A Chill in the Air - Part II

For a few years now, Turner Classic Movies has traditionally aired The Uninvited (1944) during Halloween season. A gothic mystery/romance with a lighter heart than Rebecca (1940), The Uninvited is another of my cold night favorites.


Though lacking any gun or knife, let alone even a drop of blood or a hint of gore, The Uninvited can subtly spook the unsuspecting viewer. The action begins jauntily enough as a pair of vacationing Londoners, brother and sister, hike the cliffs of Devon and Cornwall and find, fall in love with and purchase a long-empty mansion overlooking the sea. The two later come to the realization that their new home is haunted and that their new friend, the former owner's lovely granddaughter, is a target of the malevolent apparition who inhabits the house. This is a phantom whose arrival, sometimes partially materialized, brings with it a penetrating chill that terrorizes all who encounter it...including the family pets. And there is the sudden overpowering scent of mimosa that signals an unseen presence as it fills a room. Heightening these spine-tickling proceedings is a rapturous score by Victor Young with a haunting motif that later became the popular standard, "Stella by Starlight." The film was directed by Lewis Allen and photographed by cinematographer Charles Lang (Midnight, A Foreign Affair, The Magnificent Seven, Charade) who was Oscar-nominated for The Uninvited.

The Uninvited stars Ray Milland, one of Paramount's most charming and enduring players, and Ruth Hussey as the brother and sister duo. Donald Crisp is the former owner of 'Windward House,' and Gail Russell appears in her first film role as his granddaughter, Stella. Cornelia Otis Skinner portrays one Miss Holloway, a sinister creature reminiscent of Rebecca's Mrs. Danvers - and any number of characters played by Gale Sondergaard...

Cornelia Otis Skinner as Miss Holloway

This year in tandem with watching The Uninvited, I read the book on which it was based. Irish author Dorothy Macardle's novel was first published in 1942, four years after du Maurier's smashing success, Rebecca, appeared in print and two years after the enormously popular Hitchcock/Selznick 'picturization' was released. It, too, is of the modern gothic genre with roots reaching back to Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Macardle's book is engaging, lively and, though not equal to du Maurier's classic in any sense, it entertainingly transports today's reader to a time, place and world view now several decades gone. Macardle could weave a tale and hold one's attention, telling her spooky story of warring spirits from the first person perspective of the protagonist, Roderick Fitzgerald, a London journalist whose move to the seaside brings with it hair-raising adventure, a new turn in his writing career and new love.

Dorothy Macardle

Author Dorothy Macardle, I discovered, was involved in far more than writing novels during her 69 years (1889 - 1958). Born in Ireland into a well-heeled brewing family, she taught after graduating from college but was soon involved in political and social activism. She gained an international reputation as an Irish nationalist writer and was an intimate associate of Eamon de Valera, a leader in Ireland's fight for independence and president of country from 1959 to 1973. Macardle is best known today for her historical opus, the nearly 1,000 page The Irish Republic, an account of Ireland's struggle for freedom between 1916 and 1923. Quite amazing that the woman could also write a plausible ghost story in her spare time...

The adaptation from novel to screen is largely faithful. The book is peopled by a greater variety of characters and the back story of each principal is more detailed. On screen, the haunted mansion's name changed from 'Cliff's End' to 'Windward House,' Roderick Fitzgerald is referred to as 'Rick' rather than 'Rod' and Miss Holloway's role is expanded. Fitzgerald's profession was changed from writer to composer - perhaps in order to ease giving Victor Young's "Stella by Starlight" its center-stage moment in the film.

Young's theme for The Uninvited enhances the film's romantic and mysterious story. By comparison, Franz Waxman's score for Rebecca, though also dramatic and powerful, seems to me, at times, overwhelming. I knew Bernard Herrmann had, when he was with CBS Radio, scored an earlier radio presentation of Rebecca and I found this intriguing given his later association with Hitchcock.

