The Little Foxes

One of Davis' best performances. She reigned in her tendency for overacting to portray effectively a woman soured by frustration, greed and bitterness. Wonderful ensemble price. That she didn't get the Oscar and Joan Fontaine did, for the mediocre 'suspicion' is nothing short of criminal.

I hate how little attention this movie gets. The lines about people who eat the Earth are especially poignant in today's time.

...But mostly I just really love the part where Bette Davis says, "I hope you die, Horace. I hope you die soon."

1941 Best Actress Oscar should have gone to Olivia de Havilland. That was one of her least mannered and subtle performances.

I freakin' love this movie! Davis was mesmerizing and it is truly a brilliant performance. But the story and the rest of the cast is superb as well. How lucky for anyone here who hasn't seen it and gets to experience it for the first time. I envy you. Your mouth will be agape and you will probably subconsciously be cupping your balls (at least that's the way I was when I viewed it.)

Spooky. I watched it last night because we're going to see the Laura Linney/Cynthia Nixon production next month and my partner surprised me with the DVD. My partner is reading the play and was surprised that the n-word is liberally used in it, as it apparently is in many stage productions even today.

I've seen the film and a Lincoln Center performance with Stockard Channing as Regina and Brian Murray as her older brother - the show is mezmerizing on stage as well. The scene with Horace struggling up the stairs is incredible and chilling when performed live. Regina just sits on the couch, facing the audience as Horace collapses behind her.

All hail William Wyler who directed the film - he's an incredible asset to classic film - how I wish Robert Osborne had done an extended interview with him for TCM!

It's an excellent piece by Hellman.

I love the movie and play. It's a shame so much of Lillian Hellman's other work is terrible.

op the only reason why you watched this movie is because of feud. asshole.

r8 What difference does it make? We should be happy that anything is getting people interested in classic movies at all.

What roles are Linney and Nixon playing, R5?

Linney=Regina?

Nixon=Birdie?

Or vice versa?

As much as I enjoyed Mary Astor's camptastic turn in "The Great Lie", I really think the best supporting actress Oscar should have gone to Patricia Collinge that year.

And a hearty second to R9!

Actually they're sharing the roles and alternating. We're seeing Linney as Regina. It's a gimmick I guess to get people to go twice.

Thanks, R5.

R11, I don't know if it's a gimmick, sometimes a director ends up with two actors who bring very different but interesting qualities to different roles in a play. The first time I heard about this was for Sheperd's True West - the actors playing brothers (one quite malevolent) swapped roles nght-to-night. It was really well-recieved in NY.

I know that Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller swapped roles in the play Frankenstein - alternating between Dr. F and the monster.

I love the Spanish movie poster for this movie.

I would have like to have seen Tallulah in the Regina role on Broadway.

Actually the reason I watched the movie is that I missed Elizabeth Taylor in the play. I had no idea there was a movie version until last week. I'd always wanted to see it on stage. I thought the movie would be the next best thing.

Regina Giddens the proto-Datalounger

I saw Elizabeth Taylor do THE LITTLE FOXES on Broadway. It was her first appearance on the Great White Way and it was publicized beyond belief. The well-heeled, show-us-you-can-really-act audience was literally awestruck when she made her entrance on stage. You could actually feel it. And the icing on the cake was that she was actually quite good. And she looked stunning in Regina's dresses. I have never experience star power in the legitimate theatre as I did that night.

Are you Arlene Francis, R18?

As terrific as Bette and as slimy as Duryea were, my favorite part of the film was "downstairs" with the household staff when the children came to the door asking for a treat.

What y'all want?

A little biscuit with a little gravy on it.

Somebody write you a golden letter and tell you we got gravy tonight?-

- We got told. - Mr. David Hewitt tell us. - Say you got high-tone company. - Lots of meat and gravy.

Go on, get! Ain't my food to give away.

Feed the hungry, the Lord said. Give them some supper, Belle.

Miss Regina say supplies going mighty fast around here...and she ain't the stingy kind. A little bit here and there, she don't mind.but feeding the whole town.

