MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #81 HUSH… HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE 1964 & WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? 1962

SPOILER ALERT!

(1964): A Study in Gothic Horror and the Birth of “Hag Cinema”

Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) stand as twin pillars of mid-century Gothic horror, films that redefined the possibilities of psychological suspense while resuscitating the careers of Hollywood’s fading icons.

These films, often credited with launching what has now entered the lexicon as the “Hag Cinema,” a subgenre defined by legendary actresses, who were gracing the screen in the seasoned elegance of their later years, taking on roles that are as grotesque, often macabre as they are compelling. And as much about the erosion and slow fading of old Hollywood glamour as they are about the horrors lurking in decaying mansions and the unsettling truths that emerge as the façade of the luster quietly dims. The sheen of stardom is softly eclipsed by misogyny.

Aldrich, a director known for his unflinching exploration of power dynamics and moral ambiguity, leveraged the fraught histories of his leading ladies to craft narratives steeped in psychological torment, societal decay, and the haunting weight of the past.

These films also laid bare Hollywood’s vicious cycle of discarding and marginalizing its once-revered stars, reducing them to monstrous caricatures under the demoralizing “Hag Cinema” label- a cruel irony for women who had once been heralded as paragons of talent and glamour. Davis, Crawford, and de Havilland, whose careers were built on Oscar-winning artistry and box-office dominance, found themselves exiled by an industry that deemed them obsolete past 40. Imagine that—forty, and suddenly you’re tossed on the Hollywood scrap heap, as if a star’s brilliance evaporates, as if time alone can erase allure.

It’s a telling reflection of our culture that once women reach forty, their capacity for sex appeal is so often dismissed, as if that allure and desirability are the exclusive property of youth. This notion not only disregards the depth and complexity that come with age, but also perpetuates the myth that a woman’s value is tethered solely to her appearance—an idea both reductive and profoundly unfair. I’ll be delving into these very questions in my forthcoming special, Deconstructing the Myth of Hag Cinema, where I’ll examine the cultural narratives, industry biases, and enduring complexities that have shaped this provocative subgenre, not to mention not to mention the glaring hypocrisy that allows male stars to age into gravitas and continued desirability, Meanwhile, aging male stars had continued to secure roles that keep them firmly in the narrative driver’s seat, their box office appeal undiminished—and all without ever being saddled with a reductive label. If fairness prevailed, perhaps we’d be talking about “Sagging Ball Cinema,” but curiously, no such moniker exists for their encore act on screen. I’ll have a section referring to these ‘masculine’ Hollywood heroes using this delicious reversal – a bit of poetic justice to coin a new term.

The term “hag,” wielded as a dismissive shorthand for their late-career roles, underscored the systemic misogyny of a studio machine that prized youth over legacy, reducing complex women to campy spectacles.

Yet Aldrich’s films, for all their Gothic excess, refused to let these actresses fade quietly. Instead, they weaponized that marginalization, transforming it into a searing indictment of Hollywood’s cruelty. In Baby Jane? and Charlotte, the horror isn’t just in the decaying mansions or psychological torment- it’s in the spectacle of greatness scorned, of icons forced to gnaw at the scraps of their own pasts. These films, in their audacious bleakness, became a perverse tribute to resilience, proving that even in exile, these women could still command the screen, their talent burning through the demeaning labels like acid.

Both What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte owes much of their psychological complexity and Gothic atmosphere to the powerful collaboration between screenwriter Lukas Heller and novelist Henry Farrell. For Baby Jane?, Robert Aldrich commissioned Heller to adapt Farrell’s 1960 novel, trusting Heller’s sharp sense for character and suspense to translate the book’s twisted sibling rivalry and decaying Hollywood glamour to the screen.

Heller’s screenplay was praised for its ability to balance horror, dark humor, and pathos, giving Bette Davis and Joan Crawford material rich enough to fuel their legendary performances and seemed to stoke their off-screen rivalry.

When Aldrich set out to capture lightning in a bottle with Baby Jane? with Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, he once again turned to Heller and Farrell. This time, the screenplay was adapted from Farrell’s own unpublished short story “What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?”

Heller initially wrote the adaptation, but Farrell himself later contributed to the script, ensuring that the Southern Gothic elements and labyrinthine betrayals remained true to his vision. The result was a screenplay that blended psychological horror with melodrama, allowing Davis, Crawford, Olivia de Havilland, Mary Astor and the rest of the cast to inhabit characters haunted by secrets.

Lukas Heller, a German-born screenwriter whose credits include other Adlrich films like The Dirty Dozen 1967 and Flight of the Phoenix 1965, was known for his ability to craft tense, character-driven narratives.

His partnership with Aldrich produced some of the most memorable psychological thrillers of the 1960s. Henry Farrell, meanwhile, specialized in stories of twisted domesticity and repressed violence, his work forming the backbone of both films’ enduring appeal. Together, Heller and Farrell’s scripts provided Aldrich with a foundation for his explorations of aging, madness, and the grotesque, and their work remains central to the films’ lasting critical and cultural impact.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

The film opens with the glittering artifice of 1917 vaudeville, where “Baby” Jane Hudson, a child star performed by Julie Allred, basks in adoration, her doll-like persona masking a toxic narcissism. By the 1930s, Jane’s career has crumbled, eclipsed by her sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), who transitions from onstage understudy to a luminous film star. A car accident leaves Blanche paralyzed, and the sisters retreat into a dilapidated Hollywood mansion, their lives frozen in mutual resentment. Jane (Bette Davis), now a bloated, alcoholic relic, clings to delusions of revival, while Blanche, confined to a wheelchair, schemes to sell the house and commit Jane to an institution.

Aldrich’s direction thrives on claustrophobia. Ernest Haller’s black-and-white cinematography traps the sisters in a labyrinth of shadows, their mansion’s crumbling interiors reflecting their fractured psyches. Key scenes- Jane serving Blanche a dead pet bird under a silver cloche, or her grotesque attempt to revive her Baby Jane persona in a Malibu beachside performance- are studies in escalating madness. Davis’s Jane, caked in garish makeup, oscillates between infantile whimsy and venomous rage, while Crawford’s Blanche, all restrained calculation, becomes a prisoner of her own body. The film’s infamous twist- Blanche confessing she caused her own accident to frame Jane- culminates in a bleak reconciliation on the beach, where Jane’s final dance under police arrest underscores the tragedy of lives devoured by fame’s aftermath.

Critics initially dismissed Baby Jane? as lurid melodrama, but its $9 million box office (against an $800,000 budget) signaled a cultural shift. The New York Times called it “a horror film with a sense of humor,” while Pauline Kael noted Davis’s performance as “a masterpiece of camp malevolence.” The film’s legacy lies in its unflinching portrait of aging, its critique of Hollywood’s disposability of women, and its revival of Davis and Crawford as icons of resilience. Aldrich’s decision to cast the famously feuding actresses, their off-screen tensions bleeding into scenes of mutual loathing, added a meta-layer of cruelty, turning the film into a spectacle of performing the slow extinguishing of light.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Conceived as a reunion for Davis and Crawford, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte instead became a vehicle for Davis and Olivia de Havilland after Crawford’s departure (officially due to illness, though rumors of on-set clashes with Davis persist). The film opens in 1927 Louisiana, where Charlotte Hollis (Davis), a naive Southern belle, witnesses the brutal murder of her married lover, John Mayhew (Bruce Dern), by an unseen assailant. Decades later, Charlotte, now a reclusive eccentric, battles the state’s attempt to seize her ancestral home for a highway. Her cousin Miriam (de Havilland) and Dr. Drew Bayliss (Joseph Cotten) arrive, ostensibly to aid her, but their plot to gaslight Charlotte into surrendering her inheritance unveils a web of betrayal.

Aldrich’s Southern Gothic is suffused with decay. Joseph Biroc’s Oscar-nominated cinematography drapes the Hollis mansion in mossy shadows, while Frank De Vol’s haunting score, centered on the titular ballad, echoes Charlotte’s fractured mind. The film’s most chilling sequences- a disembodied hand and head appearing in Charlotte’s bedroom, or Miriam’s murder of the loyal housekeeper Velma (Agnes Moorehead)-blend psychological horror with Grand Guignol excess. The climax, where Charlotte pushes a stone urn onto Miriam and Drew, is a cathartic release of decades of manipulation, though her final moments, cradling a confession from Mayhew’s widow, leave her salvation ambiguous.

Cecil Kellaway and Mary Astor, both seasoned and beloved Hollywood veterans, play pivotal supporting roles in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, bringing gravitas and subtlety to the film’s Southern Gothic tapestry. Kellaway appears as Harry Willis, the genial yet sharp-witted Lloyds of London insurance investigator from England who arrives in Louisiana still fascinated by the decades-old murder of John Mayhew. With his characteristic warmth and “old guy charm,” Kellaway’s Willis is a gentle outsider, quietly piecing together the truth as the drama within the Hollis mansion spirals toward madness and violence. He is not directly involved in the machinations against Charlotte, but instead serves as a moral anchor and a catalyst for the film’s resolution. Willis’s investigation and his interactions with other characters, especially his poignant scene with Mary Astor’s Jewel Mayhew, help tie up the narrative’s loose ends and ultimately deliver Charlotte a measure of closure.

Mary Astor, in her final film role, appears as Jewel Mayhew, the widow of Charlotte’s murdered lover, John. Though her screen time is limited, Astor’s presence is haunting and essential. She plays Jewel as a woman worn down by years of sorrow and secrets, her performance understated yet deeply affecting. In a key scene, Jewel entrusts Willis with an envelope containing her posthumous confession—a revelation that she, not Charlotte, killed her husband John. This act, delivered with Astor’s quiet dignity, is crucial to the film’s denouement. It not only exonerates Charlotte but also brings the story full circle, allowing us to see the emotional toll of the crime on all involved. Astor’s scenes, particularly her exchanges with Kellaway and de Havilland, are marked by a restrained melancholy that contrasts with the film’s more operatic moments, and critics have noted how she “makes every moment count,” lending Jewel a tragic grace that lingers long after her departure from the story.

Together, Kellaway and Astor embody the film’s themes of compassion, justice, regret, and the corrosive power of secrets. Their performances, though supporting, are essential to the film’s emotional and narrative resolution, and both actors are remembered for bringing a touch of classic Hollywood humanity to Aldrich’s brooding Southern nightmare.

Critics praised the film’s operatic grandeur, with Variety calling it “a superior shocker,” though some found its 133-minute runtime excessive. Davis’s performance, oscillating between vulnerability and ferocity, earned her a Golden Globe nomination, while Moorehead’s turn as the sardonic Velma became a camp touchstone. The film’s seven Oscar nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Moorehead, underscored its technical mastery, though it won none. Where Baby Jane? thrived on intimate malice, Charlotte expanded into epic tragedy, its themes of patriarchal control (embodied by Charlotte’s incestuously possessive father – Victor Buono) and female solidarity subverted by greed.

Legacy and Cultural Impact:

Both films emerged from Aldrich’s fascination with societal marginalization. Baby Jane? and Charlotte interrogate the cultural erasure of aging women, their mansions metaphors for bodies and minds left to rot. Aldrich’s collaboration with screenwriter Lukas Heller sharpened these themes, blending noir cynicism with Gothic excess. The films also revived the careers of their stars: Davis, Crawford, and de Havilland, once box-office queens, embraced roles that weaponized their fading glamour, cementing their status as icons of resilience.

Cinematographically, the films diverged. Baby Jane’s stark, claustrophobic interiors mirrored its psychological confinement, while Charlotte’s lush Southern decay evoked a dying aristocracy. Both, however, used light and shadow to externalize inner turmoil- Jane’s garish makeup under harsh key lights, Charlotte’s ghostly pallor in moonlit halls.

Critics like David Thomson have since reappraised these films as feminist texts, their horrors rooted in systemic misogyny. The “Hag Cinema” label, once derisive, now signifies a subgenre reclaiming the power of women discarded by Hollywood. Aldrich’s willingness to center complex, unlikable female protagonists-and to amplify their rage-remains revolutionary.

In the decades since, both films have influenced works from Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) to Ryan Murphy’s Feud (2017), which, accurate or not, dramatized or sensationalized the Davis-Crawford rivalry. Their endurance lies in their audacity: to stare unflinchingly at the wreckage of fame, to find horror not in monsters but in the human capacity for cruelty, and to showcase aging women, once Hollywood’s forgotten, reign supreme in all their grotesque grandeur or radiant as ever, empowered by agency and courage.

Revisiting Robert Aldrich’s Grande Dame Hag Cinema: Part I What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962 ‘Get back in that chair Blanche!’

Revisiting Robert Aldrich’s Hag Cinema: Part II ” I wouldn’t piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire!”

Grande Dames/ Guignol Cinema: Robert Aldrich’s Hag Cinema “But you *are* Blanche, you *are in that chair” Part I

Grande Dame/Guignol Cinema: Robert Aldrich’s Hag Cinema Part 2 Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964 “He’ll Love You Til He Dies”

Grande Dame/Guignol Cinema: Aldrich’s Hag Cinema: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964 Part 3 “Murder starts in the heart and it’s first weapon is a vicious tongue”

Grande Dame/Guignol Cinema: Robert Aldrich’s Hag Cinema Part 4: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964 “You’re my favorite living mystery” “Have you ever solved me?”

#81 Down, 69 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Paths to Liberation: Personal Transformation Through Connection in Now, Voyager 1942 and Baghdad Cafe 1987

A common thread between Now, Voyager 1942 and Baghdad Cafe 1987 is the theme of personal transformation and self-discovery through unexpected relationships and environments. In Now, Voyager, Charlotte Vale undergoes a profound journey of liberation from her oppressive mother, gaining self-esteem and independence through love and her own inner strength. Similarly, in Baghdad Cafe, Jasmin’s arrival at the quirky desert Baghdad Cafe and Motel leads to her own transformation as she builds a surprising friendship with Brenda and its quirky inhabitants and finds a sense of belonging in an unfamiliar place. Both narratives highlight how stepping outside one’s comfort zone, be it on the ocean or in the desert, and forming connections can lead to empowerment and fulfillment.

Both Now, Voyager and Bagdad Cafe use clothing as a visual language for personal transformation: Charlotte Vale’s journey from drab, constricting dresses to elegant, self-assured ensembles mirrors her emergence from repression to confidence, just as Jasmin’s shift from tight, hausfrau attire to flowing, colorful garments signals her gradual liberation and blossoming in the desert. In both films, the evolution of each woman’s wardrobe becomes a powerful outward sign of inner change- a metamorphosis from invisibility and constraint to self-expression and possibility.

Where Now, Voyager begins like a deeply penetrating melodrama about maternal abuse and struggling identity, Baghdad Cafe unfolds like a hazy dream. Both women, Charlotte and Jasmin, take a journey toward awakening.

Now, Voyager 1942

“Don’t let’s ask for the moon! We have the stars!”

The iconic American melodrama that inspired the 1942 cult classic film starring Bette Davis. “Charlotte Vale is a timeless and very sophisticated Cinderella.”—Patricia Gaffney, New York Times bestselling author.

“I can think of no better account of the woman’s picture’s central role in American culture. At least we have the stars.” (Patricia White- Criterion essay We Have the Stars)

Here is a passage from David Greven’s Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman’s Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror (Palgrave, 2011) that specifically discusses Now, Voyager and Bette Davis’s performance:

“Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, and one suspects that what drew Davis to the role was the opportunities it gave her to perform a feat at which she excelled: onscreen transformation from one physical and emotional state into another. While several Davis films showcase her singular talent for such onscreen transformations, they are far from a unique event in the genre of the woman’s film, a prominent Hollywood genre for three decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s. Women frequently transform, either at key points in or over the course of cinematic narrative, sometimes on a physical level, sometimes in more abstract ways, as if in homage to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and her ‘infinite variety… In her classical Hollywood heyday, Bette Davis made an onscreen transformation her signature feat. In film after film, Davis transforms, usually on a physical level but often emotionally as well. Typically, this transformation is grueling on several levels, ranging from the woman’s social situation to her bodily nature to her psychic state. As I will be treating it as a central issue here, transformation in the woman’s film genre, as Bette Davis’s roles evince, is a traumatic experience.”

Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in “Now, Voyager” 1942 Warner Bros.** B.D.M.

No matter how many times I watch Now, Voyager, I find myself weeping all over again-whether it’s Bette Davis’ profoundly moving performance or Max Steiner’s lush, aching score, the film doesn’t just tug at my heartstrings, it plays them like a symphony of bittersweet heartbreak; it’s more than a tearjerker-it’s a true weepjerker, and I surrender to its beauty every single time.

Now, Voyager, as in so much of her work, Davis’s theatricality becomes a conduit for something deeply authentic, reflecting an existential honesty. She lays bare the raw feelings at the heart of her characters, offering us glimpses of their essential truths. Acclaimed American playwright, actor, screenwriter, and drag performer Charles Busch describes Davis, and writer Ed Sikov sums it up:

“What I find interesting about her is that while she’s the most stylized of all those Hollywood actresses, the most mannered, she’s also to me the most psychologically acute. You see it in Now, Voyager in the scene on the boat when she starts to cry, and she’s playing it in a very romantic style. Henreid says, ‘My darling- you are crying,’ and she says, ‘these are only tears of gratitude – an old maid’s gratitude for the crumbs offered.’ It’s very movie-ish, but the way she turns her head inward, away from the camera, is very real.”

