Aaron Tracy

She's not going to anticipate his every need.

And she's just objectively way more successful than he is.

He lowers his expectations of her cooking and cleaning.

Okay, good for him, I guess.

For her part, Neil hands over all control of her finances to Dahl, which sort of works for a while.

Giving him control of the money achieves an instantaneous lessening of tension in the marriage, she says.

And if that doesn't sound like the 1950s, I don't know what does.

As the marriage goes on, Neal continues her wild rise in Hollywood.

She stars in some seminal films of the era, like Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd.

And she does.

Tons of success.

But while Neil is on the way up, Dahl's writing career stalls again.

The New Yorker has not accepted a story by Dahl for five years.

Frustrated, he spends two years writing a play.

But this is the era of big musicals, like Damn Yankees and My Fair Lady.

Dahl's dark character drama isn't what audiences want.

In fact, though he'd never admit it, the show may have only gotten picked up because of who he was married to.

But Dahl is committed to it,

Here's how committed to it he is.

He misses the birth of their first child because he's on tour with the play in Boston.