- Stop fretting. Tell her I did it. Here. You children keep quiet.

Where did the Lord say that about feeding the hungry? What book?

I don't know, but if He didn't, He should have. Go ahead.

R16 turn in your gay card op

r15 - Dahling, you bet your ass you would have.....

The actual line is "I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I'll be waitin' for you to die." They're the closing lines of Act II in the three act play and in the hands of a good actress can be spectacularly sinister and thrilling because of the outstanding writing and set-up that precedes them.

Wyler was a brilliant filmmaker and Davis' favorite director as she was well aware that her very best performances had been under his guidance. But they fought bitterly, even explosively, over her interpretation of Regina and never worked together again.

Bankhead had received absolute raves in the Broadway production giving a somewhat different performance; she even appeared as Regina on the cover of Time (a very big deal back then). Her performance by all accounts was just as manipulate and greed driven but was far more fiery and sensual. Wyler wanted something more along the lines of Bankhead's performance but Davis was terrified of being compared to one of the greatest stage performances of recent times and played the part as an ice princess, cold, brittle and with white faced make- suggesting Kabuki. Davis was brilliant enough to pull it off in the end, but it really isn't the way the part is written and was quite controversial at the time.

How many of you noticed in the credits that the music was composed and conducted by Meredith Willson, who years later wrote The Music Man?

I guess I should add that everyone involved with the film, and especially Davis, were flummoxed by some contemporary reviews that praised her recreation of Bankhead's performance. They were mostly from critics who never saw Bankhead. Davis made her re-interpretation work on her sheer genius but she had gone out of her way to avoid what Bankhead had done and had not played the part as written. And the very sad result was that Davis and Wyler (have you seen The Letter?) never worked together again.

"I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I'll be waiting for you to die."

Cal, the grits is cold.

I don't think I've ever read anything favorable about Anne Bancroft in the role.

For R27, from Wikipedia

"In reviewing the production, Time said, "An admirable revival of Lillian Hellman's 1939 play in Lincoln Center demonstrates how securely bricks of character can be sealed together with the mortar of plot. Anne Bancroft, George C. Scott, Richard Dysart and Margaret Leighton are expertly guided by Director Mike Nichols through gilt-edged performances."

Anyone planning to see the new production with Linney and Nixon? I can see Linney in either part, but not sure about Nixon as Regina.

Love Davis in the film. The only mediocre Regina I ever saw was Stockard Channing, who I thought would be super in the role, but she was pretty average, as was the production.

Speaking of Davises, JUDY Davis would have killed in this role. She's a tad too old for it now.

I love the scene where Horace comes home and Regina can barely hide her contempt for him...and her impatience for him to sign the papers. The only false note in the film is Teresa Wrights squeaky and sugary performance. Terrible.

Elizabeth Marvel in Ivo von Hove's off-Broadway version.

Not Bette, not Tallulah, but pretty thrilling theatre.

R30, Wright's performance doesn't bother me much, but I know what you mean. She does the typical Hollywood studio ingenue performance - fortunately, Wright got better as an actress over the years. Even if Warners had cast someone else, you'd get pretty much the same thing.

r30 Richard Carlson's performance wasn't much better. It was like both of them attended "The Andy Hardy School of Drama."

Carlson wasn't much of an actor anyway. There's a reason why he wound up in B-films (mostly sci-fi) in the 50's.

Davis keeps fidgeting with her hair in her performance, which is one of the things that Wyler reportedly didn't like her doing.

I read that Carlson became a drinker as he aged but he was very cute in his younger days. He often gets mistaken for the far-less talented Hugh Marlowe.

I actually like Carlson and Wright in this. The Carlson role was added for the movie, which keeps the daughter as the fulcrum for the drama. I think it adds a lot to the play. (I'm sure I'm in the minority about this.)

Movie strikes a bit close to home for me. Tweak some details and the film could easily be the story of my grandfather and his brothers.

