Talking Back at Movies

 Is The Audience What Understands Pictures Best?

Been reading of movie audiences then-and-then by Manny Farber (40’s) and James Harvey (50’s). What is said to have begun in dutiful silence became more and more free-for-alls, verbal exchange between viewership and projected image that could not talk back. Farber says it got worse in the war. Harvey remembered college age "wise-asses" making "jeering expeditions" to movies they did not respect, which by the fifties was pretty near all movies. May we assume Farber and Harvey’s experiences reflected filmgoing as a whole? I spoke to Conrad Lane, who was in theatres from 1933 on. What he saw/heard differed somewhat from their accounts, but then, couldn’t any of us come up with anecdotes unique to individual experience, not shared by these or anyone else that went to movies? Conrad says patronage in better theatres were always well-behaved, a “quality” audience, but also admitted crowds were “progressively unruly” as years went on. There was always child clatter at matinees, Conrad recalling a girl in his party yelling out during a chapter of The Miracle Rider for Tom Mix to “Be Careful!” as he entered a doorway, an outburst Conrad attributed less to the child being disruptive than inability to separate screen fantasy from her own delicate reality.

How did surrounding viewers comport themselves as we sat spellbound through films? My first exposure to sci-fi, if not horror, was Konga in 1961. I went with cousins, maybe a sibling or two. Anyhow there were at least four of us in the group. Being age seven at the time got me into the Liberty for a dime. I was prepared by the posters for an intense exchange, Konga after all a gorilla that grows to unnatural size. What I did not expect was sarcasm among my crew that greeted his arrival on screen. And they expressed it … out loud and for anyone to hear. After a while, I got into the mocking spirit. No monster movie could scare me! A third-act crisis found Konga engulfed in laboratory flames and hurling a player thereto, latter ID’ed as unsympathetic and having it coming. I compared (aloud) Konga’s gesture with roasting of marshmallows and drew laughter from companions all older than me. Resolved then: I had “resisted” the intent of Konga to frighten us, had in fact embraced the raw material of cinema to express my own alternative postwar modernism. Well, that’s at least what academics would tell me. Truth is, I felt like Tootie after she threw flour in Mr. Braukoff’s face, having like her conquered all fears. Afterward I overdid my inclination to rewrite what was said on screens, enough so to be pointedly excluded from neighborhood expedition to see Morgan the Pirate a couple months later. Why attend movies if your goal is to ridicule them? A bunch of us fourth graders were rowdy enough to be nearly thrown out of King Kong vs. Godzilla in autumn 1963, only this time I felt less proud and more a follower behind boys who had not looked so forward to KK vs. G, certainly not enough to paste Winston-Salem Journal ads for the film on their school desktops as I did.

Everybody’s a critic, so it was said, the more so when cult and camp gnawed ways into public consciousness. It was OK, even desirable, for audiences to yap back at films. Truth to Power as it were. Conrad remembers when crowds sat polite and did not interrupt drama's unfolding. Yes, they were restless with Limelight at San Francisco’s United Artists Theatre in 1952, but courteous enough to go the course. Soon, however, it was expected for us to seize the lectern, turn the tables, and bend moviegoing to suit ourselves. The nineteenth century had seen this coming via vaudeville viewers rowdy and demonstrative till management organized to shut them up, a success through applied and organized effort. Writers who came before argued for “creative engagement with text,” Oscar Wilde in 1890 calling his critical work a “starting point for a new creation,” the goal “not to explicate meanings inscribed in a text by the artist, but to record (our) own intensely personal impressions of the work.”