“In that instance, Busch so perceptively describes and appreciates Davis’s use of her melodramatic mannerisms and breathy, teary vocal delivery as well as her seemingly spontaneous nuzzling into Henreid’s chest to express the undeniable legitimacy of self-pity. It’s not a pretty emotion, but Davis somehow makes it so. Through Davis’s elevating, sublimating stylization, this woman’s secret shame becomes beautiful.”– Ed Sikov – Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis

Few films from Hollywood’s Golden Age have endured in the cultural imagination quite like Now, Voyager (1942), a sweeping romantic drama that transcends its era through its nuanced exploration and psychological portrait of transformation, female autonomy, and the complex bonds of love and family. Tracing the journey of Charlotte Vale, a woman suffocated by her domineering mother and her own internalized sense of worthlessness and self-loathing, as she emerges into independence, self-acceptance, and a bittersweet love.

Kino. Reise aus der Vergangenheit aka. Now, Voyager, USA, 1942 Regie: Irving Rapper Darsteller: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid. (Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images).

Continue reading “Paths to Liberation: Personal Transformation Through Connection in Now, Voyager 1942 and Baghdad Cafe 1987” →

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #47 The Nanny 1965 & Dead Ringer 1964

The Nanny 1965

SPOILER ALERT!

Seth Holt’s The Nanny (1965) is a masterful psychological thriller that relies on Bette Davis’s melancholic yet sinister performance. It’s an exceptional character study and a poignant exploration using social commentary carried within the currents of a haunting narrative and deeply nuanced portrayal of disturbed people, all within the framework of Hammer Film Productions’ distinct aesthetic.

The film, based on the novel by Evelyn Piper (a pseudonym for Merriam Modell), was written and produced by Jimmy Sangster, a frequent collaborator with Hammer Films, and features an unforgettable performance by Bette Davis in the titular role. With its chilling atmosphere, layered characters, and exploration of themes such as trauma, paranoia, and the darker aspects of human behavior, including class divides and psychological instability, The Nanny remains a significant entry in the evolution of psychological thrillers during the transformative years of the Sixties.

Seth Holt had a background as an editor at Ealing Studios. Critics have noted its European sensibility and prescient influence on the British New Wave. He’s known for his work on films such as Taste of Fear (1961), released in the U.S. as Scream of Fear starring Susan Strasberg and Ann Todd, where he brought his keen eye for suspense to The Nanny.

His direction is marked by a restrained and subtle approach to intelligent horror, allowing the tension to build gradually through character interactions rather than relying on overt scares. Holt’s ability to weave elements of British New Wave cinema—such as the effects of poverty and class divides—into the horror genre is evident in this film. Nanny’s backstory reveals her descent into mental illness, shaped by societal pressures and personal tragedy.

The Nanny (1965) follows the story of Joey Fane, a troubled 10-year-old boy who returns home after two years in a psychiatric facility following the accidental drowning of his younger sister, Susy. Joey harbors deep mistrust and fear of his family’s nanny (Bette Davis), whom everyone in the house calls ‘Nanny. Joey is the only one who believes she is responsible for Susy’s death and that he is in danger. His refusal to eat her food or stay alone with her creates friction in the household, especially with his emotionally fragile mother and rigid and affectively absent father. As suspicions mount, incidents like his mother’s poisoning and Joey’s claims of Nanny attempting to drown him point to something amiss. Also, Aunt Pen meets her end after confronting Nanny about her suspicious actions. Pen suffers a heart attack during the confrontation, and Nanny cruelly withholds her heart medication, resulting in Pen’s death. As the plot further unravels, the dark secrets surrounding Nanny’s past culminate in revelations about her mental instability and tragic history. The film ends with Joey reconciling with his mother after Nanny is taken away, now the one who is institutionalized.

Davis’s nuanced portrayal infuses the tale with a quiet brilliance that moves the narrative beyond a simple tale of a psychotic caregiver. She evokes us to eventually sympathize with her and glimpse her vulnerability, even as she struggles against the weight of her own dangerous actions because she is haunted by her past.

Bette Davis delivers a tour-de-force performance as Nanny, embodying both maternal devotion and chilling menace. Her portrayal captures the complexity of a woman whose mental deterioration leads her to commit terrible deeds. Davis was joined by William Dix as Joey Fane, the troubled 10-year-old boy who distrusts her; Wendy Craig as Virginia Fane, Joey’s fragile mother; Jill Bennett as Aunt Pen, whose suspicions about Nanny add to the tension; and James Villiers as Bill Fane, Joey’s cold father.

Pamela Franklin plays Bobbie Medman, a young neighbor who befriends Joey and becomes entangled in the drama. Franklin’s performance as Bobbie is often described as sharp, precocious, and engaging. She is a worldly and independent 14-year-old girl who snidely but protectively shadows Joey, the endangered soul at the center of the story. Franklin brings a natural confidence and wit to the role (and actually to every role she’s ever taken on), making Bobbie an amusing yet grounded character who serves as a foil to the oppressive atmosphere created by Bette Davis’s character. Critics have praised Franklin for injecting a sense of realism and vitality into the film, with one review noting her portrayal as “absolutely excellent” and lamenting that she didn’t become a bigger star. Bobbie’s old soul maturity and curiosity stand out as a refreshing counterpoint to the film’s darker themes of manipulation and psychological conflict.

The cinematography by Harry Waxman enhances the film’s claustrophobic atmosphere. Waxman’s use of shadowy interiors and tight framing mirrors the characters’ emotional confinement and heightens the suspense. The production design by Edward Carrick complements this visual style, creating domestic spaces that feel simultaneously familiar and unsettling. Hammer Film Productions, known for its Gothic horror films, ventured into psychological territory with The Nanny, showcasing its versatility in crafting unsettling narratives that rely on character-driven tension rather than supernatural elements.

One of The Nanny’s most memorable scenes occurs when Joey barricades himself in his bedroom to escape his crazy caregiver. The sequence is a masterclass in suspense: Nanny forces her way in, Joey attempts to flee but is knocked unconscious, and she carries him to the bathroom, intent on drowning him. As she begins to submerge him in water, she experiences a haunting flashback of discovering Susy’s body—triggering memories of her own daughter who died tragically years earlier—and pulls Joey out at the last moment. This scene holds the soul of both her instability and lingering humanity, making it one of the film’s most emotionally charged moments.

The 1960s saw the emergence of British psychological thrillers that share thematic and stylistic similarities with The Nanny (1965). These films often eschewed supernatural elements in favor of exploring the fractured psyches of their characters, creating suspenseful and unsettling cinema.

One of the most iconic British psychological thrillers of the decade is Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). Initially reviled for its disturbing content but later hailed as a masterpiece, the film follows Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), a focus puller with a compulsion to film his victims as he murders them with his phallic tripod.

Another standout is Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), which stars Catherine Deneuve as Carol, a young woman descending into madness while left alone in her London apartment. Polanski’s use of claustrophobic spaces and hallucinatory imagery captures Carol’s paranoia and deteriorating mental state, making it one of the most harrowing depictions of psychosis in cinema. Like The Nanny, Repulsion uses domestic settings to amplify tension and unease, turning familiar spaces into sites of terror. Freddie Francis’s Paranoiac (1963) is another notable entry in this subgenre. Produced by Hammer Films, it stars Oliver Reed as Simon Ashby, a hostile and psychotic young man whose inheritance is threatened when his long-presumed-dead brother mysteriously reappears.

Roy Boulting’s Twisted Nerve (1968) also stands out for its exploration of psychological dysfunction. This British psychological horror thriller follows Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett), a very disturbed young man who manipulates those around him while harboring violent tendencies. His relationship with Susan Harper (Hayley Mills) becomes increasingly sinister as his true nature is revealed. These films collectively highlight the richness of British psychological thrillers in the 1960s with their unsettling tone and focus on familial dysfunction that echo the dynamics at play in The Nanny. They pushed boundaries by addressing taboo subjects such as mental illness, voyeurism, and familial dysfunction while featuring narratives that remain timeless in their ability to unnerve and captivate us. Like The Nanny, they demonstrate how psychological depth can elevate suspenseful storytelling into profound meditations on human fragility and darkness.

The Nanny’s legacy lies in its influence on the psychological thrillers that followed. It helped popularize narratives centered around seemingly benign caregivers who harbor dark secrets, a trope that has since become a staple in horror cinema.

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo (1971) is another excellent example of a film that fits into the trope of a seemingly nurturing caregiver hiding a nefarious secret. Directed by Curtis Harrington and starring Shelley Winters as the titular Auntie Roo, the film is another contribution that explores the story of a grieving widow who outwardly appears to be a kind and generous maternal figure but harbors disturbing mental instability. Her obsession with preserving the memory of her deceased daughter leads her to kidnap a young orphan girl, Katy, whom she believes resembles her lost child.

The film cleverly blends elements of psychological horror with fairy tale motifs, particularly drawing from Hansel and Gretel. Auntie Roo’s mansion is likened to a “Gingerbread House,” and her actions—such as attempting to fatten up the children—are misinterpreted by Christopher (Mark Lester), Katy’s (Chloe Franks) brother, as those of a witch intending to eat them. This layered narrative creates a morally complex portrayal of Roo, whose grief and loneliness make her both predator and victim. Like The Nanny, the audience is invited to pity her tragic circumstances while simultaneously recognizing the danger she poses.

Similar to The Nanny (1965), Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? uses the theme of a trusted maternal figure whose facade conceals darker intentions.

A more contemporary film that revisits this trope is The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) Rebecca De Mornay delivers a chilling portrayal as Peyton Flanders (also known as Mrs. Mott) embodying a devious nanny whose calculated malevolence and icy demeanor make her a terrifying force as she seeks vengeance against the family she infiltrates and The Stepfather (1987) fits squarely within the category of films featuring a seemingly benign caregiver hiding a nefarious secret. Directed by Joseph Ruben, the film centers on Terry O’Quinn’s character, Jerry Blake, a stepfather who initially appears to be the ideal family man but is revealed to be an identity-assuming serial killer. His charm and ability to blend into suburban life mask his murderous tendencies, which emerge as his new stepdaughter (Stephanie Maine) begins to suspect him.

The Nanny, 1964, owes much to Holt’s exploration of domestic terror rooted in psychological complexity. It stands out among Hammer Films’ non-supernatural offerings as one of its most mature and thought-provoking works.

Dead Ringer 1964

Dead Ringer (1964): A Gothic Noir with Bette Davis at the Helm:

Produced by Warner Bros., Paul Henreid’s Dead Ringer (1964) is a fascinating blend of Gothic noir and psychological melodrama, a film that hinges on its audacious premise and the powerhouse dual performance of Bette Davis as estranged twin sisters Margaret DeLorca and Edith Phillips. A tale of stolen identity, revenge, and cruel fate.

Adapted from Rian James’s story La Otra 1946, which had previously been made into a Mexican psychological thriller starring Dolores del Río, Dead Ringer tells the gripping tale of estranged twin sisters whose lives diverge in ways that lead to jealousy, betrayal, and ultimately murder with its atmospheric cinematography by Ernest Haller, an evocative score by André Previn, and Davis’s commanding presence.

The story begins with Edith Phillips, a down-on-her-luck bar owner struggling to make ends meet, attending the funeral of her wealthy twin sister Margaret’s husband, Frank DeLorca. Years earlier, Margaret had betrayed Edith by stealing Frank away from her, setting the stage for their drastically different lives. Margaret lives in opulence as the widow of the wealthy industrialist, while Edith is embittered by years of financial hardship trying to maintain her failing cocktail lounge.

When the sisters reunite at the funeral, old wounds resurface. In a moment of desperation and rage, Edith murders Margaret and assumes her identity, hoping to finally escape her bleak existence. However, she quickly discovers that Margaret’s life is far from idyllic.

As Edith navigates Margaret’s world, she faces mounting challenges: contending with suspicious servants (Edith’s servant, Janet, is played by Monika Henreid, the daughter of the film’s director, Paul Henreid), Margaret’s scheming lover Tony Collins (played with suave menace by polished but smarmy Peter Lawford), and her own former boyfriend Jim Hobbson (Karl Malden), who happens to be a police detective. Edith’s deception begins to unravel as she becomes entangled in a web of blackmail and murder. The film culminates in a chilling twist when Edith is arrested for crimes committed under Margaret’s name—a cruel irony that seals her tragic fate as she accepts the inevitability brought about by her masquerade.

At the heart of Dead Ringer is Bette Davis’s extraordinary dual performance as both Edith and Margaret. This was not Davis’s first time playing twins; she had previously taken on dual roles in A Stolen Life (1946). However, her work in Dead Ringer is particularly compelling because of how distinctly she differentiates between the two sisters. Margaret is cold, calculating, and polished—a woman who wields power with ease—while Edith is vulnerable yet simmering with resentment. Davis masterfully conveys these differences through subtle changes in posture, voice, and expression. Her portrayal elevates what might have been a standard melodrama into an engrossing character study. Critics have often noted how Davis managed to bring both campy flair and emotional depth to her roles, creating characters who are larger-than-life yet deeply human.

Director Paul Henreid—best known for his acting role in Casablanca (1942)—was no stranger to working with Davis. The two had co-starred in Now, Voyager (1942), and their professional rapport carried over into this project. Henreid understood Davis’s strengths as an actress and tailored his direction to highlight them. The film also benefited from the expertise of cinematographer Ernest Haller, who had worked with Davis on several previous films, including A Stolen Life.

Haller’s moody lighting and use of shadows evoke the classic aesthetics of film noir while enhancing the Gothic atmosphere of Dead Ringer. The contrast between the opulent settings of Margaret’s life—filmed at iconic Los Angeles locations like Greystone Mansion—and the gritty world of Edith’s bar underscores the stark disparity between the sisters’ lives.

Adding another layer to the film is André Previn’s haunting score. Known for his versatility as a composer, Previn crafted music that heightens the tension and drama at every turn. His orchestral arrangements often incorporate harpsichord melodies that lend an eerie elegance to key scenes. Previn also uses music that the characters can almost hear and interact with—such as jazz performances in Edith’s bar—to ground certain moments in reality while maintaining an undercurrent of suspense. The score not only complements the film’s dramatic shifts but also reinforces its themes of deception and identity.

When Dead Ringer was released in 1964, it received mixed reviews from critics. While some praised Davis’s performance as the film’s saving grace, others found fault with its implausible plot twists. Joan Rivers famously quipped about the film’s reliance on wigs and stand-ins during scenes featuring both twins on split-screen at once but acknowledged that Davis’s magnetic presence made such technical shortcomings forgivable. Over time, however, Dead Ringer has been reevaluated as a cult classic. Modern audiences appreciate its campy charm and its exploration of themes like jealousy, moral corruption, and the consequences of living a lie.

Though it may not have achieved the same level of acclaim as Davis’s earlier work or her other 1960s hit, Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962, Dead Ringer remains an important part of her legacy. It exemplifies how Hollywood was beginning to find new ways to utilize older actresses during an era when many stars struggled to find substantial roles as they aged. For Davis, who was always willing to take risks with unconventional characters, Dead Ringer was another opportunity to showcase her unparalleled talent.

In retrospect, Dead Ringer stands out not only for its audacious narrative but also for its ability to balance melodrama with genuine moments of suspense and emotional resonance. It is a testament to Bette Davis’s enduring star power that she could carry such a complex story almost single-handedly while making audiences believe in both Edith’s desperation and Margaret’s ruthlessness. With its rich visual style, haunting music, and unforgettable central performance, Dead Ringer continues to entertain me no matter how many times I rewatch it, and it also captivates viewers decades after its release. It embodies mid-20th-century Hollywood’s fascination with duality—both in character and narrative structure (think of Olivia de Havilland in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror 1946) —and remains an intriguing example of Gothic noir cinema. It is a darkly compelling tale of identity and revenge brought vividly to life by one of cinema’s greatest icons.

The New York Times review written by Eugene Archer described the film as “uncommonly silly” but “great fun,” highlighting Bette Davis’s ability to create two distinct characters in Margaret and Edith. He praised Davis’s performance as “sheer cinematic personality on the rampage,” noting her dramatic flair and ability to command attention despite the film’s flaws. Archer remarked that while the film itself might not be discreet or refined, Davis’s portrayal was certainly arresting and worth watching.

#47 down, 103 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as Monstergirl!

MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror #21 Burnt Offerings 1976

BURNT OFFERINGS 1976

Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings (1976) is a sophisticated psychological horror film that subverts traditional haunted house tropes. It stars Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, Lee H. Montgomery, Eileen Heckart, and Burgess Meredith as Roz and Arnold Allardyce, the odd brother and sister who own the mansion.

