Summer re-views: Bette's Charlotte Vale

Its on television now, as I write - on the BBC: the 1942 NOW VOYAGER - its so seldom the BBC show a 1940s classic now, that its almost one' duty to watch it, despite having the dvd. Its still a timeless classic and one of Bette's key roles. Here's what I said about it, in a gay context, a mere 6 years ago: 

"I am not one to read gay subtext into movies [well apart from in BEN HUR], but a fascinating piece I read the other day made me stop and think and look at NOW VOYAGER in a new light. Rupert Smith, author of MAN'S WORLD - the best new novel I have read in years [still available at all good bookshops, folks] - writing in ATTITUDE magazine has this to say about it, in a feature on the nature of camp:

"NOW VOYAGER, a 1942 melodrama starring Bette Davis as a downtrodden, mentally unbalanced spinster who has a nervous breakdown, has a dramatic makeover and embarks on an affair with a married man. The movie and the book on which it was based were aimed squarely at women. All the characters and all their relationships are resolutely heterosexual. And yet for all that NOW VOYAGER is textbook camp because it mirrors so precisely - and perhaps so unconsciously - the gay experience.

Ugly, unloved Charlotte with her thick eyebrows and dowdy clothes is like a gay man in his larval stage, stuck in the family, driven crazy by frustration. She then emerges from her chrysalis with fabulous clothes, great hair and plucked eyebrows. She falls in love with an unavailable man and settles, at the end, for whatever scraps of affection she can get, with that famous last line: "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars". For gay men watching Bette Davis in the '40s - and there were plenty - it was like autobiography, in drag."

Rupert gets it exactly right. Poor frustrated Charlotte is left to look after and put up with her domineering mother, the other family members treat her like a doormat, she is made fun of by visiting relations. Even her mother (Gladys Cooper, excellent as ever) does not love her and bullies her - so of course, after the intervention of psychiatrist Claude Rains, she cannot accept the new svelte, confident Charlotte who returns after being the the most popular woman on the cruise (and what a camp fantasy that is...). What though is the nature of those unsuitable materials which mother found when moving Charlotte's items to a new bedroom she has designated for her? Charlotte however triumphs, with wonderful bon mots along the way: "Dora, I suspect you are a treasure" to the nurse Mary Wilkes; and "let's not linger over it" when breaking off her engagement to the very solid beau that mother approves of, but whom she does not love. She will be happy with those stolen hours with married man Jerry, and looking after his unhappy daughter.

Directed by gay Irving Rapper its certainly a timeless favourite, as good as my other two favourite Bette's: THE GREAT LIE (where we have nice Bette with superbitch Mary Astor) and OLD ACQUAINTANCE with Bette at her most brittle with that fabulous apartment (with devoted housekeeper) in wartime New York, and her on-going rivalry with flouncy Miriam Hopkins. Noble Bette sends away Miriam's husband - the man she loves - and then has a silver streak in her hair for the later third act."

Its another Warner Bros classic of course, with Bette in some marvellous Orry-Kelly creations, Music by Max Steiner, Claude Rains watchable as ever, and directed by gay Irving Rapper. Bliss, utter bliss. 

Rebecca at 75

No, not REBECCA and those Forties dramas!  Fascinating too to see REBECCA again, this lush Forties romantic drama/mystery, typically Hitchcock and Selznick, from of course that classic novel by Daphne Du Maurier, still weaves it spell as once again we go back to Manderley. How those wartime audiences must have lapped it up, along with GWTW ......

1940 was an amazing year actually, following on from the great 1939. REBECCA won Best Picture Oscar for Selznick, but Hitchcock did not get best director - that went to John Ford for THE GRAPES OF WRATH, other contenders were Wyler for THE LETTER and Cukor for THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Likewise James Stewart, in the Cukor, won Best Actor. Olivier was nominated of course, as was Joan Fontaine here, but like Grace Kelly winning over Judy Garland in 1954 - see post below - it was Ginger Rogers as KITTY FOYLE who won Best Actress. But who sees KITTY FOYLE now?, I have never seen it, and its never revived these days. Also nominated were Bette Davis (THE LETTER) and Katharine Hepburn for playing herself - sorry, Tracy Lord - in PHILADELPHIA STORY.

