Stream Leading Ladies (When There Were Leading Ladies) VIII
Anne Baxter
All About Eve 1950. Based on the 1946 short story “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr which, in turn, was based on a true incident. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewitz. Theater diva Margo Channing (Bette Davis) has just turned 40 and is having a midlife crisis when she’s manipulated by waif/avid fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) into believing she needs an assistant. Slowly ambitious Eve takes over everything, undermining while seeming helpful.
Playwright Hugh Marlow (Lloyd Richards) changes his allegiance, his wife, Margo’s best friend, Karen (Celeste Holm), doesn’t see what’s going on and unwittingly helps the usurper, Margo’s lover Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) deals with what he thinks is unwarranted jealousy, Journalist/critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) becomes the ingénue’s champion. Only Margo’s long time maid Birdie (Thelma Ritter) sees the truth. “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!” (Margo) Terrific.
Baxter got the role after first choice Jeanne Crain became pregnant. Fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning six, including Best Picture. The only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations (Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as Best Actress, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter as Best Supporting Actress.) Near the top of most lists. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Carnival Story 1954 Directed by Kurt Neumann. Absolute noir. A down and out American carnival comes to Germany to try its luck. Poor and hungry, Willi (a blonde Anne Baxter) picks the pocket of barker Joe (Steve Cochran). He lets the girl buy food before cornering her. She returns the wallet. He gets her a job in the cook tent, then pounces. Willi is in love, Joe’s having a fling. One day, the show’s star attraction, high-dive artist Frank Collini (Lyle Bettger) asks whether she’d be interested in training to join him in a double act. She does. The company applauds. Frank falls in love.
Willi secretly meets Joe, even when he treats her badly and shows up to meals with another woman. Her objections are fiery, but brief. She and Frank bring in crowds. He proposes. Joe says her marriage won’t change things between them. She slaps him and marries Frank, but when Joe beckons… He continues to abuse her, she finds him literally (?!) irresistible. The two men fight…things go downhill from there. A last rescue is made by silent strongman Cropp (Ady Berber) a la Hunchback of Notre Dame. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Bedeviled 1955 Directed by Mitchell Leisen. Another noir, this one seriously far-fetched. Young men Gregory Fitzgerald (Steve Forrest) and Tony Lugacetti (Robert Christopher) fly to Italy to be trained for priesthood at a seminary. Tony comes from a big Catholic family and fits. Greg is a somewhat lost army veteran, not yet committed. French fashion designer Francesca (Simone Renant) flirts with Greg on the plane and becomes indispensable later.
On his way to dinner, Greg gets in a cab the same time as anxious, furtive Monica Johnson (Anne Baxter) who doesn’t tell him anything until after he’s been questioned by police and beat up by gangsters. She then says she witnessed a murder. While the seminary looks for him, Greg gets enmeshed in Monica’s predicament. When she makes a pass, he backs up. (OK, maybe I was wrong.) Eventually her “Lancelot” learns she’s not telling the truth. There are consequences. Rent on Amazon Prime.
The Magnificient Ambersons 1942 can be found in Stream Films By and With Orson Welles
The Razor’s Edge 1946 can be found in Stream Leading Ladies VI
Angel on My Shoulder 1946can be found in Stream Fantasy Films I: 1930s/1940s
Jennifer Jones
Madame Bovary 1949. Adaptation of the dramatic novel by Gustav Flaubert. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Romantic, twenty year-old Emma (Jennifer Jones) falls in love with her first chance at a wider world, visiting country doctor Charles Bovary (Van Heflin – excellent). He does his best to give her the kind of home she wants. She overspends lavishly. The village is, however, provincial and Charles lacks status. Her dalliance with young Leon Dupuis (Alf Kjellin) goes nowhere. A baby does nothing to bring the married couple together.
Invited to a ball by a grateful patient of her husband, Emma is gregarious and much admired, while Charles feels out of place and gets drunk. Aristocrat Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan) meets her at the event and searches Emma out at home. Hoping to stop herself, she sets her husband an impossible medical task she hopes will make him famous. When it doesn’t work out well, she turns to Rodolphe. Ill fated love affairs and increasing debt come crashing down.
A plot device which structured the story around author Flaubert’s obscenity trial was developed to placate the censors. James Mason plays the author. Otherwise the film is faithful to the book. Jones looks just right and the scenario looks great, but anguish doesn’t go deep enough. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Carrie 1952 Based on the novel “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser. Directed by William Wyler. Old school melodrama. On a train from a small town in Minnesota to Chicago, innocent Carrie (Jennifer Jones) is chatted up by traveling salesman Charles Drouet (Eddie Albert) who gives her his card. She lives with her sister’s family in a tenement while working at a sweatshop. When the young woman loses her job, she goes to see Charlie hoping he can help and is pressured into a fancy dinner.
Lost and uncomfortable at Fitzgerald’s Restaurant, Carrie is aided by gentleman manager George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier) who sympathetically helps her to a table and sends over a bottle when Charlie arrives. The salesman convinces Carrie to move into his apartment – ostensibly while he’s away. They become a couple. One day he runs into Hurstwood in the park and brings him home, encouraging a man he trusts to keep Carrie company while he’s on the road.
For a week, she’s wined, dined and taken to theater – no more than that. She and George fall in love. Carrie doesn’t know he has a wife and children. Mrs. Hurstwood (Miriam Hopkins) is a critical harridan who won’t grant a divorce and threatens to tell her husband’s boss. Pushed into a corner, he takes desperate measures compounded by not telling Carrie the truth. When everything comes out, things turn radically around. Here, the actress is credible.
There were issues during production: Jones hadn’t revealed that she was pregnant, Olivier disliked his co-star (apparently everybody did), and Hollywood was reeling under McCarthyism i.e. the film might be attacked as immoral. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Tender is The Night 1962. Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Directed by Henry King. Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Dick Diver (Jason Robards) makes the mistake of falling in love with rich, schizophrenic patient Nicole Warren (Jennifer Jones). Hoping to give her lasting emotional stability, he ignores warning by sanatorium head/mentor Dr. Dohmler (Paul Lukas) that his career will be destroyed and marries her.
Dick gets drawn into his new wife’s indolent, hedonistic life ignoring opportunities for position and research. Theirs is to say the least, a tempestuous relationship. Alcoholism and affairs follow. Nicole turns on Dick. Jones told her husband David O. Selznick that she wanted this role in no uncertain terms. Also with Joan Fontaine, Tom Ewell, Jill St. John, Cesare Danova. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Alas Anna Karenina, Love Letters, Cluny Brown and Portrait of Jennie are not available to stream
Top photo: Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Anne Baxter, and George Sanders, in All About Eve. Wikimedia Commons, public domain photo.