Once a thing of art was finished, it belonged to us to do with as we pleased. Other writers of a late nineteenth century saw change coming. For Thomas Hardy, “intensive power of the reader’s own imagination” would find values in his novels “which … was never inserted by the author, never foreseen, never contemplated.” Wilde and Hardy knew writings, theirs and anybody’s, would land in the lap of gods that were their readership, latter to apply whatever meaning such creations would acquire. What an engaged movie audience did was less personal, them among a crowd after all, so why not share their response with others who might view the thing a same way? Theatres would again be debate societies, only now viewers got the last word, provided no one sitting alongside challenged them. Things could get tense, however. I was at a campus screening (early 2005) of Northwest Passage, a childhood favorite of the instructor who obliged his class to attend. It was a laser disc, thus a bit bleary when projected on a too-large-to-wrestle-pixels screen. The thing played to dead silence for fifteen or so minutes till a lone voice cried THIS SUCKS. From there to the end, another two hours, was march to Calvary.

Audiences could be plain mean, especially ones at light side of maturity. Peter Bogdanovich taught filmmaking and cinema history at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem from 2010 to 2015. Less than an hour from me, the trip was worth it to sit in on classes, permission to do so graciously given by UNCSA and Mr. Bogdanovich. Here was opportunity to see/hear the famed director and writer interact with students, after which I'd get to chat with him myself. Classes were held in a theatre/teaching auditorium. Opening hours saw the day’s feature, followed by discussion. I usually showed up near the end of each movie, wanting mainly to hear group reaction and Bogdanovich’s remarks. Size of the room allowed students to spread way out … two here … one over there … three or so far in the back, not unlike theatre going of present day. Bogdanovich regularly had to herd them closer to the table where he sat so they could see and hear one another. None lit up at prospect of Chimes at Midnight or His Girl Friday, carping nearly always when Bogdanovich asked what they thought. One day he had enough, lighting into the bunch for not having anything “constructive” to say, his selections never good enough to suit them. Here was once where the screen (or screener) talked back on no uncertain terms to the audience, Bogdanovich as engaged for that moment as ever I observed him through what must have seemed a career low (though UNCSA is considered a world class school, it’s still 3000 miles from Hollywood).

We’re talking degrees of rudeness. Mine at Konga was no less annoying to whoever sat back of us, unless they were enchanted by snide remarks from a seven-year-old. I'd later grow into rapt attention and lack of patience for ones less considerate. By 1963 and The Haunted Palace, our Liberty was my sanctuary wherein worship of Vincent Price must be conducted in silence. I had gone from boisterous to priggish. Others still sought fun from movies, especially those meant to scare. Ann used to watch Shock Theatre with her brother on Channel 8, Saturday nights. He would boil hot dogs in water that turned a sick pink as they settled into Godzilla vs. The Thing, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, or Gamera the Invincible. “It was always American-International pictures!” she recalls, as if that were a bad thing. Here then was “text” that invited its consumer to find his/her own meaning, be it regard or disdain. I developed hearty distaste for “camp,” thinking it was mostly peer pressure that caused others to laugh at things I held dear. There was hesitation at sharing favorites with a group. First semester at college saw Channel 36-Charlotte broadcasting the first three Frankensteins on a Friday night. I invited the hall to come in and watch, at least ten showing up, the small room filled. Which way would they tilt? To my delighted surprise, the group sat entranced. All had seen these before and respected them. A moment’s levity came of reaction when Valerie Hobson threw herself across Colin Clive lying prostrate on a bed in The Bride of Frankenstein, one boy's an indelicate observation I’ll not share for propriety’s sake. Suffice to say, the interruption was OK because his remark was really funny.

“Creative criticism” was something I tried applying to reviews wrote in 1968-69 for our local bugler, most Liberty fare too weak to inspire fun-poking. Audience response was minimal because at weekday matinees, there was virtually no audience. This was dawn upon day when small town theatres were going to evening and weekend only policy. After I got done reviewing, new movies held faint fascination. I went but occasional and usually saw cause to regret it. Straw Dogs was a film that might be read a variety of ways by an intelligent audience, but the Liberty's crowd marched out like from Jeffrey Cordova’s Modern Faust in The Bandwagon. Whooping it up at the movies seemed all done by the seventies. Had a moviegoing public been intellectualized into obedient silence? Too much perusal of Pauline Kael perhaps, but then there were “midnight movies” the dump ground for stuff no exhibitor wanted to use during the week. I didn’t go unless they were revivals, and even then, it was hell staying awake in a theatre where The Cocoanuts and Duck Soup didn't let out till 2 AM. Always it returned to a same question: How much did anyone care about movies one way or the other? Sure there was “film culture” in Manhattan, but I never saw much of it down here. Maybe at UNC in Chapel Hill, plus Wake Forest had a terrific program (Doug Lemza in charge), but my little shows, at a little college, played for most part to sparse groups, less there to engage with the movie than satisfy mildest curiosity and pass idle hours. I’d like knowing percentage of my age group that fully embraced films, let alone interacted “creatively” with them.

