Answers, Updates, and Famous Photos...

A bit of this and that today:

First, a big huzzah and best wishes to all our fellow film bloggers enjoying the festivities at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Hollywood, which begins today and runs through Sunday.  I really enjoy reading their posts and updates on the fun, and their coverage only gets better each year.

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Now, the answers to last week’s Leggy Ladies on Ladders photos:

A is Cyd Charisse.  Though it’s a candid sort of backstage shot, the film she was doing in this costume is Meet Me in Las Vegas, which we discussed previously here.

B is Paul Newman and…Alexis Smith.  This is from The Young Philadelphians, which we briefly mentioned in this previous post on Alexis.

C is Zachary Scott entering the room to find…Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, which we discussed here. And here.

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I have a book signing coming up this Saturday, the 28^th of March at the Indian Orchard branch of the Springfield City Library, 44 Oak Street, Indian Orchard (Springfield), Massachusetts, from noon to 2:00 p.m.  I’ll have a variety of my books available for purchase, both non-fiction and novels, and if you have time to stop by, I’d love to chat with you.

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And now, a word about my soon-to-be-published book on the career of Ann Blyth.  June 18^th is less than three months away, and will be here before we know it.  I’m working like mad on it, and I hope you’ll approve of the final product.

Part of the challenge of finding photographs for the book is investigating the copyright or ownership of the images.  It can be a daunting task, but also a pleasure when one discovers really fine photos by a master photographer.  In this case, I’m speaking of two greats: Florence Vandamm and Eileen Darby.  They were giants in the field of theatre photography, and Ann Blyth was photographed by both when she appeared in Watch on the Rhine as a young girl.

Florence Vandamm was a pioneer in this field, and from 1925 to about 1950, she was the foremost photographer capturing the greats of the Broadway stage.  The Vandamm Studio specialized in very glamorous portraits of the Broadway stars, images not too dissimilar from what the Hollywood studios would adopt for their style of light-sculpted, touched-up and stunning glamour photos in the 1940s.

Eileen Darby came a long a little later, beginning her career as a theatre photographer in 1940, Vandamm’s chief competitor and ultimate heir to this highly specialized field; however, Darby’s work had a different style.  She would most often perch herself in the front row seats and shoot with low light the dramatic action on stage, catching stars in the moment of their greatest work.

Ann Blyth, just by the serendipitous circumstances of being cast in Watch on the Rhine, was photographed by both these greats for that play, and I am so pleased and privileged to be including photos from both these famous photographers in my book.  I admire their work tremendously.

Today, the Vandamm body of work is the property of the Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  Because my budget was limited, I could only purchase the rights for one Vandamm photo.  Though I was tempted to go with the images that grouped Ann with Paul Lukas, who played her father, and other actors in the play, I ultimately chose, instead, a portrait of her.  The group photos were excellent, but I had seen them, or photos like them in other books and magazines.  The reasons I chose the portrait are twofold:

First, it is such a sweet expression that seems to show this young girl on the verge of leaving her “play-acting” years and becoming a serious actress – half school photo and half actor’s professional headshot.

Second, because something in that portrait kept calling to me, and finally I realized what it was.  I think I might have been the first person in seventy years to look upon that sweet face outside of the archives, and if I didn’t publish it, I might be the last.  So, since those other photos were more easily available to the public in other books, I took this rarely (or never) seen photo for mine.

The Eileen Darby photo of Ann in Watch on the Rhine is one of her “action shots” that shows Ann on stage with Lucile Watson, who played the family matriarch; George Coulouris, the villain of the piece; and Peter Fernandez, who played one of Ann’s brothers.  This particular photo had also found its way into the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts collection, but for rights to publish I had to turn to the Eileen Darby Estate, which is currently managed by her grandchildren.  I am very grateful to Mr. Alex Teslik for allowing me to publish that photo.

There will be quite a number of other photos in the book, and other photographers or publishers to whom I needed to apply for permission, but I wanted to tell the story of these two particular photographers because of the important place they have in the history of American theatre.

Last year, a retrospective of Vandamm's work was held at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts called: Pioneering Poet of Light: Photographer Florence Vandamm & the Vandamm Studio, which you can read about here and see some of her stunning work.

Eileen Darby's life and work has been presented in the excellent book, Stars on Stage- Eileen Darby & Broadway's Golden Age by Mary C. Henderson.


