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Tuesday, April 30, 2019

THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET (1934)

Aging out of her Daring Modern Women period (at 32!), and with the re-enforced Hollywood Production Code breathing down her decolletage, Norma Shearer narrowed her range to ‘distinguished’ stage vehicles like this popular play (a great success on B’way for Katharine Cornell) about invalided poet Elizabeth Barrett, her tyrannical father and romantic rescue by fellow poet Robert Browning. Probably the best of her latter day roles, Shearer’s a size & a half small for it, but at least she doesn’t press. (Later, as Juliet, Marie Antoinette, and in roles associated with Lynn Fontanne, Gertrude Lawrence & Jeanne Eagles, she can seem lost or panicked, tossing in insufferable little laughs as cover. Likely she saw ‘Kit’ Cornell in this, everyone did . . . and took notes.*) The story is surprisingly uncomfortable even now, with Charles Laughton’s monstrous father (as ever, toeing the line between slightly ridiculous & brilliant) is still alarmingly scary, bringing out the incestuous angle in spite of any censorship issues. And there’s excellent support from Fredric March, offering some much needed zip as an impetuous Browning, and, gliding across the floor, that great eccentric Una O’Connor as a lady’s maid nearly as loyal as Elizabeth’s dog Flush.

DOUBLE-BILL: Sidney Franklin, after about 50 (mostly silent) features, and now transitioning from helming to producing, megs in default M-G-M laissez-faire style. (A simple staircase crane shot a major event.) He’d return to directing for the CinemaScope/MetroColor 1957 waxworks remake w/ Jennifer Jones, John Gielgud & Bill Travers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A few notes on ages: *Cornell still reviving this on B’way in 1945 when she was 52, and still playing against her original Browning from 1931, Brian Aherne. And note that in the film, Laughton, a mere 35, was only three years older than Shearer, and two years younger than March. (The real Browning was about six years Elizabeth Barrett’s junior.)

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