Do most people simply watch and walk away, better off for doing so? Why strangulate on analysis? I know a man whose job is handywork, in other words practical things. We spoke recently of a Netflix offering, Hell or High Water. “Real good” he said. Then I mentioned a tense scene near the end that Jeff Bridges played with Chris Pine. My guy, who watches films casual-like, made with perspicacity to send Kael begging, were she here to compare screening notes. Point is the people we think are barely seeing films are often seeing them deeper than any basket of connoisseurs, deeper even than folks that made the films. Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy knew what they wrote was often received on more sophisticated terms than they dreamed of. How many get beyond a tenth of what a good book or movie offers? Not me, and I really do try. We jabber over what makes a picture great, then some or other listener bats an insight over all heads and proves again that anyone who writes about film or whatever art should stay humble. Just like in any walk of life, no matter how adept you think you are, there is always someone who's better. I get the hint often from comments to Greenbriar, each an alert to dig deeper next time.

50's Family Under Siege

 

The Family Secret (1951) Has Plenty To Hide

A Santana Picture for Columbia release, one of a handful Humphrey Bogart's company produced, but he did not star in. Columbia had gone deep into business with independents, Variety pointing out extent in 7/25/51 report: "Of about 55 pix slated for release during 1951-52, over 20 will be made by other than the lot's salaried producers." Columbia's deal with most indies was straightforward. The company would supply half of financing and guarantee the other half loaned by banks, for which they'd get half of profits after recovery of investment, plus a distribution fee. Stanley Kramer and Sam Katzman supplied most of A's and B's, respectively, while balance of outside product came from Edward Small, Louis de Rochemont, Harold Hecht-Burt Lancaster, and Santana. Peers that impressed Bogart were used for The Family Secret, thus John Derek from Knock On Any Door, and Lee J. Cobb, late of Sirocco, these also of Santana label. The Family Secret might have fit Bogart as lawyer dad with a son who's committed murder, but the piece was fairly enclosed, its outcome foregone thanks to Code requirement.

Still, Family's situation is one that compels, and that doubtless drew Bogart and producing Robert Lord to what was essentially a Playhouse 90 before that anthology took up mantle of such dramatics on TV. John Derek was a pompadour heartthrob Columbia groomed in the wake of breakout in Knock On Any Door, Bogart having given him that break, but Variety pointed out his character in The Family Secret as "unsympathetic." Cobb is understated and most effective in concerned father mode. There are swipes at television and too-loud swing music, plus Derek's best girl, Jody Lawrance, driving a hot rod. Young folk were still of Andy Hardy's generation circa 1951, change being just around a rock and rolling corner. We don't linger on collateral damage Derek's belated confession brings on, but it's considerable, and audiences were probably as annoyed by PCA cow-towing then as latter-day watchers will be. The Family Secret collected a modest $283K in domestic rentals, and Bogart would sell his share in the negative to Columbia a few years after, along with kit-caboodle of Santana interests. The Family Secret is available in a very nice On-Demand DVD.

What a Sleeper Was in 1949

 

The Window Goes Places New To Noir

From a simple pair of scissors do sleepers sometimes awake. RKO did a crackerjack job making a hit of what they spent a mere $696K to create. Fact the merchandise was so good was a help, The Window adapted from a Cornell Woolrich story. He had, would continue to, supply grist for noir and thriller wheels. Let go the fact that Woolrich himself had so rough a road to hoe. Read his life and wonder how he managed so many fine short stories and novellas. Was there a a curse upon ones that wrote for pulps? Money wasn’t so good, certainly not enough, nor of fame, but where would movies have been without the Cornell Woolrichs in back of them? The Window is murder through witnessing eyes of a boy who otherwise cries wolf and so is disbelieved. It defined for 1949 a word-of-mouth must see. More profit came of The Window than RKO realized for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or The Big Steal of the same year.

