*Spoiler alert. This essay gives away key plot points
Dramatist and screenwriter Lillian Hellman had her first
major theatrical success in 1934 with the banned-in-Boston stage hit The
Children’s Hour: a shocking-for-its-time play in which the two
headmistresses of a tony girls’ boarding school have their careers and lives
ruined by the spread of the malicious rumor that the pair are in fact illicit lovers in a lesbian relationship.
When William Wyler first adapted Hellman's play for the screen in 1936, the show's scandalous reputation was such that not only was a title change mandated
(The Children’s Hour became These Three), but "the lie with the ounce of truth" was changed from the whisper of lesbianism to the more socially palatable rumor of heteronormative
adultery. Instead of an accusation of being in love with each other, the two
women were now accused of (yawn) being in love with the same man. And lest one think this a Hollywood cop-out of the highest order, know that it was Lillian Hellman herself who approved and adapted the screenplay of the 1936 version for the screen.
Hellman's almost word-for-word-faithful adaptation of her play for Wyler confirmed her oft-repeated claim that The Children’s Hour was not really about lesbianism so much as the pernicious power of a lie. "The bigger the lie, the better," Hellman affirmed. A point of view she would gain a great deal of first-hand experience with when, in 1952 she was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee; and later in 1979, charged with falsifying the details of her memoir, Pentimento. (Author Mary McCarthy [The Group] on Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'!")
Hellman's almost word-for-word-faithful adaptation of her play for Wyler confirmed her oft-repeated claim that The Children’s Hour was not really about lesbianism so much as the pernicious power of a lie. "The bigger the lie, the better," Hellman affirmed. A point of view she would gain a great deal of first-hand experience with when, in 1952 she was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee; and later in 1979, charged with falsifying the details of her memoir, Pentimento. (Author Mary McCarthy [The Group] on Hellman: "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'!")
In 1960, in an effort to rectify the compromises he felt imposed upon him by MGM and the Hays Code in 1936, William Wyler returned to The Children's Hour vowing to make a more faithful version of the play. Taking advantage of the permissive atmosphere of the times, Wyler even went so far as to say he’d be willing to release his film without the MPAA seal of approval if need be. (Many newspapers at the time refused to carry ads for films lacking the Production Code seal. Similarly, many theaters wouldn’t exhibit non-approved films.)
Whether it was Wyler’s pronouncement that his remake was to be “A clean film with a highly moral story!”, or the casting of ladylike Audrey
Hepburn as the fem half of the whispered-about duo (Wyler:“We don’t want
bosoms in this!”), but studio heads relented and The Children’s Hour
was green-lit for production. Provided, of course, that the word “lesbian” never be uttered, and that there be no demonstrative sexual contact of any sort.
Yep, certainly sounds like those 1936 compromises were put to rest by 1961.
Audrey Hepburn as Karen Wright |
Shirley MacLaine as Martha Dobie |
James Garner as Joe Cardin |
Fay Bainter as Amelia Tilford |
Miriam Hopkins as Lily Mortar |
Coy as it seems
today, The Children’s Hour was
written at a time when it was illegal to even make mention of homosexuality in
a Broadway play. The show’s ultimate success somehow surmounted public moral
outrage, allowing for it to become one of the first Broadway plays to feature a
homosexual character. Similar honors went to Wyler’s 1961 film adaptation, with
Shirley MacLaine being one of the first major stars to play a gay character in
a motion picture; albeit just barely. Change was obviously in the air in the early '60s, as
several other homosexual-themed films arrived in theaters within months of The Children’s
Hour’s release: Dirk Bogarde’s Victim, Otto Preminger’s Advise
& Consent, and Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey with Brit fave Murray Melvin making his film debut as a gay teen.
The Hateful Eight...er, 12-year-old Making her film debut, Karen Balkin as Mary Tilford |
The pair’s heated discussions and platonic entreaties
of love and loyalty on the topic are overheard and misinterpreted by Mary Tilford
(Bakin), a troublemaking student whose compulsive lying and disobedience has made
her the frequent object of discipline. In spiteful retaliation for one such
upbraiding, Mary tells her grandmother (Bainter) that Miss Wright and Miss
Dobie are lovers, and that she has seen them kissing and engaging in all manner
of nocturnal hanky panky.