 

See you next Thursday for a little Easter noir.  You can probably guess the movie.

The Smiling Ghost - 1941

 

“The Smiling Ghost” (1941) is one of those fast-paced scary/silly B-movies that the Warner Bros. studio could knock out in its sleep.  There’s a lot to amuse here, and a bit of a mystery, but mostly it’s a lot of scary house clichés as harmless as a handful of candy corn.

Unless you’re allergic to candy corn.

Or unless candy corn offends you.

There’s only one offense here in this well-intentioned free-for-all, and that’s the stereotyped character of Willie Best, who plays the longsuffering assistant of Wayne Morris.  To Mr. Best’s credit, he gets some good lines and his delivery is hysterical.  I think he probably gets more screen time than anybody in this movie except for Wayne Morris.

Wayne Morris, a befuddled victim/suitor who agrees to pretend to be engaged for one month to a jinxed girl for $1,000 (her former fiancés are all either incapacitated or dead), is a sweet fellow who really needs Willie Best to look after him.  I like how when they are called to the attorney’s office to set up the deal, the receptionist asks which gentleman is the client, not presuming that it’s the white guy and calling them both gentlemen.  Willie takes charge and speaks up, because it always takes poor slow Wayne a minute to sort things out: “The light-complected gentleman here.”

Alexis Smith is the “Kiss-of Death-Girl” who cannot hold onto her fiancés. We see how early in her career she’s been cast as the cool beauty, a template that would stay with her for many years.

Barbara Marshall is the sane and sassy girl reporter, because you just have to have a girl reporter in these things.

Alan Hale is the butler, but not in the Arthur Treacher mold.  He’s a regular Joe, who talks gruff and carries a gun.  He’s supposed to guard Wayne Morris, because Wayne is supposed to break the curse.  If he lives.

Helen Westley is the sharp old grandma who set up the caper, and Lee Patrick is a cousin who covets the family jewels.

And I have to smile at Renie Riano in a typically small, stereotyped and funny role as The Homely Woman.  She's a game gal.

Wayne Morris meets the dour extended family, including a crazy uncle, played by Charles Halton, who shrinks heads in his laboratory.  Mr. Morris settles into to a spooky night, oblivious to the fact he might be victim number four.

We have secret panels, cobwebs in the cellar, cobwebs in the family crypt, a fog-shrouded graveyard, and best of all, a thunderstorm during which we hear peals of “The Storm” from Rossini’s William Tell, which you will recognize from many, many Warner Bros. cartoons.

A murderer wanders the mansion, and though we get glimpses of a waxy face with dark, sunken eyes and a sickeningly fixed grin, the identity of the monster is withheld until the end.  He lends some excitement to the proceedings, but for my money, the scariest sight in this movie is the fellow, one of the former fiancés who lived, but who is now paralyzed—encased in an iron lung.  Jeez, those things were frightening. 

 

 

And if you think about it, just the shot of watching the patient through the mirror mounted on the top of the machine suggests a disembodied head.

 

You don’t have much time to think about the plot, even if you wanted to, because there’s too much going on, a few fistfights, a couple magnificent tumbles down a very long staircase, and a romantic triangle when the girl reporter and the Kiss-of-Death Girl become rivals for the hapless hand of Wayne Morris.

True love conquers all in the end, including one disgruntled smiling ghost.

One of my favorite lines, when the Justice of the Peace arrives to perform a midnight wedding, “The Justice of…stuff is here.”

 

Happy Halloween.

 

Big Stars in Small Towns - Summer 1965

 

 

The heyday of summer theater was coming to the end of an era in the 1960s.  There's still plenty of it around today, especially in New England, where it is possible to see journeyman actors and established stars trod the boards of a simple barn-like playhouse. 

 

But the golden era from the late 1940s through the early 1960s gave us a profusion of really big stars traveling to really small towns to perform live.  Comedies and musicals were the big draw in this period.  These two ads are from two different summer playhouses in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts.  The Storrowton Music Fair, which played in tent, theatre-in-the-round style, was located in West Springfield.  Here Lee Remick starred this August week of 1965 in Annie Get Your Gun.  The most expensive seats were $3.95.

 

Under that, we see an ad for the Mt. Tom Playhouse, which was a simple wooden playhouse perched up on Mt. Tom in Holyoke, the city just north of West Springfield.  Dana Andrews starred in the comedy, A Remedy for Winter. 

