Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me): My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather

Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Davis

The Metzinger Sisters of Silver Scenes are hosting a classic film event,The Great Imaginary Film Blogathon - and this is my entry. Click here for links to participating blogs.

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In 1926, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather published her eighth novel, a novella, really, titled My Mortal Enemy. Among the writer's many poetic works of prose fiction, the book earned a reputation for both its lean structure and dramatic plot. When I read it for the first time, I couldn't help but imagine what a powerful film My Mortal Enemy might be. Yet I also knew that, because of Cather's profound unhappiness with the film version of A Lost Lady (1934, starring Barbara Stanwyck), she hadn't allowed her other works to be adapted in her lifetime and that at the time of her death in 1947, the terms of her will dictated a ban on future film adaptations. Mostly because I saw in My Mortal Enemy's central character, Myra Driscoll Henshawe, a role that would provide a golden opportunity for the right actress to deliver a blistering tour de force performance, I despaired that it would never be dramatized.

The tale unfolds from the point of view of its narrator, a young Midwestern woman named Nellie, who grew up enchanted by the local legend of a great romance that had taken place not too many years before she was born. Myra Driscoll had been the pampered only heir of her great-uncle, the wealthiest man in town. Though well-educated and handsome, Oswald Henshawe was of more humble origins, and the love that developed between the two was unacceptable to Myra's guardian. Myra threw away the certain inheritance of most of her great-uncle's enormous fortune when she defied him and eloped with Oswald. For young Nellie, Myra and Oswald's "runaway marriage" was "the most interesting, indeed the only interesting" story among those told on "holidays or at family dinners."

Myra had been taken in by her great-uncle when she was orphaned in childhood. He took her traveling with him to Europe, had her portrait painted by an esteemed painter, lavished her with clothing and jewelry as well as a riding horse and "a Steinway piano." She was spirited and witty and pretty and her guardian took pride in her. Though she enjoyed a close, affectionate relationship with her uncle, she was also proud and willful. When he solemnly promised he would "cut her off without a penny" if she married Oswald, she didn't react immediately. Some months later, though, Myra went out on a sleigh-ride with friends and never returned. She and Oswald met at a pre-arranged time and place, were married with his parents and her friends on hand and departed in the wee hours on an express train.

Drawing by Edward Hopper

The Myra we glimpse through Nellie's reminiscences of the stories she's been told all her life is  passionate, impulsive, determined and full of self-confidence. The Myra we encounter when Nellie meets her in person is much older and very worldly. Myra and Oswald return to the small town 25 years after their elopement and Nellie, now 15, is finally introduced to the couple she has idealized as storybook lovers. She meets Myra first and is both bewitched and intimidated by the still-handsome but heavier-than-expected middle-aged woman. Myra's "charming, fluent voice, her clear light enunciation" bewilders Nellie, who also notes that her "sarcasm was so quick, so fine at the point - it was like being touched by a metal so cold that one doesn't know whether one is burned or chilled." Oswald is less imposing though also charismatic, and Nellie is captivated by his "dark and soft" eyes, shaped "exactly like half-moons." She observes "something about him that suggested personal bravery, magnanimity, and a fine, generous way of doing things." Nellie was more comfortable with Oswald than Myra, "because he did not frighten one so much." By the time the Henshawes leave days later, it has been decided that Nellie and her aunt will spend the Christmas holidays in New York and stay at a hotel near Oswald and Myra's apartment on Madison Square.

Madison Square painted by Paul Cornoyer, circa 1900

Once in New York, Nellie falls instantly in love with the couple's apartment in a brownstone on the north side of the Square. She enthusiastically takes in every detail - including long velvet curtains "lined with that rich cream-colour that lies under the blue skin of ripe figs." She is dazzled at the celebrity-studded New Years' Eve party the Henshawe's host, and enthralled when an opera star sings an aria from Bellini's Norma to piano accompaniment. But she also observes first-hand a darker side to the Henshawe marriage.  After spending a pleasant day with Myra in Central Park, Nellie notices in her friend what seems an "insane ambition" when the woman offhandedly reveals her deep disappointment that her lifestyle isn't at all grand enough to suit her. Then, finally, Nellie walks in on the pair in the midst of a ferocious argument. Myra has found a key on Oswald's key-ring that he cannot or will not explain to her satisfaction. Already, Nellie is aware that a young woman of Oswald's acquaintance has given him a gift of topaz cufflinks and that, to avoid Myra's jealous wrath, he had asked her aunt to pretend they were a Christmas present from her. As Nellie and her aunt leave New York, Myra makes sure to tell them that she knows the cufflinks were not a gift from the aunt, "I was sure to find out, I always do," she says. Nellie will not see the Henshawes for another ten years and when she does encounter them again, it comes as a complete surprise.