Sam Goldwyn had Teresa Wright under contract so I think Wyler was stuck with her. I'm another who can't stand her. She ruins Shadow of a Doubt for me.

I believe that's Italian, not Spanish, R14.

Herbert Marshall excelled at playing fragile,sick husbands

I don't mind Wright's performance. Her love for her father rings very true. Does anyone remember what movie the likable Herbert Marshall played a villain? I think it was a Hitchcock film, but I could be wrong.

Foreign Correspondent?

R14 that's the French poster

[QUOTE] I hate how little attention this movie gets. The lines about people who eat the Earth are especially poignant in today's time.

ITA , R2. I saw a production of "The Little Foxes" recently at Arena Stage in D.C (with Marg Helgenberger in the Bette Davis role) and I was taken aback by how relevant the whole play seemed. It was like watching a gathering of 1% people on the eve of Trump's election.

[QUOTE] As much as I enjoyed Mary Astor's camptastic turn in "The Great Lie", I really think the best supporting actress Oscar should have gone to Patricia Collinge that year.

Patricia Collinge was devastating in this. How did she lose the Oscar as well? (I remember absolutely nothing from Mary Astor's performance in The Great Lie. Not a single line or moment. How did THAT win happen? Was it purchased?)

I just love this and the Godfrey thread. Thanks, guys.

Thank you, R44!

My how this place has gone down hill when homos weighing in confuse French for Spanish and for Italian.

I'll wager R44 is a boomer and the ones who got it wrong are millennials.

Maybe the Academy realized they goofed in not even nominating Mary Astor for The Maltese Falcon? I find Patricia C's shtick as tiresome as someone like Marion Lorne. Neither have any range, whereas Astor does.

R31, at the performance I saw, Elizabeth Marvel was thrown to the floor and cut her leg. She wiped the blood off her leg, licked it off her finger and just kept going. I do not know if it was a part of the show, but it was visceral and fierce.

Elizabeth Marvel is a force of nature.

R43, you are correct, Marshall was one of the villains in Foreign Correspondent. That movie has amazing disaster sequence of a plane being fired upon and crashing into the ocean... how Hitchcock and his team created that sequence is a marvel (for its time).

I thought the first word looked like "lei" to me not "les".

The best Birdie I ever saw was Frances Conroy in the Lincoln Center production (the one with Stockard). She was the one bright spot in that otherwise "just OK" production.

[quote]I remember absolutely nothing from Mary Astor's performance in The Great Lie. Not a single line or moment. How did THAT win happen? Was it purchased?

The studio went to a lot of trouble to get her the Oscar, knowing that long-time Academy members would see her as someone who should have one as basically a lifetime achievement award. There was a lot of publicity about how Davis, who didn't like being cast in programmers, pushed to improve the film with a better cast, and how she and Astor re-wrote a lot of the script -- I think the whole hiding out during the pregnancy bit was theirs, and it is the best part of the film.

But a lot of the film is really amateurish in that Warner Bros. programmer way. There's some weird dubbing when the dogs are called by name, for instance, instead of just reshooting the scene (they clumsily dub out the dog's names, so I guess it was something offensive). There are unconvincing sets and ridiculous Hollywood contrivances. I once read someone say it was basically an old Kay Francis movie updated for the 1940s, and I agree.

My all time favorite Bette Davis line is from this film:

"I've been lucky before. I'll be lucky again."

I do a lot of community theater; whenever I need a five minute monologue, I use one of Birdie's when she talks about getting hiccups the first time she ever saw Oscar Hubbard. It always goes over great.

r55 One of most endearing and poignant scenes in the movie/play when all of the 'good' guys and girls are gathered to chat without the threat of the 'foxes.'

Richard Carson wad ok. Dan Duryea was amazing. So weasel like.

The poster linked by R14 is for the French movie, which was renamed "Le Vipere" (viper).

(58), It's "La", for the feminine. Also, the first e in vipere has the French "accent grave."

With the ass that young Richard Carlson had, who needs acting. That thing should have gotten its own screen credit.