 

They were river towns, small, and since the superhighway I-91 had not yet been constructed along this stretch, accessible by the older, more narrow, eatery-lined Route 5 that crawled up from Connecticut to Vermont parallel to the river.  It is far from the bright lights of Broadway, and a different world altogether from Hollywood. 

 

In the coming week, Van Johnson would star at Storrowton in Bye, Bye, Birdie.  The husband-and-wife team of Craig Stevens (late of his Peter Gunn gig) and Alexis Smith, would appear in the comedy Mary, Mary.

 

It would have been a treat to travel to Boston or New York to see any of these actors in these shows, but the thought of them coming to a neighborhood near you (or me, as the case may be), just blows my head off.  And for $3.95, on a cool summer evening, in a big tent, or up on the mountain with the wooden screen door slapping shut every time someone opened it (audience or actor making his entrance), keeping out the skeeters.

 

By the way, I'm planning to write a book on the Mt. Tom Playhouse, and the summer stock group, The Valley Players, that were in residence in the previous decades (Hal Holbrook created his Mark Twain one-man show here).  If you have any information, or know of someone who does, please drop me an email:  JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com.  Thanks.

 

 



Angel's Flight Railway in the Movies

One scene in our look at "The Unfaithful" (1947) last week here--really delighted me and I thought I'd save that for this week.  It's this view of a funicular railway in downtown Los Angeles.   We see Marta Mitrovich, who plays the widow of Ann Sheridan's attacker, traveling home to her working-class neighborhood on this railway car, when she reads the news of her husband's death in the newspaper.

 

 

I don't suppose there's any reason to have this scene on this funicular, it has nothing to do with the plot, but it makes for a nice foray into Los Angeles sights, and "The Unfaithful" is full of them.  I remembered seeing this same funicular in "The Turning Point" (1952) -- a movie we'll have to discuss sometime or other.

 

 

In that movie, we see William Holden and Alexis Smith riding the steep railway as they ferret out a mystery. 

 

The funicular is called Angel's Flight Railway, and was built in the Bunker Hill area of downtown L.A. in 1901.  I understand it has been filmed in a handful of movies,

 

  Another shot from "The Turning Point"

 

The original Angel's Flight was dismantled in 1969 when the area underwent an extensive urban renewal project, and a lot of the, now rundown, but historically significant buildings in the neighborhood were demolished.

 

 

Here in "The Turning Point" the camera pans out the window and we can see an example of what the neighborhood looked like before it was demolished.

 

The funicular is only about two blocks long.  It was built at a time when the Bunker Hill area was fashionable.  It continued to be used as daily transportation by working-class people when the neighborhood demographics changed, and finally, torn down when the promise of the future came, as it did to so many cities, in the form of really ugly 1970s steel-and-concrete urban renewal projects.

 

 

Funny, though, that our wish to be modern fights our wish to be nostalgic.  Giving in, perhaps, to this secondary urge, as well as the desire to turn any attribute into a tourist attraction, the Angel's Flight was re-created a little bit south of where the original stood. 

 

You can read more about the controversial history of the new Angel's Flight Railway here, with some photos.

 

Another shot from "The Unfaithful"

The Woman in White - 1948

 

“The Woman in White” (1948) is an example of how Hollywood can “borrow” a classic novel, change things around, slap together “locations” on a soundstage and back lot, even alter the ending, and still, sometimes, get it right.  This movie is a winner because of its engaging cast, and a director who employs film noir techniques on a Victorian mystery.
 

How the movie succeeds is probably because this is one of the few times where that old bemused studio system arrogance that altered the plots of classic novels as often as it changed the names of its contract players actually came up with a plot that works for this movie.  This is not to say that the movie is the ultimate version of this story, written by Wilkie Collins in 1859—it does not strictly adhere to the plot—but I will say that no filmed version of this story I have seen, including two BBC miniseries (and nobody dramatizes their literature like the British), are better.  All take liberties with plot and characterization.  This movie, I think more closely follows the spirit, certainly energy, of the book.

Long post.  I hope you brought an overnight bag.
 

The film, directed by Peter Godfrey, employs an economy of script and cinematography to capture the essence of the story.   If there was one thing Old Hollywood did well, it was atmosphere. 

