KIND LADY (1935; 1951)

Much produced play, from the Hugh Walpole story, a polite precursor to nastier modern spinsters-in-jeopardy thrillers*, has a cultured con artist befriend a wealthy society lady, replace the house staff with rough confederates, shut her up in the place and psychologically break her down to gain power-of-attorney so he can sell her Old Masters art collection and property.  Effectively creepy stuff in its Edwardian way, M-G-M filmed it twice to results that are paradoxically remarkably similar and completely different.  In ‘35, faceless B-pic megger George Seitz has younger leads Aline MacMahon & Basil Rathbone fraught with subtextual sexual tension.  In ‘51, action-oriented John Sturges (an odd choice though he’d just made the even more stage-bound MAGNIFICENT YANKEE/’50) has older, frailer Ethel Barrymore & sexless Maurice Evans.  For both films, finding a believable way to get the two leads in touch is probably the toughest story beat to pull off: awkward in the first film/far more smoothly handled in the second.  In fact, everything about the plotting much more sensible and well-run in the latter film.  (M-G-M’s version of GASLIGHT/’44 very influential on the remake, right down to the likely reused interior & exterior sets, shot, as was GASLIGHT, by cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg.) 

But if the second film has been ‘fixed,’ it’s fixed the way you fix a pet; tamed, with the undertow of dread in the sadistic setup and humiliation neutered of full creepiness.  It’s ‘better,’ more sensible, yet less effective.  Quite the cast, though: Angela Lansbury, Betsy Blair, Keenan Wynn & John Williams in support.  (Evans & Williams soon to co-star on B’way in DIAL M FOR MURDER, but only Williams repeating in the Hitchcock film.)

DOUBLE-BILL: *Make this double-bill a triple with Olivia de Havilland & James Caan in modern variant LADY IN A CAGE/’64.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In the 1951 film, Evans seizes on Barrymore’s unusual bronze doorknocker as a way of introducing himself.  It’s a Benvenuto Cellini, no?.  Yes, an original, she replies.  If so, it would be worth considerably more than the mansion and much of the art inside!   He could have just stolen that and called it a day.  (When Cellini's famous salt cellar was stolen about twenty years ago, it was valued at about $60 mill.  Yikes!)