At 25, Nellie ventures, without much conviction, to a West Coast city (reminiscent of Los Angeles then) to teach. She takes rooms in an apartment-hotel and once there finds that the Henshawes are living in the same building. Their circumstances are much reduced and Myra, now a wheelchair-bound invalid, is dying. Oswald, who holds a low-paying job with the city while carefully tending to his wife's needs, looks far older than his years. Myra appears to Nellie "strong and broken, generous and tyrannical, a witty and rather wicked old woman." Those traits the younger woman had admired and disliked have become ever more distilled.

As death approaches, Myra grows more demanding and difficult, as does her dark resentment of Oswald. She is openly suspicious of him and seems to blame him for her every discomfort and complaint. On one particularly bad night she laments that she must "die like this, alone with my mortal enemy..." Nellie, chilled as she listens to these bitter words, reflects that "...violent natures like hers sometimes turn against themselves..." 

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I’ve envisioned many actresses in the role of Myra Henshawe.

A rich, multifaceted character like Myra would have tantalized Miss Bette Davis during her heyday. With William Wyler in the director’s chair, Davis had turned in three outstanding performances – in Jezebel (1938), The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941), all of them earning Best Actress Oscar nominations for her, and Jezebel bringing the gold statuette. And all three characters possessed traits in common with Myra – spoiled, impetuous Julie, manipulative Leslie Crosbie and fierce Regina Giddens. So, with Wyler directing Davis and an evocative score by Max Steiner, My Mortal Enemy could easily have been another stellar Warner Bros. release during Hollywood’s Golden Age. While Warners might’ve been inclined to put George Brent or Herbert Marshall in the role of Oswald, the studio’s best bet would’ve been Paul Henreid. It seems to me, though, that another actor, someone like Lew Ayres, would've been a better fit.

I’ve also imagined My Mortal Enemy as a Technicolor production from the 1950s starring Deborah Kerr and Gregory Peck. Kerr’s lofty poise and ability to convey tumultuous emotions (Black Narcissus, From Here to Eternity, The Innocents) would've made for an interesting take on Myra, who was as haughty as she was passionate. Gregory Peck would have had no trouble portraying gentle, magnetically attractive Oswald. A good pick to direct might’ve been John Huston, who so often and successfully adapted literary gems (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby Dick). Huston also devised the vivid color concept of Moulin Rouge (1952) and directed both Kerr and Peck in popular films of the 1950s.

In the late 1960s, My Mortal Enemy could’ve provided a high profile vehicle as well as a solid follow-up to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The characters were within their range, but Liz & Dick's  tabloid notoriety and worldwide superstardom at the time might well have overpowered the actual characters and story. Perhaps with Mike Nichols, who directed Virginia Woolf, at the helm, My Mortal Enemy could’ve been one of those memorable transitional films that bridged the shift from the studio era to the age of “easy riders and raging bulls.”

Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Meryl Streep was well established by the 1980s, and a complex and meaty role like Myra would’ve seemed tailor-made for her remarkable talents. Teaming her with Jeremy Irons, her co-star in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), would’ve worked well. On the other hand, there’s the superb but relatively underrated Judy Davis, who emerged with My Brilliant Career (1979) and A Passage to India (1984), earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the latter. Davis possesses, along with an ability to express the deep anguish of a divided soul, the vivacity and sharp humor integral to Myra’s personality. I would pair Davis with William Hurt and put them under the direction of Martin Scorsese, who later rendered a moving and meticulous adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1993).

By the early 1990s, adaptations of Willa Cather’s fiction for television had begun to surface. Perhaps the ban on “film” adaptations did not, technically, apply to broadcast media. A PBS production of O Pioneers!, starring Mary McDonnell, appeared in 1991 and a Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of the same novel appeared in 1992, starring Jessica Lange. In 1995, the USA Network aired a TV-movie version of My Ántonia, the second novel in Cather’s Prairie Trilogy (after Pioneers), starring Jason Robards and Eva Marie Saint. Finally, in 2001, the third book in the trilogy, The Song of the Lark, was adapted for PBS, starring Maximilian Schell and Alison Elliot.

Following the death of the last living executor of Willa Cather’s estate, Charles Cather, in 2011, The Cather Trust dropped the prohibition contained in her will against the publication of her letters and the adaptation of her fiction to film. In April of this year Knopf published The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. A dramatization of My Mortal Enemy, it seems, could actually come to pass. Cate Blanchett, now in her early 40s, is still young as well as old enough for the plum role of Myra. But the possibilities are endless - and fascinating.