Burnt Offerings is a morbidly fascinating tale of a family’s summer vacation gone horribly wrong. Karen Black and Oliver Reed star as Marian and Ben Rolf, a couple who rent a massive Victorian mansion for a suspiciously low price. Marian and Ben, along with their son David (Lee H. Montgomery) and Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis)—rent the sprawling house for the summer until things take a dark turn. Though the house is too good to be true, there is one catch: The Rolfs must care for Roz and Arnold’s unseen elderly mother, who resides in the attic.

The family soon discovers that their dream home has quirks, like Mrs. Allardyce, the mysterious old lady who never leaves her room, a garden that resurrects itself, and a house with an appetite for human souls.

The real scene-stealer, and the one that made me jump out of my seat in the theater, is the sinister chauffeur, played by Anthony James, who appears in Ben’s nightmares. James, known for his creepy on-screen presence, really gives you a shock to the system in the coffin scene with Bette Davis.

As the house’s sinister influence grows, the Rolfs find themselves in a race against time to escape before they become the latest addition to the property’s unique renovation plan. Burnt Offerings is the perfect example of 70s horror as many of the horror films from that era relied on psychological terror and a pervasive sense of dread rather than graphic violence or supernatural spectacle, though a soul-sucking evil house does have its moments.

Dan Curtis, adept at atmospheric Gothic horror, which includes character-driven supernatural narratives and thoughtful genre adaptations, masterfully builds tension through subtle atmospheric changes and the gradual transformation of the characters, particularly Marian’s growing obsession with the house. The film’s intelligent script, co-written by Curtis and William F. Nolan, delves into the psychological impact of the house on its inhabitants, blurring the lines between reality and supernatural influence.

Burnt Offerings stands out for its nuanced approach to horror, eschewing cheap scares in favor of a pervasive sense of dread. The film’s exploration of how evil can manifest through seemingly benign objects and the corruption of familial bonds is what truly adds a layer of shivers because family dynamics are complex enough when adding a layer of a malevolent force that seeks to destroy them.

Anthony James, with his uniquely imposing face and his topography of scars, delivers a chilling performance as the sinister chauffeur. This recurring apparition that haunts and tortures Ben’s nightmares serves as a harbinger of the house’s malevolent nature. The specter of James’s character becomes a symbol of the inevitable doom that awaits the family as the film explores themes of familial disintegration and the insidious nature of evil, a haunting meditation on the seductive and destructive power of both.

#21 down, 129 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

Enter Teresa Wright in The Little Foxes 1941 – Behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts" and they shall eat every tree of yours that grows in the field.

“I only ever wanted to be an actress, not a star.”

Teresa Wright may seem lamblike at first glance, but don’t let the soft smile fool you into thinking there isn’t something gutsy within that charming glow. She is one of the most engaging actors, and she shows a resolute luster and independence to take on Hollywood with the same veracity she pursued wicked Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt.

Wright was not only endearing, but her acting and personal life lacked ceremony and authenticity. She was discovered by Samuel Goldwyn and gained early recognition for her exceptional performances in her first three films. She became the only actor to receive Oscar nominations for each of them. Wright earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and one for Mrs. Miniver.

Teresa Wright and Greer Garson in William Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver (1942).

It stands to reason that Times drama editor Edwin Schallert described Wright’s burgeoning career as “one of the most remarkably brilliant for a young player in Hollywood.” Despite being a Hollywood star, she remained true to herself and rejected the pretentiousness that came along with being a star. She achieved Hollywood stardom on her own terms, without selling out for the sake of glamour.

Teresa Wright was resolute in her refusal to pose for photographs while wearing bathing suits and to subject herself to superficial interviews in gossipy fan magazines. At first, Goldwyn told her he was not of “the bathing suit school of Hollywood producers.”

Muriel Teresa Wright was born in Harlem, New York City. She discovered a passion for acting while attending the exclusive Rosehaven School in Tenafly, New Jersey, after watching Helen Hayes in “Victoria Regina.” While attending high school in Maplewood, N.J., Wright participated in theatrical productions. Although one teacher advised her to pursue typing instead, a public-speaking teacher mentored her and provided her with plays to read. He also arranged for her to spend two summers at the Wharf Theater in Provincetown.

After receiving a scholarship in the two summers preceding her graduation, she began apprenticing at the Wharf Theatre in Massachusetts, appearing in plays such as The Vinegar Tree and Susan and God.
She performed in school plays and graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, in 1938. She then decided to pursue acting professionally and moved to New York.

Wright had to drop her first name when she discovered that another actress named Muriel Wright was already registered with Actors Equity.

In 1938, in her first play, she landed an understudy role in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” on Broadway and then toured in the play.

It was a minor role, but it also served as a chance to understudy the lead ingÃ©nue character of Emily, actress Dorothy Maguire; however, when Maguire failed to return, Teresa continued in the same role under Martha Scott. Wright eventually replaced Martha Scott when the actress adapted the role of Emily in the film version.

Following her successful stage performances, Wright made her remarkable Broadway debut as Mary in Life With Father in 1939. This caught the attention of playwright Lillian Hellman, who recommended her to Goldwyn for the screen version of Hellman’s The Little Foxes.

Teresa Wright as Alexandra (Zan) Gibbons in Lillian Hellman/William Wyler The Little Foxes (1941).

She gained recognition for her work alongside Bette Davis (who played the cold, calculating mother Regina) and Patricia Collinge who reprised her unparalleled Broadway role as the mercurial Aunt Birdie) in the film.

At that time, she had signed a contract with MGM but refused to do publicity stunts or cheese-cake shots that would turn her into a centerfold:

” The aforementioned Teresa Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: In shorts, playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the Fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at a turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf; assuming an athletic stance while pretending to hit something with a bow and arrow.”

Though she became the unwilling pin-up girl, Teresa Wright became Goldwyn’s biggest overall star during the 1940s.

Teresa Wright and Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees (1942) image RKO via Getty Images.

Teresa received Oscar nominations for her roles in Mrs. Miniver (1942), the only movie she made for her studio MGM, and The Pride of the Yankees (1942), winning the Best Supporting Actress trophy for Mrs. Miniver.

In both roles, Teresa Wright gave heartwarming performances as the granddaughter in the sentimental war-era Mrs. Miniver and as baseball icon Lou Gehrig’s kindhearted wife in Pride of the Yankees, starring opposite Gary Cooper. Wright, now one of the most appealing newcomers in Hollywood, garnered two Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress nods in the same year. She holds the record for receiving back-to-back Academy Award nominations in her first three film roles, which still stands today.

Teresa Wright received top billing for Shadow of a Doubt, a film that was her personal favorite and earned every bit of that limelight in Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller. The film places Wright as serial killer Joseph Cotten’s unsuspecting niece, Charlie, at the story’s center. Unsuspecting at first”¦

When Young Charlie (Wright) is over the moon about her favorite Uncle Charlie coming to her sleeping California town for a visit, the whole family celebrates his arrival. Her mother, Emma, Charlie’s older sister (Patricia Collings, who appeared with Wright in The Little Foxes and Casanova Brown), can’t wait to dote on her baby brother. But soon, it comes to light that Charlie might have left strangled wealthy women in his wake, and in fact, maybe The Merry Widow killer.

Teresa Wright gives a nuanced performance as Charlie Newton, who daringly holds her own in a game of cat and mouse with Joseph Cotten. They are tangled up in danger as she carefully draws out his murderous impulses.

But in the shadows beyond the edges, the family is unaware of the two characters diverge ““ one set on self-preservation with a malignant disgust for fat lazy wives who live off their husbands and the other who seeks out the truth and bends toward humanity. Their same names are where it begins and ends. Wright is a glowing jewel in the blackness of Hitchcock’s nightmare.

Continue reading “Enter Teresa Wright in The Little Foxes 1941 – Behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts" and they shall eat every tree of yours that grows in the field.” →

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! Part 1

This special The Last Drive in Halloween Feature will conclude with Part 4 and it’s primary focus exclusively on the great Barbara Steele!

‘through the complex changes in society surrounding traditional female roles using the ambivalence of the horror genre’ – Claudia Bunce

The 1960s were plagued by controversy and convulsed with violence. Horror cinema, with the exception of Hammer Studio and European filmmakers’ colorful pageantry of Gothic tales, and the colorful dreamlike poetry of Mario Bava, mainly transitioned from classical themes. In the 1950s, B-horror movie narratives were concerned with outside hostile forces, alien invasions, and fear of nuclear war, but the new decade began to explore more interior horror that originated in the home and within ourselves. And many of these movies stand out as women-centric protagonists…

“Widely interpreted as a pivotal moment in the horror genre. Suggestive that monstrosity must be defined as inherent to the bourgeois family structure rather than an arcane social aberration: the crimes of Norman Bates can be read as the consequence of the sexually active mother, not unlike Marian Crane. The film is profoundly subversive.” – source unknown

After Riccardo Freda abandoned Black Sunday, the project went to cinematographer Mario Bava and became his directorial debut. The film was the start of the director’s momentous contribution to the genre with his masterful grasp of composition, mise en scène, allegorical visual symbolism, imagery, and the bold use of expressionist color, vivid tones, and spectrum of light. Bava directed Kill, Baby Kill! 1966 features a ghostly little blonde girl (actually a boy actor) with a white ball that is the creepy harbinger of a series of violent deaths.

Mario Bava unleashed on us his very dark-hearted black – and- white Black Sunday in 1960 with jolting scenes of death and a new horror goddess, the provocative, wide-eyed Barbara Steele. During the decade of the 60s, Steele’s ascendance within the genre was part of a broader trend in horror cinema that echoed the real world. Her strong presence and instinct to captivate our gaze stood head to head with male horror stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing during that period of horror cinema. Barbara Steele inhabited the haunted screen with such a formidable primacy that there’s no disputing she is the ultimate scream queen.

The Italian movie industry of the 1960s saw a wave of gothic chillers. Bava’s Blood and Black Lace 1964, is best remembered as the first “˜Giallo,” a particularly savage trademark of murder mysteries.

Riccardo Freda directed The Horrible Dr. Hichcock 1962 and The Ghost 1963, Margheriti’s beautifully orchestrated, eerily atmospheric ghost story Castle of Blood, and Ciano’s Nightmare Castle 1965. All starring Barbara Steele.

Roger Corman established himself as a successful director. Of course, maverick filmmaker Corman showered us with some of the best campy low-budget sci-fi/horror films of the 1950s, and in the 60s, we were reintroduced to the splendid Poe adaptations in a series of vivid films of glorious terror and dread, with Daniel Haller’s gorgeous hallucinogenic art direction. These films are a series of Gothic masterpieces, – House of Usher 1960, Pit and the Pendulum 1961 and Masque of the Red Death 1964, featuring Hazel Court, another icon of 60s horror, who would command the screen with her fiery sensuality, flexing her bloodlust to offer herself up as Satan’s bride in Red Death.

Corman established himself as a successful director with his landscapes, as Rodrick Usher says, a “feverish and deranged mind’ with his colorful, more substantial yet still low-budget homages to Poe’s series of horror tales, with screenplays by Richard Matheson and cinematography by Floyd Crosby. It reached its artistic peak with the Masque of the Red Death. Many of the women in his Poe series feature a more incendiary female character. The horror genre, especially from the 60s forward, would prove to have more provocative roles for women since the femme fatale reigned during the time of film noir.

Instead of the restrained earlier decades, the 60s held up a mirror to the decade’s social turbulence and reflected back to us, with subversive storytelling, its edgy gore, and taboo-breaking narratives that fed a whole new audience who were hungry for more realistic and challenging scenarios. A new vanguard of filmmakers shattered traditional boundaries that restrained on-screen violence and sexuality.

Women’s roles in classical horror films of the 1930s & 40s (to my memory for now), with the exception of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride, and Gloria Holden as Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter, initiated most of the leading ladies and supporting actresses, as easily fainting from fright, who screamed with hollow innocence, projecting reductive nuances of helplessness.

Still, there were established directors such as Alfred Hitchcock who caught wind of the changes, inspired by Clouzot’s le Diabolique 1955 and impressed by William Castle’s popular run of low-budget horror formula (albeit with its use of gimmickry).

Psycho 1960 would be set in safe and secure American suburbia instead of the imposing castles of Europe. The clean-cut serial killer would eclipse the caped swarthy vampire as the screen’s new boogeyman. Yet Marion’s ascendancy is as much a major element of the narrative as Norman Bates’ psychopathy!

Hitchcock offered us the bold cautionary tale, The Birds, a film Fellini referred to as “an apocalyptic poem” featuring a beautiful woman perceived as a she-devil that ushered in the natural world’s revolt.

FROM BARBARA CREED THE MONSTROUS FEMININE:

“Melanie Daniels in The Birds is a single woman in her thirties drifting – who must go through a trial by fire which she suffers, is humiliated and lectured to lower her defenses. She is an outsider who is being shown how social behavior becomes physically agonizing.”

The stark black-and-white 1960 film Psycho, based on a real-life serial killer, Ed Gein, pushed the boundaries of the Production Code with its shocking scenes of murder and inflected frames of Janet Leigh’s bra and slip. Leigh’s 30-minute on-screen persona of the immoral Marion Crane was a diverging representation of the traditional leading lady.

The decade also signaled a multitude of black-and-white psychological thrillers. Hammer split off some of its focus on the gory period pieces- translations of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Mummy, and jumped on the Psycho bandwagon with films like Scream of Fear 1961, Maniac 1963, Nightmare 1964, Hysteria 1965, Die! Die! My Darling! 1965 starring Tallulah Bankhead as the menacing Mrs. Trafoil, not a Medieval crone but a modern-day unleashed psychopath. And, The Nanny 1965 with Bette Davis, coming off of her pair of shockers by director Robert Aldrich, plays a sinister governess terrorizing young William Dix.

After Baby Jane, the industry was rife with menacing Hollywood starlets. I’ll be writing about the shattering of the myth of Hag Cinema, down the road. Robert Aldrich set in motion a trend of psychological horror films after he paired Bette Davis and Joan Crawford together in what is considered campy, outrageous at times, sickening – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962. It was a watershed moment for the genre.

Crawford and Davis, in particular, in Aldrich’s films, made the bold and courageous decision to act under harsh white lights, in grotesque makeup, and were willing to immerse themselves in a character-eclectic, cringingly childish, and utterly sadistic.

After Baby Jane, Aldrich followed up with Davis, de Havilland, and Agnes Moorehead in Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964. Crawford worked with William Castle on Strait-Jacket 1964, and Geraldine Page played a greedy murderess in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Co-starring Ruth Gordon. Shelley Winters appeared as the maniacal villainess in the fable-like Who Slew Auntie Roo? 1969 and Winters, Debbie Reynolds, and Moorehead in 1971 topped it off with Harrington’s What’s the Matter with Helen? A personal favorite of mine.

The second wave of the feminist movement and its emergence and impact began with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, giving 50s suburban housewives a different vision of domestic enslavement and began to disassemble the myth of that decade’s family values. The quaint and complacent sentiment of post-WW2 comfortability became subverted by empowered women who broke free and found new independence reigniting the Monstrous Feminine giving permission to women as represented more freely in film, with more prominent parts, especially fostered in”¦ the horror genre.

The 60s subverted the expectations surrounding the traditional housewife roles. Witches could be well-bred housewives like Janet Blair in Burn Witch Burn 1962 or a malevolent Ingénue, Sharon Tate in Eye of the Devil 1966.

“The housewife witches of Burn, Witch, Burn and Season of the Witch use witchcraft to escape the confines of the domestic sphere and subvert their husbands’ patriarchal power. Then there is the cult leader witch of Eye of the Devil who uses her femininity to intimidate traditional societal gender roles” – Claudia Bunce

Significant films like Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963, which were suggestive of lesbianism and repressed sexuality, star two very significant central female characters, Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, who give intensely complex and reflexive performances. Bloom, as the stylish and extraordinarily self-composed Theo, is a truly independent woman who lives life on her own terms. There isn’t anyone who wouldn’t shiver while at the mercy of the malevolent forces of Hill House. Director Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (The French title Les Yeux sans Visage) 1960 has perhaps one of the most graphic scenes of horror, a gruesome fairytale with its medical experimentation with facial transplantation and a lead actress, Edith Scob with her macabre blank mask who floats around the halls like a lost princess swallowed up inside a night terror. The film also stars a stoic Alida Valli, a strong ally to the twisted plastic surgeon in search of a new face for his daughter.

Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, became a screenplay by William Archibald, The Innocents 1961′ lead actress Deborah Kerr lies wide open with her distillation of a woman tortured by her sexual paranoia, dressed in classical clothes, unlike Deneuve’s role in Repulsion, where her character Carol’s neurosis is flayed and hung out naked on display.

And most significantly, the female-centric role of Mia Farrow as the allegorical heroine Rosemary Woodhouse, hunted down by a coven of upper west side devil worshipers in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby 1968. Farrow’s performance is a striking denunciation of control over women’s bodies, a slow burn of paranoia, and a strong instinct for survival.

“but when he (Guy Woodhouse) took control of her reproductive functions, he asserted his dominance over her in the darkest way possible.

