Sight & Sound...Classic Cinema with Live Music

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo at Davies Hall, San Francisco, November 1, 2013

A few months ago the San Francisco Symphony announced that it would kick off a season-long classic film series with Hitchcock Week, October 30 - November 2. Each night a different Hitchcock movie was to be presented with its music track scrubbed and the score performed live by the symphony orchestra. Psycho launched the series on the 30th, followed by The Lodger on Halloween, Vertigo on November 1st and, on the 2nd, a night of 'greatest hits' excerpts (To Catch a Thief, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest) hosted by Eva Marie Saint. Most appealing to me among these events was the Vertigo program, not only because Vertigo is one of my favorite films of all time, but also because the symphony's musical accompaniment would be the world premiere live performance of Bernard Herrmann's full score. But the event was sold out by the time I found out about it. Only due to my good fortune in making a connection with a very considerate symphony representative did a pair of orchestra section seats come my way. And so it was that on the first Friday night in November my dear friend, Mike, and I, filled with anticipation and excitement, set off for Davies Symphony Hall to see Vertigo and hear its luscious score live. Once there, we sampled the special cocktail concocted for the evening, "The Voyeur" (sparkling wine, Grand Marnier, cognac), had a quick bite to eat, took our seats and waited for the lights to dim.

"Voyeur"

The presentation started with an informal talk by Bernard Herrmann biographer Steven Smith, an expert on the composer's music, who contends that "the pairing of a master visualist like Alfred Hitchcock and a composer like Bernard Herrmann, who set out to pull viewers 'into the drama,' remains the greatest director-composer partnership in cinema." Many consider Vertigo's score the ultimate of the composer's seven scores for the director (The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, Marnie), and Bernard Herrmann himself acknowledged that the music he composed for Vertigo was his favorite of his Hitchcock works.

James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo

Within Herrmann's heady score is a deliberate nod to composer Richard Wagner, particularly the "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde - what biographer Smith refers to as Vertigo's "Wagner-tinged love theme." Wagner described Tristan und Isolde as "a tale of endless yearning, longing, the bliss and wretchedness of love...a yearning, a hunger and anguishing forever renewing itself." I can't think of a better description of Scottie Ferguson's never-ending, obsessive love for Madeleine Elster, so flawlessly accentuated by Bernard Herrmann's heart-piercing theme.

I have seen Vertigo on many screens large and small over the years, from its re-release into theaters in 1983, to countless in-home viewings, to a screening last year at Oakland's movie palace, the Paramount Theatre. As I watched Hitchcock's dreamscape unfold onscreen at Davies Hall and listened to the live performance of Herrmann's score, I thought of Diane Ackerman's poetic Natural History of the Senses and her descriptions of the visual image as a "tripwire for the emotions" and of music that "like pure emotions...frees us from the elaborate nuisance and inaccuracy of words." My experience of Vertigo with orchestra was as profoundly moving as it was unique.

My friend Mike, who was once a sound engineer for CBS Records, remarked that the symphony was so perfectly in synch with the film that he found himself forgetting that an orchestra was onstage performing the score. When he did take a moment to watch the orchestra, he said he noticed that conductor Joshua Gersen was "playing to time," keeping a close eye on a clock as well as the sheet music and musicians.

In 2011 I attended my first film with live accompaniment at the San Francisco Symphony when Casablanca was screened and the orchestra performed Max Steiner's memorable score. It was exhilarating and I hoped there would be more such events to come. When I learned the Symphony had scheduled a film series to run through its entire 2013/2014 concert season I was thrilled. The Hitchcock Week launch was a great success and four more film-with-orchestra events are still ahead. Classic film buffs in or near the San Francisco Bay Area (or who may be headed this way for business or holiday) shouldn't miss the chance to experience an evening of great cinema backed with live orchestral accompaniment  - a pleasure that nearly defies description.

Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca

Coming to the symphony on Saturday and Sunday, December 6 and 7, is the film classic voted the greatest musical of all time by the American Film Institute. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952), featuring Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed's music, will be presented at 7:30 pm both nights. Conductor Sarah Hicks will lead the orchestra.

Gene Kelly, Singin' in the Rain

On Saturday, February 15, Valentine's Day weekend, the symphony will present A Night at the Oscars. The program will begin at 8:00 pm, and conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos and the symphony will accompany excerpts from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Citizen Kane (1941) and Ben-Hur (1959) with the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Herbert Stothart, Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa.

Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn, The Adventures of Robin Hood

Saturday April 12, brings Charlie Chaplin's silent masterpiece, City Lights (1931), to Davies Hall. Conductor Richard Kaufman and the symphony orchestra will perform Chaplin's score, its main theme based on José Padilla's song, "La Violetera."