Cate Blanchett by David Downton

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A Film to Watch for...on TCM Next Week

Actress Jeanne Eagels, one of the great legends of early 20th century American theater, became the toast of the New York stage by the time she was 30. She most famously originated the role of Sadie Thompson on Broadway in John Colton's Rain (based on a Somerset Maugham short story); the play ultimately ran for a record-setting 648 performances. Eagels appeared in only a handful films during her career, most of them silents. The two sound films she did make were both produced in 1929, and she received a Best Actress nod for her performance in the first, a film adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Letter. But Eagels' contention for an Academy Award occurred posthumously, for she had passed away, at age 39, in October 1929.

The acclaimed Bette Davis/William Wyler re-make of The Letter (1940) has been seen far more widely than the earlier Eagels/Jean de Limur version, but on October 24, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1929 original. New York Times film critic Dave Kehr has described Eagels' acting style as "radically innovative," and next Wednesday morning TCM viewers will have a chance to find out why.

Jeanne Eagels and Herbert Marshall in The Letter (1929)

Jeanne Eagels was born Eugenia Eagles in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1890. She left school to go to work while still a child and joined the Dubinsky Brothers traveling theater company as a dancer sometime between the age of 12 and 15. There she would eventually take lead roles in popular dramas such as "Camille, " "Romeo and Juliet" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Eagels later joined another touring company and made her way to New York where she hoped to develop her career. Though she was, for a time, a 'Ziegfeld Girl,' her primary focus was to build a theatrical reputation on the 'legitimate stage.' She was cast in a variety of small roles and, at some point, apparently developed a distinctly British accent off-stage. It was while she was vacationing in Paris that American actor Julian Etinge noticed and admired her, though they did not meet at that time. As it turned out, Etinge and Eagels would soon co-star in "The Crinoline Girl" (1914).

Portrait of Jeanne Eagels, 1918

In early 1916, Eagels earned her first Broadway credit with a featured role in "The Great Pursuit," which ran for just 29 performances. It was in 1917 that her star truly began to rise over The Great White Way with co-starring roles in three plays opposite George Arliss: "The Professor's Love Story," "Disraeli," and "Hamilton."  She went on to appear opposite George Abbott in David Belasco's hit, "Daddies," from 1918 - 1919. Eagels was so popular in her 1920 starring role in "The Wonderful Thing" that her entrances were greeted with such enthusiastic applause she had to wait for the house to quiet before she could go on. She opened in "Rain" in 1922 and it ran on Broadway and on tour over the next four years. She turned down many roles following the play's enormous success (including the role of Roxie Hart in the 1926 production of "Chicago"), but returned to Broadway in 1926 for George Cukor's production of "Her Cardboard Lover" with Leslie Howard.

Before going on tour with "Her Cardboard Lover," Eagels took time out to star in MGM's silent production of the Monta Bell-directed "Man, Woman and Sin" (1927) opposite silent screen idol John Gilbert. Bell would produce and write the dialogue for her talking debut in The Letter two years later.

At the height of her stage career Eagels, who had health issues along with a fondness for alcohol, became notably unreliable. When, in 1928, she failed to appear for scheduled performances of "Her Cardboard Lover" in Milwaukee and St. Louis, the show's producers requested that Actor's Equity ban her from appearing on stage with other Equity members. An 18 month ban ensued. During that time she appeared on the vaudeville circuit performing scenes from "Rain."  She was also free to make films - for which stage actors with trained voices were now in great demand. Following her high-voltage performance in "The Letter," Eagels starred opposite Fredric March in Jealousy (1929). This film was also re-made much later with Bette Davis in the starring role - as Deception in 1946. Eagels' next film was to have been The Laughing Lady (1929), but she dropped out of the project and her role went to Ruth Chatterton. 

Jeanne Eagels, 1921

While in New York in September 1929, Jeanne Eagels underwent successful in-patient surgery for ulcers on her eyes.  A few weeks later, apparently fully recovered, she suddenly fell ill. She was taken to a private hospital where, as she waited to be seen by a doctor, she went into convulsions and died.  Three different coroner's reports followed and all agreed that her demise was caused by an overdose - but each named a different substance. One report pointed to alcohol, another blamed chloral hydrate and a third attributed her death to heroin.

Jeanne Eagels was admired as an actress by many in her day. Bette Davis was reportedly a fan and Louis B. Mayer, taken with Eagels' performance, purportedly deemed The Letter required viewing for actors under contract to MGM at the time. But Eagels' turbulent life off-screen also inspired. "The Shooting Star," a Broadway play of 1933 starring Francine Lattimore was based on her life. The storyline for Dangerous (1935), the film in which Bette Davis portrayed a declining Broadway star (and for which she won her first Oscar), reflected elements of Eagels' own decline. And, in 1957, Kim Novak starred in the biopic Jeanne Eagels, a film that played fast and loose with the facts of Eagels' life story.
 