Assertion of dominance reinforced his masculinity and the traditional role that men had in relationships. Guy’s taking control assuages the fear of women gaining too much independence.” – From Jenna Labbie damsels in Distress Analyzing gender in horror movies of the 1960s and 70s

Polanski’s earlier released Repulsion 1965 strayed from Hitchcock’s black humor drizzled about in Psycho. Repulsion rather has a sense of nightmarish realism and a protagonist, Catherine Deneuve who goes down a rabbit hole of repressive seizures.

Repulsion is an extremely disturbing contemplation on the destructive forces of loneliness, isolation, and paranoia seen through the lens of a sexually repressed young woman, Carol, who suffers a homicidal breakdown while her sister and married lover leave her alone for a long weekend. An exit from the cheeky dark humor of Hitchcock’s Psycho, Repulsion brushes the screen with strokes of Carol’s existential misery.

Michael Powell’s groundbreaking shocker Peeping Tom is a hauntingly twisted mood piece about serial killer Karl Bohm, who films his victims in the last moments of their death to capture their fear. It features two very strong female leads, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley.

Mexican fright flicks abound with atmospheric gems like The Curse of the Crying Woman 1963, The Brainiac 1961, and The Witch’s Mirror 1962, featuring strong female-centric characters played by Rosita Arenas and Rita Macedo. And in Jack Hill’s oddball black comedy, Spider Baby 1967 benefited from the quirky presence of both Beverly Washburn and Jill Banner as two bizarre, homicidal sisters.

Luana Anders features significantly in the genre, highlighted in Coppola’s Dementia 13 as the independent yet ruthless Louise Halloran and as prostitute Sylvia in Robert Altman’s psycho-sexual thriller That Cold Day in the Park 1969. The film stars one of my favorite underrated actors, Sandy Dennis, who gives a stunning performance as the disturbed Francis Austen, who holds Michael Burns hostage.

George Romero broke ground with the brutal realism of Night of the Living Dead 1968 which has not so indirect social relevance. 60s horror films were breaking away from Hollywood and being forged by gutsy independent filmmakers with smaller budgets, and an imaginative longing to experiment with diversity, artistic style, and a divergent way to visualize and process gender roles outside traditional cultural norms.

Barbara Shelley

The Queen of Hammer

Ryan Gilbey, in her obituary in The Guardian, praises Shelley’s acting in the Hammer films, considering that she had “a grounded, rational quality that instantly conferred gravitas on whatever lunatic occurrences were unfolding around her.”

The world lost Barbara Shelley in January 2021 at the age of 88. With hair like paprika, Barbara Shelley was born Barbara Kowin. A glamorous gothic leading lady was considered the “˜Queen of Hammer’ during the studio’s golden age of Gothic horror. A classical beauty, with an air of elegance and self-assuredness, she has co-starred with other Hammer royalty Christoper Lee and Peter Cushing. Shelley was an actress with such integrity and beauty that she transcended the horror genre.

The London-based production company was founded in 1934 by William Hinds and James Carrera, who made a string of hit Gothic horror films from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Inspired by classic horror characters like Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy, and appeared in 104 films and television series until 2000. She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1975 and 1977.

From Wiki-
{Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success.}

“Hammer was like a family, a very talented family”¦ with a wonderful atmosphere on the set and a wonderful sense of humour.

“When I first started doing Hammer, all the so-called classic actors looked down on the horror film. All the other things I did, nobody remembers those. But for the horror films, I’m very grateful to them because they built me a fan base, and I’m very touched that people will come and ask for my autograph. If you went to see a [Hammer] film in the cinema, the gasps were interspersed with giggles because people were giggling at themselves for being frightened, they were frightening themselves, and this is what made Hammer very special.”

With her success as a teenage model, she made her minor film debut in Hammer’s motion picture Mantrap in 1952, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Paul Henreid and Lois Maxwell.

Shelley took her screen name from Italian actor Walter Chiari who saw something in the actress and suggested that she use the last name as a tribute to his favorite English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She wound up living in Rome for four years and appeared in nine Italian-speaking films.

She returned to the UK in 1957, starring that year for British Lion Film in her first starring role within the horror genre as Leonora Johnson Née Brandt in Cat Girl (1957), directed by Alfred Shaughnessy, who set out to borrow from Jacques Tourneur’s superior, and innovative Cat People (1942). Leonora Johnson returns to her ancestral home that is beset with the family curse, that the spirit of a leopard will possess her. The film was a collaboration between American International Pictures and the British Anglo-Amalgamated.

Her first starring vehicle was Cat Girl (1957), Alfred Shaughnessy’s offbeat variation of Jacques Tourneur’s influential Cat People (1942), and A.I.P.’s first co-production with the UK’s Anglo-Amalgamated. The following year, she made her first major appearance in a film for Hammer, The Camp on Blood Island.

In 1958, she co-starred as a woman in peril at the hands of mad scientist Callistratus (Donald Wolfit). In Blood of the Vampire, Shelley is the picture of fainting beauty chained to the wall, a garish period piece in line with the days of Universal’s classic horrors, though scattered with gory scenes, satiated by fake blood and understated cleavage.

In 1880 Transylvania Dr. Calistratus is brought back to life by his one-eyed hunchback assistant Carl after he’d been executed as a vampire. At the same time, Dr. John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is on trial for killing one of his patients whom he tried to save with a blood transfusion. He is found guilty and sentenced to life. Barbara Shelley plays the fiancée, Madeleine, set on finding the truth behind the incriminating letter allegedly proving his guilt, forged by Calistratus.

He is brought to prison for the criminally insane by the mad doctor’s hunchback Carl. John is put in a cell, a menacing place guarded by vicious dogs, where Calastratus experiments and tortures his human subjects. In order to prove John’s innocence, Madeleine poses as Calastratus’ housekeeper, who winds up chained to a wall and strapped to an operating table!

Shelley was against her body being exploited or appearing in any nude scenes while being menaced by Wolfit. She warded off this endeavor by producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman by writing the word “STOP” on her chest. She threatened to sue the studio if it even used a body double.

“I had one or two dissertations on horror sent to me by students, and all the discussion ever seems to be concerned with is exploitation and the licking of blood and a scene of people making love, and it’s not right. It annoys me intensely because my career was not built on exploitation and sex. It was built on working very hard.”

In 1960, she is marvelous in the heartbreaking role of the tragic mother Anthea Zellerby who has given birth to an unfeeling monstrous alien boy who has uncanny dangerous powers along with the rest of the children of Midwich. All the mothers in Midwich have conceived during a strange blackout where they wind up giving birth to a breed of malevolent telepathic sociopaths.

Shelley’s character is earnest in the role of a woman torn between motherhood and sheer terror in director Wolf Rilla’s incredibly unsettling moody classic blend of science fiction and horror- Village of the Damned (1960) based on John Wyndham’s science fiction novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The film co-stars George Sanders as Shelley’s altruistic husband Gordon, who seeks to understand the menacing children with their freaky white hair and piercing eyes, and his creepy son David, played by Martin Stephans. These dangerous little progeny can get inside people’s minds and make them do anything they want, as in making Shelley’s character stick her hand in a pot of boiling water. The screenplay written by Stirling Sillipant is quite a disturbing potboiler in total.

She went on to star in John Gilling’s turn-of-the-century old dark house mystery Shadow of the Cat (1961)

Some of the outstanding pictures that put her upon the throne as the reigning Queen of those splendid years of Gothic horror are Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966, Rasputin the Mad Monk 1966 with Christopher Lee, and The Gorgon 1964 with Peter Cushing. The monstrous Gorgon is portrayed by Prudence Hyman.

“She really was Hammer’s number one leading lady and the Technicolor queen of Hammer.
“On-screen, she could be quietly evil. She goes from statuesque beauty to just animalistic wildness.” She adored Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and loved working with them; that was very dear to her.”-Agent, Thomas Bowington

What truly established Barbara Shelley’s esteemed reputation as the First Lady of British Horror in the mid-1960s is her collaboration with Terence Fisher. Leaving behind the more exploitative persona of the luscious heroine with inviting bosoms, Shelley portrayed the sympathetic character of Carla Hoffman in Fisher’s mood piece The Gorgon. Carla is the assistant to Dr. Namaroff (Peter Cushing) and a tortured soul possessed by an ancient evil spirit with serpents for hair and the ability to turn whoever gazes upon her to stone, and Shelley conveys the bleakness of a woman who is held captive by her monstrous alter ego.

Before Shelley turns into the blood-sucking bride of Dracula, she plays her first woman transformed into a monster in The Gorgon (1964). She told the studio “I wouldn’t need any makeup”¦ just a green face and the headdress of real snakes.” Shelley was absolutely let down when she saw what the special effects department conjured up, “They came up with these terrible sorts of rubber snakes dancing around, and it just looked awful. It wasn’t frightening at all.” She had said that it was “probably the biggest regret I’ve had in any film I ever made.”

She was absolutely dejected when they chose to substitute Prudence Hyman in the part of the Gorgon. “They came up with these terrible sorts of rubber snakes dancing around, and it just looked awful. It wasn’t frightening at all.” She called it “probably the biggest regret I’ve had in any film I ever made,” though she admired the look of the picture, noting that “every shot ” resembles a Rembrandt painting.”

In Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966, Christopher Lee resurrects the count from Horrors of Dracula 1958. Shelley plays Helen, the heroine whom we empathize with as she is trapped by her circumstances, when her stubborn husband Alan (who dismisses Helen’s panic), and his brother Charles, both refuse to leave the creepy, unwelcoming Castle Dracula after stumbling onto the unattended mausoleum.

They want to stay and partake in a meal laid out for them, but Helen is justifiably spooked by its strange undercurrent. “Everything about this place is evil.”

Once Christopher Lee’s resurrection, Helen goes through a diverging transformation from the archetypal repressed female to an unrestrained raptorial vampiress liberated from her proper English breeding, in high contrast to her tightly swung hair in a provincial hat, which is now wide open with unwound flowing hair and unequivocal breastage. Shelley loved how distinct her character’s trajectory was in Dracula: Prince of Darkness, from inhibited, startled gentlewoman to the monstrous feminine as one of Dracula’s brides. When she appears at Karlsbad Castle, telling Suzan Farmer, “Nothing’s wrong” through hungry red lips and baring fangs. “Come, sister, you don’t need Charles,” she tempts, with inviting arms outstretched to the innocent Suzan Farmer as Diana. Shelley’s virtuous woman, who reveals to her, Diana, that she is now a vampire, is lauded by Gilbey in The Guardian as having “traumatized and tantalized” viewers.

Shelley’s scream in Dracula is actually dubbed by fellow actress Suzan Farmer (Die Monster Die! 1965 with Boris Karloff), who appeared with her in Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin The Mad Monk.

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A terrifying scene, perhaps inspiring by Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, has Helen tapping on the window in the middle of the night. “Please let me in,” she pleads. “It’s cold out here. So cold. Everything’s all right now.”

She was delighted by one of her most potent scenes -when she contends with her adversaries, monks who lie her on a table and hammer a stake through her undead heart.

Shelley told Mark Gatiss in his 2010 documentary series A History of Horror, “The scene that I’m most proud of is when she is staked, that’s absolute evil, when she’s struggling, and then suddenly she’s staked and there is tremendous serenity. And I think that is one of my best moments in the film.”

“… and then suddenly she’s staked, and there is tremendous serenity. And I think that is one of my best moments on film.”

“Christopher Lee, who was an eloquent Gothic figure of pure evil in 1958’s first adaptation of Stoker’s vampire, had now evolved into a hissing fiend. But Shelley had this to say about the actor -“He brought dignity and veritas. It’s a difficult thing to bring to a fantasy like a vampire. And that is just Chris’ appearance and his personality. He did all that. He used to walk onto the sent and I’d say to him it’s an extraordinary performance, cause we know each other so well and you could hypnotize me. But it was brilliant because he completely dominated the film without a word. Talk about silent movies!”

Shot at the same time was another Hammer horror, Rasputin the Mad Monk, with Christopher Lee, who has dialogue in a more colorful, lurid role, as the mad mesmerist in contrast to his silent, blood-eyed fiend. Shelley falls under the spell of Rasputin. While not willing to do a nude scene in Blood of the Vampire, she was, however, up to laying bare a seduction scene with Christoper Lee. “That scene was in the script when I read it. The scenes I refused to do was when they would suddenly say to me, ‘Oh, you take your clothes off here’ The answer to that was always no” – From an interview with Fangoria Magazine 2010.

One of her beloved roles is her last Hammer feature in Roy Ward Baker’s adaptation of writer Nigel Kneale’s (The Quatermass Experiment 1955, First Men in the Moon 1964, The Witches 1966, The Stone Tape 1972 TV movie) Quatermass and the Pit 1967.

In Quatermass and the Pit, Shelley portrays scientist Barbara Judd who along with paleontologist Doctor Roney (James Donald) and a team of scientists discover an ancient alien race whose spacecraft is found buried in the underground station at Hobbs End during an expansion of London’s Underground transport system. Shelley develops a psychic link to the aliens and is taken over by the inhabitants of the alien spacecraft.

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She is subjected to images of green gooey decomposing locust-like alien carcasses that, in the process of being removed from the tunnels, cause her brain to succumb to the electromagnetic influence of the spacecraft, causing her to writhe in pain. She is so totally reasonable as an actress that she brings credibility to her character. Shelly had claimed that director Roy Ward Baker was her favorite of all the filmmakers she worked with.

The way he felt about her goes like this. He told Bizarre Magazine in a 1974 interview that he was “mad about her. “Mad in the sense of love,” he said. “We used to waltz about the set together, a great love affair. It puzzles me about her. She should be much bigger than she is, but I don’t think she really cares whether she is a star or not. She can act, God, she can act!”

In The Avengers 1961 image: Studio Canal.

Barbara Shelley would eventually do guest appearances on popular television shows, including the British television series Doctor Who, playing Sorasta in the episode “Planet Of Fire,” starring Peter Davison as the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who. She would also appear on The Saint, The Avengers, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and Route 66. Later, she would play Hester Samuels in “EastEnders.”

Shelley’s final role in horror films was in the old dark house mystery Ghost Story 1974 directed by Stephen Weeks and co-starring Marianne Faithful.

Her final role on screen was in the Uncle Silas mini-series in 1989. A sinister character brought to life on screen by Derrick De Marney in 1947 with Jean Simmons in the role of Caroline.

Although Shelley ultimately felt framed within the horror genre by the late 1960s, retiring two decades later, she always embraced her devoted fanbase and left behind a substantial legacy. “I realized that my work had been appreciated and that I had – through those horror films – actually reached a far bigger audience than I would ever have done if I’d stuck to the theater.”

The actress was modest about her achievements but happy with her legacy, as she conveyed with typical aplomb to Marcus Hearn: “There’s a lovely saying, ‘we’re given memories so we can have roses in winter. When I look back over my various rose gardens, I’m only sorry I didn’t enjoy them more”.

“No one told me I was beautiful. They said I was photogenic, but no one said I was beautiful. If they had, I would have had a lot more fun!”

In an interview with the Express newspaper in 2009, she said she was told at a convention by female fans that they loved her for her strong roles. “Which I thought was a brilliant thing to have said about one. I never thought of it in that way. The fact that I’m still getting mail from my horror fan base really touches me.”

TRIVIA

While making the 1961 TV film, A Story of David, she met Hollywood star Jeff Chandler and they began a relationship. Chandler died suddenly the following year. Shelley is later reported to have said that he had been the love of her life

So convincing was Shelley’s violently realistic struggle against the stake, she swallowed one of her stuck-on fangs.

With no spares at the ready and a tight shooting schedule, it is reported that she kept drinking salt water until she puked it up.

After the scene in Dracula: Prince of Darkness where she struggles with the monks at the end with her demise, it was so physically demanding on Shelley, that she suffered from chronic back pain.

Barbara Shelley would recall how she and Lee, prided themselves on being “un-corpseable”, and would compete to make one another laugh during takes.

Cat Girl 1957, Blood of the Vampire 1958, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED 1960 THE GORGON 1964,Â DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS 1966, RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK 1966, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 1967

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! Part 1” →

Chapter 3 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

The subtle gay gangster films of the early 1930s – Little Caesar 1931, The Public Enemy 1931 and Scarface 1932

"Criminals should not be made heroes"¦ The flaunting of weapons by gangsters will not be allowed"¦"

“… the fashion for romanticizing gangsters” must be denounced.

The three films also evenhandedly parcel out social pathology and sexual aberration: homosexuality in Little Caesar. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy from the novel by W.R. Burnett Little Caesar was first out of the gate and an immediate sensation. A diminutive bandit whose single-minded ambition compensates less for his stature than his repressed homosexual desire, Caesar Enrico Bandello is compact, swarthy and tightly wound; his golden boy pal Joe played by the scion of Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is tall, patrician and easygoing.