Charlie Chaplin, City Lights

The season's classic film series will end with Fantasia on Saturday, May 31, at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, June 1, at 4:00 pm. These presentations will feature a mix of elements from Disney's original Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000. Sarah Hicks will conduct the symphony in selections including Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, Debussy's Claire de lune, Beethoven's Pastorale, Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice and more.

Fantasia

For detailed information on the San Francisco Symphony's classic film series and its "Compose Your Own" special pricing package, click here or call (415) 864-6000.
 

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco

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Remembering JFK

Personal Memories of John F. Kennedy

At 43, he was the youngest man to be elected and the only Catholic President of the United States. His youth and religion were issues in 1960 when he won the office by quite a bit less than a landslide. After his assassination in 1963, at age 46, those issues became irrelevant - and 64% of those polled at the time claimed to have voted for him when he was elected, though his margin of victory was just over 50%.

Yes, John F. Kennedy was charismatic and handsome, but as impressive and more important were his intelligence and cool head, major assets as he was drawn into intense Cold War world politics during his three years in office.

I was very young then. I remember reading in My Weekly Reader, a newspaper for grammar-schoolers, about him and other Democratic candidates in an article on presidential primaries. Little did I know that his candidacy would actually make primaries relevant to election politics. Later, when he’d won the nomination and was campaigning in Southern California, my parents took us to Lindbergh Field, San Diego’s airport, where Kennedy was to land and say a few words before delivering a major speech downtown. Dad had gotten a pass of some sort through political contacts that gave us admittance to the area on the tarmac where Kennedy would arrive. The enthusiastic airport audience was contained within a small fenced area where we awaited the candidate. Kennedy landed in a private plane and spoke briefly from a raised podium nearby. Then he began shaking hands with the crowd. I’d already moved from the back of the crowd, where my family was standing, to the front so I could hear better and get a good look. As the handshaking began, I climbed on top of a fallen papier mache donkey in front of the podium and reached for his hand. Success! I was thrilled. I’d been captivated by his eloquent words and magnetic presence. Now I’d shaken his hand.

Two months later he was elected. His iconic inaugural address and the grand inaugural ball (partly orchestrated by Frank Sinatra) followed in January. Soon came the Bay of Pigs fiasco, for which Kennedy took full responsibility – while learning just how much to trust the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There was a triumphant trip to Paris with Jackie – and it seemed the U.S. had at last attained a stature in the world that, until then, had seemed the sole province of Europe. The Peace Corps was established and ‘physical fitness’ (the 50-mile hike!) was promoted. Kennedy’s frequent televised press conferences and speeches proved him to be the true ‘great communicator’ among modern American presidents. He spoke out and proposed a bill on civil rights, he signed the first limited nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union and the UK…

And then he was gone.

It was the morning of November 22, 1963, sometime between 10:00 and 11:00am, Pacific Standard Time. I was in the language lab which was in the school's library building. I began to hear what sounded like a radio or TV at loud volume coming from the library. I wondered what was going on. My next class was gym and while I was changing clothes I began to hear rumors that shots had been fired at President Kennedy. I knew that someone had tried to shoot Harry Truman when he was in office and assumed this was the same kind of thing – an attempt. It was basketball season and we girls were on the court when the school principal’s voice suddenly came over the public address system and announced that President Kennedy was dead. My best friend was in the class with me and I remember that we sat on the court, hugging each other and sobbing.

That night, mother didn’t feel like cooking, so we went to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was packed with families like ours. Apparently a lot of other mothers didn’t feel like cooking that night either. The eerie thing was that as we sat there in that restaurant full of people, no one spoke, not anyone at any table. The room was completely silent and it stayed silent.

My brother and I were glued to the TV through the rest of the weekend and, on Sunday morning, watched together in disbelief as Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed while in police custody. Then, on Monday, there was no school – it was the day of the President’s state funeral – and with it came all those never to be forgotten images…a widow heavily draped in black, heads of state from all over the world walking in the street with the family behind the coffin-bearing caisson, a riderless horse, the doleful sound of the funeral march as it played on and on, a little boy saluting his father's casket.

As I've watched some of the 50th anniversary specials about JFK's life, presidency and death this past week and mulled over my own memories and all that has transpired since, I've realized that so much more than innocence was lost 50 years ago today.

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What a Character: Gladys Cooper

The What a Character! blogathon is in progress now, hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken and Freckled and Paula's Cinema Club. Click here for more information and links to participating blogs. My entry for the event follows...

