BEYOND THE FOREST 1949

Rosa Moline is discontented and doesn’t care who knows it. Rosa (Bette Davis) is the bored and restless wife of dull-but-decent general practitioner Lewis Moline (Joseph Cotton), the only doctor in the small town of Loyalton, Wisconsin. Loyalton is a lumbering town, literally and figuratively, whose local sawmill blasts heat and spews sawdust ceaselessly, fueling Rosa’s fevered certainty that she is suffocating and being buried alive.
But if the local sawmill is the arrhythmic heartbeat of Loyalton, the only thing that can get Rosa’s pulse racing is when the train that goes to and from Chicago pulls into the station twice daily. A train whose chugging steam engine beckons (per the film’s portentous narration): “Come, Rosa. Come away before it’s too late. Chicago…Chicago…Chicago….”

Bette Davis as Rosa Moline

Joseph Cotten as Lewis Moline 

David Brian as Neil Latimer

Ruth Roman as Carol Lawson

Minor Watson as Moose Lawson

Dona Drake as Jenny

Fans of the overripe cinema of director King Vidor (Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry) and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will recognize Beyond the Forest as the film whose title George is stumped to recall when Martha mimics Bette Davis and utters the oft-parodied line “What a dump!” But for that bit of theatrical immortality bestowed upon this hotly contested post-war melodrama (plagued by censorship interference, it's a film Davis did only under protest, contributing to the end of her 18 years with Warner Bros), it’s unlikely many others could recall Beyond the Forest, either; a lesser entry in the Bette Davis canon that has nevertheless developed a devoted cult (and camp) following over the years.

"What a dump!"
Brandishing an emery board, that international symbol of the self-absorbed and aloof, Bette Davis utters what The American Film Institute voted #62 in its roster of 100 Most Memorable Movie Quotes

Joining the ranks of the many discontented housewives of great literature: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Flaubert’s Emma Bovary, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Carol Burnett’s Eunice Higgins…Rosa Moline is a woman who longs for more out of life. Feeling constrained and stifled by marriage and the conventional morality of small-town life, Rosa not only wants more, but also feels she deserves more. Though a Loyalton native, Rosa has always clung to the idea that she is somehow “different” from the other women in town; a grade above the ordinary and therefore meant for better things.
Which is why, rather than simply escaping Loyalton on her own and paving an independent path for herself in the big city—“What as…a telephone girl, a stenographer, waitress?”— Rosa sticks around, thumbing her nose at the low-rent aspirations of the townswomen ("You certainly go in for mass production, don't you?" she remarks to a local mom and her brood) and settling for a life of not-so-quiet desperation as a doctor’s wife in the town’s finest house (said aforementioned dump). 

A life of pitiful attempts at cultivating second-hand class (“I wanted venetian blinds...all the houses in magazines have venetian blinds!”), and of having her middle-class pretensions consistently deflated by the knowing insolence of her Native-American housekeeper. 

Jenny - "Do you want that Chicken a la King business served on toast?"
Rosa - "Well, I showed you the picture in the magazine, didn't I?"
Jenny - "How can I see if there's toast under all that goo?"

But Rosa is a woman with a dream. Well, to be honest, more like a scheme. Not one to content herself with merely the best that Loyalton has to offer, Rosa sets her sights on wealthy Chicago businessman Neil Latimer, the owner of a nearby hunting lodge overseen by family friend Moose Lawson. After carrying on a torrid, year-long love affair with the bachelor industrialist practically under her husband’s saintly, overworked nose, Rosa plans on getting Neil to marry her and whisk her away with him to Chicago. Sure, she's already married, but what’s a minor detail like that when a woman has a destiny to fulfill? And make no mistake, Rosa is a woman who wants the good life, has convinced herself she deserves the good life, and is so determined to acquire the good life for herself; she’s willing to do just about anything and everything to make sure that happens.

When Velma Takes The Stand

Like many a film noir, Beyond the Forest is a tale told in flashback. When we first meet Rosa, she is on trial for shooting a man; the who and why melodramatically divulged once the film proper kicks in and takes us back five months prior. Here, Rosa is revealed to be a crack shot with a lousy disposition (after using her rifle to take out a poor, defenseless porcupine minding its own business, her only explanation is, "I don't like porkies...they irritate me."); the film conveniently supplying three likely targets for her trigger-happy temperament.
There's her goody-goody husband who is too nice to press his clients into paying their bills (those ankle-strap sandals aren't going to pay for themselves, y'know). Next, there's Moose, the town souse, and Lewis' fishing buddy. Moose's only offense is that he, like the character of Leroy in The Bad Seed, is one of the few people in town who sees right through Rosa. Their mutual antipathy (Moose- "You're something for the birds, Rosa. Something for the birds." Rosa - "You're something to make the corn grow tall!") isn't at all helped by the fact that Moose has a well-turned-out daughter (Ruth Roman) who's everything Rosa would like to be.
Lastly, there's rolling-in-dough Neil K. Latimer. Although he and Rosa share a passionate physical attraction and Rosa sees him more as a ticket out of purgatory than the love of her life; the monkey wrench in the works (and probable bullet to the body) is Rosa's nagging fear that he just doesn't think she's good enough for him.