“Sleeper” as byword for something discovered by a public instead of foisted upon them by publicity was a term promiscuously used, before and since 1949. Surrounding seasons had seen the label attached to Jungle Patrol, The Doctor and the Girl, The Return of October, and The Lawless, so easy to see it was wishful thinking, as who recalls those, except possibly The Lawless (1950), which slept indeed as patrons spent elsewhere. I’m betting Terry Turner ran promotion for The Window, as result bespoke his genius. Ads and pub used the scissors, a motif central to the film’s killing that propels action (Ruth Roman the user). A weapon as central image juiced merchandising for Twelve Angry Men and of course Psycho in years after, shorthand always for violence and suspense to be got for buying your ticket in.

Anomaly … well, maybe not as this was RKO after Howard Hughes took over … saw The Window getting a sneak preview at the RKO-Hillcrest Theatre in Los Angeles on June 1, 1948, nearly a year before the film was released. Hughes had a habit of holding product back until he had an opportunity to vet each offering personally. Based on his erratic schedule and indifference to distribution policy as set by underlings, this meant many a feature sat on shelves indefinitely. I sometimes wonder if there are RKO movies yet that we haven’t seen. The Window at its 6/1/48 unveil, a totally unknown quantity for which the title tipped off nothing, got huzzahs from its cold-call audience, “patrons were sitting on the edge of their seats all the way, and frequent gasps at the crucial moments and the rousing applause they gave at the finish proves what an emotional wallop this picture has,” said The Radio Flash as reported by staffer Perry Lieber on 6/4/48, The Window noted also for “a compactness which adds vastly to the film’s intense quality.” This sleeper wouldn’t wake for nearly a year, even as favorable buzz spread from that first sneak at Hillcrest. Why wait to release what everyone knew early on was powerful product? Only Hughes knew, and he wasn’t talking.

Novelty inherent was letting a small boy be central to the threat, as in nobody buys his story … except the killers, a conceit not softened as these two (Roman and Paul Stewart) are intent on getting rid of little Bobby Driscoll by quickest means however foul. Bobby had been a moppet for Disney, lately in Song of the South, So Dear To My Heart, being sung to by Roy Rogers in Fun and Fancy Free. To put him amidst gritty environ of New York tenements, his life in the balance (literally … there are rooftop, high-set perils), this a scary depart from rules 40’s viewership were used to. The Window sold what really was novelty for its time. Parents play clueless support, unresponsive to the boy’s warning, as are police, the child utterly alone in trying to save his own life and bring murderers to account.

The Window is genuinely suspenseful in a modern sense for the bold set-up, surprising, or maybe not so much, for attitude of those who would nurture at a time when upbringing was a job conducted very different from what we now expect or would support. Where father says “punish,” he often as not means a whipping, or, as a friendly police officer jokes, a “shellacking like my old man used to give me.” Kids getting tough love from Dad, with Mom approval, was accepted practice in an era where corporal discipline held sway. Yes, it was common to send a child to his/her room without supper. Here it is Bobby banished to bed sans lunch or the evening meal. I worried as much for what pop Arthur Kennedy might do as whatever Ruth Roman/Paul Stewart had in mind. Latter pair have abducted the boy at one point and hustle him roughly into a cab, the driver thinking nothing of it … just parenting as usual as he sees it. Cop on the beat that Driscoll yells to is moved not at all by his plea for rescue, warning instead of the tanning he’ll get later for disobeying what appears to be his parents, but of course are not. As Lillian Gish said later in Night of the Hunter, it surely was a hard world for little things.

