THE CHALK GARDEN (1964)

A family with child rearing troubles sees one governess after another fleeing the house. Then, out of the blue, an eccentric applicant; a take-charge disciplinarian who gets the job without a single reference. In 1964? MARY POPPINS, of course. Staying with 1964: chilly blonde with a secret past haunting her (a childhood murder). Alone, controlling, she fears her buried crime will catch up with her. It makes her prone to breakdowns: spilled wine on a tablecloth floods the screen in RED. Hitchcock’s MARNIE? (With the coiled hair bun from VERTIGO/’58 as bonus.) Meet THE CHALK GARDEN, John Michael Hayes’ adaptation of a well-received play by NATIONAL VELVET author Enid Bagnold, produced on B’way as a prestige piece by Irene Mayer Sleznick (daughter of Louis B./ex to David O.). A fascinating, uneven piece; too bad glitzy producer Ross Hunter made the film, glossing over and gussying up the material. Still, a very good cast sees Edith Evans as the confused, forgiving grandmother, unable to cope with her psychologically damaged granddaughter (absent/remarried mother; self-destructed father), John Mills as her independent houseman, and an indispensable Deborah Kerr as the new governess with as many issues to work thru as her teenage charge. That’d be Hayley Mills, not quite up to the dramatic demands of the part, too loaded down with ingratiating tics & tricks after four films for Disney. Director Ronald Neame isn't able to deglam the bright, tidy, ostentatious house style producer Ross Hunter imposes on everything, but does manage to make Bagnold’s italicized characterizations believable and get past some hard-to-swallow coincidences & dovetailing plot devices. All in all, more points for effort than execution, but consistently interesting.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: What a better film MARNIE might have been with a real actress like Ms. Kerr in the lead! At 43, she may have been thirteen years older than ‘Tippi’ Hedren, but looks, if anything, younger, and certainly more beautiful. With just the sort of warm mellow voice Hitchcock once preferred (think Ingrid Bergman or Grace Kelly compared to Hedren’s jarringly harsh tones). And note that MARNIE’s psychological issues get split here between Kerr & Hayley Mills, with kleptomania swapped out for pyromania.