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Young Gladys

She was a beautiful child, wide-eyed and wistful, who began modeling at age six; during World War I she was the favorite 'picture postcard' pin-up of British troops; she went on tour in a musical at age 17 and by the time she neared 40 she was a star of the London stage. In 1940, at age 51, she began working as a character actress in Hollywood and would, over the course of the next three decades, earn three Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Her name was Gladys Cooper and she is best remembered for her performance as Bette Davis's cruel, steel-willed mother, Mrs. Vale, in Now, Voyager...

Gladys Cooper and Alfred Hitchcock launched their careers in Hollywood at the same time on the same film - Rebecca (1940). Cooper's was the small role of a tweedy aristocrat, the sister of Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), who offered warmth and kindness to the beleaguered second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine). Rebecca, Selznick Pictures' follow up to Gone with the Wind, took the year's Best Picture Oscar and put Cooper (not to mention Hitchcock, Fontaine and Olivier) on the Hollywood map. Her obvious talent and commanding presence brought two less sympathetic roles next: Dennis Morgan's disapproving socialite mother in Kitty Foyle (1940) and the spurned wife of Laurence Olivier in That Hamilton

Gladys Cooper and Frank Morgan in Green Dolphin Street

Woman (1941). Her facility in these roles paved the way for Cooper to be cast as the villain in Now, Voyager. She earned her first Oscar nomination in 1942 for her portrayal of this archetypal devouring mother. The following year she earned her second nomination as Sister Marie Therese, a severe and punishing nun in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

Typecast? Yes and no. Cooper was fortunate (and versatile) enough to be cast in sympathetic roles - in Mr. Lucky (1943), The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), The Valley of Decision (1945), Green Dolphin Street (1947) and other popular films - but she was as often cast as uppercrust autocrats. In 1947, she brought one of her most memorable wealthy dowagers to the screen as Mrs. Hamilton in the holiday fantasy The Bishop's Wife. This time, though, there was a twist; the imperious widow's hardened heart was melted by no less an angel than Cary Grant - giving Cooper the rare chance to render both harsh and tender facets of her character.

Gladys Cooper and Cary Grant, The Bishop's Wife

The 1950s brought the actress far more work on television that in films, but she would add one more notable ill-tempered and overbearing mother to her gallery of silver screen harridans. Maude Railton-Bell, her role in Delbert Mann's Separate Tables (1958), doesn't command the wealth or position of Mrs. Vale of the "Boston Vales," but she does maintain the same kind of suffocating stranglehold on her dowdy spinster daughter (Deborah Kerr).

Gladys Cooper's credits during TV's early, golden days are impressive. She appeared on two legendary drama anthologies, The Alcoa Hour and Playhouse 90; she was featured on both Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; she guested on The Ann Sothern Show, Naked City, The Outer Limits, Burkes Law, Ben Casey, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. (!) and was nominated for a

The Rogues

1964 primetime Emmy for The Rogues, a crime caper series in which she co-starred with Charles Boyer, David Niven, Gig Young and Robert Coote. Most often talked about among her many TV performances, though, are her appearances on the venerable series, The Twilight Zone. Cooper first appeared in a haunting 1962 episode entitled "Nothing in the Dark," in which she portrayed an elderly woman utterly terrified of death (personified by fledgling actor Robert Redford). Her second guest spot came the following year when she played one of several elderly travelers who have booked "Passage on the Lady Anne." Finally, later in 1963, came "Night Call," directed by Jacques Tourneur, in which she starred solo as an elderly woman who lives alone and begins to receive unnerving, anonymous phone calls.

Now in her mid-70s, Gladys Cooper still had a last good film or two ahead of her. She was a member of John Huston's illustrious cast in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) and earned her third and final Academy Award nomination for her performance as Mrs. Higgins, mother of Henry (Rex Harrison), in the Oscar-winning musical, My Fair Lady (1964).

And that's not all. Before she embarked on her Hollywood career, Cooper had starred on Broadway several times. She returned to the New York stage in her late career and earned Tony nominations in her final two roles. She was nominated for Best Actress in a Play in 1956 for her performance in The Chalk Garden and again in 1962 for her performance in A Passage to India (in a role that would bring an Oscar to Peggy Ashcroft 20+ years later).

Gladys Cooper (center) in a 1971 revival of The Chalk Garden

At last, in 1967, as she approached 80, Gladys Cooper was named a Dame of the British Empire. Her life in the public eye had begun because of the great beauty with which she was naturally endowed; she was long considered the most beautiful woman in England. But Cooper was blessed with more than looks, she had striking talent and presence and profound devotion to her craft. The blush of youthful beauty would, as it always does, fade, but her power as an actress only matured and deepened through the years. Dame Gladys Cooper had been about to embark on a Canadian tour with a revival of The Chalk Garden in 1971 when she was stricken with pneumonia and died.

