Dear Ruth

Dear Ruth is a 1947 romantic comedy film starring Joan Caulfield, William Holden, Mona Freeman, and Edward Arnold. It was based on the Broadway play of the same name by Norman Krasna. A teenage girl has a soldier for a pen pal, but uses her older sister's name and photograph. Then the man shows up while on a two-day leave. There were two sequels: Dear Wife (1947), with all of the principal actors reprising their roles, and Dear Brat (1951), featuring Freeman, Arnold and De Wolfe. Although it is sometimes mistakenly believed that J. D. Salinger got the name for his character Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye and other works, when he saw a marquee for the film, the first Holden Caulfield story, "I'm Crazy", was published in December 1945, a year and a half before the movie's release.