Joan is superlative here as the shy new Mrs De Winter, its a great performance and she is absolutely captivating. Olivier with that moustache is perfect too. No wonder women of that generation swooned over him. Add in Florence Bates as the ghastly Mrs Van Hopper and those amusing scenes in the South of France (California actually), and cad George Sanders and Gladys Cooper, Hitchcock regular Leo G Carroll as the doctor with the key to the mystery, and of course Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers, and that great location and art direction for Manderley,  

It seems though a film of two halfs. I love the first half . The cinematography, the direction, the chemistry between the two leads (though it seems Larry and Hitch used to say dirty words to Joan to disconcert her), the acting, the large house and the enigma of the dead first wife, Rebecca, are all fantastic, as Hitch builds up the eerie atmosphere with the sinister Mrs Danvers. But once we find out about the true story about Rebecca it loses, for me, some of its magic and turns into a simple mystery/thriller. But, 75 years on, audiences still love REBECCA and it remains a key Hitchcock classic.

We like Joan a lot, see labels for more on her and Olivier and Hitchcock. 

Separate Tables, 1958

Terence Rattigan's 1954 play SEPARATE TABLES is a Fifties time capsule now, capturing as it does that genteel Bournemouth hotel with its residents at their separate tables ... the play is in two acts, with the main two leads playing different characters in each act, the other residents stay the same. In the original production it was Eric Porter and Margaret Leighton. But the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production team when they made the popular 1958 film in Hollywood, combined them both into one continuous narrative, thus 4 stars were required for the main 4 characters, who are now Burt and Rita Hayworth, and David Niven and Deborah Kerr. This required a lot of dexterous pruning of the original script, which Rattigan himself did with John Gay and an uncredited John Michael Hayes. 

In the theatre when played as two acts, the acts are 18 months apart time-wise, but in the film we are in the continuous timeframe of the first act. This means a lot of the young couple (Rod Taylor and Audrey Dalton, below right) has been removed, and new material inserted, like scenes between Sybil and Mrs Shankland (Kerr and Hayworth) (who do not meet in the two separate act orginal).

The young couple stay as we see them in the first act - but in the second act of the play (18 months later) they are now married with a baby, which takes up all the mother's time - she sides with dragon-lady Mrs Railton-Bell to get the bogus Major, who has been exposed as a fake and a pesterer of women at the cinema, expelled from the hotel. Her husband does not agree and sides with the other residents. It makes for more interesting drama, but all that has to go for the film. 

There is a lot more of Miss Cooper, the hotel manageress, too in the play, but Wendy Hiller managed to scoop Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film. Niven of course won the Best Actor, but it seems a blustering fake performance, but then he is playing a blustering fake. Kerr is marvellous as the downtrodden Sybil, who finally stands up to her bully of a mother - Gladys Cooper being very malevolent here, as she was to Bette Davis in NOW VOYAGER. Hayworth and Lancaster add the Hollywood gloss and are perfectly adequate. The film is one of 1958's big enduring ones, up there with I WANT TO LIVE!, THE DEFIANT ONES, THE BIG COUNTRY, THE VIKINGS, SOUTH PACIFIC, AUNTIE MAME etc. 

I have seen a few other productions - John Schlesinger directed that 1983 television film, long unavailable, which goes back to the two act structure, with Julie Christie and Alan Bates (ther fourth teaming) playing both sets of leads, with Claire Bloom perfect as Miss Cooper, and Irene Worth, a monstrous suburban bully, as Mrs Railton Bell. Liz Smith shines too as the racing-mad spinster and Brian Deacon (from THE TRIPLE ECHO) as the young husband. - as per my fuller review, at Rattigan/Bates/Christie labels, which also goes into another version of Rattigan's work ...

