THE FOXES OF HARROW (1947)

From one of the many mossy/moldy antebellum bestsellers hoping to be the next GONE WITH THE WIND, this one set in 1820s New Orleans, its film adaptation has Maureen O’Hara & Rex Harrison making like Scarlett & Rhett mismatched lovers.  He’s a gamblin’ man, an illegitimate immigrant out to establish a new family legacy with a plantation won in an epic game of Twenty-One.  She’s the society belle who resists . . . but only for so long.  Lots of GWTW story beats (breached bedroom door; death of a child; high-toned mistress; mistimed vow renewal; oafishly large mansion & social parties; wise old Dad; the works).  And the Stock Market panic of 1821 in for the Civil War.*  Plus, dicey use of house & field slaves, juiced up with taboo Voodoo practices to make modern audiences even more uncomfortable.  But there’s a bit of background giving everything a twist since the best-selling author was Frank Yerby, the first Black author to have a book bought by Hollywood.  (Low six figures, a very considerable sum in 1947.)  And even if the story ends with our White couple putting down a slave revolt as they finally come together to save plantation & marriage (whatever did Yerby think of that?), there are also a few privileged moments of Black pride most unusual for the period.  Particularly when a recently purchased slave runs off with her newborn son rather than have him raised to be a slave.  A quality of hysteria in the scene that makes it even more distressing to watch.  Yet, not without a certain crazed dignity, too.  (Does her Fate-Worse-Than-Death reaction look back four decades to D.W. Griffith or ahead four decades to Toni Morrison?)  Of course, other than Yerby, all the creatives were White, so who knows who was responsible for what.  Harrison, who didn’t quite break out in Hollywood during this late ‘40s run in spite of exceptional work (this was the weakest of his five films at 20th/Fox), only gets better as the film darkens, while Maureen O’Hara seems completely artificial from start to finish.  Surprising under director John M. Stahl who specialized in Woman’s Pictures, but largely received unsuitable assignments at the studio after his huge success with LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’45.*  An awkward piece of moviemaking begging for reevalutation.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *To see Stahl in his element, and a sequence to match the best scene here (the Stock Market ‘Panic’), try the extended prologue from ONLY YESTERDAY/’33 where Stahl recreated the 1929 Stock Market crash to superb effect in a film that’s really more about his usual unwed mother theme.