Before long, the lie concocted merely to avoid the consequences
of a rule infraction, mushrooms into a scandal which closes the school and makes
a shamble of the lives of three innocent people.These Three |
All I know is William Wyler movies occupy a lot of space on my DVD shelves: Roman Holiday, The Heiress, The Little Foxes, Funny Girl, The Letter, and of course, The Children’s Hour; a film whose every frame supports his reputation for vivid storytelling and extracting superior performances from his cast. The Children's Hour was the no-win recipient of five Academy Award nominations (supporting actress, cinematography, costume, art direction, sound).
Children Will Listen |
At these times The Children’s Hour reminds me of the character Mary Tyler Moore played in Ordinary People - it becomes a film
determined not to draw attention to itself by making a scene.
Veronica Cartwright as Rosalie Wells One of the best criers in the business |
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT
THIS FILM
“It is incredible that educated people living
in an urban American community today would react as violently and cruelly to a
questionable innuendo as they are made to do in this film.” - Bosley Crowther's New York Times review of The Children’s Hour March, 1962
Obviously, movie
critic Bosley Crowther needed to get out more. In the face of homophobia and bigotry,
incredulity like Crowther’s is deceptive in that it has the surface appearance
of giving people credit for being more civilized and intelligent than a film
like this would suggest. But in reality, to ignore the fact that lives are ruined every
day in America by the very same rootless bigotry and baseless homophobia The
Children’s Hour dramatizes, is merely
a privileged means of refuting and denying the suffering that is the day-to-day reality for many homosexuals even today.
One of the
contributing factors to my not having even seen The Children’s Hour
until recently is because
most everything I’d read about the film in past years corroborated Mr. Crowther’s position. I
avoided The Children’s Hour because I assumed it was going to be another
dated Hollywood exercise in homosexual self-loathing masked as liberal
discourse.
When I finally did
see the film, I was happily surprised at how dated the surface trappings were, but how timeless the message. Remove the old-fashioned acting, starchy
language, and that '60s censorship straitjacket (à la Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
necessitating characters verbally dance all around an issue without ever saying
it plainly; and you’ve got a story that could happen today. Trade the boarding
school for a Boy Scout troop – substitute Muslim for homosexuality…the particulars
of theme (ignorance is deaf to truth) and what Lillian Hellman sought to convey remains (sadly) contemporary and unchanged.Careless Whisper In this her last film, Fay Bainter garnered The Children's Hour's sole acting Oscar nomination, and deservedly so. She's a forceful and dynamic presence in every scene. In the role that won Bonita Granville an Oscar nomination in 1936's These Three, Karen Balkin (who sometimes bears an unfortunate resemblance to Charles Laughton) gives an outsized performance that wouldn't be out of place in a comedy like The Trouble With Angels. Still, I wouldn't say she's exactly ineffective in the role, as by the third act you're apt to find the character she plays loathsome in the extreme. She makes The Bad Seed's Rhoda Penmark look like Shirley Temple |
If The Children’s Hour has a
credibility problem at all, it lies not in its depiction of the swiftness with which the community
condemns the women on baseless innuendo (these days, inciting the public to overreact to unsubstantiated hate-mongering has practically become an official GOP political platform); but in anybody not being able to see through little
Mary’s broad-as-a-barn-door lying and bullying tactics. Barring this, I
think The Children’s Hour presents one of the screen’s more accurate and cutting indictments of hysterical
bigotry.
The ever-likable James Garner is solid as always, but isn't called upon to do much more than stand around looking all heterosexual and stuff |
PERFORMANCES
I have no idea how 1961 audiences responded to Audrey
Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine appearing in this “daring” film, but these days when
a straight actor takes on a gay role, the public practically awards them a medal
of bravery. Everyone, gay and straight alike, carries on as though the actor had
just crawled through the foxholes of war-torn Iwo Jima with an orphan on their
back.
Nevertheless, back in 1961 it was no doubt a big deal for
two such high-profile stars to appear in a film with a lesbian theme. But (not to diminish
the risk-taking of either actress), Hepburn had just played a prostitute--or
Hollywood’s idea of a prostitute--in Breakfast
at Tiffany’s and was eager to shed her ingénue image, while MacLaine had a
bohemian “kook” reputation (yes, even as far back as that) which lent itself to
character roles (aka, women outside the mainstream). And politically speaking, it certainly didn’t
hurt that both women were at the time married with children. One source I read speculated on the unlikely chance of an unmarried actress at the time taking on either role.
Miriam Hopkins, who actually did play the MacLaine role in These Three opposite Merle Oberon and Joel McCrea, is a hammy delight as Martha's affected, self-dramatizing aunt.