I have now seen a BBC 'Play of the Month'  production of the play from 1970 with Porter and Geraldine McEwan in the lead roles. It is perfectly satisfying but a bit low-key. It is part of the BBC Terence Rattigan boxset (a nice companion to the Noel Coward boxset, again with interesting productions which I must return to), which also includes part of another version I saw on stage in the 70s, with John Mills and Jill Bennett. (As we mentioned previously, Rattigan's original text had the major pestering men in the cinema, but that would never have played back in the Fifties... and certainly not in the film, which suggests there is a future for the Major and Sybil).  

I also saw Rattigan himself at the BFI giving an entertaining talk also in the early 70s. The 1958 film though, directed by Delbert Mann, is the version most people know and like, even though it does not do full justice to the play and Rattigan's plea for tolerance for those who are 'different'. 

Dames & blithe spirits

A few assorted photos ..... 

Raves of course for Dame Angela back on stage agt 88, reprising her Madame Arcati in Coward's BLITHE SPIRIT, here is the Broadway production with Rupert Everett:

and we just have to include that priceless moment from David Lean's 1945 film when Rex Harrison first sees Elvira's ghost ....

More of Ruth Roman in Angela's MURDER SHE WROTE, finishing off her career here in a good way, as Loretta who runs Loretta's Beauty Shop - think pink! Ruthie enjoys herself here in '87 and '89 doing 3 episodes of Angela's series, set in Cabot Cove. The beauty shop regulars are fun too: Julie Adams looking better than ever, Kathryn Grayson and Gloria de Haven. 

Two more favourites: Geraldine Page and Dame Gladys Cooper who suprisingly have a duet in the 1967 Disney film THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE (its worth sitting through Fred McMurray, Tommy Steele and Greer Garson) for this number ! 

Soon: a real troupe of dames in some campy '60s fun with Curtis Harrington's grand guignol titles: Debbie Reynolds, Shelley Winters, Geraldine again with Ruth Gordon - as we find out WHATS THE MATTER WITH HELEN? WHO SLEW AUNT ROO? and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?, plus Romy Schneider's grand guignol THE INFERNAL TRIO in 1973!

A new look at some '40s classics...

I am not one to read gay subtext into movies [well apart from in BEN HUR], but a fascinating piece I read the other day made me stop and think and look at NOW VOYAGER in a new light. Rupert Smith, author of MAN'S WORLD - the best new novel I have read in years [still available at all good bookshops, folks] - writing in ATTITUDE magazine has this to say about it, in a feature on the nature of camp:

"NOW VOYAGER, a 1942 melodrama starring Bette Davis as a downtrodden, mentally unbalanced spinster who has a nervous breakdown, has a dramatic makeover and embarks on an affair with a married man. The movie and the book on which it was based were aimed squarely at women. All the characters and all their relationships are resolutely heterosexual. And yet for all that NOW VOYAGER is textbook camp because it mirrors so precisely - and perhaps so unconsciously - the gay experience.

Ugly, unloved Charlotte with her thick eyebrows and dowdy clothes is like a gay man in his larval stage, stuck in the family, driven crazy by frustration. She then emerges from her chrysalis with fabulous clothes, great hair and plucked eyebrows. She falls in love with an unavailable man and settles, at the end, for whatever scraps of affection she can get, with that famous last line: "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars". For gay men watching Bette Davis in the '40s - and there were plenty - it was like autobiography, in drag."

Rupert gets it exactly right. Poor frustrated Charlotte is left to look after and put up with her domineering mother, the other family members treat her like a doormat, she is made fun of by visiting relations. Even her mother (Gladys Cooper, excellent as ever) does not love her and bullies her - so of course, after the intervention of psychiatrist Claude Rains, she cannot accept the new svelte, confident Charlotte who returns after being the the most popular woman on the cruise (and what a camp fantasy that is...). What though is the nature of those unsuitable materials which mother found when moving Charlotte's items to a new bedroom she has designated for her? Charlotte however triumphs, with wonderful bon mots along the way: "Dora, I suspect you are a treasure" to the nurse Mary Wilkes; and "let's not linger over it" when breaking off her engagement to the very solid beau that mother approves of, but whom she does not love. She will be happy with those stolen hours with married man Jerry, and looking after his unhappy daughter.

