New Years Resolutions: The Little Foxes

January is for New Year’s Resolutions, and your Picture Show bloggers have resolved to watch more award-winning classic films.

RODNEY BOWCOCK: The Hubbard Family are wealthy socialites who have their eyes on partnering with a Chicago businessman in plans to build a cotton mill in their small town, where they can take advantage of the low wages that are allowed to pay to workers in their area. Horace Giddens (Herbert Marshall), husband of Regina Hubbard Giddens (Bette Davis) blanches at the possibility of entering into this arrangement. With her family crumbling around her, Regina embarks on a series of schemes to propel her greed and sense of entitlement. There is more to this plot, but as the Cincinnati Enquirer notes in their review of the film on October 11, 1941, “Much of the best of The Little Foxes does not fit easily into a synopsis.” With that in mind, I’ll leave it to you, the viewer and reader to put together some of the other

pieces of the proceedings.

SAMANTHA GLASSER: The Hubbard family is wealthy and greedy, scheming to cheat anyone, including each other, to make a buck. They need capitol to invest in the mill, and Regina's husband is the only one with enough tangible wealth to invest, but he is away recovering from heart trouble. She lures him back and does everything it takes to get what she wants. It's a movie about despicable people, but it is strangely engrossing.

RB: I’ve never quite understood people who don’t enjoy a particular movie or TV program because they don’t find the lead characters people that they want to root for. I’ve never really been a person to base the quality of a movie or TV show based around how much I wanted to hang out with the people that it was about.

SG: What you're describing is something I had to learn. I had a hard time getting into Mad Men, which I consider to be one of my all-time favorite shows, because I didn't know who I should latch onto. Had it not been for the amazing clothes, sets and music, I might not have stuck around long enough to find out.

RB: Tallulah Bankhead originated the role in the initial production of Lillian Hellman’s play and toured with it for a time after it closed. It played the now long demolished Cox Theatre in Cincinnati (near were the Aronoff Center is now located) where the reviews in the local press were unanimously exemplary.

SG: Davis told Screenland magazine, "I've read the play and I think it is one of the great plays of all time, and it certainly should make an amazing picture. Lillian Hellman is extraordinary. I've never known a character to be so consistent as Regina. Miss Hellman's heavies are not dyed in the wool villainesses — they have a sense of humor. I admire her enormously." Hellman had a hit with The Children's Hour, a story about rumored lesbianism at a school, which was adapted to the movie screen in 1936 as These Three and in 1961.

RB: It’s interesting to me that Davis notes the sense of humor that many of the characters have, and while I haven’t read or seen Hellman’s play (and my understanding is that there are differences between the play and the film), I was reminded that some of the advertising material of the time referred to the “DRAMA!” and “HUMOR!” of the film, and while I recall the drama very, very well, I keep coming up blank when trying to remember the humor that was in the film.

SG: Your sense of humor would have to be rather dark to squeeze comedy out of this film.

Wyler suggested Davis see Tallulah Bankhead on the stage, and she did, but came away angry, feeling that Wyler wanted her to emulate the actress instead of playing it her way. Wyler did not approve of the stark white face powder Davis wore. Davis and director William Wyler had tiffs on the set, and during one argument Davis stormed off and production stopped for three weeks. The studio painted it as a breakdown due to exhaustion. Rumors swirled that the studio was considering Miriam Hopkins or Katharine Hepburn to replace her, but that they determined too much had been shot already and it wouldn't justify the cost.

RB: It’s likely that the rumors regarding the replacements were deliberately planted in order for Davis to know that Wyler and Goldwyn were not playing games and she was going to have to bend and do at least some things his way. Personally, I consider the white makeup to be a miss. Davis wanted it to reflect her age, as her character in the film was to be around 40 years old, but I think the makeup makes her appear more ghoulish than middle-aged.

SG: I liked it. I felt it was in keeping with the kind of makeup a stuffy society woman might wear in an era when makeup was frowned upon. It made her look untouched by the sun, and therefore untouched by work. It made her look paler, in contrast with the darker skinned races she felt were beneath her. It also reminded me of Elizabeth I, a royal I imagine Regina likened herself to.

The sets and costumes in this movie are sumptuous. I delighted in seeing all the details. The high-backed stiff couch in the living room was more decorative than comfortable. The dining room is grand with an enormous crystal chandelier over the table. I liked seeing the Victorian bathroom with the tub with the wainscoting on the side and the mirror on the metal spring that could pull away from the wall, and yet as much as it looked antique, it looked functional too.

Although Wyler made many great films, I've read negative things about him from Charles Bickford too, who called him a stupid golem.

RB: Davis declared him her favorite director, yet the two never worked together again.

SG: Ruth Chatterton also played Regina on stage, and Hellman called hers her favorite depiction. If only television had been around then, we might have had a record of Chatterton's performance so we could compare the two. In revivals, Anne Bancroft, Elizabeth Taylor and Stockard Channing played Regina.

RB: The play and film were both popular enough that there were many regional productions. I found notices for a bunch in Ohio in the late 40’s, all starring people that were essentially un-Google-able.

SG: Richard Carlson is delightful as the exuberant handsome son of a seamstress that courts Teresa Wright. His character was created for the film to provide reprieve from the heaviness of the corrupt family.

This was the first film of Wright, Duryea, Carl Benton Reid, and Patricia Collinge (who gives a moving performance in a wonderful, layered part). I love Duryea, a staple of noir films, and was surprised to see him in a dopey innocent role. His face has the strength of character of his later films, but he plays the youthful, manipulated son to perfection. In a Screenland article, Davis expressed insecurity about stepping into a part with a cast that had played with Bankhead on the stage, and Charles Dingle told her they were all intimidated to be playing in their first movie with such a big star.

RB: As good as she is in the film, and she is very, very good, there were some reviews that felt that the rest of the cast outacted her. That’s not a slag about Davis. It simply shows how well everyone was cast and how well they handled their roles.

SG: "Rarely does a fine play become an even finer film," wrote Sara Corpening for Hollywood magazine. "But such is the happy case of The Little Foxes."

This movie played on a double bill with Citizen Kane, partly because Kane was struggling at the box office. Gregg Toland was responsible for the impactful deep focus photography on both films.

RB: It’s hard to imagine that double bill, and usually from what I can find it was billed as a single. Perhaps that’s part of why the neighborhood theaters hated the movie so much. Here’s my favorite, courtesy of Tom McCormick at the Rock Theatre in Rockford, Iowa: “Every kid in the theatre was hollering 'Mama, I wanna go home' before the first reel ended. Nearly all of them had gone home when the picture was half over. Certainly, this is not small town stuff.”

So, yeah, the Oscars have always honored films that the more average film viewers weren’t interested in (well, at least until recently when superhero movies seem to be nominated for the majority of the accolades).

SG: The title comes from a Bible passage which contains another classic movie title Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, which has no relation to this story. A prequel to The Little Foxes called Another Part of the Forest was released in 1948 with Dan Duryea playing his character's father as a young man and Ann Blyth in the Bette Davis role.

The film lives up to its good reputation as an Oscar nominee. Four stars.

RB: I agree. Four stars for an engrossing film that I really enjoyed watching and have contemplated a lot over the last few days.