As someone commented in an earlier post for the movie Hot Spell, Shirley MacLaine can come off a little shrill in scenes requiring displays of anxiety or excitability. But like many gifted comic actors, she can really deliver the dramatic goods when playing hostility and pique. In a film which codifies lesbianism as simply an absence of glamour, MacLaine is really very good and (this is where the film in its own small way is rather progressive) and grants her sympathetic character a depth and humanity refreshingly devoid of caricature. She resorts to no gimmicks or tricks to signify Martha's latent homosexuality, playing the role honestly and without artifice. In recent interviews about The Children’s Hour, MacLaine likes to relate how Wyler got cold feet during the making of the film, resulting in several non-explicit scenes of Martha showing her affection for Karen (brushing Hepburn’s hair, ironing her clothes, and cooking) ending up on the cutting room floor.
I’m not altogether sure how the inclusion those sequences would have helped a film whose big dramatic payoff is an 11th hour “self-realization” scene (which for my money MacLaine pulls off very well in spite of it being a tad overwritten). Besides, such demonstrativeness to me would appear redundant given how well she already successfully conveys her deep love for Hepburn’s character through a dozen subtle looks and gestures.
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
The Children’s Hour has
always been controversial for the part it played in kickstarting the tired
movie trope of the doomed/suicidal homosexual: a worn cliché born of warped
morality and show business savvy. In most cases, the introduction of gay characters in films tended to be either for sensation or a glib, short-cut bid towards demonstrating sophistication. From the start, studios and censors gleaned that the death of a
gay character in the final reel not only satisfied the movie mandate requiring “sinners”
pay for their transgressions, but presented, at fadeout, a symbolic “return to
normalcy” designed to reassure audiences and send them on
their way, secure in their faith in the enduring indomitability of the status quo.
Problematic as the ending of The Children’s Hour is for many (MacLaine’s character hangs herself), anecdotally
I’ve always felt it presented a situation more complex than mere homophobic self-loathing. In the scene precipitating her suicide, Karen comes out to Karen at precisely the same moment she comes out to herself. She falls apart in a stream of consciousness monologue in which she tries to sort out her feelings about herself amidst paralyzing confusion and guilt over the role her lack of self-awareness may or may not have played in the destruction of so many lives. Including her own.
It's arguable and certainly up for debate whether Martha's self-disgust ("Oh I feel so damn sick and dirty I can't stand it anymore!") is wholly related to her discovery of her true sexual identity, and not, at least in part, also attributable to genuine guilt-based self-recrimination. Both her ill-temper towards Joe and her impatience with her silly Aunt are brought on by her repressed feelings for Karen. She must certainly feel considerable guilt in having her overheard outbursts with these two serving as the catalyst for the chain of events resulting in the severest harm coming to the one individual she most loves.
It's arguable and certainly up for debate whether Martha's self-disgust ("Oh I feel so damn sick and dirty I can't stand it anymore!") is wholly related to her discovery of her true sexual identity, and not, at least in part, also attributable to genuine guilt-based self-recrimination. Both her ill-temper towards Joe and her impatience with her silly Aunt are brought on by her repressed feelings for Karen. She must certainly feel considerable guilt in having her overheard outbursts with these two serving as the catalyst for the chain of events resulting in the severest harm coming to the one individual she most loves.
So, while there's no denying Martha's suicide is an extreme response to her suffering from a particularly acute case of "gaynst" (gay-angst); it can also be said (non-politically) to be a kind of final, selfless act of love her character intends it to be. Which is to say that within the confines of the narrative (the last we see of Martha alive, she's not brooding intently upon herself, she's looking lovingly at Karen from a window) Martha's love is such that she seeks to "liberate" Karen by letting her go.
Of course, she could have achieved the same thing by merely hopping on a train (which Martha actually does at the end of These Three), but as I said earlier, this is Hollywood, and it would be several more years before the movies would grant any gay character a happy ending...and if you found a pun in that sentence, shame on you!
BONUS MATERIALOf course, she could have achieved the same thing by merely hopping on a train (which Martha actually does at the end of These Three), but as I said earlier, this is Hollywood, and it would be several more years before the movies would grant any gay character a happy ending...and if you found a pun in that sentence, shame on you!
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A production still of the libel suit courtroom sequence that was deleted from the final film. |
The theatrical trailer for William Wyler's These Three (1936)
In this clip from the 1996 documentary, The Celluloid Closet, Shirley MacLaine talks about making The Children's Hour.
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The Children's Hour had its title changed in the UK |