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STRAITJACKET & FISHNET & BABY PINS It’s well known Bette Davis fought with director William Wyler over how to play Regina in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. In the annals of on-set wars, theirs are considered legendary. As the story goes, Bette wanted to hold Regina in total check, restricting Wyler’s demand for a range of softer touches. She even had cosmetic designer Perc Westmore subversively oblige her insistence by creating an unflattering makeup for the character—a “facial” as venomous mock of Tallulah Bankhead. Here is where the facts about the battles get fuzzy: Bette reluctantly agreed to see the play but came away with the conclusion Bankhead’s interpretation was the right one, and though Wyler also thought she was stellar, neither he nor his star seemed to agree what in Bankhead’s portrayal would be reproduced on film. Wyler was said to have wanted from Bette some of the extravagantly packaged slithering Bankhead is famous for, including her poise, charm, humor and (alleged) sexiness. On stage, a “star” can use Regina to mount posturing and command dramatic stillness and we love watching the theatrics because she is in the flesh. (The reason Elizabeth Taylor managed to score a hit revival in the early 80s.) On screen, though, the part is exposed as anorexic—starved of meaningful innards. A guess, Wyler likely conceded Regina hadn’t much of a heart and hoped to devise elements to suggest she might have had one at one time and, equally a hunch, Bette saw the limitations and constructs a fidgety to frosty severity as means to conclusion. (And clearly they want to avoid duplicating her angst in Jezebel and especially The Letter, in which she’s a roller-coaster and as such a dazzling ride.) Facilitated by a heatwave keeping the sets excessively hot, by Wyler’s snippy criticism at instead of support to Bette between takes and by her growing insecurity over her portrayal, what apparently happened is the raging private wars of attraction and possession by estranged lovers erupted to blind them both and thus one of the longest running fights goes on: Is Bette the real thing as Regina? (I side with the doubters.) The play can be sustained on the power of the bitch; the movie fizzles because its inherent paltriness is exposed—Hellman’s familial sins are blackmail threats as claustrophobic small-mindedness. (There’s a petty cash feel on money matters in Toys in the Attic too.) We also just as easily ascertain more details of Regina’s relationship with her husband are required—we get stewing Regina’s admission of hate for her husband but we really need a news update on her repressed sexuality. (In early drafts, Hellman had the husband suffering from syphilis, contouring Regina’s sublimation.) Still, Bette is superlative in her obduracy, and I like the way she’s coifed and attired: Orry-Kelly has designed some pretty regal formals and there’s something queerly satisfying when she wears a hat with fishnet covering her face. Hellman adapted, with Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell and Arthur Kober adding filler. Photography by Gregg Toland; the attractively appointed interior decoration by Stephen Goosson and Howard Bristol includes a masterpiece leather chair for Bette’s husband Herbert Marshall; music by Meredith Wilson.
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |
With Toys in the Attic, Hellman is back at the poisoned wells of family and money squabbling, this time spiked with incest. Directed by George Roy Hill (from Minneapolis), it’s performed at a clipper pace in just ninety minutes by a rather disparate cast a long long way from the author’s Louisiana roots: there’s Geraldine Page (from Missouri), Wendy Hiller (from Cheshire, England) and Dean Martin (from Ohio) as sisters and brother, Yvette Mimieux (from Hollywood) as Dean’s child bride and daughter to Gene Tierney (from Brooklyn). It’s a little like a destitute version of The Little Foxes, with show-stopping Page all aflame with southern affectation and giving some oomph to a few terrifically bad lines—she brays at Yvette to “stop sticking your baby pins in me!”—but she’s also got a climatic front yard scene fit for the annals by connoisseurs cataloging movie hysterics. (So whatever it is that smiles appear on viewers’ faces.) Hiller’s doing a resigned tranquility with a payoff—telling Page her years-long obsession with their brother is all about her secret desire to sleep with him. Martin isn’t half as bad as you might fear; Yvette looking like she’s just barely recovering from her Light in the Piazza malady; Gene Tierney suggesting a bit of Sylvia Sidney with a bad gray hairdo; and Larry Gates and Nan Martin not too bad, either. Both the play and movie have zilch pretensions: Toys is the equivalent of rummaging through trash.