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The Letter (1929) starring Jeanne Eagels, Reginald Owen and Herbert Marshall airs on TCM Wednesday, October 24 at 8:45 am Eastern/4:45 am Pacific. A few hours later, at 11 am Eastern/8 am Pacific, TCM will air the Lewis Milestone-directed version of Rain (1932) starring Joan Crawford.

Jeanne Eagels as Leslie Crosbie in The Letter (1929)

Sources:
Internet Broadway DataBase
Jeanne Eagels website

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William Wyler's "The Letter" (1940) - Starting with a Bang

 

This piece is my contribution for The Movie Projector's blogathon in honor of William Wyler. Click here for more information and links to participating blogs.

Of director William Wyler, Bette Davis once declared, “It was he who helped me realize my full potential as an actress.” Of the actress, Wyler would recall, “She was a director’s dream.” Together they made three very popular and critically acclaimed Hollywood films. The pair first collaborated on the 1938 Warner Bros. production of Jezebel. For her performance Bette Davis won the second of her two Best Actress Academy Awards. Davis was sorely disappointed that Wyler had not received a Best Director nod for his work on the film and would later credit her Oscar-winning portrayal to him, “It was all Wyler,” she wrote.

Bette Davis and William Wyler

In January 1940, Warner Bros. announced that Bette Davis would star in a remake of a film adapted from a play Somerset Maughamhad dramatized from his own short story, The Letter. In April, William Wyler was hired to direct, on loan from Samuel Goldwyn who would, in turn, be able to use Bette Davis for his upcoming The Little Foxes, which would be the last film Wyler and Davis would make together. In an interview years later, Wyler recalled that he had read Howard Koch’s script for The Letter and liked it and that he wanted to work with Davis again. His only regret was that cinematographer Gregg Toland was unavailable. For her part, Davis was eager to work with Wyler on another very promising project; Maugham’s sensational tale of British colonial “white mischief” was set in the exotic Far East and replete with adultery, deceit and murder.

The Malay Peninsula

By the time he traveled to British Malaya in 1921, Somerset Maugham was a well established writer of best-selling fiction and popular stage plays. While in the colonies he met an attorney, Courtenay Dickinson, who told him of a scandalous case he’d handled ten years earlier. In 1911, Dickinson represented the wife of the headmaster at a boys’ school in Kuala Lumpur who shot and killed a male friend one night while her husband was out. The headmaster was William J. Proudlock, a British citizen, and his school was the prestigious Victorian Institute, founded in the capital city in 1894. Proudlock’s wife, Ethel, had been visited by William Crozier Stewart, an engineering consultant, while her husband was at dinner with an associate one night in April 1911. Though Mrs. Proudlock claimed that Stewart had attempted rape and that she shot him (several times) in self-defense, she was found guilty at trial and sentenced to death. The outcry of the local British community prevailed, however, and Ethel Proudlock was freed after serving a scant five months in prison. Maugham developed a fictionalized account of the case, with details changed and flourishes added; Maugham said of himself, “I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller.” The Letter first appeared in a collection of his short stories in 1924.

Somerset Maugham’s stage adaptation of The Letterdebuted in London in 1927, starring Gladys Cooper as rubber plantation wife Leslie Crosbie and Nigel Bruce as plantation manager Robert Crosbie. The play premiered on Broadway later that year starring Katharine Cornell.In 1929, illustrious American actress Jeanne Eagels played the lead in a Paramount film directed by Jean de Limur; her co-stars included Reginald Owen as Crosbie and Herbert Marshall as shooting victim Geoffrey Hammond. Eagels received a posthumous Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

Jeanne Eagels and Reginald Owen, The Letter (1929)

Somerset Maugham’s short story opens in Singapore within the offices of Howard Joyce, the attorney representing Leslie Crosbie, who is charged with murder. Joyce’s clerk, Ong, ushers in Robert Crosbie, husband of the accused. The lawyer expresses concern that Crosbie is not bearing up well under the strain of his wife’s arrest and incarceration. Maugham re-engineered the opening to powerful dramatic effect when he adapted it for the stage. As the curtain rises, the sound of a pistol shot is heard. A man (Hammond) staggers across a sitting-room toward its veranda and cries “Oh, my God!” A woman (Crosbie) follows, firing her gun into him even after he has fallen.