I can't vouch for how 1949 audiences reacted to Beyond the Forest (although we can all agree it wasn't particularly favorable), but I remember getting a huge kick out of watching Davis—Vampira wigged, low-necklined, lumpy-figured, clomping about in Joan Crawford pumps and spitting out her campy dialogue in her best self-parodying, Bette Davis drag queen impersonation—while trying to guess which one of these male clay pigeons would irritate her to the point of having to mete out a little "porcupine justice."

"If I don't get out of here, I'll die. If I don't get out of here, I hope I die!"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
There’s no getting past the fact that Beyond the Forest’s single main attraction for me is the staggeringly miscast Bette Davis. Looking awkward, uncomfortable, and unable to get even a remotely credible foothold on the type of bad-to-the-bone vexed vixen Gloria Grahame could play in her sleep; Davis (whom director King Vidor seemed intent on molding into a lousy copy of Jennifer Jones' Dueling in the Sun hotpot in a peasant blouse) relies instead on a mannered (read: ludicrous) vamp posturing and broad-as-a-barn emoting.
And while I can fully understand why she campaigned enthusiastically to be replaced by Virginia Mayo in the part—"She's good at these sorts of roles!" (which sounds like a generous compliment until you stop to think about it)—I'm glad jack Warner held her to it, because Davis, in all her sublime awfulness, is the best thing in the film.

Rosa goes camping (with a capital CAMP)
Moose- "The trouble with you, Lew, is you don't get up here often enough."
Rosa - "He doesn't do ANYTHING enough!"

Beyond the Forest treads such familiar noir ground that even upon first viewing, I felt as though I’d seen it before. Indeed, my having already encountered Joseph Cotten as Marilyn Monroe's nice-guy cuckold in Niagara (1953) and David Brian as Joan Crawford's hankered-after symbol of well-heeled respectability in Flamingo Road (1949) contributed to the déjà vu. Beyond the Forest's allusions to adultery, abortion, miscarriage, sexual dissatisfaction, and (gasp!) the lead character’s blatant disdain for all the things postwar women were supposed to want, must have been pretty heady stuff back in the ‘40s, but watching it now only makes me aware of how—outside of a few stylistic touches in the cinematography and use of music—it’s all been done before and to better effect. The sole exception, thus supplying the film’s only spark of energy and interest, is Bette Davis’ completely off-the-rails performance.

Rosa, literally trapped in a domestic cage

PERFORMANCES
As a fan of Patty Duke's Neely O'Hara and Faye Dunaway's Joan Crawford, I obviously have no real problem with unrestrained, bordering-absurd performances. They shine like beacons of inadvertent genius when they enhance (rather than derail) a production. But in accessing the "Carol Burnett Show parody" level of Bette Davis's unsubtle take on the character of Rosa Moline in Beyond the Forest (which bears more than a passing resemblance to a supposed-to-be-awful screen test performance Davis gives in 1953's The Star), it doesn't seem fair to lay all the blame at the actress's ankle-strapped feet.
For example, I'm not sure who came up with Davis' almost "goth girl" appearance here, but you'd have to look to Joan Crawford's garish getup in Strait-Jacket (1964) to find a campier image of toxic sexuality. Another problem is Davis' age. Although only 40, Davis looks at least five years older, the resultant effect being that Rosa's desire to hightail it out of Loyalton comes off as half-hearted at best, at worst, an epic case of foot-dragging.

"Rosa...moving easily, freely, every man's admiring eye upon her."

She's not given much help by a screenplay (adapted from Stuart Engstrand's 1945 novel by Lenore J. Coffee, Warners' only woman screenwriter) which, perhaps in an effort to undercut audience sympathy and identification (who wouldn't want to get out of that hick town?), makes Rosa into an almost misogynist caricature of self-interest and greed. Though one can imagine any number of good reasons why a vital woman would feel stifled by small-town life, the film sees fit to reduce all Rosa's desires to the material and superficial. The only time the movie comes close to granting her recognizably human emotions is when (tellingly) her spirit is broken by a particularly humiliating visit to Chicago. Otherwise, she's depicted as little more than an overage Sadie Thompson spewing forth an unbroken stream of harsh invectives at anyone unfortunate enough to cross her path.

Pregnant, hair restrained, body covered, and (God forbid) wearing flat shoes; Rosa, now convinced of her ordinariness, is at last brought low. Is this return to traditional gender roles what people wanted from women in the postwar years?

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
I don't find Beyond the Forest particularly persuasive as drama, but it can't be beaten as arch-melodrama. Vidor ratchets up the excess to the point that everything about it feels satirical, even when it's in deadly earnest. However, the natural performances of the rest of the cast, Joseph Cotten especially, grounds the film just enough to provide Davis' over-the-moon emoting with a solid springboard from which to soar.
Case in point: my favorite sequence - Rosa's trip to Chicago. Set up as the film's dramatic centerpiece and given ample buildup by having the 1922 Fred Fisher song "Chicago (That Toddlin' Town)" chime in on the soundtrack every time Rosa gets that faraway look in her eyes; the sequence instead plays out like an early draft of Neil Simon's The Out of Towners.