When Joe finds a female dancer and show business success, the jilted Caesar unhinged by a jealousy that dare not speak its name even to himself, makes his first mistakes in judgement. The male triangle is completed by Caesar's worshipful lapdog Otera (George E. Stone) who gazes up at Rico with a rapturous desire that, unlike Rico, he barely bothers to sublimate. Doubly deviant Rico dies for his social and sexual sins, asking in tight close-up and choked up tones, "mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?"The famous last words inspired an incisive remark from Robert Warshow on gangster psychology:" Even to himself he is a creature of the imagination" from FILMIC – From Sissies to Secrecy: The Evolution of the Hays Code Queer by Mikayla Mislak

"This is what I get for likin' a guy too much," Rico ‘Caesar’ tells himself after he realizes he’s lost, Joe. Joe, who he has referred to as "soft" and a "sissy." The very pretty Joe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) has decided to give up the racket, to be a professional nightclub dancer. Robinson wisecracks, “Dancin’ just ain’t my idea of a man’s game.”

Joe is romantically involved with Olga (Glenda Farrell). ‘Caesar’ is not only jealous of Joe’s relationship with Olga, but he also appears to have no use for women at all.

In the end, there is a telling close-up, a well of tears in his eyes, a subtle quiver in his face. Rico cannot shoot Joe, even though he needs to keep him from squealing. The image of Robinson coming head-on with his feelings reveals his struggle with the repressed love for his dancing pal. The scene is very effective when the camera closes in on Robinson, capturing his dewy, wide-eyed stare. Behind the scenes what helped the intensity of the look of longing turned out to be a serendipitous moment when Robinson had to fire a pistol while looking into the camera, and was unable to keep his eyes open, each time he pulled the trigger. Eventually, they had Robinson’s eyes held open with cellophane tape. The effect worked perfectly.

Another interesting point in Little Caesar that hints at his latent homosexuality is a scene that highlights his clumsy fussiness. Rico is trying on a tuxedo and gazing at himself in the mirror. Posturing gleefully as he swishes at his own reflection. In this scene, Rico also becomes caught in his effete sidekick Otero’s (George E. Stone) gaze, who joyfully watches his boss flit for the mirror.

In The Public Enemy (1931) there is a noteworthy scene when Tom (James Cagney) goes to his tailor to get fitted for a suit. It’s a hilariously fidgety few moments for Cagney while the flamboyant tailor fawns over his arm muscles. When the movie was re-released, the sequence wound up on the cutting room floor.

According to Mislak In Howard Hawk’s Scarface (1932), it could be seen as having a gay subtext, as Antonio ‘Tony’ Camonte (Paul Muni) shows a repressed homosexual desire for his best friend Guino Rinaldo played by George Raft. Hawk’s film doesn’t work on a blatant exhibition of violence, instead, Scarface’s subtlety draws on the subliminal impression of his sexual impulses.

Through my readings, it has been noted that there is a coded gayness inferred from the character of Camonte in Scarface. Rather than the repressed sexual desire for his close friend Guino, I catch more a wind of an incestuous desire for his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak). Camonte hovers over her with an iron will, not allowing her to have any man touch her. She even alludes to his untoward attentions at one point telling him that he loves her more than just a brother. Camonte (Muni) does focus obsessively over his hair and his wardrobe, which Poppi (Kathy Morely) tells him is ‘sweet’. But there are a few references to Guino being queer. He wears a carnation which is a code for being a gay man in film. Camonte says he’d like a carnation too, takes it out of Guino’s lapel, and tells him “Better no one sees you with this.” He also makes a comment about one of the North Side gang members not being taken seriously because he owns a flower shop! Guino doesn’t show any interest in women until nearly close to the end of the picture, when he submits to Camonte’s sister, Cesca.

“The placement of homosexuality or the real possibility of it in an antisocial context is quite natural. Homosexuality when it is invisible is antisocial. The only condition under which homosexuality has ever been socially acceptable has been on the occasion of its voluntary invisibility, when homosexuality were willing to pass for heterosexuals. Obvious homosexual behavior is reflected onscreen as in real life, only in the ‘twilight world’ of misfit conduct. During the brief period of explicit reference to homosexuals in pre-Code films of the early 1930s. Gay characters were psychologically ghettoized by their routine relegations to a fantasy world or an underworld life….

….in addition to strengthening the Code in 1934, Will Hays reacted to criticism by inserting morals clauses in the contracts of performers and compiling a “doom book’ of 117 names of those deemed “unsafe” because of their personal lives. Homosexuality was denied as assiduously off screen as it was on, a literally unspeakable part of the culture. By 1940 even harmless sex-roles farces such as Hal Roach’s Turnabout were considered perilous in some quarters. The film, about a married couple (Carol Landis and John Hubbard) who switch roles by wishing on an Oriental statue, was described by the Catholic Legion of Decency as dealing with ‘subject matter which may provide references dangerous to morality, wholesome concepts of human relationships and the dignity of man.’ ” –Vito Russo

HITCHCOCK SUBVERTS SUSPENSE!

Hitchcock sensed the ambiguous sexuality in Mrs. Danvers (nicknamed Danny) who embodies the forbidding identity of the coded lesbian in 1940s films. As she strides down the halls of Manderley, there is an element of the angry older woman trope, who is vacant of male companionship by choice, with an added streak of dissatisfied longing. She embodies the sterile matron, showing characteristics of an ‘old maid’ attributed to a repressed lesbian.” Rebecca serves as Fontaine’s idealized mother and that Hitchcock’s films present images of ambiguous sexuality that threaten to destabilize the gender identity of the protagonist.” -(Tania Modleski)

Gay Coding in Hitchcock films

Article by Scott Badman & Connie Russell Hosier February 7, 2017- The wonderful Hitchcock icon credited to the article!

“In typical Hitchcock-ian fashion, the “Master of Suspense” often employed in his films subtle references to gay culture, defying conservative attitudes of the late ’50s.”-Scott Badman & Connie Russell Hosier | February 7, 2017- Editor's note: The following article, like many of Alfred Hitchcock's films, includes references to sex and violence.

Did Martin Landau play a homosexual in North by Northwest? Did Alfred Hitchcock really show gay sex on-screen in Rope, albeit in an unusual way? Was the whole plot of Rebecca driven by the twisted jealousy of an evil lesbian? And, most surprisingly, did Hitchcock depict a gay marriage way back in 1938's The Lady Vanishes?”

Alfred Hitchcock was a complicated man, who put a singular stamp on all his films, infusing them with his droll and macabre sense of humor and imbuing his work from the point of view of a satyr. Hitchcock projects his dark and twisted view of the world as at the end of his films there is sort of a perverted release that he leaves us to contemplate. It also appears that he was playful with the use of his gay-coded characters in many of his films.

Nothing Hitchcock did was unintentional, thereby reinforcing proof that there is a gay subtext to many characters in various films. He was very measured in every detail even before the camera captured the scene. But this method of implying a queer pathology and positing queer elements to the narrative. He was ingenious in the way he veiled his ciphers within the cloak of deniability, in order to slip it by the censors in his cheeky manner.

Though Hitchcock would often imbue his pictures with coded gay characters, among scholars it is still speculative as to which side his view fell on. Given that everything Hitchcock constructed was intentional, it’s easy to see why he would be viewed as homophobic, due to his use of stereotypes that eventually led to queerness possibly being as the source of the crimes. But you have to consider that during the time he reigned, it’s a tribute to Hitchcock that he even embraced the complex issue of homosexuality. It shows me that there was a conscious level of understanding.

In his life, Hitchcock surrounded himself with gay culture be it in England or Hollywood, and he worked with many gay writers and actors. Ivor Novello who starred in two of Hitchcock’s silent pictures was good friends with him and Alma. Hitchcock was also friends with Rope stars John Dall and bisexual Farley Granger who played coded gay characters in the film. Granger also had the lead in Strangers on a Train, co-starring Rober Walker who plays another of Hitchcock’s coded gay characters, Bruno. Anthony Perkins who struggled with his sexuality in real life, plays the ambiguous, stammering, Norman Bates in Psycho. According to Jay Poole, Robert Bloch was interested in ‘abnormal psychology’ and was familiar with Freudian theories on sexual identity. His novel was more suggestive of the taboos, in terms of the incestuous relationship with Norman’s mother and his confused sexual identity.

The assessment of ‘camp’ and queerness can be seen as negative. More contemporary audiences might perceive Psycho as more campy than lurid or scary. Norman’s appearance in the fruit cellar might register with audiences as if he’s a big ugly ridiculous drag queen with a knife. The rest of the film is darkly humorous. (Doty cites Danny Peary)

In contrasting these male characters, one representative of sexually suspect psychosis, the other of gendered and sexual normalcy, Hitchcock blurs the lines between them, creating effects that will inform future depictions of American masculinity… While Lila Crane has been read positively as a lesbian character, and also as Carol Clover’s prototype for the ‘final girl” I demonstrate here that Lila is a more ambiguous figure, tied to social repression and the law. […] (Norman’s voyeurism and Lila’s examination of Norman’s room as pornographic) Infusing these pornographic motifs with addition levels of intensity and dread was the increasingly public threat of homosexuality within the Cold War context in which Hitchcock’s related themes gained a new, ominous visibility. What emerges in Psycho is a tripartite monster-voyeurism-homosexuality-pornography.” — (Scott Badman & Connie Russell Hosier)

WARNING SPOILERS:

Saboteur (1942) producer/writer Joan Harrison wrote the screenplay and collaborated with Hitchcock on many projects for both film and television. In the period of the 1940s to the 1950s, movies often conflated homosexuality with unsavory characters like Nazis, communists, and terrorists.

Saboteur stars Robert Cummings as plane mechanic Barry Kane who is framed for the terrorist bombing of a military installation’s aircraft hanger where they manufacture planes. After he sees his friend die in the explosion, police assume that it was Kane who filled the fire extinguisher with gasoline. Kane goes on the run, to try and find the man he suspects is the saboteur, Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd) who is the real murderer who committed the heinous crime.

Kane stumbles onto a secret group of ‘the firm’, 5th columnists who are plotting to sabotage key targets, military planes, ships, and dams. Kane is dropped into the middle of a cabal of dangerous Americans who have infiltrated positions of power in order to carry out their nefarious plan to disrupt the democratic system and cause chaos. Socialite dowager Mrs. Henrietta Sutton (Alma Kruger) is a New York philanthropist who provides cover for the ‘firm’ run by Otto Kruger as the coldly, sinister Tobin. Kane pretends to go along with the group, and in one scene in a taxi with Alan Baxter who plays Mr. Freeman, there is a queer exchange between the two. Freeman tells Kane about his two little children, one of them is a boy, whom he wishes was a girl. He’s letting his son’s hair grow long and hesitates to cut it. Then he shares his reminiscence about his boyhood when he had glorious long blonde curls. Kane tells him to cut his son’s hair and “save yourself some grief.”

Purely by Hitchcockian fate, Kane is thrown together with Pat (Priscilla Lane) who comes to his aid and at one point tries to distract Fry at the top of the Statue of Liberty. The beautiful Pat flirts with Fry in order to stall him until the police get there, but he isn't the slightest bit interested in her at all. In fact, he seems annoyed by her presence. He's a slim effete figure, a swishy loner with a serpent-like grin. Theodore Price, in his book ‘Hitchcock and Homosexuality (1992), has no doubt Fry was gay. (Ken Mogg 2008)

Saboteur climax prefigures that of North by Northwest between Thornhill (Cary Grant) and the sinister Leonard (Martin Landau) who is also a gay Hitchcockian figure.

We first hear a remark spoken by socialite Mrs. Sutton (Alma Kruger) when Barry (Kane) is taken to the saboteurs’ New York lair, as Barry enters the upstairs room. Mrs. Sutton is addressing a couple of her male colleagues, whom she reprimands: ‘I have to hover over you like an old hen.’

This is precisely the line Hitchcock uses in Rebecca to characterize the somewhat de-natured estate manager Frank Crawley (Reginald Denny) – nearly all the men in the film are so afflicted – and will be used again in The Paradine Case to characterize the gay Latour (Louis Jourdan).

Frank Crawley is ‘as fussy as an old mother hen’; Latour, we’re told, had been ‘like an old mother hen’ to his beloved master, the blind Colonel Paradine.- Ken Mogg (2008)

In North by Northwest (1959) Martin Landau’s character Leonard, displays an undercurrent of homosexuality, that is subtly implied. He’s a devoted bodyguard whose gaze on his boss, Phillip Vandamm, seems to be bubbling with a refined sensibility, romantically fixated on Vandamm (James Mason), a communist spy being hunted by the CIA. For a 1950s film, Leonard’s immaculate fashion sense and his fastidious swagger are a cue of his being queer. Nearing the climax of North by Northwest, the telling scene set in a mid-century modern house reveals Leonard’s love for Vandamm. Hitchcock even sets up the motive for Leonard shooting the object of his affection, jealousy, and rejection. In a notable line toward the end of the movie, Leonard remarks, “Call it my woman’s intuition” affirming the effete stereotype of a feminine gay man. Vandamm is genuinely flattered (contrary to homosexual panic) by Leonard’s feelings, which hints at his motivation for killing the thing he loves. Vandamm (Mason) tells him in that coldly sober tone of his, “I think you’re jealous. I mean it, and I’m very touched. Very.” As Scott Badman & Connie Russell Hosier point out, Hitchcock’s direction shows a “progressive perspective for its time but so brief that it doesn’t fully register with most viewers. Much later, Landau acknowledged that he played Leonard as a homosexual, albeit subtly.”

From the opening of Strangers on a Train (1951), Hitchcock frames the entranceway to the story with a close shot of the main character’s shoes walking to catch the train. Bruno wears elaborate wing tips with high heels and Guy wears a more toned-down fashionable pair of shoes, which are in opposition to each other and illustrate the contrast between the two main characters.

Robert Walker’s Bruno is a menacing, creepy guy with flashy ties, who positions himself after a chance meeting on a commuter train, to assert his influence over famous tennis player, Guy Haines (Farley Granger). Bruno begins to flatter Guy and insinuate himself by sharing his knowledge of Guy’s personal life. He is very proud of the tie that his mother gave him. It is a garish accouterment dappled with lobsters. Like his silken smoking robe and another tie with the name, Bruno embroidered on it. Bruno also spouts a lot of ‘ideas’ he has in that ever prompted mind of his, when talking about Guy’s upcoming divorce and bigamy scandal, “I've got a wonderful theory about that."

Bruno insists on Guy having lunch with him, “sent to my compartment… You see you'll have to lunch with me.” It is obvious, though Hitchcock is very subtle about broadcasting the cues, that Bruno is wooing Guy. Bruno is very effeminate in his demeanor, you could say that he has a ‘flaming’ air about him, always dropping hints about his sexuality. “My father hates me”, insinuating that he is not the kind of man he expects of him. “I've got a theory that you should do everything before you die." He tells Guy amorously, “I like you, I’d do anything for you.”

Bruno Anthony’s plan is for both men to exchange for each other’s murders. There are several scenes that scream Hitchcock’s gay coding. Initially, when the two men meet each other on the train, Bruno is flirtatious, dressed in ‘flamboyant clothes’, which to gay audiences, is seemingly clear to be a gay pickup. Bruno’s not only attracted to the handsome Guy, but he is in fact stalking him as an ‘object’ to fulfill his needs and be his ‘partner’ in his deranged homoerotic plot.

His mother, Mrs. Anthony (the wonderful character actor Marion Lorne) does Bruno’s nails and dotes on her son. As Bruno tells his mother, he wants his nails to look right.

Homosexuality is not explicitly stated, but there is too strong an import for critics and audiences in the know, to ignore. And, considering Hitchcock’s fascination with homosexual subtexts, it’s not a stretch to read into various scenes this way.

There is also the insinuation that Bruno has some serious mother issues, which is one of Hitchcock’s points of reference for his gay coding, such as his use of it with Norman Bates in his film Psycho. Bruno amuses himself by antagonizing his mother (Marion Lorne) who is completely in the dark about the twisted pathology of her homicidal son.

Bruno has set up a visit from Guy who finds himself talking to the sociopath, who’s been waiting for Guy while lying in bed in his silky pajamas. Is this actually arranged as a bedroom seduction?

Another brief sequence takes place at the end which centers around a carousel, a possible symbol of fluid sexuality, and sexual foreplay. The scene shows Bruno and Guy wrestling with each other, the movements could be read as Bruno really achieving what he wanted, to have sex with Guy. Hitchcock even cut different versions of the movie for Britain and the U.S., toning down the implied homosexuality in the American version "” proof positive that he was fully aware of the gay implications in his movies. –(Badman and Hosier)

Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) is based on the play by Patrick Hamilton Rope's End is perhaps one of the more obvious coded gay films with homosexual subtexts in his canon. Arthur Laurents, who eventually came out of the closet and wrote the screenplay, said during a commentary “What was curious to me was that Rope was obviously about homosexuals. The word was never mentioned. Not by Hitch, not by anyone at Warners. It was referred to as ‘it’. They were going to do a picture about ‘it’, and the actors were ‘it’.” The original British stage play was loosely based on the sensational true crime committed by Chicago students Leopold and Loeb in 1924, who killed a fellow student, just to see if they could get away with a motiveless crime. The script was penned by Arthur Laurents in collaboration with Hume Cronyn and Ben Hecht.

Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger) are entitled, affluent snobs, who are self-aggrandizing psychopaths with a Nietzschean superiority. Hitchcock arranges a taut stage play, around a case of Folie Ã deux. Brandon and Philip are implied coded lovers, who used the crime of murder to stimulate each other as if it were a sex act. The intellectual discourse they have at the beginning of the picture is overshadowed by the sexual banter that precedes what ultimately will become the act of committing a murder. Rope from the beginning of the picture inaugurates a very feverish sexual undercurrent.

In real life, John Dall was gay but died in 1971 without talking openly about his homosexuality. Farley Granger was bisexual when making the movie and then was in a lifelong gay relationship starting in 1963. Alfred Hitchcock was well aware of the sexual orientations of both actors and was reportedly pleased with what is now called the on-screen "chemistry" between the two.

He coded Brandon and Philip as gay by their "sex scene." It occurs at the very beginning of the movie, which is also the murder scene. Hitchcock is strongly equating murder with sex. The murder-sex occurs behind curtained windows. The death scream corresponds to the orgasm. Now visible, the murderers Brandon and Philip quickly put the body in a cabinet and go into a postcoital exhaustion. Philip doesn't even want the light turned on. In an inspired touch, Hitchcock has Brandon light a cigarette, a standard Hollywood indicator for "we just had sex." – (Badman and Hosier)

The unorthodox murderers throw a dinner party with the victim stuffed inside an antique trunk. The film was initially banned in Chicago and other cities, because of its implied homosexual relationship between the two killers. In 1959, the story was revised as Compulsion directed by Richard Fleischer scripted by Richard Murphy, and based on the novel by Meyer Levin. Compulsion remains closer to the actual true-life crime, and the implicit queer undertones are brought more to the surface, with less of Hitchcock’s cheeky innuendo.

Hitchcock employs many homoerotic symbology and allusions, as the couple reenact the murder, with the director conflating violence and sex. For instance, Brandon gets a bottle of champagne still invigorated by the murder, while Philip the weaker of the murderous pair, is nervous. Brandon fondles the bottle of champagne as the two stands close together very intimately. He grasps the champagne bottle as phallus and flirts with the top of the bottle, yet not releasing the cork. All this is stages as foreplay. Philip finally takes the bottle from Brandon and liberates the cork. They then toast to their victim. Film Critic Robin Wood asserts, in The Murderous Gays: Hitchcock’s Homophobia, that these films could be made as more positive or sensitive to homosexuality rather than “traffic in homophobia” and that it perpetuate the notion that homosexuality leads to violence.

Psycho (1960)

Psycho works as a warped adult fairytale about getting lost and paying for one’s transgressions. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is a Phoenix secretary who embezzles forty thousand dollars from her employer’s client and goes on the run. Marion is also shown to be a fallen woman, a sexual deviant herself with no morals, not only is she a thief but she is also having an affair with a married man Sam Loomis, (John Gavin). Driving in torrential rain, she pulls into the Bates Motel, an eerie, remote motel off the beaten path. The motel is run by a ‘queer’ sort of young man, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who lives up in the brooding house on the hill, under the dominant authority of his cruel and elusive mother. As Poole puts it, Norman “remains locked in a disturbed world, and, as the film progresses, becomes murderously mad.”

Norman Bates: “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

Norman is not a masculine figure, he is a mama’s boy who does his mother’s bidding. He is continually identified with his mother and, according to Freud and his psychological tunnel vision, would probably have evolved into a homosexual because of his Oedipal desires. Hitchcock perverts Freud’s narrow theory, by making sure the narrative shows Norman to be attracted to women, not men. It is when Norman’s arousal by the female body, that he dresses in frumpy dresses to represent his mother, who then takes over and annihilates the object of Norman’s desire. Many viewers assume that Norman is a repressed homosexual because he dressed in women’s clothing when manifesting his mother’s personality. Cross-dressing was stereotypically associated with homosexuality, however, Hitchcock’s film tries to make it clear that Norman is attracted to women from the very beginning with the seductive Marion. The concept of fluid sexuality was not understood in 1960, so conflating cross-dressing with homosexuality was a commonly misleading view.

Another interesting point that Jay Poole (Queering Hitchcock’s Classic) brings out is how the dÃ©cor of the house is itself, queer. Referring to what he cites Foucault’s theory of ‘We Other Victorians’ which essentially invokes ‘the image of the imperial prude.’ Therefore the Bates house itself with its provincial Victorian style from a queer perspective represents the constraints of Victorian sexual expectations, which is — we do not speak of sex, and any relations are to remain between a heterosexual married couple in the privacy of their own bedroom. Norman is surrounded by this oppressive atmosphere and tries to fight his impulses and his carnal desires. He does this by dwelling in his mother’s house, hoping that she will control the voyeuristic, dirty lustful desire he is having about Marion.

Norman Bates: “People never really run away from anything. The rain didn’t last long, did it? You know what I think? I think that we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.”

Marion Crane: “Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps.”

Norman Bates: “I was born in mine. I don’t mind it anymore.”

Psycho, is the first of Hitchcock’s films to break tradition from his usual cultured mystery/suspense tropes. He decided to present this narrative using a pallet of B&W to set up a different tonality. Without the use of the vivid colors that he often used with cinematographer Robert Burks. Psycho deals with a more graphic, monochromatic, psycho-sexual sickness. A sickness that erupts in unprecedented perversity and violence for the director. Hitchcock also kills off his heroine in the first 20 minutes of the film. Psycho, will forever be known for ‘the shower scene.’

It also brings to the screen one of THE most hauntingly intense scenes that will remain in the collective consciousness, for what it lacks in vivid bloodshed, it possesses an uncomfortable voyeuristic gaze that brings us into Norman’s mind with the twists and turns, it assaults us, because of its deeper brutality, a more queasy feeling of psychic angst and inverts our gaze, as Marion stares back at us with her lifeless eyes.

“It’s not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?”

In the 1950s into 1960 was a time when Americans were seeking out the American ideal, and cultural conformity. It was also a time when many audiences did not explore alternative sexualities and would have conflated homosexuality with a deviant and dangerous personality. Poole suggests “Hitchcock queers the image of sexual purity but reinforces naturalized heterosexuality as the film progresses… Hitchcock utilizes the Freudian explanation of homosexual development in his explanation of Norman’s development as a psychopathic killer despite Norman’s apparent heterosexual orientation.”

Hitchcock believed he made the perfect choice in casting Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, the homicidal misfit who put on a dress and wig to embody his cruel mother. Norman became a serial killer with a fixation on his castrating mother because she dominated his life and turned him into a monster. Perkin’s himself soft-spoken, androgynous, even perhaps a slightly effete actor. Alfred Hitchcock envisioned another gay character whose inherent corrupted humanity stems from their conflict of being queer. By queer, it can refer to the process of shattering normalcy and vision from the perspective of a heternormative lens. Psycho takes the audience into a place of dis-ease, where seemingly ordinary people are capable of monstrous acts. If Hitchcock’s film is subverting the value of 1950s America, and the transgressive content of Psycho breaks from societal norms, then it can be read as a ‘queer’ film.

[voiceover in police custody, as Norman is thinking]” It’s sad, when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. But I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man… as if I could do anything but just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. They know I can’t move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do… suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…”

As ‘Judith Butler’ Gender scholar, and ‘Hall’ speak of gender as performance, Hitchcock was clear in the way he developed Stephano and Bloch’s central characters in Psycho. In the final scene, the murderer is revealed and his inner monologues keep hidden, the source of a disturbed, untroubled ‘victim’ of faulty psychological development.’ The opening montage sets the scene for the dark thing that takes place inside ordinary towns and inside the minds of ordinary people. (source: Poole)

Psycho was a vehicle that queered what the public had come to expect from Hitchcock films, and,much like its real-life inspiration (Ed Gein), it queered the notion that America was a place where ‘normal,’ was defined as a quiet, safe, small town life, free from the darkness that lurds in modest roadside motels… With Psycho, Hitchcock abetted by Stefano’s script, would shock audiences with sexual innuendo, apparent nudity coupled with a sadistic stabbing scene. Perhaps most shocking of all, he would leave audiences wondering what might lie below the surface of family, friends neighbors and themselves.” (Jay Poole)

Rebecca (1940), was not one of Hitchcock’s favorite films at all. Adapted from the Gothic novel by Daphne du Maurier, the sick soul here is a menacing lesbian. The formidable Mrs. Danvers ( played by the equally formidable Judith Anderson) is the head Matron of Manderley, living in the shadows of the former Mrs. de Winter. She is a lovesick sapphic with an unnourished desire for her dead mistress, Rebecca. Manderley itself is like a hollow mistress that consumes those inside its ominous hallways. ‘Danny’ resents the new Mrs. de Winter and in one revelatory scene taunts her (Joan Fontaine) trying to drive her to suicide through her cruel torments. She parades Rebecca’s lingerie with a lustful smirk on her diabolical face, running her hands under the sheer, delicate fabric as if she were fondling Rebecca herself.

Mrs. Danvers’ jealousy of Maxime de Winters’ new bride is driven by obsession, a lesbian-coded manifestation, one of jealousy and sexual desire. For Joan Fontaine’s character, Danvers reenacts through storytelling, all the attention she used to lavish on her beloved mistress, running her bath, brushing her hair, admiring the finery of her monogrammed pillowcases. Though Rebecca is only seen as the painting of an alluring woman her ghost haunts Manderley and the new Mrs. de Winter.

In Hollywood movies of the 1940s, coded lesbian characters were far less common than coded gay men. Portrayals of lesbians might define them as dangerous and threatening, as is the case with Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers implies that she had been married. This allowed Hitchcock's deniability against Judith Anderson’s lesbianism But Mrs. Danver’s eventual demise is brought about by her inability to accept Rebecca’s death or allow anyone to replace her love. And so her desire consumes her literally, in fire.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

When I first saw Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naughton Wayne) in The Lady Vanishes my radar went off like a firehouse siren during the scene where they are both sitting up together in a small bed, one wearing the pajama tops and the other wearing the bottoms, (giving the appearance of both being naked in bed. It was such a marvelous coded moment and I knew they were a loving married gay couple. I found it so refreshing to see the British comedy duo playing a cheeky proper English couple who are cricket fanatics trying to get back to London while the Hitchcockian espionage is happening under their noses.

I enjoyed their farcical vignette about a pair of golfers, the one comedic entry in an otherwise moody collection of ghost stories- Dead of Night (1945) which like The Lady Vanishes, also stars Michael Redgrave.

Hitchcock excelled at getting fine performances from his supporting cast members. They usually are finely honed characterizations portrayed by perfectly cast actors, fascinating and funny, imbued with his dry British humor. Charters and Caldicott are wonderful examples. Played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, two fine stage actors who reprised these characters in subsequent movies and BBC radio programs, Charters and Caldicott follow a long tradition of comedy duos of older men in British Music Hall, vaudeville and stage performances. Most audiences of the time, especially British audiences, would have interpreted their relationship simply as one between eccentric, middle-aged bachelors. (Badman and Hosier)

Though there are so many elements of the duo that is ambiguous, Hitchcock imbues Charters and Caldicott with an affection and closeness that reads like a positively coded gay pairing. The two aren’t played as stereotypically flamboyant or campy. Later in the movie, Charters and Caldicott are heroic in facing down danger, during an onslaught of gunfire by fascist spies.

Charters and Caldicott are stranded at the only hotel in a tiny alpine village. The desk clerk informs them that they must share the maid's room. When they meet the voluptuous Germanic blonde, they glance at each other with an expression that appears to be saying they’re not interested. When they follow the maid to her cramped room, Charter cracks “It’s a pity they couldn’t have given us one each” which could be interpreted as each having their own woman, to have a bit of a romp with. But Charters clarifies himself by saying he meant two rooms. One for the maid and one for them. A mainstream audience could read their conduct as two heterosexual British gentlemen, but if you read between the lines, it is suggested that they have no interest in women. In another scene when the maid enters their shared room without knocking, both men act startled by the intrusion. Caldicott moves in a way that conjures up the role of a protective mate. Once she leaves, Caldicott locks the door.

A master of queering the screen, Hitchcock plays with sexuality using his skillful methods of innuendo and artful suggestiveness "” In an already masterful way of blurring the lines of reality and adeptly flirting with transgression, Hitchcock's milieus are perfect playgrounds for coded gay characters.

Continue reading “Chapter 3 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:” →

Chapter 1: Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

"I wish to join the Legion of Decency, which condemns vile and unwholesome moving pictures. I unite with all who protest against them as a grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and to religion. I condemn absolutely those salacious motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land… Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality."

"”Catholic Legion of Decency pledge

And now here at The Last Drive In, the subject of “The Third Sex in the Shadows of Cinema.”

Clifton Webb as Hardy Cathcart in The Dark Corner 1946 directed by Henry Hathaway. Waldo Lydecker: “I’m not kind, I’m vicious. It’s the secret of my charm.”

“Oh, it’s sad, believe me, Missy, when you’re born to be a sissy without the vim and voive…” -Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Growing up as a gay woman, though gender and sexuality are fluid, there was not a well spring of characters in film or television that I could grab onto as a buoy for my burgeoning self-awareness – I was ‘different than the others.’ Though there are the obvious icons who became heroes and heroines to many of us because of their peerless image. And while films could not overtly represent ‘queerness’ directly, they could posit mixed messages and a whole generation of us could understand the subtext, unsheltered from an array of homophobic language.

We still had Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo, who gave us immortal androgyny– there was no one who could shatter the silence, and ceremoniously ring the bells out in the open. There were no ‘obvious’ gay role models. We had to create that worship ourselves through iconography and a variety of sublime, convention-smashing signals. For those of us who knew how to look in the dark corners, right under your nose, corners, or should I say coded corners.

There’s one thing I want to be very clear about. I am not asserting that the actors themselves were gay in their personal lives, but that what was coded was merely the particular characters they played in the film. Or that the narrative might seemingly be ‘queer’. Which I will go on to explain. Particular actors or directors’ private lives are not up for conversation unless they were clearly open about themselves and their influences on their artistic work.

For instance, I am not saying that I suspect Doris Day is a lesbian, just that the character of Calamity Jane is throwing out messages for those of us ‘in the life,’ to feel a special affinity. Using comforting symbology gives us a place in the universe, especially when the story is presented by the stars we most admire. Not all coded gay characters are portrayed by gay actors, and not all coded comedy, jokes, or situations denotes that the character themselves are gay, just that the humor is cannily made to be queer at the moment. It can be an off-the-center remark that speeds by almost unnoticed except for the sake of the hurried laugh or two. Sometimes it’s all subjective and at times it’s pretty obvious which way the deliberate wind blows.

(Stacey) categorizes her range of material into several kinds of identification broadly dividing them into two categories. "Cinematic identifcatory fantasies" "”devotion, worship transcendence, inspiration are proper to the act of spectatorship and appear to be based primarily on difference from the star ideal and "extra-cinematic identifactory practices" "”imitation and consumption "”attempt to close the gap between subject and star even as they take place outside cinema.

The worship of Doris Day is not surprising, she was one of the top box office draws of the 1950s. Day performs a cross-dressing role in the biopic of a legendary lesbian. Indeed, Day and Calamity Jane in particular in which the star sings both "Secret Love" and a duet with another, feminine character called " a woman's touch" are regularly cited by lesbians as crucial cinematic texts. (Jackie Stacey’s Star Gazing)

There was a period when Peter Lorre, George Sanders (and his equally effete brother Tom Conway), Anne Revere, Judith Anderson, and Agnes Moorehead played movie villains, fanatics, or oddballs. Each of these actors suggested queerness in their androgynous personas. Each became an iconic character actor of classic cinema.

Characters like Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius, Clifton Webb’s Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944), Judith Anderson in Rebecca (1940), or Gloria Holden as Countess Zaleska in Dracula’s Daughter (1936), stood out to us, though they were despicable and unwelcoming characters. Although I see Gloria Holden’s character as strangely sympathetic. Usually, queerness that was veiled behind a coded role, exhibited a disturbed or desperate personality. They might be a person who is ambiguous in their maleness or femininity. And at times, they were full-on, deadly.

However, there was so little for those of us who are part of the ‘hidden audience’, we needed to catch sight of something familiar. That meant grabbing onto whatever little crumbs were thrown to us. So whether those characters were inherently insensate evil had nothing to do with our empathy or revulsion. The real power lay in the ability to identify with the essence of ‘otherness’ and more to do with familiarity and belonging. I longed to find that ‘something‘ that signified a relative identification of their sexuality. To see that subtle finger motioning, come closer, you’re in the right place kiddo, you’re one of us. Andrea Weiss writes: “[In the 1930s] for a people who were striving toward self-knowledge, Hollywood stars became important models in the foundation of gay identity.”

The films I have uncovered throughout my endeavor to write this immense blog post, either commonly fall within the queer canon or can be liberally dissected and/or challenged. We can read into any film if we so choose. I am merely putting it out to you that these films do seem to meet the criteria for coded queer paradigms. I also began this piece thinking that in order to understand the evolution of coded characters, you first have to look at the origin of the queer presence in silent and Pre-Code films, and how the Code influenced and constructed the way being queer had to be hidden in plain sight.