Howard Koch’s script for William Wyler’s film opened with an exterior shot of the Crosbie bungalow, the sound of a sudden gunshot followed by a woman stalking a man as he flees, her revolver blazing. Reading this scenario for the first time, Wyler thought it was literally “starting with a bang” and decided the scene should be set up “…with an opposite mood. A mood of silence, quiet, people sleeping…” Wyler also wanted to evoke “…a feeling of the dank, humid jungle atmosphere of rubber plantation country” and opened the film with an uncut and wordless 2-minute sequence:

Under a vivid full moon and cloud cluttered night sky, the camera sweeps through a rubber plantation where a tree oozes latex into a collection pot as Malay workers lounge or sleep in hammocks and a white Cockatoo perches on a fence. A gunshot shatters the quiet and the startled bird takes flight. A man emerges onto the veranda of a lamp-lit bungalow and lurches down its steps. Close on his heels strides a woman with a gun, her face a study in fierce resolve. She fires shot after shot into his body until he is a crumpled a heap at the foot of the steps. The moon goes dark behind a drift of clouds as Max Steiner’s ominous and hypnotic theme surges.

Wyler reflected,“…it was a more effective opening this way, by having this silence,” and Howard Koch, who fondly remembered working on The Letter, remarked on Wyler’s fine-tuned “instinct for staging.” The opening sequence of The Letter, which took a full day to shoot, establishes not only the film’s noirish mood and hot-house atmosphere, but also the controlled ferocity intrinsic to Leslie Crosbie’s character. From this spectacular beginning The Letter unfolds slowly and deliberately, revealing and suggesting its secrets with painstaking care. The film evolves with unrelenting tension and suspense and is remarkable for its astonishingly expressive camera work and atmospheric effects…

The image of the full moon, breaking through heavy clouds or peering down between the fan-like leaves of palm trees, recurs and has been much discussed over the years. According to Wyler, the image of the moon was his attempt “to bring in something mysterious and supernatural” to the story. He knew that this repeated image would lend itself to many interpretations, but his own desire was to add “…a bit of supernaturalism, which I thought belonged.” Another of Wyler’s noteworthy atmospheric accents is the occasional sound of tinkling wind chimes. According to Wyler this was not a planned effect, but something he came up with during filming. There happened to be decorative Chinese wind chimes on the set and when the soundman began to complain that the tinkling annoyed him, the director considered the possibilities and decided they could be used to interesting effect. He thought the chimes made “…an eerie kind of noise, which would heighten the suspense.”

James Stephenson reads "the letter"

At the time The Letter was released, William Wyler had recently commented that he believed the sole responsibility for the quality of any film rests entirely with its director. He felt that the director, whose every decision culminates in what ultimately appears onscreen, is accountable for everything including the performances of the players. The Letter is marked by high caliber acting all around and two impeccable portrayals in particular. Bette Davis is radiant yet coolly controlled as the emotionally repressed Leslie Crosbie, a woman capable of coy charm, relentless guile and calculating deceit - as well as violent rage. James Stephenson, in a breakthrough performance as Howard Joyce, Leslie’s attorney, depicts an intelligent, inherently civilized man manipulated into a wretched compromise. His Howard Joyce, suspicious of the case from the start, endures a visibly wrenching struggle with his own conscience as he becomes ever more entangled in the moral intricacies of Leslie’s defense. The scenes between Bette Davis and James Stephenson are some of the richest moments in the film.

On one important point Wyler and Davis disagreed and that was how the actress should deliver her crucial line at the film’s climax. In the scene, Leslie and Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall) are alone together in a darkened room, their marriage in tatters. When Robert asks Leslie if she loves him, she at first says yes, then cracks and cries out, “….with all my heart, I still love the man I killed!” Wyler wanted Davis to look Herbert Marshall directly in the eye as she said these words, but Davis disagreed, she felt no woman could do that, it was too brutal, she would avert her eyes. The two fought and could not agree. Finally, and for the first time in her career, Bette Davis walked off the set. She soon returned and later recalled, “I came back eventually – end result, I did it his way. It played validly, heaven knows, but to this day I think my way was the right way.” She also remarked, “I lost, but I lost to an artist.” 37 years later, Davis was honored as the fifth recipient, and the first woman, to be gvien the Life Achievement Award by the American Film Institute (William Wyler had received the award the previous year). In her 1987 memoir This ’n That, she remembered that the high point of the evening, for her, was when Wyler spoke. He said, “If tonight I brought up the subject of [that] scene in The Letter, Bette would insist on going back to Warner Brothers and reshooting it the way she wanted it.” According to Bette,  “Willie’s speech was short and funny and had the added advantage of being true.”

One battle Wyler did not win was with the Production Code. He had made a change to Maugham's ending. The author's and de Limur’s versions end with Leslie's realization that her punishment for her crime will be to live out her years in a country she despises with a man for whom she feels no passion. The closing line is her confession that even now she loves the man she shot. Wyler and Koch devised a more dramatic demise for Mrs. Crosbie, she would die by the dagger of Hammond’s widow. Wyler’s plan was that, “The thing should end with [Gale Sondergaard] killing Bette Davis.” But at the time “nobody could get away with killing somebody, so for censorship reasons we had to tack on the scene of her being arrested.” Wyler could never accept this “silly anticlimactic” ending and complained to the end of his days that the scene of Sondergaard's arrest still ought to be cut from his picture.