In December 1938 Orson Welles' Campbell Playhouse (formerly the Mercury Theatre on the Air) premiered and featured the first radio adaptation of Rebecca; it starred Margaret Sullavan as the second Mrs. de Winter, Welles as Maxim de Winter and Mildred Natwick as Mrs Danvers. Bernard Herrmann provided the score:

In the end, the music Herrmann scored for Rebecca eventually made its way to the screen; much of it was used in Jane Eyre (1943) starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.

Gail Russell

19-year-old Gail Russell, in her screen debut as Stella Meredith, is another high point in The Uninvited. Fresh-faced, with dark, tousled hair and long, thick lashes, Russell projects a fetching mixture of fragility and intensity as a young girl faced with a deadly threat just as she experiences first love. Russell followed The Uninvited with a role in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay - coincidentally, she portrayed Cornelia Otis Skinner in the film (she played Skinner again in Our Hearts Were Growing Up). In 1945 Russell was cast in a quasi-sequel to The Uninvited called The Unseen (with Joel McCrea), and she made a number of films co-starring with John Wayne, who befriended her when they made Angel and the Badman in 1947. But Russell's life and career were blighted by serious personal demons. A beautiful teenager who'd been embarrassed by the nickname "The Hedy Lamarr of Santa Monica High," she had long suffered from crippling shyness. When Paramount Pictures came calling she agreed to pursue a movie career; her mother had insisted, the family needed money.  Russell developed a habit early on of drinking before she faced the cameras - it helped steady her nerves. This habit developed into a deadly addiction that shortened her life; she died in 1961 at age 36.

The characters of Stella Meredith in The Uninvited and Rebecca's second Mrs. de Winter are fairly similar - both are young, inexperienced and in need of  protection and guidance. But one character evolves more than the other. Throughout The Uninvited, Stella remains a maiden in need of rescue by older, wiser Roderick Fitzgerald. In Rebecca, the second Mrs. de Winter begins as an awkward, coltish young lady utterly intimidated by all that her new status as bride of an aristocrat brings. But when Maxim de Winter confesses his role in Rebecca's death and reveals his vulnerability, her transformation into a more confident, assured woman begins. Fontaine's portrayal of this maturing is seamless.

Joan Fontaine as the second Mrs. de Winter

Joan Fontaine, who became a star with Rebecca, enjoyed continued success. Cast again by Hitchcock in 1941's Suspicion, with Cary Grant, she won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Other noteworthy films include Jane Eyre in 1943 with Orson Welles and Max Ophuls' stunning Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948). She continued to work in film and on TV until the mid-1990s and just recently celebrated her 94th birthday; she and her older sister Olivia de Havilland, however, remain estranged...

My meanderings through Rebecca and The Uninvited on page and screen began as I sought enjoyable ways to spend the crisp, dark evenings that come with the late months of the year. This quest brought several cozy nights charged with chills, thrills and romance and now I'm tempted to continue...perhaps with another foray into the realm of the gothic  -  once defined as the Cinderella story gone very wrong...

In the meantime, I've been trying out different hot drink confections to help fend off the chill. My latest experiments involve a healthier cocoa mix called 'WonderCocoa' and a new twist on the hot toddy called 'The Laureate.' Click here for ideas on what to sip to stay warm on a cold, dark night...

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A Chill in the Air - Part I

Halloween has come and gone, a time change looms (“fall back”) and winter is just around the corner. Early twilight and cool evenings are here and it seems to me that when the weather starts getting nippy and night falls early, nothing satisfies like a crackling fire, something either steaming or iced to drink and a well-chosen book or movie to settle into. What I'm reading and watching as autumn deepens this year are books and the films that were made of them.

The Uninvited, 1944

I’ve been reading Dorothy Macardle’s classic ghost story, The Uninvited, a novel that made its way to film by way of Paramount Pictures in 1944. I’d seen The Uninvited again recently and became curious about its original source material.  I’ve also picked up Daphne du Maurier’s romantic thriller Rebecca once more and have happily revisited the 1940 Hitchcock-directed Selznick production.