I echo Susie Bright, in her feelings that we (the queer community) would hang on to anything close to a hint of gayness, and it would change the whole world of the motion picture, just to see that famously analyzed moment when Marlene Dietrich plants that sensuous kiss on a woman’s lips in Josef von Sternberg’s Morocco 1930. Or the first cinematic lesbian romance when vamp Louise Brooks slinks on the dance floor with her androgynous female admirer Alice Roberts as Countess Anna Geschwitz in director GW Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929).

The boldly androgynous Marlene showcased another masculine appearance when she ascends the throne at the end of The Scarlet Empress (1934).

Greta Garbo portrays the Swedish monarch who declares herself not an “old maid” but “a bachelor” in Queen Christina (1933)

Because of the social relationship between non-normative gender and sexuality and the symbology of fashion and the role of work, women only had to dress like their male counterparts and be employed in a man’s job to seem queer. In the movie directed by George Cukor, What Price Hollywood? (1932), the very drunk filmmaker notices a woman having lunch at a fashionable Hollywood restaurant. The drunks inquiry goes like this, “I beg your pardon, old man… who’s your tailor?

In Victor Fleming’s Red Dust (1932), Jean Harlow is adorable as Vantine as she handles the heat and hands out the jibes.

Other members of the lesbian parade inhabit spaces that, as with the men, connote queerness. Consider the lesbian couples in the Greenwich Village dive in Call Her Savage (1932), seated alongside male same-sex couples while pansy entertainers, dressed as maids, perform for their amusement. Mannishly garbed women barflies, sometimes wielding cigars, often pal around with men, or sometimes confuse and emasculate them, in Lawyer Man (1932), Grand Slam (1933), and Blood Money (1933). (Lugowski)

Blood Money (1933) Rowland Brown’s atmospheric jaunt that embraces the gritty underworld, includes racy subjects like sadomasochism, empowered women, and fluid sexuality. Kathlyn Williams credited as the “Nightclub Woman Wearing Monocle”, is a beautiful androgynous off-cut in the film. In one notable scene George Bancroft as Bill Bailey enters Ruby Darling’s (Judith Anderson) nightclub and comes across a young woman at the bar, dressed in a man's tuxedo and sporting a monocle. Baily offers her a cigar. She smells it and nonchalantly mocks the husky guy, “Why, you big sissy!” and hands it back to him. The nature of this adventurous passage into a subversive world generated a lot of sexual tension. With Blood Money, the subject of homosexuality is a non-issue, belonging to a subculture that invites those who are outsiders.

In Blood Money and Call Her Savage, "¨homosexuality is just another pocket of an underworld that exists outside the law. When George Bancroft warns a timid taxi driver not to betray his destination to the police, he threatens, “Lissen fag” -and is rebuked by Judith Anderson for “scaring the little fellow half to death.”

Keeping along the lines of the connection between women working at men’s jobs, within a wide range of social status, you can see this example in Heat Lightning (1934) starring interestingly handsome actress Aline MacMahon when she, covered in grease, working on cars in her desert garage/gas station wearing a filthy jumpsuit and hair wrapped in a bandana. She sheds her desire to be desired by men, and exudes a solitary quality, as if she has given up on, performing femininity for men. She seems independent and strong and in her ‘male’ attire, you can see her projecting a queer attitude, though the film deposits a past love interest with bad boy Preston Foster as a distraction. The attraction is doomed from the start.

Olga (MacMahon) balances the duality of loving Preston Foster, donning her "˜womanly' dress when she decides to submit to a heterosexual liaison which goes wrong. Then she shuns the idea of her femininity, re-asserting her hyper-masculine posture in greasy mechanics overalls and once again hiding her ravenous hair under her bandana, to protect herself from performing as a straight woman again.

To be clear it is not my belief that she’s not “all woman,” even using these props to represent masculinity. She is not truly changing her gender but for the purposes of the narrative, in the movie’s time period, it suggests a superficial interpretation of gender for our spectatorship.

In Jame’s Whales’ The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) there is a sophisticated female lawyer Hilda Frey (Jean Dixon) who is stern and stiff-backed, and is dressed in severe clothing, a “new kind of woman” which allows for an undercurrent of lesbianism.

In The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933), Nancy Carroll as Maria Held is a career-oriented lawyer, who wears men’s suits and considers herself a “new woman.” There are tinges of heterosexuality, which serve to shield her character from scrutiny. But, she does appraise heterosexuality in vaguely cynical terms. She talks to another woman about a case where the husband has murdered his wife, “At least no one will ever murder me.” She also responds to, “What are you? A lawyer, or a new kind of woman?” by saying, “By day, I’m a lawyer. At night, well, you might be surprised.” Either it went undetected by the SRC (Studio Relations Committee) or they felt that the connotations of her lesbianism were ambiguous enough to slip by an unsophisticated audience.

We learn to watch out for signs that there are ‘others’ out there on the screen – those we can relate to. A young person exposed to old films, as I grew older and dove head first into classic film with a critical eye, I could read those sign posts and cues that led me to become consciously aware of the invisible affinity laid out in plain site for me, and those of us who knew the secret whispers behind the storyline.

Women wearing men’s apparel, like Dietrich’s wonderful drag performance, kissing a woman in Morocco in 1930. Or Clifton Webb’s often effete superiority as with his character, Waldo Lydecker in Otto Preminger’s Laura 1944, or his role as Hardy Cathcart’s with a pathological objectification of his wife Mari’s aesthetic beauty in Henry Hathaway’s The Dark Corner. Greta Garbo in Queen Christina 1933– “I shall die a bachelor!” Gloria Holden’s vampiric desire to embrace the necks of beautiful young female models in Dracula’s Daughter 1936.

Nan Gray and Gloria Holden in Lambert Hillyer’s Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

The Production Code Administration (PCA) saw the obvious connection between vampirism and lesbian sexual desire in Dracula’s Daughter (1936) They only gave two warnings concerning the ‘queerness’ of Countess Zaleska and her thirst for young female victims. Universal, even hyped the idea that women were not safe from unnatural desire using this publicity catchphrase, “Save the women of London from Dracula’s Daughter!”

Throughout these films coded lesbian characters, scattered their rose petals of longing for their dead lost loves or the nymphs just out of their reach. There was tragedy within the tragedy of the horror story! As long as these queer women monsters also became victims, the PCA could negotiate its release, being comfortable with the narrative in that form.

The most overt representation of lesbians was her stylized look, a severely tailored suit, monocle, slicked back or bobbed short hair, or staunch, with a strait backed, severely repressive temperament. The coded dyke is typically less seen on screen than the pansy who enjoyed more of a character actor’s trademark in popular films. However, it could be said that covert lesbians are more subtle in their presence than their queer male counterparts – the sissy.

Major female stars could be seen as having indirect lesbian undertones, though their ambiguous sexuality might be camouflaged by their independent streak, their strong spirit or shaded by their exotic, mysterious nature. Thus we find some of our lesbian icons like Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Clara Bow, Greta Garbo, and Barbara Stanwyck. Lesbian vibes can often be signaled by a playful tomboyishness. And what we have is a diametrically opposed result, the pansy is perceived as failed manhood, but conversely the lesbian performing manhood is perceived as a threat.

And if they weren’t tomboys they could be man-less shrews, castrating viragos, or in need of a man, who can make her come to her senses, and give up her career and her disruptive way of life. The threat of strong women is still equal to the threat. The gay man elicits a laugh.

Thus, discourses about queer sexuality in this period are never purely homophobic against men. To a sizable extent, they have their basis in sexism against women, for it is the power of femininity, the “feminization” of 1930s culture mentioned, and the threat of working women “wearing the pants” that are being policed.

The metaphorical nature of the pants-wearing, money-earning woman attaining independence from men connoted lesbianism as a complete break from the interwoven financial and sexual economies of patriarchy. Thus, if “clothes make the man,” the wearing of pants in and of itself suggested a link to lesbianism that films of the time simultaneously offered as spectacle and punishment. (Lugowski)

In particular classical horror and science fiction films spoke to the sense of "otherness" installed in my psyche. That does not mean that I viewed things through a dark lens, but classical horror and science fiction are effusive metaphors and inherently philosophical. When some of us, like Frankenstein’s monster were figuratively chased with flaming torches, horror, and sci-fi movies afforded us shelter from the angry mob. Their use of mythic undertones and symbolic context provided for so many of us, psychic release and catharsis.

It’s also why I love and identify with the monster in classical horror films. The iconic or tragically fated monster has always been portrayed as the ‘other’. Gay people understand what it means to be an outsider. And filmmakers encoded that sui generis into our beloved classical horror genre. It worked like waving that meaningful finger at the audience, saying, you found us, we’re here.

WHAT IS A CODED GAY CHARACTER?

CODED–verb [with object] 1 convert (the words of a message) into a particular code in order to convey a secret meaning: "¢ express the meaning of (a statement or communication) in an indirect or euphemistic way: (as adjective coded)

films allude to homosexual meanings in more of less coded ways. From today’s perspective, one can view these films as excellent examples of the very discourse of the closet-they employ connotative and symbolic meanings to signify homosexuality for those ‘in the know’ while ostensibly being about something else. Such connotative meanings were the way homosexuality could be signified under the dictates of the Hollywood Production Code.

Although it was continually challenged throughout the 1950s (by films such as The Moon is Blue 1953 and Baby Doll 1956) The Production Code still exerted a profound effect on the content on Hollywood film, especially in relations to homosexual themes. The Production Code Administration (PCA) edited queer backstories and subtexts of the film adaptations of Tennessee William’s plays A Street Car Named Desire (1951) , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Vincente Minnelli’s film of the Broadway hit Tea and Sympathy… (Jeffrey Sconce)

Continue reading “Chapter 1: Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:” →

The Little Foxes that Spoil the Vines:

THE LITTLE FOXES (1941)

At the turn of the century, the ruthless Hubbard clan spread their greed and opportunistic fervor all throughout the South. Bette Davis commands the screen once again playing the hard-hearted Matriarch Regina who keeps an iron hold on her lovely daughter Alexandra (Teresa Wright). Regina is separated from her husband Horace (Herbert Marshall) who suffers from a serious heart ailment and is living in a sanitarium being treated by doctors in Baltimore. Regina summons her husband after her two conniving brothers Charles Dingle as Ben Hubbard and Carl Benton Reid as Oscar Hubbard conspire to make a killing by forging a lucrative merger with a Chicago cotton magnet. In order to come up with their part of the investment they must rely on Horace’s part of the money. Horace has been estranged from the family and his bitter wife and has no intention of releasing any part of his money to the cunning Hubbard siblings.

Oscar is married to Birdie whom he only married for her money and her family’s plantation which once he owned both begins to abuse her psychologically and verbally to the point that she takes to talking incessantly to anyone who will listen and quietly drinking away her sadness. Trapped in a loveless marriage, and receiving the brunt of such distasteful ire by her husband. She is like a sweet flower that has been trampled upon by the brutal ugly want of greed. Birdie is brought to life by one of the great character actors I can imagine, the wonderful Patricia Collinge who manages to make her pain seem so palpable it’s almost unbearable to watch.

Birdie doesn’t even like her own son Oscar who is already showing signs of the father’s avarice. Leo is played by another favorite of mine, the versatile Dan Duryea, who manages to play a smarmy noodlehead. One of the lighter characters of the film is Jessie Grayson as the unflappable and sagacious Addie the maid who is the true person who keeps the household going smoothly. Richard Carlson plays David Hewitt who encourages Zanda to break away from under her mother’s thumb. The music by Max Steiner has his signature emotional washes of grand mood and the cinematographer Gregg Toland creates a claustrophobic chamber piece for the incredible ensemble cast to work their magic.

Here is one of the most powerfully consequential scenes of the film:

The beautiful heart that pulses within the rotten venomous soul of this old Southern Hubbard family, are those who in this one scene sum up all the love and compassion that director William Wyler presents to us with the help of Lillian Hellman.

This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying The Last Drive In has Tender Grapes!

What A Character! Blogathon 2019 Thelma Ritter “Always a bridesmaid and never the bride”

It’s here again, my favorite blogathon that honors those unsung actors we love to see inhabit films and most often enhance them immeasurably!

I want to thank Paula’s Cinema Club, Once Upon A Screen… and Outspoken & Freckled for hosting this important event that brings to light those essential personalities that populate memorable films and television programs with their own rare brilliance. This year I am honoring the great Thelma Ritter!

With her warm and weather-worn face, Thelma Ritter is the quintessential expression of a working-class dame, the working-class mother, the everywoman. And no one can deliver a snappy quip quite like Thelma Ritter. Between her mournful tones of better days or raising a stink about this or that, you can almost see the cleaning rag over her simple brown hairdo hanging out the window in Brooklyn just chatting it up with the neighbors. Thelma Ritter, with hands-on hip, spouts barbs, and verbal gems from an endless fountain of everyday wisdom.

And I want to make this clear from the start, Thelma is no plain, dowdy, or shabby spinster, she’s a beautiful woman. So there’ll be no agism or misogynistic observations in this tribute.

"Usually looking like a cross between Mother Courage and a cafeteria lunch lady, [Mankiewicz], who would repeatedly explore the theme of the effects of ambition on his characters, was blessed with Ritter"˜s presence in allegedly subservient roles as truth-tellers disguised as maids in"¦ All About Eve (1950)." "”Moira Finnie Streamline, The Filmstruck Blog

Thelma Ritter's legacy is that of the wise-cracking and world-weary characters who inform us in any role that she is just a regular gal like you or me. We feel empathy for her, and we laugh along with the sharp-witted come backs she so famously utters. Whenever she shows up on the screen she enlivens whatever plot she was sent out to explore with that cynical and bold approach to life offering that dialogue that had razor-sharp teeth.

Ritter was one hell of a character actor/comedian who worked on the radio and then quickly established herself in top-billed supporting roles in post-war Hollywood. She was nominated 6 times without winning a single Oscar between 1950-1962. She tied with Deborah Kerr for the most nominated without winning the award. It is a crime that she never won a statue or a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

As writer Paddy Chayefsky wrote in his New York Times tribute for her death: “She was never properly publicly recognized as an actress. ["¦] She was a character actress, which means only that they don't write any starring parts for middle-aged women."

Frank Capra called her "the best of all character actresses."

Even in her performances of the most plain of women, she exuded sophistication, often classier than the upper-class people that satellite around her. She often played characters who had the answers and the gumption to say it like it is, the truth that circulates through each story, driving sanity, stability, clarity, and compassion into the narrative.

None of her roles could ever be considered ordinary. Her characters always exuded her own brand of humanity. The people she played were immediately relatable to all of us.

Thelma Ritter was born in Brooklyn New York in 1902 on St Valentine's Day on Hart Street in South Brooklyn. Born of a Dutch immigrant father and a Scottish mother. Thelma would have to rely on her wits as the family was not of an advantaged background. Maybe that's why she has a keen witty charm, a lovable persona, and a certain pluckiness and curt wisdom that doesn't allow for quick comebacks by the other actors. Though cast as a supporting actress, her name always appears on the bill or right up in the title close to the stars often being the more memorable in the picture. She brought cracking wise to a whole other level of artistry.

She attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts, the class of 1922, but did not graduate with her class as she had to quit to earn money. She made her Broadway debut in a comedy called The Shelf, costarring with other notable character actors Jessie Ralph, Lee Patrick, and Donald Meek. She appeared in 32 performances before the show closed in 1926. Then she was in Times Square (1931) which didn't have a very long run on Broadway. She took some time off to raise her children and then went back to work initially in radio. Her daughter Monica Moran is an actress, they appeared together in the 1966 road company of Bye Bye Birdie co-starring Tab Hunter.

Thelma Ritter was actually 41 at the time of her wonderful film debut as the uncredited harried Christmas shopping mother in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Ritter left such an impression on director George Seaton and 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck that they lengthened her small part in the film and decided to cast her in other pictures. This sparked a career where she wouldn't make a multitude of films, but a film a year from 1947 until her retirement in 1969. The films she did appear in were extremely popular and received well by the critics.

Ritter's uncredited role of Captain's secretary in Call Northside 777 (1948) was left on the cutting room floor. The credits were left in, but she is nowhere to be seen in the film. Though again uncredited she appeared as the sharp-tongued maid Sadie Dugan in director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1949 melodrama A Letter to Three Wives starring Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Southern.

In A Letter to Three Wives, Thelma Ritter plays the maid Sadie Dugan who works for an upper middle-class couple George (Kirk Douglas) and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern). Kirk Douglas plays an English teacher and his wife Rita is a writer for a radio soap opera, played by Ann Sothern. Sadie ingratiates herself into the family feeling right at home telling Rita "The cap's out. Makes me look like a lamb shop with pants on" when Rita asks her to wear a frilly hat while serving dinner to important guests. Ritter has wonderful lines that she expresses with ease. The writing was handpicked for her brand of comedy that cuts through the melodrama of the film. While describing her disdain for Rita's radio program she comments, "Do you know what I like about your program? Even when I'm running the vacuum, I can understand it."