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The Letter was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture (Warner Bros.), Best Director (Wyler), Best Actress (Davis), Best Supporting Actor (James Stephenson, who died suddenly in 1941), Best Music, Original Score (Max Steiner), Best Cinematography, Black and White (Tony Gaudio) and Best Film Editing (Warren Low).

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The Letter airs on Turner Classic Movies Friday, June 29, 6:00am Eastern/3:00am Pacific.

Sources:
A Talent for Trouble, Jan Herman, Putnam (1995)
William Wyler - The Authorized Biography, Axel Madsen, Thomas Y. Crowell Co. (1973)
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis, Ed Sikov, Henry Holt (2007)
"Imagery and Sound in William Wyler's The Letter," interview by Charles Higham, Columbia University Oral Research Office (1972)
The Letter: A Play in Three Acts, W. Somerset Maugham, George H. Duran Co. (1925)
The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, Doubleday (1934)

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Thank You

Bette Davis, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex  (1939)

When I received an email from Rick Armstrong the other day telling me that I'd been awarded the Classic Movie Blog Association's 2011  "Best Review/Drama" CiMBA for my post on The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, I was thrilled - and also surprised. The post had originally been my entry in CMBA's "Movies of 1939 Blogathon" last spring and I'd always thought of it as something of an outlier, being about a film that isn't generally counted among the truly great films of that much-vaunted movie year.

I took another look at the post and read it with, I'll admit, a certain amount of pride (deserved or misplaced...who knows), and what came through most for me as I re-read my own words was the depth of my admiration for Bette Davis. I remembered that The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, though a moneymaker for Warners and a nominee for five Academy Awards, was bereft of statuettes and plaques. And I thought with some satisfaction (and cheek), "At last, Bette, this film that you were so eager to make, that you insisted was your 'tankard of tea,' has won an award!"

Thanks to everyone who voted for my CiMBA entry - as well as those who simply liked it.  I'm honored.

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CMBA Movies of 1939 Blogathon - The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

“In 1939, I secured my career and my stardom forever. I made five pictures in twelve months and every one of them was successful.” Bette Davis was referring to the string of movies she made in rapid succession, beginning with The Sisters in 1938 and followed by four more the next year – Dark Victory, Juarez, The Old Maid and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. If 1939 was a watershed year for Hollywood, it was, too, for the actress who was about to begin her reign as America’s top film actress.

Of Human Bondage (1934)

Bette Davis spent most of the first half of the 1930s making her way through a series of mostly dreary film assignments, first for Universal and then for Warner Bros. Her startling performance in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) changed the course of her career. She won her first Best Actress Oscar for a downbeat role in Dangerous (1935), and her second for her turn as a headstrong Southern belle in Jezebel (1938).

Maxwell Anderson’s Elizabeth, the Queen, a historical drama written in blank verse a la Shakespeare, opened on Broadway in 1930. It starred Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt and ran for 147 performances. The production and Fontanne’s portrayal of Elizabeth I were legendary. Eight years after the play closed, an adaptation would make its way to the screen.

Based on events of Elizabeth’s late years, the story follows her relationship with the much younger Earl of Essex. After a victory against Spain at Cadiz, Essex returns to England a hero. Ambitious and overconfident, he is a favorite of the queen. However, the two are often at odds; she favors measured statesmanship and he is for bold action; both have a taste for power. Not surprisingly, the Earl is unpopular with the queen’s advisors who maneuver him into leading an ill-fated intervention in Ireland. Essex fails and returns to England in disgrace. Unable to bear ignominy, he attempts to raise a rebellion against the queen. This ends badly for Essex. 



Elizabeth I by Hans Holbein

When Bette Davis learned that producer Hal Wallis bought Anderson’s play for her, she was elated. “Elizabeth was my tankard of tea,” she later recalled. Familiar with the Broadway production and Fontanne’s performance, she saw in the part an exciting opportunity as well as a real challenge. Davis was only 31 at the time and she would be portraying Elizabeth in her 60s. Additionally, the script primarily consisted of complex blank verse dialogue. As was typical of her, Davis threw herself into the project completely. She began extensive research on the Elizabethan period and monarchy, and she was happily surprised when she saw in Holbein's portraits of Elizabeth a resemblance between herself and the queen.