The novel was a smash in its day.  It was at the forefront of the rise of the sensation novel, and one of the first to use a character, or in this case, two characters, to follow logical detection to solve the mystery.  Or mysteries.  There are several.  According to Matthew Sweet, who wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classic version published in 2009,

“The progress of the plot became a dinner-table topic and bets were struck on the outcome of this or that situation.  Collins received letters from single men demanding to know the identity of the original for his heroine Marian Halcombe, and if she would accept their hand in marriage…The future Prime Minister William Gladstone cancelled a theatre engagement in order to continue reading it...Prince Albert was a great admirer, and sent a copy to the royal family’s most trusted adviser, Baron Stockmar.” (p. xv)
 

The book is very long and the subplots are intricately entwined.  A modern reader might be surprised to discover that a book written in 1859 could have such a “modern” feel in pacing, but it really is a quick read if only because you can’t put it down.  A charming approach the author uses to create intimacy with the reader is to break up the book into separate first-person narratives with many different characters each taking a turn at bat and giving their perspective on what is happening. 

We know that Marian Halcombe is intelligent, loyal, and forthright, speaks her mind, because of her impressions as she relates them.  We know others regard her with admiration because they say so.  We know Walter Hartright is the hero because he tells us he suspects the ladies are in danger and he wants to help them.  We don’t entirely know who the villains are at first, but slowly we begin to realize from the testimony of others that some people are not to be trusted.

The movie similarly sets us up right away on the characters of Marian, played by Alexis Smith; and Walter, played by Gig Young.  We know right off the bat they are to be trusted, because both director and novelist know we have to come to the table trusting somebody.  We experience the mystery through them.  I like Gig Young in the role.  He’s stalwart and transparent, and we need to see him as the Rock of Gibraltar.

In the book, Marian is described as tall and graceful, but with an unattractive face.  Some critics may fault the film or at least smile at it because Alexis Smith was not unattractive.  However, the previously mentioned BBC offerings featured actresses in the role who were also attractive, so it seems a moot point among directors to regard that bit of information on Marian as unimportant.  And so it is.
 

Miss Smith is warm and natural in her role, speaks her accent with a greater ease than the other Americans, enjoyed good reviews, but this was one of the last films she made for Warner Brothers, having finally worked her way to star billing.

Walter Hartright is called to the mansion of Frederick Fairlie to teach his nieces to draw.   In the book, the young women are half-sisters, who share a mother.  Their parents are all deceased and Laura, the younger, is Fairlie’s ward.  Laura, through her father, is the heiress of a great fortune.  Marian, who is a few years older, has only a small income.  They are inseparable and devoted to each other.  Marian tells Walter at the beginning that neither she nor Laura can do without the other, so he must please both of them.  In the end, he does.

In the movie, Marian and Laura are cousins.  I’m not sure what necessitated this particular change in script, but the novel deals with Laura’s father having an illegitimate child, and maybe this was too close a relationship to make the censors happy.  Beats me.  That child is Anne, who in this movie becomes yet another cousin.  She is a near lookalike to Laura.  So, in this movie both Anne and Laura are played by Eleanor Parker.

I won’t go play-by-play from here on in, but what the movie does change from the novel is a skillful paring down of a very long story to under two hours of film.  The movie should be taken separately from the novel as its own creation, and will be best appreciated as such.
 

For instance, and here is a big fat spoiler—in the movie, Walter falls in love with Laura, but later circumstances change and he falls in love with Marian.  In the novel, Walter falls in love with Laura and marries her.  In this case, I prefer the movie version.  Laura is a weaker character and by the end of the novel, quite emotionally and physically dependent on Marian and Walter to take care of her.  She draws our sympathy, but does not seem like she should be an object of passion.  Marian, however, has been at Walter’s side through thick and thin, helping him and facing danger.  He tells us how much he admires her, and other characters in the story do, too.  One villain in particular is infatuated with her. It seems more logical that Walter would be, too.  The author’s only reason for Walter’s romantic disinterest in Marian seems to be that she’s ugly.
 

Eleanor Parker, one of Hollywood's most gifted actresses, is quite good in the dual roles of Laura and Anne.  Laura is charming, lighthearted, and unaffected.  Anne, who has just escaped from an asylum, is tense, with a wandering mind and an overly emotional response to others.  There may be a bit of scenery chewing here, but Anne’s at the edge and sometimes all an actress can do is go to the edge with her.