Directed by gay Irving Rapper its certainly a timeless favourite, as good as my other two favourite Bette's: THE GREAT LIE (where we have nice Bette with superbitch Mary Astor) and OLD ACQUAINTANCE with Bette at her most brittle with that fabulous apartment (with devoted housekeeper) in wartime New York, and her on-going rivalry with flouncy Miriam Hopkins. Noble Bette sends away Miriam's husband - the man she loves - and then has a silver streak in her hair for the later third act.

My other particular '40s favourite is David Lean's THIS HAPPY BREED, as scripted by Noel Coward: his paen to the British spirit during wartime as we focus on ordinary working class folk, the Gibbons family - Frank and Ethel, together with daughter Queenie and son Reg, mother in law and spinster sister Sylvia. It follows the era between the wars as the Gibbons move to a new house in Clapham, the period detail is perfect as we follow their family life, its joys and pain. We focus on Queenie, the wayward daughter, who spurns the stifling nature of conventionality, and flees. Perhaps Coward writing as a closeted gay man in the '40s saw Queenie as a substitute gay man: forever sniping at the others and being dissatisfied with suburbia, until she runs off with an unsuitable man and is estranged from the family for years, as the mother will not forgive her. Finally decent John Mills brings her home,having married her and Queenie redeems herself and is accepted back into the fold. Its a superior tear-jerker, with great comedy moments by Amy Vaness as grumpy mother-in-law forever bickering with Alison Legatt's Sylvia. Needless to say Celia Johnson is superlative as ever as Ethel - its as good a performance as hers in BRIEF ENCOUNTER. Kay Walsh of course is also perfect as Queenie. Like THE WAY TO THE STARS its a perfect entertainment for wartime Britain.

It was interesting recently reading BEHIND THE SCREEN - HOW GAYS AND LESBIANS SHAPED HOLLYWOOD by William K Mann, focusing on how those gay directors (Rapper, Leisen, Whale, Cukor, Goulding, Arzner, Walters et al), producers like Ross Hunter, agents like Henry Willson, designers like Orry-Kelly, Adrian and Travis Banton etc worked and successed during the classic era.

Everyone has their own possible gay suspects in '40s movies then: Mrs Danvers in REBECCA?, Waldo Lydecker in LAURA and Eliott Templeton [both played by Clifton Webb] in THE RAZOR'S EDGE?, most of those characters (Greenstreet, Lorre, Cook Jr) chasing THE MALTESE FALCON?. I would certainly add in that neighbour, as played by David Wayne, of Tracy and Hepburn in ADAM'S RIB! oh, and Hepburn's supercilious, prissy, swishy male secretary in WOMAN OF THE YEAR!

In the '50s one thinks immediately of those two hoods Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman in THE BIG COMBO, those so macho jocks in TEA AND SYMPATHY, those odd military cadets in THE STRANGE ONE ('57), Plato in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and possibly (some think so..) Addison and Eve Harrington in ALL ABOUT EVE, and it may have been fun to have seen those two guys ("interior decorators I think") living in the apartment uptairs from Tom Ewell and The Girl in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH - or maybe they would have been too caricatured ? and of course that first gay bar in Otto's sensational ADVISE AND CONSENT as the '60s dawned....