Davis campaigned for Laurence Olivier to be cast in the role of Essex. “He was perfect for the part…he was arrogant, beautiful, virile and talented,” she remembered years afterward. Olivier was in between Wuthering Heights (1939) and Rebecca (1940) at the time, but Jack Warner wasn’t enthusiastic. Olivier was not yet a star in the U.S. (though he was on the very brink) and Warner felt the film required a box office powerhouse equal to Davis. The adaptation of Anderson’s play was a big picture for Warners in 1939 and Jack Warner wanted Errol Flynn, the studio’s hottest leading man, for Essex. Flynn had completed The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Dawn Patrol and Dodge City all within the past year and was at the height of his popularity. Davis was not convinced. She did not think Flynn had the experience to cope with blank verse or the professionalism to work at it. But Warner prevailed; Flynn it would be. Davis was deeply disappointed. Perhaps the fact that Flynn was being paid twice as much as she amplified her disappointment…

Bette Davis and Michael Curtiz on the set

Warner Bros. veteran Michael Curtiz was tapped to direct. Though Curtiz and Flynn collaborated on several popular films, the dynamic between them was not ideal. Curtiz viewed  Flynn as little more than a blank slate, referring to the actor as “my beautiful puppet.” On the other hand, Davis put up with nothing from Curtiz on this set, she would not  forgive or forget his dismissive treatment of her before she was a star.

The supporting cast was steeped in solid character actors: Donald Crisp, Henry Daniell, Vincent Price, Henry Stephenson, Leo G. Carroll, Alan Hale and James Stephenson. Olivia de Havilland appeared intermittently and young Nanette Fabray (Fabares) made an affecting screen debut as ladies in waiting.

Though Davis anticipated the film and her role as “a dream come true,” the production did not go smoothly.

It might seem logical that in making a film of a famed stage drama, the name of the play would remain intact. But Flynn did not like it that his character was not mentioned in the title and insisted on a change. The Knight and the Lady was proposed. For Davis, whose character was the centerpiece of the drama, that was unacceptable. The Lady and the Knight was offered as an option. No one liked this, including Davis. The success of Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), an Oscar-winner for Charles Laughton, inspired the film’s eventual title.

Bette Davis and Errol Flynn

When Olivia de Havilland arrived to begin work, she was still doing retakes for Gone With the Wind. She claimed that she wasn’t ready to start, she couldn’t play two characters at the same time. Jack Warner convinced her, at least to some extent, that she could.

Davis insisted on authentic costume design, but Curtiz thought that authentic costumes would be “too much for the camera” and wanted them scaled down. According to Davis, designer Orry-Kelly made two complete sets of Elizabeth’s costumes – the first conforming to Curtiz’s edict, the second historically accurate. Davis tested in the first set and played her role in the second. “Tricky is the determined female,” she later mused.

Makeup artist Perc Westmore worked closely with Bette Davis to achieve Elizabeth’s age and appearance. He remarked on her dedication to the part but said that he had to walk a fine line to create what Davis wanted while not exceeding what Jack Warner would tolerate.

As it turned out, Davis’s concerns about Errol Flynn were well-founded. Notes in the film’s production reports mention the actor’s difficulty with the dialogue. Flynn apparently protested, “I can’t remember lines like that,” and screenwriters Aeneas MacKenzie and Norman Reilly Raine simplified his lines by rewriting them out of verse.

In one famous scene (and infamous incident), Davis gave Flynn a hearty slap across the face with her heavily jeweled hand. Flynn called it a “right hook” and reportedly never forgave her for it. Davis did not seem to think she’d done anything out of character…

Orry-Kelly, Perc Westmore, art director Anton Grot and cinematographer/d.p. Sol Polito, all masters of their respective cinematic arts, worked inspired magic. Polito was especially valuable on the production for his wizardry with Technicolor.

Anton Grot’s lavish sets are an eyeful. At times Elizabeth seems to exist as if within an enormous chest of jewels, so surrounded is she by plush shades of amethyst, turquoise, ruby, emerald and gold. And Grot creates an evocative mood...in vaulted candle-lit chambers, a massive fireplace blazes and flickering shadows leap across dim walls.

Art Director Anton Grot

Anton Grot dominated art direction at Warner Bros. from the late '20s through the 1940s and is often credited for the realism of "the Warner Bros. look" of the 1930s. He was known for his interest in the expressive qualities of light on film, and his work was influenced by European modernism. Nominated for five competitive Oscars, Grot was given a special technical achievement award in 1940 for his design of a "water ripple and wave illusion machine." His films include Little Caesar, Anthony Adverse, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Captain Blood, and Mildred Pierce. The UCLA Library houses a collection of Grot's original sketches (see below and click here to see more).

Anton Grot's sketch of the court of Elizabeth I

Bette Davis in an intriguing performance is the finest of the film's fine qualities. In his Great Stars monograph on the actress, David Thomson wrote of Davis that she "often moves like a beast fearful of being leashed." As Elizabeth, her erratic gestures and movements, her voice and her eyes are alive with frustration and exasperation, insecurity and rage. At times she seems to prowl the queen's quarters like a caged cat. Davis captures the spirit of a weary but wily and indomitable monarch, a woman trapped in the power she has fought hard to hold.