Ritter's first major role as a lady's companion was Birdie Coonan in All About Eve (1950). Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was so taken with Ritter’s style, that she was the first choice to play Birdie, the edgy ex-vaudevillian maid to theater Diva Margot Channing (Bette Davis in her Oscar-nominated role). He claimed he wrote the screenplay with Thelma Ritter in mind. Aside from Addison Dewitt (George Sanders), Birdie is the only one who isn't fooled by Eve (Ann Baxter). Ritter's character has a keen understanding of the realities of life and is honest and gruff with the waif-like manipulative and ambitious Eve. Her role was so impressive that she received her first of six nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

When Eve first recounts her sad background to Margot, Birdies reacts with the infamous line "What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end." The original line used was "˜ass' instead of "˜rear end.' But Joseph Breen's office was clamping down on "morals" and found the original word too vulgar.

All through the film All About Eve, Birdie tries to inform Margot of Eve's duplicitous nature, while everyone else is also taken in by the "˜kid'. Margot asks, "Birdie, you don't like Eve, do you? Birdie answers, "You looking for an answer or an argument?" Margo, "An answer." Birdie, "No." Margo, "Why not?" Birdie, "Now you want an argument."

Thelma Ritter's most significant trademark is her sassy streetwise meddling, to offer her wisdom and advice even when not being asked for it. After All About Eve, she would be cast in strong supporting roles for the rest of her career.

The next year she would once again be nominated for the wonderful picture directed by underrated directed Mitchell Leisen’s The Mating Season (1951) co-starring Gene Tierney, followed by With a Song in My Heart (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953) as Moe Williams (A film she should have won the Oscar for her outstanding performance) then came Pillow Talk in 1959 and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).

**John Lund and Thelma Ritter in a scene from the film ‘The Mating Season’, 1951. (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Getty Images)**

While most older female character actresses go loveless in their films, Thelma Ritter is one who manages to not always fly solo in the storylines. She often gets to have a love interest. The Mating Season (1951) directed by M. Leisen, is a satirical look on class culture, and a hilarious story of mistaken identity. Thelma as Ellen McNulty runs a small hamburger joint in Jersey and when the bank forecloses she goes to Ohio to be with her son Val (John Lund), who has just married socialite Maggie (Gene Tierney). Maggie is not a snob, but Ritter's son is embarrassed by his humble background. Miriam Hopkins plays Tierney's mother and former ambassador's wife and pretentious elitist, Fran Carleton.

Robert Osborne called The Mating Season a delightful romantic comedy that most people don't know about. The film brought Thelma at age 48 "the closest to inheriting the mantle of the great Marie Dressler than anyone in Hollywood since Dressler's death in 1934."

Ellen secretly works to make enough money to buy an $18 hat to wear when she meets her daughter-in-law. The way Thelma Ritter uses the hat as a prop in the storyline adds an endearing touch to the film. Thelma drops in unexpectedly to meet her new daughter-in-law and is mistaken for a domestic that the new bride has hired to cook and serve at her dinner party. Her son's boss, Mr Kalinger (Larry Keating) falls for Ellen after she rubs liniment on his chest while he is sick. She finds out he's much like her dead husband"” the kind of guy stray dogs take to.

Ellen –"If you’re a chicken, you can fool people about your feathers. But when you start laying eggs all over the place, they know you’re a chicken."

Ellen: “You don’t know what it was like working with her yesterday. I felt like I was 21 again.”
Val: “Oh Malarky”
Ellen: “Look wiseguy, I didn’t feel like I was 21 when I was 21.”

"Despite the fact that she usually played variations of a Shakespearean "wise fool", she often played a person whose keen awareness of her place in our supposedly classless society made her secure enough in it to voice her opinions without fear.” -Moira Finnie

Ritter finally receives above-the-title star billing in George Cukor's delightful romantic comedy starring Jeanne Crain and Scott Brady, The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) Another highly underrated picture. Director Cukor adds a sensitive touch to this endearing film creating a world with plenty of witty dialogue and quirky characters. The cast is filled with lonely-hearted misfits including Nancy Kulp, Zero Mostel, and Dennie Moore. Ritter plays good-hearted, wryly-witted yet sympathetic matchmaker Mae Swasey who just doesn't want anyone to be alone after her own husband had left her for another woman years before. Mae goes on a mission of mischief to fix up Matt Hornbeck (Brady) with model Kitty Bennett (Jeanne Crain) though Hornbeck initially puts up a good fight saying he has no intention of getting married… that is until he meets Kitty.

Mae to Mr. Wixted (Zero Mostel) about planning a date with Nancy Kulp, "A real live wire, low voltage but steady.”

**THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER [US 1951] SCOTT BRADY, JEANNE CRAIN, THELMA RITTER Date: 1951**

"Anybody with four pints of blood that can stand on their two feet long enough to say I do is in a position to get married."-Mae

Dan Chancellor (Jay C. Flippen) "Beautiful up here, isn’t it? Those trees. I’ve always liked that poem that said, “Only God can make a tree.”

Mae Swasey, "Yeah, but on the other hand, you gotta figure, who else would take the time?"

As Young as You Feel (1952) Monty Wooley, Allyn Joslyn, and Thelma Ritter

Following the romantic comedies Ritter appears in one of the most extraordinary and evocative noir masterpieces by director Samuel Fuller, Pickup on South Street (1953).

In Pickup on South Street 1953 directed by Samuel Fuller, Ritter plays Moe Williams the best pickpocket stoolie in the business. A police informant who sells neckties on the street corners and wants a fancy funeral and a nice plot out on Long Island. Robert Osborne couldn't have stated it better, "Moe Williams lives in the underworld and ekes out a living by selling secrets and information for a price. It's a far cry from the kind of roles Thelma usually plays. More sinister than lovable."

Moe is streetwise and world-weary. She's broken down by her years getting by on the rough streets of New York City selling ties and secrets to the police. She also cares about what happens to Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) one of the local petty thieves who picks pockets and chills his beer in the river.

Jean Peters is fantastic in the role of Candy, and Thelma Ritter in Pickup on South Street.

As Moe Williams In Pickup on South Street (1953), Ritter inhabits a darker world than we're used to seeing her in. Worn down by life on the street as a tie hustler and informant to the law, her weakness for telling the truth puts her in harm’s way. It's one of the most gloomy and heart-rending roles in any of her films as it takes a hardened dismal look at crime, postwar greed, and the fear of Communist infiltration. Throughout the picture Moe is fatalistic about her future. She is a character we feel empathy for, and I think it's one of Ritter's finest performances.

In a heartbreaking tour de force Ritter gives a performance that should have garnered her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Director Sam Fuller created a role just typed for Ritter's blood, as she poured every ounce of her soul into the character that'll make you hold your breath, then weep.

She appeared in the 1953 version of Titanic with Barbara Stanwyck. She plays affluent Maude Young who once again, is mistaken for a domestic, with some of the best lines in the picture added for comic relief.

Maude Young: [after Richard (Clifton Webb) has rejected his son Norman and refused to play in the shuffleboard match with him] "It certainly clouded up. Well, word’ll do it faster than a hickory stick any time."

Maude Young: “Where I come from this is either a revival meeting or a crap game.”

Maude Young: “I’ve seen that look before. He’s a runaway. Earl Meeker: From what, some woman?Maude: No, he’s running too fast for that.”

Ritter made several significant appearances on the small screen between 1953 and 1962. In 1955 she played Mrs. Fisher in The Show-off, and Agnes Hurley in Paddy Chayefsky's The Catered Affair (Bette Davis played Agnes Hurley in the film version a year later). Playwright Paddy Chayefsky was so taken with Thelma Ritter that he wrote about the 1955 television play, "The Catered Affair was an unfocused piece in which the first act was farce and the second was character comedy, and the third was abruptly drama. There aren't a dozen actresses who could make one piece out of all that; Miss Ritter, of course, did."

The Farmer Takes a Wife 1954 as Lucy Cashdollar plays Betty Grable's friend on the Eerie Canal Lucy Cashdollar- "Don’t forget, I’m a five-time widow, and when they died they all left me everything they owned. Rest their souls." Fortune Friendly "What do you want with me I'm broke?" Lucy Cashdollar-"Well, I figure after five rich husbands, the next one would be on the house."

Also in 1955, Thelma Ritter played Abby in 20th Century-Fox Hour's television adaptation of Sidney Howard's play, Christopher Bean. Thelma is often compared to the great Marie Dressler, who played the same role in the 1933 film Christopher Bean. Thelma Ritter takes on the ironic and poignant role of a woman whose worth is seen through the eyes of an alcoholic artist who paints a portrait of her.

Ritter finished her 6-year contract with Twentieth Century Fox in 1955, playing Alicia Pritchard in director Jean Negulesco's Daddy Long Legs. Ritter did return in The Second Time Around in 1961.

When explaining why her contract had not been renewed, Ritter joked that “I don't look so good in a toga." Referring to Fox's preference at the time for epics filmed in CinemaScope centered around all things ancient.

Rear Window 1954 Thelma plays the feisty wisecracking nurse, Stella. The scenes with Thelma and Jimmy Stewart were marvelous. Her character's voice delivered both reason and common sense and in their scenes, we learn about Jimmy Stewart's character. Thelma brought her comic flair to the role of Stella. As Pat Hitchcock explained "The humor that Thelma Ritter brought to Rear Window was absolutely wonderful. And my father, he loved that because he knew that you couldn't keep going and keep going. You had to give the audience a break. You had to have them laugh at something. His whole life was about the importance of having a sense of humor with whatever you do."

**Deborah Kerr rides in a jeep with Thelma Ritter in a scene from the film ‘The Proud And Profane’, 1956. (Photo by Paramount/Getty Images)**

After twenty-six years away, Thelma returned to Broadway in 1957 to play Marthy in the hit musical New Girl in Town, based on Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie. For her part, she won a Tony Award (in a tie with Gwen Verdon who won for Anna). This was the first time in history that two actresses won from the same show.

Cameron Pru'Homme, Thelma Ritter, and Gwen Verdon –On the set of New Girl In Town.

American actors Thelma Ritter (1905 – 1969) and Cameron Prud’homme (1892 – 1967) in a performance of the Bob Merrill play, ‘New Girl in Town’ at the 46th Street Theatre, New York, New York, mid-1957. (Photo by Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

At the Tony Awards with Robert Preston Thelma Ritter Helen Hayes Ralph Bellamy.

She went on to appear in the hit romantic comedy Pillow Talk (1959). She played the supportive lead with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, exchanging her usual barbs this time with Doris Day about her love life. "If there's anything worse than a woman living alone it’s a woman saying she likes it."

She continued to act in successful roles in the 1960s in films like John Huston's The Misfits in 1961 (playing Isabelle Steers, co-starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach). Then, in How the West Was Won in 1962, and then she was once again paired with Doris Day and James Garner in Move Over, Darling in 1963.

Ritter also appeared on television shows like General Electric Theater in 1960 and the popular Westerner Wagon Train in 1962. She appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Presents in a very chilling, nail-biting episode called The Baby Sitter.

In director John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1963) Thelma Ritter delivers quite a drastic departure from any of her other roles. She portrays the numb and obsessive mother, loyal to her son Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) in one of his most lucid performances. The movie creates a claustrophobic relationship between mother and son, as she is stricken with a myopic vision of championing for him while he is locked away in prison. Axel Nissen calls it "one of the most emotionally ugly characters in her filmography she is cold and uses stillness brilliantly."

Ritter received her last Oscar nomination for her performance as Burt Lancaster's controlling mother. She lost to Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker.

In 1963 she was in A New Kind of Love (1963) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Ritter plays Leena, who wears a perfume called "My Sin" and is a buyer at Bergner's Department Store. Leena is attracted to her boss, George Tobias.

She also appeared in the disastrous Broadway production of UTBU 1966 with Margaret Hamilton and Tony Randall.

Coming full circle, Ritter made her last big screen appearance in a small role in George Seaton's What's So Bad About Feeling Good? 1968 In Feb 1968 she co-starred with Tab Hunter and her own actress daughter Monica in a stock production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park at the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, before retiring. She did not live long enough to enjoy her retirement.

Thelma died of a heart attack in New York City just nine days before her 67th birthday. Thelma Ritter was very beloved amongst her colleagues and co-stars, and also critics adored her.

"On screen, Ritter projected a wonderfully sanguine and calm acceptance of human frailty and need. It is this quality, combined with her rueful humor and notorious wisecracks, that give depth to her finest performances"¦{"¦} Though she played a few middle-or upper-class women towards the end of her career, Ritter was obviously best suited to playing women on the lower echelons of the social ladder"¦{"¦} She represents the legion of women who keep the wheels of the world turning"– Alex Nissen

CLIPS

Miracle on 34th Street (1949) Peter's mother

A Letter to Three Wives (1949) Sadie Dugan the maid uncredited

City Across the River (1950) Mrs. Katie Cusack

Perfect Strangers (1950) Lena Fassier

All About Eve 1951

I'll Get By 1951 Miss Murphy

The Mating Season 1951

The Model and the Marriage Broker 1951 as Mae Swayse

As Young as You feel 1952 as Della Hodges

Titanic 1953

Pickup on South Street 1954

The Farmer Takes a Wife 1954 as Lucy Cashdollar

Rear Window 1955 as Stella

Daddy Long Legs 1955

Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1956 The Baby Sitter Lottie Slocum

The Proud and Profane 1956 as Kate Connors

A Hole in the Head 1959 as Sophie Manetta

Pillow Talk 1959 as Alma

The Misfits 1961

Birdman of Alcatraz 1962 as Elizabeth Stroud

Move Over, Darling 1963

The Incident 1967 as Bertha Beckerman

FILMOGRAPHY & AWARDS

Thelma Ritter won a Tony Award on Broadway in 1957 for the hit musical New Girl in Town, for which she won a Tony in a tie with Gwen Verdon in 1958. She won an Emmy (in 1956), Nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the Goodyear Television Playhouse production of The Catered Affair. A Golden Globe Awards Nominated for Best Supporting Actress for All About Eve (1950) The Mating Season (1951)) With A Song in My Heart (1952), Pickup on South Street (1953), Pillow Talk (1959), and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and nominated for a Golden Globe for All About Eve, The Mating Season and Boeing Boeing (1965)

Miracle on 34th Street (1949) Peter's mother
A Letter to Three Wives (1949) Sadie Dugan the maid uncredited
Call Northside 777 (1949) captains secretary uncredited her scene was left on the cutting room floor
City Across the River (1950) Mrs. Katie Cusack
Perfect Strangers (1950) Lena Fassier
Too Dangerous to Love 1951
All About Eve 1951 as Birdie Coonan "”companion to theater Diva Margot Channing the only character aside from George Sanders' Addison Dewitt who isn't fooled by conniving Eve.
I'll Get By 1951 as Miss Murphy
The Mating Season 1951 as Ellen McNulty
The Model and the Marriage Broker 1951 as Mae Swayze
As Young as You feel 1952 as Della Hodges
Radio Broadcasts 1953 Theater Guild on the Air "A Square Peg"
With a Song in my Heart 1953 as Clancy
radio shows such as Radio Broadcasts Theater Guild on the Air "A Square Peg" (1953).
Titanic 1953 as Maude Young playing a version of the Unsinkable Molly Brown done up to the nines again mistaken for a housekeeper or maid.
Pickup on South Street 1954 directed by Samuel Fuller as Moe Williams the best pick pocket stoolie in the business
The Farmer Takes a Wife 1954 as Lucy Cashdollar plays Betty Grable's friend on the Eerie Canal
Rear Window 1955 as nurse Stella
Lux Video Theatre 1954 Christmas in July theatre guest
The Best of Broadway The Show Off 1955 Mrs. Fisher
Daddy Long Legs 1955 as Alicia Pritchard
Goodyear Playhouse 1955 The Catered Affair as Mother created the role that Bette Davis adapted to the screen.
Repertory Theatre 1955 The Ghost Writer as Muriel
Lucy Gallant 1955 as Molly Basserman
The 20th Century Fox Hour 1955 “Christopher Bean” as Abby
Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1956 The Baby Sitter Lottie Slocum
The Proud and Profane 1956 as Kate Connors
New Girl in Town (1957) on Broadway
The United States Steel Hour 1957 The Human Pattern as Ma Garfield
Telephone Time 1957 plot to save a boy as Mary Devlin
A Hole in the Head 1959 as Sophie Manetta
Pillow Talk 1959 as Alma plays her housekeeper who likes to drink she's hilarious
General Electric Theater 1960 Sarah's Laughter as Doris Green
Startime 1960 The Man as Mrs. Gillis
The Misfits 1961 as Isabelle Steers
The Second Time Around 1961 as Aggie Gate
Birdman of Alcatraz 1962 as Elizabeth Stroud plays Burt Lancaster's mother
Wagon Train 1962 The Madame Sagittarius Story as Madame Delphine Sagittarius
How the West Was Won 1962 Agatha Clegg a middle-aged woman looking for a husband on the wagon train heading west across America
For Love or Money 1963 as Chloe Brasher
A New Kind of Love 1963 as Lena O'Connor
Move Over, Darling 1963 as Grace Arden plays James Garner's mother, a wealthy upper-class woman who is an atypical character for her
Boeing, Boeing 1965 as Bertha
The Incident 1967 as Bertha Beckerman
What's so Bad about Feeling Good? 1968 Mrs. Schwartz