All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go
Fantasies vs. Murphy's Law as Rosa's dream of Chicago turns into a nightmare

Rosa's escape to Chicago city is a comedy of errors that really couldn’t go much worse. List of mishaps:
She can’t get through to her lover on the phone.
She's kept waiting in his offices for hours.
He finally calls, but she's so lost in thought ("I'm Rosa Moline!") she misses it.
They meet up, and he greets her with wonderful news: he's getting married!
She gets kicked out of a bar for soliciting.
She gets propositioned by a slob in the middle of a monsoon.
In succession: she's heckled by a madwoman, startled by a drunk, and terrorized by a newsboy.
Has to chase down a cab in her ankle straps.

No one ever had as miserable a time looking for a good time as Rosa Moline

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I grew up in a house with four sisters, so I can attest to the fact that the femme fatales of '40s film noir and the sadder-but-wiser fallen women of the '40s "woman's picture" were every bit the vicarious thrill for them as I found them to be in those movies where geeky guys like Tom Ewell and Tommy Noonan wound up with incredible women like Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe.
These films were the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasies that gave wings to our adolescent ids (in MY fantasies, Monroe & Mansfield were replaced by Frank Converse or Steve McQueen). But unlike the myriad male-centric films devised to reassure unexceptional men that the world actually favored them; the women in the film noirs and women's pictures always had to pay a hefty price for their freedom. 

A woman's desire to exert power over her fate was rarely, if ever, depicted as a healthy drive. On the contrary, it was always associated with pathology or moral lack. The fun we had watching the "bad girls" (who always dressed better, had the best lines, and moved the plot forward) was always undercut by the knowledge that no matter how much havoc was wreaked, before fade-out, order...in the form of gender-role normalcy, would be restored to the universe.

Beyond the Forest is too overwrought for me to take seriously, but if well-crafted camp can be considered a legitimate genre (and since we all know how difficult it is to pull off, it should be), it's one of the best of its kind.
A film that can be enjoyed on many levels (I've read of many Bette Davis fans who actually think it's one of her better performances); what I love about it is the essentially camp drag queen sensibility that makes Davis' Rosa Moline such a hoot of a to watch, is matched scene-for-scene with an unconsciously gay sensibility that makes Rosa's plight relatable and sympathetic.

Rosa, channeling her inner fabulousness

Gay men of my generation traditionally grew up in towns and environments where they felt "different" and out of step with others. Unable to relate to peers who only wanted to get married and start a family, a common reaction and survival tactic was to embrace that which made them not fit in. To take pride and revel in one's uniqueness, and to learn (like Rosa) to express oneself by looking, dressing, and behaving in ways more attuned to how one saw oneself—not with how society said you ought to be.

My partner grew up in a small town and tells me that despite having a very happy childhood devoid of bullying or harassment, he never for one moment entertained the thought of remaining there once he came of age. The town's quiet sameness fostered an appetite for big city life, the unspoken dominance of conformity assuring him that he could never truly be himself there. The parallels to be found in the early lives of many gay men (I hope it's only the early lives) and Rosa Moline's bristling at the life she's supposed to want as a woman in a small town, is, I believe, an intractable part of where Beyond the Forest's gay cult appreciation is rooted.

It's a fact of life that we invariably have to leave one place and relocate to another to find ourselves and discover what we really want. Happily, for most of us, the road to self-actualization doesn't involve firearms.


BONUS MATERIAL

As many have noted, the readers who leave comments on this blog are so knowledgeable about films they're more like contributors. For example, Blogger Rick Gould brought my attention to the baggy, unflattering suit Rosa wears to Chicago. Since its difficult to imagine seasoned costume designer Edith Head just "happened" to have dropped the ball with Davis's problematic figure, my mind went to the 1988 book King Vidor: American in which authors Raymond Durgnat & Scott Simon suggest that Rosa's ill-fitting handmade suit was perhaps intended to convey Rosa's pathetic attempt to copy the sleeker, more sophisticated suit worn by Moose's daughter Carol.
In the same book, the authors reference another point Rick brings up, the similarity in appearance of Rosa and her maid Jenny. Their take is that characters of Jenny & Carol both possess more freedom than Rosa sees herself as having and that it's telling how she adopts the clothing style of these women in two unsuccessful attempts to escape from her life.


Hard as it is to believe, Bette Davis doesn't give Beyond The Forest's worst performance. That dubious honor goes to actress Dona Drake. Admittedly it can't be easy doing anything under that dreadful fright wig and three pounds of Max Factor's Dark Egyptian #5, but as Rosa's just-not-into-it maid, Drake gives (to quote The New York Times): "A fine high-school performance."

Drake's offscreen acting must have been considerably more convincing, for the lovely mixed-race actress/singer/dancer/bandleader spent her entire career passing as Mexican-American. Going by several different names, among them Rita Rio and Rita Novello, Drake was wed to famed costume designer William Travilla (Valley of the Dolls, Marilyn Monroe) in what is rumored to be an arranged marriage (the studio guarding her ethnicity, his being gay/bisexual). She appeared in many films, usually as an "exotic."
You can read more about Drake's life and history:
Travilla's Legacy
Little Known Black History

The Lady Dances
Dona Drake as Rita Rio in the 1936 Eddie Cantor feature Strike Me Pink
She's rather adorable in this musical number which fans of Yellow Submarine (1968) will recognize as having segments rotoscoped for "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."
Watch it on YouTube HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2016

HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE 1964

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay not a review, therefore many crucial plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion. 