 

John Abbott plays Frederick Fairlie, plays him so well you wonder why he didn’t star in films instead of just play bit parts or uncredited walk-ons.  Frederick is a self-absorbed fop, dramatically fussing about his nerves and comically displaying a disinterest in everything but himself.  Mr. Abbott is spot-on and terrific in this role.  He’s hysterical.  It’s like this guy knew he was given the role of his life.  He takes the baton and runs with it.

Poor Curt Bois, who I think gets one line in the film, is his bullied servant.  With a slackened stance and hangdog look, he seems to be channeling Buster Keaton in a couple scenes, and makes the most of his part.
 

 

John Emery is Sir Percival, who is engaged to marry Laura.  He’s charming one minute, and a villain the next.  He’s out for her money.

The best for last.  Sydney Greenstreet.  It’s as if Wilkie Collins had Sydney Greenstreet in mind when he wrote the complicated character Count Fosco.  A brilliant man of self indulgence, who plays human beings like chess pieces, and is so wicked that writes his own rules.  And usually gets away with it.

We know early on Mr. Greenstreet must be wicked, because the director gives us a hint at the very beginning of the movie.  Gig Young is walking in the twilight mist of the English countryside of the back lot.  He meets Anne, learns a bit of her story, learns she is running away, and then she bolts as a carriage approaches. A man asks if Young has seen an escapee from the asylum.  Inside the carriage where Gig Young can’t see him, is Sydney Greenstreet with a scowl on his face.  He looks mean.
 

We next see Greenstreet when he pops through the French windows from the terrace as Mr. Young is welcomed to the mansion by Alexis Smith.  She is delighted to see Mr. Greenstreet, and treats him like a fond and funny uncle.  It's as if he is a different person.  So, we see from the start his character is duplicitous. 

We are quickly fed the plot in bite-size chunks—about asylums (there will be more than one escape before the movie is through), about inheritance, and getting robbed of one’s inheritance, and how to foil the bad guys. 
 

Alexis, by virtue of her being the older girl and because John Abbott can’t be bothered, takes responsibility for the younger Laura.  When she senses Gig Young falling for Laura, she warns him that Laura’s already engaged and he has to knock it off.  We see, though he does not, that Alexis is falling in love with him.  A few nice very light touches by the director indicate her desire.  In one scene, he questions Mr. Greenstreet's motives, and she tells him not to overstep his bounds. 

 

The camera is on her as she turns her back to him and proceeds to leave the room, but she thinks the better of it, softens, and turns to address him again.

 

The camera shows us he has already turned his back to her and is walking out to the terrace to be with Laura.  Camera cuts back to Alexis, who looks like a despondent wallflower at a country dance.  We can imagine she has been in this situation before.

In another scene he plans to leave the estate because Laura is going to marry John Emery.  He kisses Alexis’ hand and she leans over him slightly as his head is bowed.  She lingers as if she will touch him or say something, but doesn’t.  These are great clues that will make their union logical at the end, except we get no clues from Gig Young.  The director doesn’t set up any scenes with his reactions to her.  His later declaration of love for her seems a surprise, to us as well as her.

 

The director gives us some other shots though, that are splendid, uniting the 1940s with the 1850s in a neat way.  Lots of ground-to-ceiling film noir shots that show menacing figures, a few shadows on the wall. 

There’s a spiffy scene shot from the ceiling to the floor through the crystal jungle of a chandelier.  It is morning, and a few characters leave the room through a door, closing it behind them. 

 

Then, instantly it is night, the chandelier is lit, the door opens, and another character walks through.  It is a seamless showing of the passage of time.

On another occasion, Gig Young and Eleanor Parker are spied on through a telescope, and the camera takes a view of them through the telescope that looks like an iris shot from a silent movie.  Then it opens up, and we are no longer watching them from a distance; we are right behind them.  We could touch them.

I also really like the score of this movie.  Max Steiner is credited, but some of the English country ballad flourishes sound authentic to me, and I wonder if he adapted some traditional music?
 

Laura, who has now married Sir Percival, may be in great danger.  We suspect this when Alexis, who has spent a few months with relatives in the country while Laura and Sir Percival are in Europe on their honeymoon, returns to silly John Abbott’s mansion to wait for them.  Hey, none of the servants are familiar!  They’re all new!  Including marvelous Anita Sharp-Bolster, who we discussed here in this previous post.  That woman, with her stupendous profile, could play scary/funny like nobody. 