While I don't think Flynn was up to this script, it isn't hard to imagine an aging queen (or any woman) falling victim to his many obvious charms. It's true that Olivier's brooding charisma along with his mastery of Shakespeare might've made for a compelling Essex - and I'm very sure he would have held his own with Bette Davis. But many among the film's cast and technical crew were veterans of Curtiz/Flynn action adventures and that may have something to do with why, overall, Elizabeth and Essex plays as a slightly off-balance marriage between historical drama and swashbuckling epic.

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex was a moneymaker for Warner Bros. Variety reported, “Bette Davis dominates the production at every turn…” and pointed out it was the first picture to be released using fast new Technicolor methods. The picture's "slow spots" were discounted as minor shortcomings.

Bette Davis and Errol Flynn

Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times, voicing a complaint common among critics that Flynn was a weak Essex, observed that Davis delivered “a strong, resolute, glamour-skimping characterization against which Mr. Flynn’s Essex has about as much chance as a beanshooter against a tank.”

Bette Davis needed a rest at this point. “I weighed 80 pounds when I discarded Bess’s ruff and hoop for the last time. I was really exhausted. I knew I must take a holiday and recharge the battery…”

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex received five Academy Award nominations - for art direction, color cinematography, special effects, music score and sound recording. Davis was nominated for Dark Victory instead.

Nominated for art direction, cinematography, effects, score and sound

Forty years after the film’s release, the actress told a biographer, “I have very mixed emotions when I see it.” She questioned whether she had, young as she was at the time, enough life experience to draw upon for the role. And she admitted that she had “secretly” been a bit unsure about playing Elizabeth.

In her 1962 autobiography, A Lonely Life, Bette Davis recalled a moment that stood out in her memory of the production. One day Charles Laughton visited the set. It was her first meeting with an actor she admired very much.

“Hi, Pop,” she greeted him, playfully referring to his role as Henry VIII.

“Ah, it’s my favorite daughter,” he replied.

As they talked, Bette mentioned that perhaps she had a lot of nerve to be trying to play Elizabeth. Laughton’s response was something she never forgot.

“Never stop daring to hang yourself, Bette,” he told her.

~

Click here for a full list of links to blogs participating in CMBA's "Classic Movies of 1939" blogathon.

The Classic Movie Blog Association honored this post with the 2011 CiMBA award for Best Film Review (Drama)

Sources:
The Lonely Life (1962) by Bette Davis, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography (2006) by Charlotte Chandler, Dark Victory : The Life of Bette Davis (2007) by Ed Sikov, Bette Davis (2009) by David Thomson (Great Stars series)

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(Not Quite) All About Bette...

Bette Davis was born 103 years ago on April 5 in Lowell, Massachusetts. She attended drama school as a young woman and made her Broadway debut in "Broken Dishes" in 1929. She headed to Hollywood in 1930 where she was tested and signed by Universal. When her Universal contract was not renewed and she was on the verge of returning to New York and Broadway she received a call from Warner Bros. This was not exactly the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but it was the beginning of the truly legendary screen career of a groundbreaking actress.

In her career of more than 100 films, Bette Davis was nominated for 11 Best Actress Academy Awards (including one write-in campaign) and won two.

In her heyday, Bette received Best Actress nods five years in a row and, in 1942, was the highest paid woman in America.

She won the Cannes Film Festival's 1951 Best Actress Award for All About Eve.

She was nominated for four Emmy Awards and won one. The list of her various award nominations and wins goes on and on...

She was the first woman to be the president of AMPAS and the the first woman honored with the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.

She was one of a group of Hollywood stars who established the Hollywood Canteen for soldiers traveling through Los Angeles during World War II.

Not to be forgotten (for it speaks to Bette's status as an icon)...the #1 single of 1981 and the winner of "Song of the Year" and "Record of the Year" Grammy Awards was "Bette Davis Eyes," sung by Kim Carnes.

Even after suffering breast cancer and a stroke, Bette Davis continued acting until the final year of her life.
 

All About Eve (1950)

Bette Davis's performances in these films were nominated for Best Actress Oscars:

Of Human Bondage (1934) ( write-in)
Dangerous (1935)
Jezebel (1938)
Dark Victory (1939)
The Letter (1940)
The Little Foxes (1941)
Now, Voyager (1942)
Mr. Skeffington (1944)
All About Eve (1950)
The Star (1952)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

She won for Dangerous and Jezebel but was also "robbed" on more than one occasion...

What else can one say about Bette Davis? A lot! However, what actor James Woods had to say in a TCM "Word of Mouth" segment a few years ago hits the bulls-eye for me and bears repeating in honor of her birthday...

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