In earlier posts on The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, I wrote about how, as a youngster, I was drawn to horror films and scary movies; this in spite of everything in my personal and psychological makeup only reinforcing how ill-suited I was to the genre. A self-serious kid given to over-thinking everything, I was too literal-minded and took things far too much to heart to appreciate the cathartic benefits of what felt to me to be the casual sadism at the core of so many horror films and scary movies.

It’s not like I was immune to the escapist fun of being frightened by a movie—the rollercoaster thrill ride of jump cuts and shock effects—but that’s what B-movies were for. Cheaply made, poorly-acted programmers featuring creatures with visible zippers in their costumes were so artificial, their frights were reassuring. Once the genre started attracting Oscar-winning actresses and high production values, and the ghouls and monsters were replaced by cruel behavior and criminally dangerous people with mental illnesses…well, cathartic escapism gave way to inappropriate-for-the-genre empathy.

I grew up at a time when TV violence was full of bloodless bloodletting. Whether it be westerns, spy thrillers or sci-fi dramas, death on television was impersonal and at a remove. When people were killed, they simply fell: no visible wounds, eyes closed. The same held true of those B horror movies from the '40s and '50s screened on TV programs like “Creature Features”—death was just part of the drama and nothing to take seriously.

I don’t know when What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) first aired on TV, but I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine at the time. I remember watching it expecting to be scared out of my wits (in a fun way), but by the end, all I remember is trying to conceal from my sisters the fact that I was crying. Anything I might have been scared by in the earlier part of this Davis/Crawford horrorshow of grotesques came in second to how heartbreakingly sad it made me when Davis said to Crawford at the end, “You mean all this time we could have been friends?’’

And indeed, until I grew older and the film took on the mercifully distancing attributes of camp, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has always been for me less a shocker than a very sad melodrama populated with pitiable characters. Some fun I was on scary movie nights. 

I had a similar reaction to Robert Aldrich’s follow-up film, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Only with gore levels ratcheted up (as is the wont of horror films cashing in on a previous success), there was enough genuine fright to go around, too.

Bette Davis as Charlotte Hollis

Olivia de Havilland as Miriam Deering

Joseph Cotten as Drew Bayliss

Agnes Moorehead as Velma Cruther

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, in reuniting the director, production team, writers, and many of the actors from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, stops just a hair short (make that a big bouffant wig, short) of being an actual sequel to the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford starrer whose surprise success kicked off the whole Grand Dame Guignol horror film trend. Director Robert Aldrich had initially succeeded in convincing Crawford and Davis to appear together again as co-stars, but after roughly ten days of shooting, Crawford bailed and/or was fired (details below*) and was replaced by frequent Davis co-star Olivia de Havilland.

  

Substituting the Hollywood decay of Baby Jane for dilapidated southern-fried gothic, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte tells the story of Charlotte Hollis (Davis) an eccentric, Delta Dawn-like southern belle (is there any other kind?) who has holed herself up inside her late father’s Louisiana plantation following a scandalous, horrific night in 1927 whose secret she must guard. An unsolved secret involving a daddy’s girl, an illicit affair, a married man, a domineering father (Victor Buono), and an unattended meat cleaver.

Mary Astor (in her last film role) as Jewel Mayhew

Jump ahead to 1963. The demure Charlotte has grown into a loudmouthed, hot-tempered, pistol-packin' plantation proprietress a few mint juleps shy of a full pitcher. With the home she shares with her slovenly housekeeper (Moorehead) now threatened with demolition by a highway commission, Charlotte enlists the aid of her level-headed cousin, Miriam (de Havilland). Unfortunately, Miriam’s arrival triggers all manner of past rivalries and resentments, not to mention elaborate psychotic episodes in Charlotte which the family doctor (Cotton) barely has time to tend to before the next one erupts. What's the secret Charlotte is guarding, and who is it she's trying to protect? Is Charlotte really off her southern rocker as everyone in town seems to think, or is she getting a little assist off the deep end from seeming well-wishers?

As thrillers go, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is certainly not one lacking for secrets, suspects, and suspicious characters; so there’s a great deal of creepy fun to be had in trying to figure out just who is doing what to whom, and why. And while it’s been many, many years since the first time I saw it, I recall that after I thought I’d figured everything out, I was blown away by how many more surprises the film had up its sleeve.

Victor Buono as Samuel Eugene Hollis ("Big Sam")
Only 26-years old and portraying 56-year-old Bette Davis' father  

The film benefitted from a larger budget (nearly $2.5 million to Baby Jane’s $980 thousand), a name cast, a Top Ten theme song (Patti Page’s version on vinyl, Al Martino sung it in the film), and Davis’ tireless promotion (she was an unbilled associate producer with profit points). Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (amazingly) garnered seven academy award nominations -- Best Supporting Actress [Moorehead], B&W cinematography, score, song, art direction, costume design, editing). Upon release, it was met with a largely favorable critical response and emerged a boxoffice hit. Although not quite as big a hit as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Cecil Kellaway as Harry Willis

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 

Ranking Baby Jane and Charlotte on the basis of entertainment value alone, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? comes out on top as the most original and conceptually daring of the two. There’s something audacious in both the premise and casting of a story about two washed-up movie actresses making their golden years hell for one another that makes Baby Jane feel like a lost chapter from The Day of the Locust. Horror credentials aside, Baby Jane succeeds in being an ingeniously grotesque Hollywood black comedy with a campy/bitchy bite.