Alexis is given a different room on the other side of the mansion!  Away from Laura!
 

Alexis confronts John Abbott about this.  He attempts a tantrum, but his blood sugar level is too low.

Alexis discovers that Sydney Greenstreet is living here now with his wife, played by Agnes Moorehead.  She is an enigma, and takes the character from the novel to a different, more intense, level.  We may puzzle at Greenstreet’s hold over her, that allows him to taunt and manipulate her, but still waters run deep.  There’s a lot more going on here.  We will soon see she’s not just a wax figure under her husband’s thumb.  Miss Moorehead does so much with a small role, it's like she conducting a master class in acting.
 

When the honeymooners return, Laura is a changed person—haughty, gaudily bejeweled and attempting to smoke at the dinner table.  (GAD!)  She has not replied to Alexis’ letters to her during their separation.
 

Back in her room that night, Alexis writes her fears in her diary that Laura is lost to her.  This is about the only scene, except for some beginning narration by Gig Young, that tries to imitate the novel in first-person perspective, but that’s hard to keep up in a movie.

Later Laura sneaks into Alexis’ room, tells her  she has to act out a part because she’s in danger.  Alexis gets to do some girl power stunts when she climbs out on a ledge in a storm to eavesdrop (quite literally under the eaves) on the plans of the bad guys.
 

She returns to her room and we see her figure in a shadow on the wall as she is changing from a rain-soaked nightgown to a dry one.  Then the curtains part, and it’s Sydney Greenstreet!  He thinks she knows too much.  He’s also attracted to her.

There’s a nifty exchange between them when she asks, “Was it necessary to hide there and shame me as well?”

He responds with that gravely-voiced huff, “I was only too happy to discover at last something as flawless in form as it is in spirit.”  It took me several viewings of this movie to realize that meant he’d been watching her undress.  Yes, I am that obtuse.

There’s nothing quite so charming as Victorian lechery.
 

And, funny enough, just before this a scene where we hear John Emery muttering his frustration and he appears, if I’ve heard right, to use the word “bugger”.  Obviously, to us in the US this is just a funny sounding oath, but in British English it’s a vulgarity.  It may have lost quite a bit of its punch through the decades and no longer so offensive, but at the time story is set, it was quite vulgar and author Wilkie Collins never used it.  I guess those minding the store didn’t know that.

Actor and screenwriter 1, Production Code 0.
 

 

Because Anne and Laura are played by the same actress, we do have one Patty Duke Show scene where they’re together, but it’s not overdone.  I don’t think we ever mistake one for the other because they behave differently, and Anne’s makeup, with her dark circles under her hollow eyes indicates she is sickly.  But others mistake them, and I won’t tell you what happens because of it.  So there.

Mr. Greenstreet gloats over Alexis when she refuses his offer to be his mistress, predicting she will return of her own accord.  She does, when she thinks Laura’s in too big a jam and Walter unable to help.  She offers herself to the big guy if he lets Laura go.

Alexis Smith appeared with Sydney Greenstreet in “Conflict”(1945) discussed here, and she enjoyed working with him.  On “The Woman in White”, her husband in real life, Craig Stevens, was quoted in The Women of Warner Brothers by David Bubbeo (McFarland and Co., Inc.: Jefferson, NC, 2002) “Alexis was mesmerized by Sydney Greenstreet…He memorized the entire script.  He knew everyone else’s role.  She just thought he was fascinating to be around.”

In the novel, Marian describes Fosco as a man, “who devours pastry as I have never yet seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding-schools…”  In a nutshell we have Fosco’s love of food, and Marian’s witty sense of humor.
 

In another passage, she tries to get Laura to leave her cruel husband, “Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease?  No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women.  Men!  They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace—they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship—they take us body and soul to themselves and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel.  And what does the best of them give us in return?  Let me go, Laura—I’m mad when I think of it!”

Doesn’t sound very Victorian, does it?  The book also has an astounding subplot of murder by a 19^th century style Italian Mafia. 

Watch the movie and enjoy it for all it is, which is plenty.  But treat yourself to the book as well.  Hollywood exploited popular literature and classic literature, but also introduced  a fair number of its audience to these books for the first time.  A lovely co-dependence.  Like Marian and Laura.