People We Like: Mrs Railton-Bell

I mean of course Dame Gladys Cooper - writing about NOW VOYAGER reminded me of how brilliant she is in SEPERATE TABLES, that quintessential '50s drama that we lapped up back in 1958. It seems quite phoney now with its faded granduer - even for '58 - but Gladys' Mrs Railton-Bell positively glitters with menace and malice as she learns of the bogus major's crimes in the local cinema, as she seems to be looking directly at us, the audience. Mrs R-B is in her element bossing around the other residents and her crony, that other Edwardian beauty Cathleen Nesbitt, and keeping her dowdy daughter Sybil (Deborah Kerr) firmly under her thumb, as she tries to get the major ousted from the hotel.

Rattigan's play of course is a splendid warhorse for actors and is usually staged as 2 separate acts with the lead actor and actress playing both sets of lead roles - the major and downtrodden Sybil, and the Lancaster and Hayworth roles, in the two separate plays. I saw a version in the '70s staged that way with John Mills and Jill Bennett - and John Schlesinger's 1983 BBC version did the same with Alan Bates and Julie Christie (along with Irene Worth as Mrs R-B, and Claire Bloom as Miss Cooper - the Wendy Hiller role). The movie version is prime ham actually: Niven and Kerr are actually much better for Preminger in the same year's BONJOUR TRISTESSE where they play steely variations on their usual personas - here they are acting by numbers, still it got Niven his best actor award...

But back to Dame Gladys [1888-1971]: she had a long distinguished career, from being a famous beauty in Edwardian times, a member of the Hollywood Raj in Hollywood in the '40s in lots of roles (in REBECCA, that nasty nun in THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, with Garland in THE PIRATE, etc) as well as Bette's monstrous mother in NOW VOYAGER, she also ran her own theatre at one stage, and became mother-in-law to Robert Morley and Robert Hardy.

Back in the UK she did a play with Kay Kendall "THE BRIGHT ONE" in 1958 as she was a friend of Kay's - in fact when Kay went to Hollywood to make LES GIRLS in 1957 Gladys lent Kay her corgi dog June, as company. There are some nice pictures of Kay and June together (as below) and June also appears in the film. Gladys was also Rex's imperious mother in MY FAIR LADY.

I saw her on stage in 1971 (the year she died) in a revival of THE CHALK GARDEN with another favourite, Joan Greenwood; (pictured below), it was a low-key production as I recall but both ladies were splendid. Here is their programme page: (click to enlarge text) [Gladys had originated the role of Mrs St Maugham in the original production, though Edith Evans later took it over and made the film in '64] There is another photograph from this production in my Joan Greenwood post, further back.

People We Like: Joan Greenwood

English actress Joan Greenwood [1921 – 1987], one of those ladies for whom superlatives are not enough. She is “a rather dotty, genteel sexpot” according to David Thomson in his invaluable A Biographical Dictionary of Film, whereas David Shipman in his equally indispensable The Great Movie Stars comments on her “sex appeal, style and striking individuality”, and Variety once described her voice as “one of the wonders of the modern world”. Exquisite is the word that sums up Joan’s allure both vocally and personally. No wonder she voiced the Evil Queen in Vadim's BARBARELLA!

In movies since the early 40s, early roles included THE GENTLE SEX (43), THE OCTOBER MAN (47), SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS (48), those Ealing classics WHISKEY GALORE and her naughty, seductive, adorable minx Sybilla in KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, 1949. She was also Lady Caroline Lamb in the dreadfully enjoyable THE BAD LORD BYRON.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST in 1952 by Anthony Asquith remains the definitive film of Oscar Wilde’s play, a wonderful staging preserving the great performances of Edith Evans, Margaret Rutherford, Michael Redgrave and Joan’s considerable star turn as Gwendolyn. Her every appearance is a joy here, full of vocal inflections and marvellous readings of lines like, when asking for bread and butter with her tea “as cake is never seen in the best houses these days”. Above: MOONFLEET with Stewart Granger.

She is very touching in the French KNAVE OF HEARTS (MONSIEUR RIPOIS) opposite Gerard Philipe in 1954 (left), and with Guinness again in FATHER BROWN. Joan then went to Hollywood in 1955 to appear in Fritz Lang’s MOONFLEET – one of the high points of mid-50s costume dramas. Other roles were in STAGE STRUCK (57), MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (61), and as the very demanding Lady Bellaston in Richardson’s TOM JONES, the big hit of 1963.