Bruce Dern as John Mayhew

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, on the other hand, has two ghosts hovering over it: John Mayhew and Joan Crawford. As good as Olivia de Havilland is, there’s no way I can watch the film without wondering what might have come from the re-teaming of Davis & Crawford. They were a dynamite pair in spite of—most likely, specifically due to—their shared animosity.  But in comparing Baby Jane  & Charlotte as they stand and on their own terms, I find Charlotte to be the better film overall: better written, better acted, more solidly structured, and less of a one-woman show. It’s a genuinely riveting melodrama that loses points only for its too-traditional gothic structure (the movie tests one’s tolerance for dark shadows, long staircases, and women in long, flowing nightgowns), and over-reliance on familiar haunted house/woman in peril tropes (Thunder! Lightning! Gale-force winds! Weather is never as unpredictable as it is in a horror film).

But being a longtime fan of the whole crazy-in-the-heat southern gothic tradition, what I enjoy most about Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is how it feels like the explicit, pulp novel reworking of one of those dark, family-related secrets poetically alluded to or whispered about in the works of Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte was adapted from the unpublished short story What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? by What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? author Henry Farrell (who obviously had a thing for these kinds of titles: What’s The Matter With Helen?,  How Awful About Alan).

PERFORMANCES

Although I’m never quite sure what to make of everyone’s southern accents (I have no ear for their authenticity, only the giggles they sometimes inspire), I like all of the performances in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte a great deal. The very capable cast of classic Hollywood stars appear to be enjoying themselves in roles that capitalize on and play off of past performances (both Cotten and de Havilland are likable personalities with screen experience showing their darker side). None more so than the Oscar-nominated Agnes Moorehead, who pulls off the amazing feat of making an over-the-top, very funny characterization, if not necessarily believable, certainly sympathetic. No one kids themselves that they're appearing in Eugene O’Neill, but neither do they condescend to the material.

As de Havilland demonstrated in The Heiress (1949), few people can
play the flip side of  sweetness and light to such chilling effect

However, it’s Bette Davis as the titular Charlotte in need of hushing who serves as the film’s center and driving force. Make that tour de force. Playing another pitiable, mentally fragile woman haunted by the past, Davis achieves moments of surprising sensitivity and subtlety of emotion almost simultaneously with instances of full-blown, drag-queen-level histrionics. It’s precisely what the role calls for, and Davis, clearly giving it her all, must have been disappointed when she was overlooked for an Oscar nomination.

Cecil Kellaway plays an insurance investigator looking into the unsolved Mayhew murder case
Davis & Kellaway's scenes are my favorite 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Were my list of favorite movies a ledger, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte would occupy a double-entry column marked “loss of innocence”: movies that have changed as I've grown older.  There, alongside such titles as The Birds, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Bad Seed, and Valley of the Dolls; Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte would represent yet another film that I took seriously in my youth, but now can only watch through the jaundiced eye of camp and unintentional humor. 

Looks like Charlotte could do with some hushing.

As with the aforementioned Baby Jane, I was a child when Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte had its broadcast TV premiere. A night that stands out as an evening of traumatic firsts: 1. It was my first exposure to gory bloodshed: the meat cleaver murder in the film’s prologue was bad enough, but the sight of blood splattering on the statue of a cherub fueled more childhood nightmares than I’d care to count; 2. It was the first time I ever saw anyone die with their eyes open. Yikes! 

Add to all this the fact that I had yet to see the influential French thriller Les Diaboliques (1955), so Charlotte’s borrowed denouement twist was nearly as terrifying for me as it was for poor, put-upon Bette Davis.

So while Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte did a superb job of scaring me to death, like its predecessor, it was also a movie my younger self found to be very sad. Honestly, I must be the biggest softie around, but even today Bette Davis' crestfallen demeanor and wounded eyes can fairly make my heart break. But as a child I was just worn out by all the film put her character through...and as it turns out, unnecessarily. So once again, as the credits rolled, I had to conceal from my sisters that I had been reduced to waterworks by the thought of her character's life spent in misery for nothing.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

These days, my memory of Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte as a scary film has fallen prey to too many years of Bette Davis impersonators, too much quotable dialog, a 2015 drag spoof titled Hush Up, Sweet Charlotte, and too many laugh-filled evenings with my partner cracking up at this, his favorite line (and line reading):

Truth be told, I would have given Bette Davis an Oscar for this bit alone.

