based on a short story with the same name by Jack Ritchie. The short story is 28 pages long, Elaine May's script blows this up to a three hour movie. That doesn't work. In the written short story you need only a few words to describe a situation. The film needs a lot more time for this. The short story starts when Henry and Henrietta are already married, Henry wants to go on with his plans to kill her. To inform the reader he remembered his motiv for his plan and when he first met her at the tea party. It takes only 5 pages for this. The released cut of the movie nearly needs half of it's time to introduce Henry, his playboy life, his realization that he had exceeded his inheritance, that he had to marry a rich woman, if he wants to go on with his life and his several attempts to find other rich woman before he met Henrietta at the tea party. Together with the two murders the movie would be way too long, so this side plot ended on the cutting floor.

@@red.aries1444 We'll have to agree to disagree. Elaine May referenced Kind Hearts and Coronets as a dark comedy where the protagonist successfully kills multiple people but there are considerable differences that make this comparison a poor one. The Dennis Price character in Kind Hearts is established as having been wronged -- his mother was cast out of the wealthy D'Ascoyne family because she married for love, so there is an element of sympathy there. And then there is the running joke that everyone Dennis Price kills are all played by Alec Guiness -- 8 in all. Walter Mathau, on the other hand, starts off as an unlikable self-entitled boor whose solution to his profligate ways is to simply suck down someone else's money and kill them -- not because they are even in the way of him accessing their wealth, but because they simply annoy him and his self-indulgence. There is no dimension to Mathau that is in any way sympathetic. Building a "comedy" where Mathau is successful in getting away with murder has little in common with Kind Hearts and is, I think, a poor basis for a comedy. I adhere to my contention that Paramount did May a favor by reworking A New Leaf and she was perhaps too close to her own work to see that her comedy eye on this one sorely missed the mark.

@@tinetannies4637 Kind Hearts and Coronets is another one of my favourite movies. 🙂But this film has an open ending and it isn't clear if Louis Mazzini D’Ascoyne gets away with all his killings. I agree with you, that the studio did May a favor with the reworking and it was a good decision to cut away the side story with Henry killing the lawyer and the blackmailer. That Henry ended as a better character was in my opinion a nice bonus. We disagree maybe about the first decision when they planned the reworking. You may say it was most important to turn Henry into a better character. I say it was most important to cut an hour away from the original film to have movie of average length. It wasn't possible to turn the story into a real crime story. And to keep it as a comedy all the funny scenes had to stay in the film. So the film ended as it is now. It's really difficult to compare "Kind Hearts and Coronets" with "A New Leaf". Louis Mazzini D’Ascoyne suffered from his snotty family who stole his birthright and he started his life as a common man, before he starts killing his family members. Henry Graham was very wealthy but he wasted his money before he married Henrietta, organized her household and became a responsible man. Anyway, "Kind Heart and Coronet" has a lot of good monologue, spoken by Dennis Price, in it. This keeps the movie and the different scenes together. Mathau's character speaks only few word to himself. Yes, I agree with you that Elaine May was maybe to close to her own work and although she had good ideas, she got lost with keeping everything together. She had the same problem in some of her other projects.

Elaine May was very attractive here, great figure.

I'm not familiar with NE Georgia so I don't know any sites there but I would suggest using the Explore feature on inaturalist.com to find sites near you. Otherwise try checking rich, deciduous forests along rivers.

I agree, she had beauty. That was what made her so funny.

I'm not familiar with Canadian sources, sorry.

@@MasseyHerbarium thanks