I wonder if seeing The Window obliged parents to go gentler with offspring. Were children traumatized by having seen it? Something tells me fewer than what might be imagined, as youth were undoubtedly tougher then. Something about Driscoll’s character tells us he will think his way out of the trap, as surprisingly, pleasingly, he kills off lethal pursuer that is Paul Stewart, and will all but get a key to the city for his job well done. Suppose Disney regretted the loan of Bobby Driscoll to RKO for such intense workout? And yet The Window may have OK’ed Bobby shooting a pirate full in the face for a following year’s go at Treasure Island via Disney/RKO, a scene so graphic it had to be trimmed from a 1975 reissue to enable a G rating. I don’t know when a child’s fear was so utilized to sell a film than with The Window. Ads really exploit Driscoll’s terror and the menace Ruth Roman and Paul Stewart represent. This could almost be a horror movie were merchandising to be believed. I picture children, ones timid enough, keeping away or being forbade to go, and yet audiences, if we accept modern speculation re the era, were ready to embrace stronger mix by 1949, as The Window scored well in a year when most RKO releases lost money, a year in fact where most of industry outlay lost money.

The Window borrowed a semi-doc leaf from Fox’s book, at least to extent of shoot in Gotham which put RKO crew on site during November-December 1947. Though story was set in sweltering summer, Ann noticed as we watched that Bobby Driscoll, and some of other kids, wore long sleeves, which now I understand in view of chilly days they worked. Realism push for American films was meant in part to bring us in line with street scenes as captured by Italians and others of the continent. Director Tetzlaff, formerly of behind camera work going back to silents, was for telling The Window on visual terms, while others of the crew were lately off RKO Pathe’s newsreel division, that unit having been sold to Warners. This all enabled stark look of backgrounds to much enhance conviction, the postwar cycle getting closer to life, if on melodrama terms, than studio-bound output had. You could better believe far-fetched tales, pulpy ones even, where told on streets we might recognize from daily commute.

The Window as location made and detail of those behind it are described in welcome detail by Richard Koszarski in his recent Keep ‘Em In The East: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance (Columbia University Press), a latest in the author’s splendid series of books revolved around filmmaking in the Northeast (Paramount Astoria, Fort Lee companies etc.). Nobody beats Koszarski when it comes to this kind of research and result. His work sure enlivened the Window watch for me. Older transfers of The Window were serviceable, improved at least from C&C 16mm prepared for syndication in 1956 when the RKO library went first to television. Warners has lately issued a Blu-Ray to bring out more of values The Window had, but were hidden, since first-runs. It is a revelation to up-tick regard for the film and make fresh viewing a must.

NOTE AT RIGHT: Bobby Driscoll appears in person to greet attendees at Cleveland's RKO Palace.

A Would-Be Precode "Bat"

 

Miss Pinkerton (1933) Is Blondell as Lead Sleuth

Old house mystery gets near horrific preserve of Doctor X, utilizing sets, if not two-colors, of that also 1932 Warners release. Joan Blondell issues screams (are they really hers?) to make Fay Wray's sound like bird calling, and there's enough skulking figures to put Cat and The Canary in the shade. So for all this, shouldn't Miss Pinkerton play better? Unfortunately, it's a precode that misses --- they can't all burn off the roof --- but for 66 minutes it lasts, Miss P gets by as half-heart reprise of The Bat, and by the same author, Mary Roberts Rinehart. Starring Joan Blondell may be a best current reason to watch, this an occasion (there weren't so many) when she was the clear lead and men for once (in this case, George Brent), had to be her sidekick. Precode aspects are muted; the thing could have been done verbatim three years later without losing anything other than JB shucking her nurse's uniform for bed in an opening reel. In fact, the yarn was remade as The Nurse's Secret in 1941, with Lee Patrick in the Blondell part, this one coming near the end of a WB row of nurse-solves-murder B's.

Would DEVOTION Please Ones Devoted to the Brontes?

