The Picture of Dorian Gray biography, "Oscar Wilde" (1989), the literary critic Richard Ellmann said that: Wilde does not name the book, but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost [was], Huysmans's "À rebours" ... to a correspondent, he wrote that he had played a 'fantastic variation' upon "À rebours", and someday must write it down. The references in "Dorian Gray" to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate. Some commentators have suggested that "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was influenced by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's (anonymously published) first novel "Vivian Grey" (1826) as, "a kind of homage from one outsider to
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945 film) moral leprosy was eating him away", Hallward encourages Gray to reform his life. However, Gray panics, murders his friend and seals his body in the school room next to the portrait. Dorian blackmails an old friend, Allen Campbell (Douglas Walton), to dispose of Hallward's body. He then starts a romance with Hallward's niece, Gladys (Donna Reed), who was a child when the portrait was painted. Though Gladys had always loved Dorian, and is overjoyed when he proposes marriage, those close to Gray find him suspicious and changed. Allen Campbell, distraught at his role in destroying Hallward's corpse, commits suicide. Gray