Other roles included Disney's THE MOONSPINNERS where she was rather wasted, in '64. I saw her on the stage in 1971 in a revival of THE CHALK GARDEN as Miss Madrigal [above] opposite Gladys Cooper’s Mrs St Maugham. (programme page at left, click image to enlarge text, detailing Joan's extensive theatre career).

Joan by all accounts was a very unaffected leading lady, quietly married to reliable supporting actor Andre Morrell (who died in 1978) with whom she had a son.

She is also the subject of a fascinating website: http://www.silversirens.co.uk which feature her and Margaret Lockwood, with great galleries of photos, stills and much more on their films. Joan Greenwood, like Kay Kendall, will always be a leading light of the English cinema.

My full appreciation on Joan is on IMDb at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339343/board/nest/136932896?d=136932896#136932896

People We Like: Kay Kendall

Kay Kendall remains as entrancing now as she did back in the '50 when she zoomed like a comet through British and then American films. She died in 1959 but left a lasting legacy of high comedy and elegant charm. The small parts throughout the early 50s are interesting: in DANCE HALL, IT STARTED IN PARADISE, THE SHADOW MAN, CURTAIN UP, FAST AND LOOSE etc, then that breakthrough role in GENEVIEVE as the elegant model and that trumpet-playing scene, a cameo followed in DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE with her chum Dirk Bogarde, then she co-starred with Rex Harrison in THE CONSTANT HUSBAND and their relationship began here, despite his long marriage to Lilli Palmer. SIMON AND LAURA is another delightful Rank Organisation comedy, teaming her with Peter Finch as a tempermental theatre couple appearing in a television soap opera. She then did that lovely period film QUENTIN DURWARD for MGM with Robert Taylor. When Rex went to New York with the stage show of "My Fair Lady" Kay went with him. Her only Hollywood film was Cukor's LES GIRLS in 1957 which she effortlessly stole from the other girls Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg, good as they are here.

The high comedy style of the Harrisons (she had married Rex in '57, after his divorce from Lilli) is captured in Minnelli's '58 version of the stage play THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE which is still a delight now. She wears those Balmain clothes and looks perfectly glamorous here. Perhaps only Carole Lombard was as gifted and glamorous a comedienne. 

Kay though had leukaemia, which it seems she did not know about. She looks frail in her last film, ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, in '59 for Stanley Donen, as wife to Yul Brynner's music maestro. She died in September 1959 before its 1960 release.

Another interesting early title of hers I tracked down recently was ABDULLA THE GREAT, made in '54 or '55 by Gregory Ratoff who plays the Farouk-like despot undone by his passion for a visiting model, Kay, co-starring with Sydney Chaplin, whom she was invovled with at the time. A fascinting oddity to see now, as per my first post on here! At least Cukor, Minnelli and Donen got to showcase her individual talents.

Though unwell, she also did a short-lived play "The Bright One" in 1958. Rex and Lilli Palmer both give their versions of the ending of their marriage in their respective autobiographies, both engrossing. Dirk Bogarde also writes movingly about her in his "Snakes and Ladders"

. Kay's sister Kim, with Eve Golden, has co-authored a fascinating book on Kay's life and career, her music hall background, and showgirl years in the London revues of the early '50s.

Kay remains a fascinating enigma who left us all too soon, aged 32. She has a lovely headstone and resting place in an 18th century churchyard in Hampstead, North London, in a theatrical quarter with Du Mauriers and Beerbohm Trees nearby and actor Anton Walbrook just across the path. Perfect.

My reviews of ABDULLA, QUENTIN DURWARD, LES GIRLS and RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE are on previous posts here.

My full appreciation on Kay is on IMDb at:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0447608/board/nest/90402935?d=90402935#90402935