 

Literary History As Warners Would Have It

Show of hands for Bronte Society members! There are many, worldwide, more than belong to any movie fan clutch. The Brontes go back past 170 years. Still you’d think they were alive for reverence they inspire. Charlotte (Jane Eyre), Emily (Wuthering Heights), support members (Anne, tragic brother Branwell) remain objects of feverish research and veneration. Think what we do picks nits? Try going against a Bronte scholar and see how long you last. I lately finished a book called The Bronte Myth, by Lucasta Miller, who tells us for 288 pages how fascination for the family never ended, scarcely paused, after last of siblings Charlotte packed off to eternity (1855). The author reviews various films spun off Bronte output, the 1944 Jane Eyre (but oddly not the 1934 version with Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive), Wuthering Heights (1939), and most notorious to her thinking, Devotion, the Warners Bronte bio, finished in 1943 but not released until 1946. We know the latter for Ida Lupino playing Emily, Olivia DeHavilland as Charlotte, and Nancy Coleman as Anne, Arthur Kennedy being Branwell. We can enjoy Devotion or not for having less at stake re accuracy, less that is unless one regards this literary family as sacred figures, which for many they very much are.

Lucasta Miller says Devotion “twisted the facts without aspiring to any form of higher truth … submerged the sisters in a bath of romantic and wildly inaccurate slush …” Not unexpectedly, I am here to defend Devotion, having re-visited it twice in as many weeks, and ready to take up cudgels in Warner’s defense. Firstly, too much bow to historic characters will stultify your movie. Ticket buyers are seldom there to deepen knowledge, especially of schoolbook sort. And what were the Brontes to a mass audience in 1946? Devotion’s theatrical trailer does not even mention them, and neither did posters. There had been popularity of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre on screen, but interest was for romance and stars, not source novelists. If these sisters can’t be ginned up for the sake of drama and conflict, why tell their saga at all? Simple enough to plug Brontes into Warners’ narrative formula, and let fans have it or leave it. Purists would revile whatever Hollywood attempted along these lines, piling vitriol on liberties necessarily taken. Devotion was held from release for three years. Stills had shown up in 1943 fan publications, so those who cared knew the Bronte story was waiting in wings. Critics remembered too and laid for Devotion until finally it floated in upon postwar waves. “A three-year-old strip of damp bark off Warners’ wartime backlog,” said James Agee, who amusingly called it “Little Women on an overcast day.”

Thackeray Played by Greenstreet? I Can Buy It

Here was where mainstream critics showed off cultivation by sticking pins in poor donkey that was Devotion, a movie meant to be nothing other than triangle fireworks spun off combo of Ida Lupino and Olivia De Havilland, “strange sisters” squabbling over dubious prize that was Paul Henried, while possibly sinister Sydney Greenstreet observes. These people were going to play to their personas no matter what, so being Brontes was good as essay of the Andrews sisters so far as image-conscious actresses thought. Did anyone ask Lupino-DeHavilland-Coleman if they read or studied the triumvirate? They’d no doubt reply yes, but I’ll guess investigation went no further than scripts driven by WB messenger to their respective digs or agent office. As to “Fat Man” Sydney Greenstreet (you wonder how such billing jabbed this distinguished player, time after humiliating time), there was forever expectation he’d be up to Casper Gutman tricks again, The Maltese Falcon having encased him in casting concrete. Greenstreet portrays William Makepeace Thackeray for a mid-point extended cameo to lend humor/color to otherwise solemn Devotion, yet publicity/ads saw him purely on Gutman terms (“the “Friend” … they couldn’t fool him --- they couldn’t trust him!”). Such was bolt and key to confine Gold Age contract talent. You had to pay into Devotion to enjoy what was a delightful departure from norm the Thackeray part was for Greenstreet.