Happily, none of this has lessened my affection for this film or for Davis' memorable (to say the least) performance. My appreciation for Bette Davis—the rabid scenery-chewer with the yo-yo-ing southern accent and forceful screen presence—is matched by my genuine admiration for Bette Davis the talented actress, and the nuances she brings to a role (at least in the film's quieter moments) written in such broad strokes.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a watchable, fun, atmospheric old-style escapist movie (still a little sad for me in parts, but in a nice way) featuring a cast of good actors giving solid performances. Agnes Moorehead is a scene-stealing hoot, but it's Olivia de Havilland who winds up being the film's Most Valuable Player. She has an easy naturalism that grounds the high-flung theatrics surrounding her. While no classic,  Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is nevertheless a viewing pleasure too rarefied and full of surprises to ever be considered "guilty."

BONUS MATERIAL

Who needs Patti Page's willowy-soft vocals singing the Oscar-nominated song Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte when you can listen to Bette Davis' smoky rendition (and I mean that literally, as it sounds as though she just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes) HERE.  With a full orchestra, yet.

Olivia de Havilland & Agnes Moorehead (r) recreating a scene first filmed with Joan Crawford (l). Although nothing alike, de Havilland also wound up replacing Joan Crawford in
1964s Lady in a Cage as well as Airport '77

I intentionally steered clear of the whole Bette Davis/Joan Crawford feud as it relates to the making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. These documentaries and "making of" featurettes cover the territory nicely:
AMC Backstory: The Making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte 

Wizard Work: a 1964 featurette narrated by Joseph Cotten 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2016

NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: A List of Lamentable Last Films

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”   - T.S. Eliot   

It can’t be easy maintaining a film career. The practical side of the motion picture business doesn’t readily correspond with an artist's desire to work well and consistently while trying to hold onto whatever faint vestiges of integrity and self-respect are left intact after one is deemed no longer young or the pop-culture “flavor of the month.” Fans, critics, and rear-view-mirror biographers tend to speak of an actor’s career and body of work as though they are things strategically orchestrated and mapped out. Perhaps in some cases this is true, but for the most part, the cold realities of the business of fame suggests an actor’s lingering legacy is often the result of nothing more premeditated than the serendipitous meeting of talent, luck, ambition, and tenacity.

A film career of any length is bound to have its ups and downs, but if an actor is lucky, the ups outnumber (or outweigh) the bad to sufficient degree as to have little impact on time’s overall evaluation of an actor's merits. Because Hollywood films ween us on happy endings and tidy conclusions, perhaps this breeds in us an expectation (or hope) that the careers of our favorite stars culminate in films and performances worthy and emblematic of their lifetime achievements, in toto.

Occasionally it works out: as in John Wayne, dying of cancer in real-life, portraying an aging gunman dying of cancer in his last film The Shootist (1976); or Sammy Davis Jr. appearing as a revered, aging tap-dancer in Tap (1989) his final film. But all too often stars with illustrious early careers bow out in vehicles severely at odds with their cumulative talent, reputations, and dignity.
So here's a list of the less-than-celebrated last films of a few of my favorite actors. An unlucky list of 13 movies - indicative of nothing deeper than a movie fan's wish that these talented stars had been shown to better advantage in their final movie roles.
   

1. Mae West — Last Film: Sextette (1978)
The final film of screen legend Mae West turned out to be something of a good news/bad news affair. The good news being that the self-enchanted octogenarian ended her four-decade movie career in a name-above-the title star vehicle (vanity project) designed as a tribute to her image and career. The bad news, of course, is that I’m referring to Sextette: an ill-advised, fan-produced exercise in celebrity exploitation so unflattering to its leading lady, it essentially ends up being a 90-minute exercise in character assassination and idol-smashing...set to a disco beat.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: My Little Chickadee (1940) 

*****

2. Laurence Harvey  — Last Film: Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

Speaking in terms of equal opportunity, it’s nice to know that late-career leading men are as susceptible to the beckoning charms of the B-grade horror film as the cadre of older actresses populating that subgenre known as Grand Dame Guignol. On the heels of appearing with gal pal Joanna Pettet in a 1972 episode of TVs Night Gallery, and co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor in Night Watch (1973); Oscar nominee Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top - 1959) went the full  slasher route in the rarely-seen cheapie Welcome to Arrow Beach. Appearing again with (VERY) good friend Joanna Pettet, Harvey underplays a military vet with a cannibalistic taste for hitchhiking hippie chicks and blowsy booze hounds. Looking gaunt from the stomach cancer that would claim his life before this film was released, Harvey also directed this bloody exploitationer which rode a short-lived 70s trend of cannibalism-themed horror movies. I remember seeing this as a teen (under the alternate title, Tender Flesh) on a double bill with the another  cannibal horror film, The Folks at Red Wolf Inn (1972). I guess we all have our low moments.  View trailer HERE

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Night Watch (1973)

                                                                         *****

3. Joan Crawford — Last Film: Trog (1970)

As a journalist once noted, the boon and bane of every Crawford fan has always been the actress’s dogged professionalism. No matter how low she'd fallen (and Trog is about as low as it gets) Crawford always emoted as though Louis B. Mayer were still breathing down her neck. Crawford’s co-star in Trog is a professional wrestler in a rubbery Halloween mask (Joe Cornelius), but by the level of her intensity and commitment, you’d think she was acting opposite Franhcot Tone. And while this trait is certainly admirable, it has the unfortunate effect of making Joan appear to be performing in a vacuum; acting her ass off independent of the tone and timbre of the scene, not really relating to her co-stars. In Trog, Joan – looking tiny and occasionally pretty well-oiled – plays an anthropologist who attempts to tame a "Kill-crazy fiend from hell!” amidst public outcry and resistance. As always, Joan is the best thing in it (on my personal Camp-o-meter, anyway), but this B-horror movie programmer is so beneath her talents it makes the schlock she made for William Castle look dignified.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Berserk (1967)

