THE FOUR POSTER (1952)

Jan de Hartog’s popular stage piece, a true two-hander and a perfect vehicle for a married acting couple to inexpensively tour with, was a major B’way hit for married acting couple Hume Cronym & Jessica Tandy (José Ferrer directing) while this film version had starrier married acting couple Rex Harrison & Lilli Palmer under stage-stuck film director Irving Reis.  (Harrison & Palmer with three B’way appearances around this time, including a huge hit in BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE, which they were still playing together in London in 1954 after Rex had taken up with Kay Kendall!  Talk about troopers!)  The play, a middlebrow Scenes From A Marriage, plays like an elegant series of alternately witty/wise/obvious/sentimental Black-Out sketches: Wedding Night; Labor Pains; 12 Year Itch; Children; Loss; Empty Nesters; Search for Youth; Till Death...; Survivor Blues.  Tougher-minded than you’d imagine, in addition to the expected charm & sentiment, with witty pen & ink styled animated interludes from the great John Hubley.  Pleasant, but these things can be awkward on film without an imaginative rethink.  (It has a better chance on the small screen.)  If only a decent print were available, perhaps it might come closer to its potential.*

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Touching on similar ideas, an earlier Rex Harrison film, from his initial Hollywood sojourn at 20th/Fox, shows what’s missing here.  Co-starring Gene Tierney, it's Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s still undersung THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR/’47.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Likely lost on today’s audience is that the very title of this film is a thumb to the nose of the Hollywood Production Code still forcing even married couples to sleep in separate beds.  A fourposter indeed!  Shocking.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Note the stage play is THE FOURPOSTER while the film is THE FOUR (space) POSTER.  Now you know what Hollywood producers do.