Devotion has resonance and Bronte-relevance few could have seen coming in 1946. Charlotte and Emily of the real-life clan were co-opted by a nascent feminist movement that gathered steam for decades to precede and follow Devotion, these being role models for many. Warners knew it took dynamic and respected stars to play them. Heroines for the sisterhood came no better picked than Ida Lupino and Olivia DeHavilland, as fates turned out. Lupino after Devotion would begin a directing career unique to actresses hitherto limited to acting. She’d not live long enough to enjoy huzzahs of Blu-Ray box sets and celebration as a history maker, but make history she did, so yes, put her to equal stature with Emily Bronte, that is whenever we are finally ready to assign movies respect equal to literature (a day not yet arrived). Regard too Olivia DeHavilland, the rebel slave who broke contract chains at Warners, did her walkout, took it to courts, beat the Brothers soundly. Did Charlotte Bronte on her best day show such spunk? Devotion can be viewed in terms of two modern women staging and winning struggles not unlike the Brontes might have done given greater advantage than was possible in a first half of the nineteenth century. If you’re going to pitch Devotion to a current audience, pitch it this way.

Everything relative to the Bronte’s “Haworth” village was mocked-up by Warners, indoor moors, a parsonage constructed within stage walls, inside plus exterior, little of Haworth done under sun save one shot of a carriage driven off. This was reality of war years, but so artfully done that lovers of artifice (Me! Me!) might prefer it to a real thing. Besides, Haworth of so long ago was a nightmare to truly disturb sleep. The place was rotten with disease, mostly “consumption” (TB), life expectancy an appalling twenty-four years. 40% of children were dead by age six. The water which people drank seeped through graves with dead barely laid beneath heavy stones. Paterfamilias Bronte as vicar sometimes conducted eight funerals in a single day. An honest Bronte depiction would have been better produced by Val Lewton (a swell idea actually), as here was truly an isle of the dead. The Bronte parsonage was fronted by a cemetery choked to capacity, while the back opened to spooky moors that inspired Emily to write Wuthering Heights. She was understood, at least remembered, as a mystic driven more by supernatural force than creative impulse to inspire the radical book that Wuthering Heights proved to be.

Nothing To Suggest Period Setting Here

Chicago Goes Whole-Hog With Saucy Sell

For that matter, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre proved hot stuff for its time, many convinced that proper young women should not pen such violent emotion. Jane Eyre proved to be the big seller in its day however, Charlotte received by London literary circles, embraced by notables, though one hostess noted her “shattered” teeth, chill reminder that in those dental-deprived days, precious few held onto healthy mouths for long. But then that was case also for many stars of a Hollywood to come, lovely teeth yes, but too often not their own. Devotion takes expected course in letting Charlotte/Emily succumb to varied loves and be disappointed by them, just like in the movies. What drove WB more than history was their own successful string of sister showdowns that so far encompassed In This Our Life and The Hard Way, DeHavilland having starred on one, Lupino in the other. Maybe it was parted sneer that made Warners give Lupino billing over DeHavilland, Paul Henried also as object of rivalry, DeHavilland placed third, a sorry spot for someone who’d served Warners well for over ten years. Should she not have placed first, if not alongside Lupino over the title? Maybe that’s what made Olivia cuss so colorfully in a blooper from Devotion that WB ran for Christmas parties in 1946.

Lupino gets also the big “entrance” scene so that we know from a start that Emily will be our focus, even as Charlotte dominates for a second half, plus getting most daring of content, being kissed forcibly by Henried (“You are fortunate, Miss Charlotte, that I am not a woman beater”) and Victor Francen as married mentor at a girl’s academy who steers Charlotte into a carnival’s tunnel of love. Director Curtis Bernhardt said years later that he liked doing Devotion because he was “interested” in the Brontes, which may well have separated him from most others present, while Nancy Coleman recalled from years forward that Lupino and DeHavilland got along well after initial clashing, to a point where they called afternoon teas to recognize shared Britishness (OdeH parents were of Brit origin and Lupino was raised there). Coleman, being American, was not invited to the teas, but did not care. Extras did however, and so staged their own teas specifically to invite Nancy and get the snob stars’ goat. What a beehive, or hornet nest, was Classic Era picture-making. Devotion can be had from Warner Archive, could use a fresh transfer, someday perhaps to High-Def, though I can’t imagine it being high on Warners’ priority list.