Bette Davis was set to tape a guest appearance on The Dick Cavett Show when she learned of Gladys Cooper's death; she shared her thoughts during the interview:
 

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Three (Mesmerizing) Hitchcock Villains Revisited on Halloween

Today (and today only) our friend Lara of Backlots is hosting a one day Hitchcock Halloween blogathon and for the occasion I'm resurrecting an old favorite from the Reel Life archives.

In January 2011 the Classic Movie Blog Association hosted a Hitchcock blogathon and I decided rather than blog about a particular film, I'd take another approach. The result was an exploration of three legendary Hitchcock killers and the actors who portrayed them: Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Robert Walker's Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train (1951) and Anthony Perkins's Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). I was and still am fascinated by the complex characters of Uncle Charlie, Bruno and Norman - and with the masterful performances of the three daring actors who took their turns as what film critic/historian David Thomson calls Hitchcock's "smiling psychopaths."

Click here to read Three Classic Hitchcock Killers.

For links to Lara's blog and and more on Hitchcock Halloween, click here.

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Hitchcock Week...and more...at the San Francisco Symphony

Just over two years ago I attended – and was astounded by - “Casablanca with the San Francisco Symphony” at Davies Hall. Conductor Michael Francis led the orchestra in accompanying the beyond-iconic classic with Max Steiner’s unforgettable score. What an experience it was (click here for my reaction)...

Now the symphony is about to present a Halloween season series, Hitchcock Week, spotlighting several of the Master’s films with live musical accompaniment. The piècede résistance will be “World Premiere: Vertigo” on Friday, November 1, with the symphony accompanying Hitchcock’s great masterpiece with Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant, haunting and, some would say, peerless score.

Bay Area film lovers, get thee to a box office, online or otherwise! Hitchcock Week is about to begin… 

Wednesday, October 30, 8pm, Psycho, with Joshua Gersen conducting Herrmann’s legendary score 

Thursday, October 31, 7:30pm, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, live organ music will accompany Hitchcock’s early silent thriller on Halloween night

Kim Novak and James Stewart, Vertigo (1958)

Friday, November 1, 8pm, Vertigo - Vertigo accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony…what more is there to say? 

Saturday, November 2, 8pm, Hitchcock! Greatest Hits, clips from several Hitchcock classics – To Catch a Thief, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest – to be hosted by Eva Marie Saint, with Joshua Gersen conducting

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (1959)

The symphony has scheduled more classic films with orchestral accompaniment through the rest of its 2013/2014 season: 

Friday and Saturday, December 6 and 7, 7:30pm, Singin’ in the Rain 

Saturday, February 15, 8pm, A Night at the Oscars will feature celebrated scenes and scores from memorable films 

Saturday, April 12, 8pm, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights 

Saturday, May 31 at 8pm and Sunday, June 1 at 4pm, Fantasia 

A “Compose Your Own Film Series” package offers savings to those who buy tickets to three or more of these film concerts: Click here to go to the symphony website or call (415)864-6000.

Fantasia (1940)

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TCM Presents Five Tyrone Power Films in Primetime and Late Night

Nightmare Alley to Make Its TCM Premiere

Nightmare Alley

Tyrone Power was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood from the late 1930s through the late 1950s and he was 20th Century Fox's most famous star until Marilyn Monroe came along. Turner Classic Movies hasn't traditionally aired as many films of Fox's great stars as those from other studios - this has been about film rights more than anything else. Since TCM entered into an exclusive licensing deal with Fox, though, that has begun to change.


In August 2012, Tyrone Power was honored for the first time with a day filled with his films as part of TCM's annual Summer Under the Stars event. Soon after, more of Power's films began appearing on the channel than in the past, but Wednesday evening, October 16, marks the first time since then that TCM's primetime schedule and late night hours are being devoted to his movies.  Among the films to be aired are two that will be making their TCM debuts: Rawhide (1951), a Western, and Nightmare Alley (1947), a film noir that contains what most consider Power's best dramatic performance.

The Schedule (all times Eastern/Pacific):

8:00pm/5:00pm  Rawhide (1951), co-starring Susan Hayward, directed by Henry Hathaway

9:45pm/6:45pm  Nightmare Alley (1947), co-starring Joan Blondell, directed by Edmund Goulding

11:45pm/8:45pm  The Mark of Zorro (1940), co-starring Basil Rathbone and Linda Darnell, directed by Rouben Mamoulian

1:30am/10:30pm  The Black Swan (1942), co-starring Maureen O'Hara, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell and Anthony Quinn, directed by Henry King

3:00am/midnight  Marie Antoinette (1938), co-starring Norma Shearer, directed by W.S. Van Dyke 

The Black Swan

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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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