Rebecca, 1940

I don’t know how old I was when I first read the words, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” but do know I was young because, when I came upon du Maurier’s description of 50-foot rhododendrons I didn’t know what they were or how to pronounce the word (...if only I could remember what I called them in my imagination back then...). As I re-read Rebecca, I realized how completely Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning film had supplanted the book, erasing nearly all but the opening line and “rhododendrons” from my memory.

The film is a generally literal adaptation, barring Production Code-dictated changes (most notably, Rebecca's death is accidental in the film rather than outright murder as in the book) and a few other alterations. This is largely thanks to producer David O. Selznick, who was wary when it came to tinkering with literature.

Selznick, Fontaine & Hitchcock at Academy Awards dinner

Hitchcock and Selznick weathered a famously rocky collaboration on Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first American film and his first under contract to Selznick International Pictures. The director counted himself lucky that Selznick was still involved with Gone with the Wind - which lessened his interference on Rebecca to some extent. For his part, Selznick was flabbergasted by the director’s stubborn habit of shooting very little ‘coverage’ – or extra footage, effectively “editing in camera” (filming only what he wanted for the final cut). Once Hitchcock completed the shoot, the producer did what he could to more explicitly stamp the production as his own. In particular he supervised the film’s score, having music added to almost every scene – which accounts for intermittent intrusions of musical bombast. Selznick biographer David Thomson writes that the producer learned that no matter how involved he was, “there were secrets of craft, nuance and meaning that only a director controlled.” According to Thomson, Rebecca had been a battle between director and producer that left Selznick feeling defeated.

He should not have been so glum. Rebecca is plainly a Selznick project, a glossy and rich first rate production. The film was an unqualified success and brought the producer his second Best Picture Oscar in a row, one of the two Oscars Rebecca won out of the eleven total nominations it received. But Selznick was accustomed to dominating his directors and Hitchcock had outfoxed him…

Despite the fact that Rebecca has been called the least ‘Hitchcockian’ of the director's films and that Hitchcock later virtually disowned it, it bears unmistakable signature touches. The character interpretations of Florence Bates (Mrs. Van Hopper) and George Sanders (Jack Favell) are darkly witty comic turns - entirely in the Hitchcock tradition. And from relatively inexperienced Joan Fontaine in the central role, the director determinedly mined the performance of her young life. Judith Anderson’s iconic Mrs. Danvers, a brilliantly shaded tour de force, evolved out of a collaboration between actress and director about which she remarked, “I knew I was in the presence of a master; I had utter trust and faith in him.”

Judith Anderson and Joan Fontain in Rebecca

Rebecca's visual style also bears the recognizable imprint of its director. Hitchcock and cinematographer George Barnes concocted a persistently foreboding atmosphere that permeates the film from its first frames.  In fact, the film's opening images - of Manderley's ornate iron-gated entrance, its misty landscape and the mansion's ghostly silhouette - are often cited as an influence on Citizen Kane. Hitchcock and Barnes also notably and inventively contrived to create a character, or the presence of a character, who never once appears onscreen - the titular Rebecca. The scene above beautifully illustrates...

Daphne du Maurier and her children at Menabilly

Daphne du Maurier once described Rebecca, her most well-known and popular novel,  as a study in jealousy. Many have offered opinions on what inspired the plot - was it du Maurier's relationship with her mother and father? Was it based on the writer's insecurities about her husband's beautiful, glamorous, dark-haired former fiancee? It is known that du Maurier spent time during childhood at two grand country mansions, Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire and Menabilly (which she later owned) in Cornwall, and that the two estates were both likely models for Manderley and its grounds. Regardless of conjecture about du Maurier's inspirations, few have questioned that Rebecca is a triumph of its genre - it has been continuously in print over the eight decades since its original publication.

Daphne du Maurier

Du Maurier's Rebecca is a shrewd, seductive 20th century update on the gothic mystery/romance. Its persistent lure is dream-like imagery and a vulnerable narrator's voice throbbing with melancholy and hinting at dark secrets and heartbreak. Soon enough the reader is trapped, like the second Mrs. de Winter, in the world of psychological torment that is Manderley.

For me, du Maurier's novel and the Hitchcock/Selznick film are, taken together, an unbeatable way to greet the season's chill...

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