*****

4. Gene Kelly — Last Film: Xanadu (1980)

A curious inclusion given how much I love this film and how, considering what he had to work with, I actually think Gene Kelly acquits himself rather nicely.
But I have to admit I've always found my enjoyment of Kelly in this musical to be running neck and neck with a sense of missed opportunities and a disappointment in how poorly he’s served by this charming but rather weak vehicle as a whole. Xanadu is nothing if not respectful of the influential actor/singer/dancer/director/choreographer who helped shape the face of the modern movie musical; it’s just that he’s let down by an insipid script, sabotaged by editing and camerawork which fails to understand the rhythms of dance (or rollerskating...they cut off his feet!), and is left to play third-fiddle to two low-wattage leads who fail to possess even a fraction of his screen charisma. So while Xanadu is not exactly a career embarrassment (I'd say that honor goes to his direction of Hello, Dolly! & The Guide for the Married Man), it ranks as a poor representation and send-off for the genius that was Gene Kelly.

Shoulda Quit  While I Was Ahead: The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

*****

5. Gloria Swanson — Last Film: Airport ’75 (1974)     

In this loopy sequel (of sorts) to 1970’s Airport, silent screen star Gloria Swanson appears as herself and makes up for all those mute years by never shutting up. Swanson’s not onscreen a great deal ‒ although it feels like it since, in a film overrun with nuns (Helen Reddy, for one), Swanson makes the curious choice of dressing exactly like a nun who’s been to a couturier ‒ but when she is onscreen you can bet she’s talking about herself. Ostensibly under the guise of dictating her memoirs to her self-medicating secretary (Planet of the Apes’ Linda Harrison or Augusta Summerland, who knows a thing or two about keeping quiet), Swanson, who is said to have written her own dialog, captures perfectly what it’s like to be in the company of an actor: they are always their own favorite topic of discussion.

Overlooking the suspense-killing casting of having Swanson playing herself in a fictional narrative (what are they gonna do, have her get sucked out a window?), her role feels like a far-in-advance infomercial for her 1980 memoir Swanson on Swanson. A title describing the entire thrust of Swanson's self-enamored characterization here.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Sunset Blvd. (1950)

*****

6. Dean Martin / Frank Sinatra — Last Film: Cannonball Run II (1984)

Although I tend to consider myself a child of the '60s & '70s, and therefore lay no claim to the cinema atrocities committed in the 80s; the next time I go on a jeremiad about the craptastic bros-before-hos movie oeuvre of Adam Sandler and Kevin James, someone needs to remind me that Burt Reynolds – an actor from my generation – pretty much originated the lazy buddy comedy genre. That's when you find someone to pay for you and your pals to get together and have a good time, hand somebody a camera, film it, slap a title on it, and then call it a movie.

I never saw the original The Cannonball Run (1981) but the appeal of having the '60s Rat Pack reunited onscreen in this movie (Sinatra, Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. & Shirley MacLaine all appear) got the better me, and so I watched it one night on cable TV. With this movie (and I use the term loosely) I discovered that nostalgia is no match for a film that clearly holds its audience in low regard. The level of contempt this movie has for the intelligence of its audience is palpable and pungent. Dean Martin dares you to call him on the obvious fact that he really doesn’t give a shit, and Frank Sinatra looks exactly like someone dutifully following through on a favor/obligation. Dreadful. An unspeakably depressing last film for two of my favorites.    
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Airport (1970) / The First Deadly Sin (1980)

*****

7. Elizabeth Taylor  — Last Film: The Flintstones  (1994)    

Beyond the garden-variety complaint that Hollywood never seems to know how to properly showcase stars once they cease to be young, I’ve no objection to an actress of Elizabeth Taylor’s magnitude and reputation being cast as Fred Flintstone’s harridan of a mother-in-law (one Pearl Slaghoople) in a live-action version of the enduring 60s primetime TV cartoon show (inspired by the live-action The Honeymooners). Indeed, given Taylor’s sense of humor about herself, lack of pretension, and past success in playing shrews and shrill, fishwife types, it’s actually a pretty cool idea.
My problem lies with how dismal a comedy The Flintstones turned out to be. Taylor's role is little more than an extended walk-on, but in it, she's saddled with some strenuously unfunny material that she doesn't handle particularly well. There's so little to The Flintstones beyond the wittily prehistoric costumes, sets, and special effects (it's all concept, no content), that one is left with too much time to contemplate why the only laughs the film earns derive from how accurately the production team has captured some device or creature recognizable from the cartoon. Taylor (sporting that awful Jose Eber feathered helmet hairdo she adopted at the time) has definitely been better, was capable of better, and I only wish she had been given better.
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Mirror Crack’d (1980)

*****

8. Peter Sellers — Last Film: The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)

It’s anybody’s guess how this flat, misguided comedy ever got beyond the planning stages, but avarice likely played a role in this unsuitable-for-release trainwreck ever seeing the light of day (it was released weeks after Sellers’ death). Fandom fuels a desire to see the last professional efforts of any favored celebrity, but it’s hard to imagine any Peter Sellers fan deriving much joy from this slogging crime comedy. A film which also served as the last screen role for Mary Poppins’ David Tomlinson and features Helen Mirren impersonating Queen Mary, the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, whom Mirren would win an Oscar portraying 26-years later. Sellers was a comic genius who made a career out of disappearing behind impersonation, but by the '80s his extended yellowface Fu Manchu shtick was strictly cringe material. Matters aren’t helped much by Sellers (ill at the time) playing dual roles: bored & tired.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Being There (1979)

*****

9. Tallulah Bankhead —  Last Film: Die! Die! My Darling!  (1965) 

This one’s a bit of an academic call. A call resting both on the awareness of Tallulah Bankhead being an esteemed stage actress whose motion picture appearances were rare (thus branding this Z-grade exercise in Hag Horror as a film far beneath her talents); and the full understanding that no one in their right mind would care to deprive the world of Bankhead’s mesmerizingly over-the-top performance in said Psycho-Biddy gothic. Bankhead is too fine an actor for a title like Die! Die! My Darling! to stand as the representative coda to her brief film career, but as a longstanding connoisseur of camp, I can’t deny that I’m forever grateful to her for having undertaken it.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: A Royal Scandal (1945)

*****

10. Bette Davis — Last Film: Wicked Stepmother (1989) 

It’s kind of a good thing this chaotic comedy about a homewrecking witch (Davis) is so aggressively unfunny, for the sight of the frail, reed-thin, surgically tightened, post-stroke, eerily animatronic Bette Davis croaking out her lines while chain-smoking like a madwoman is a bonafide laugh-killer. A problem-plagued production that had the ailing, dissatisfied Davis deserting the film shortly after shooting began (resulting in her onscreen time amounting to slightly less than 15-minutes), Wicked Stepmother may have brought Davis a hefty paycheck and yet another opportunity to work – something obviously very important to her – but beyond the curiosity value of seeing one of Hollywood's greats in her last film roe, the whole affair has a ghoulish feel to it.
The only joke in the film that works is a brief sight gag revealing the late wife of Davis' new husband (Lionel Stander) was Joan Crawford.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Whales of August (1987)

*****

11. Charles Boyer — Last Film: A Matter of Time  (1976)

Charles Boyer is an interesting case. He dodged having to be shackled with Ross Hunter’s Lost Horizon (1973) as his last film by following up that misstep with the stylish Alan Resnais film Stavisky…; a fine and suitably distinguished movie to end his career. Unfortunately, Boyer dodged the Ross Hunter bullet only to jump into the firing line of Vincente Minnelli’s calamitous A Matter of Time (1976). A film which not only reunited Boyer with the director of two of his earlier films (The Cobweb and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), but reunited him with his Arch of Triumph and Gaslight co-star, Ingrid Bergman.

Hopes couldn’t have been higher when it was announced Vincente Minnelli (making his first film since 1970s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) was going to direct daughter Liza (in need of a hit after Lucky Lady) in a lavish costume drama. Without going into the ugly details behind a problem-plagued production, suffice it to say A Matter of Time didn’t do anybody’s resumés any favors. Boyer, as the husband of dotty Contessa Bergman, is really rather good. It’s the film that’s such a mess.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Stavisky…(1974)

*****

12. Lucille Ball — Last Film: Mame (1974)  

Mame was released with a ton of hoopla and cheery smiles all around, but once the smoke cleared (and a few years had passed) what were we left with? A star who claimed making the film “was about as much fun as watching your house burn down”; a costar (Bea Arthur) who went on record stating, “It was a tremendous embarrassment. I’m so sorry I did it,” and that the leading lady was “terribly miscast”; a discontented composer (Jerry Herman); and a marriage dissolved (according to Arthur, her husband – Gene Saks, Mame’s director – used emotional blackmail to get her to do the movie: “As my wife you owe it to me to play this part.”).

Mame was to be TV legend Lucille Ball’s return to the silver screen, but reviews and reception to the film were so harsh, this $12-million misstep was her swan song. Oops! Maybe it’s not polite to bring up singing in this context.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Long Long Trailer (1953)

*****

13. Barbara Stanwyck — Last Film: The Night Walker (1964) 

After playing a bordello madam (Walk on the Wild Side) and appearing in an Elvis Presley movie (Roustabout), I guess Barbara Stanwyck decided to make her career degradation complete by working for William Castle. The Night Walker is a somewhat listless, surprisingly gimmick-free William Castle melodrama that, while not doing much for Stanwyck, at least reunited her with former hubby and co-star Robert Taylor.

As always, Stanwyck and her trademark intensity are fascinating to watch and the only worthwhile elements in a film that really would have been just fine as an episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs (although the really creepy music by Vic Mizzy is effective as hell).
Happily, with the movies treating her so shabbily, it's nice to know television provided Stanwyck with some of her finest latter-career moments (I'm crazy about her performance in The Thorn Birds).

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

"I am big! It's the pictures that got small."

Norma Desmond - Sunset Blvd.

Copyright © Ken Anderson