Somewhat older Richard Carlson and Richard Denning nicely fill out their swim trunks in "Creature from the Black Lagoon." That's the movie MM talks about in "Seven Year Itch," just before the subway gust.

Does anyone else like the scene where Oscar slaps Birdie hard for talking out of turn? It's so raw and edgy a moment for a 1941 movie.

R55 Does it confuse the casting team, since you are being considered for the role of Willy Loman?

That scene is so upsetting to me, R60. I can only imagine how he treats her at their own home.

[quote] With the ass that young Richard Carlson had, who needs acting

It got more use when Carlson tried to defend the United States border from Mexican illegals.

Excellent film.

I'm glad you said that, R62 -- I always get upset by that scene and yet no one else I know who has seen the movie has ever felt the same way.

The slapping scene is so good. It's like a scene from a more modern movie

Was Richard Carlson into bondage and erotic asphyxiation.....

R65, I'm glad that I found a fellow "MARY!" on that one. I have a very pronounced domestic violence trigger and that scene definitely sets it off.

This was discussed in another thread awhile ago, but Maureen Stapleton's Birdie in the 1981 Broadway production was supposed to be absolutely incredible, especially that Act III monologue of hers. I think it would have crushed me to see Maureen slapped like that.

He might have been, (67), but the guy in the photo is John Bromfield. Another favorite of mine, and if you google his name with Tab Hunter, you will find a series of great swimsuit shots of the pair."hanging out," so to speak.

R16, There's a very good quality bootleg video recording of the 1981 Broadway revival. Taylor was fine, but Stapleton was excellent. The exit applause after her big scene is quite prolonged. Elizabeth took a final solo curtain call, but then motioned for Maureen to join her.

Here's the Spanish poster for Little Foxes!

That production just didn't work for me, R6. Stockard just didn't have the power for that moment. I've seen Linney onstage as well, and she won't be able to pull off that moment either. She might be able to do Birdie well. I'm not sure about Cynthia, but I imagine she doesn't have that moment up her sleeve either.

Really, no one will ever better Bette in the role, certainly no living actress. Maybe Blanchett could do it?

There was a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version starring Greer Garson in the 50's. I have a copy of the filmed kinescope on DVD. About that Broadway version with Miss Elizabeth Taylor...yes she was quite good and yes, it was the event of the season.

"Really, no one will ever better Bette in the role, certainly no living actress. Maybe Blanchett could do it? "

As someone else noted above, Judy Davis could - or could have since she's too old for Regina at this point.

Blanchett would just think "What would Judy Davis do?" and perform accordingly.

R70, any good ideas on how to get ahold of a copy of the bootleg of the 1981 Broadway production with Stapleton?

How did she lose the Tony to Swoosie Kurtz that year? Wasn't this around the time that she had just won an Oscar (for REDS)?

R73, did you see it?

Greer Garson? Good grief!

Went to youtube for the clip. Brrrr. So she's a cunty 1-percenter with some good lines? Why do I want to watch this again?

R77 = a rube

r76 - I'd be curious to see it. Would have also liked to have seen her in Auntie Mame.

Greer appeared on WML? as the mystery guest, in character as Auntie Mame.

Greer Garson was a great mystery guest on WML, the one with Orson Welles as a panelist. She was also a very good panelist.

bump

I am NOT a bump troll, but I just watched this for the first time and didn't want to make a new thread.

I loved it. So many good scenes--but the one with Birdie's monologue on the porch was so well shot and framed and acted by all in the scene., and was probably my favorite.

And Richard Carlson and Dan Duryea were really cute, too.

I like the remake with Tatum O'Lesbian and Kristy McLesbian better.

TLF fans who are into opera should check out gay composer Marc Blitzstein's 1949 opera "REGINA." It's had a few revivals and recordings over the years. It's just as great as the play and film.

Someone already made that joke for you upthread, r84.

Here it is, in its entirety.

I know and I wanted to state MY opinion on it as well. People can share the same opinion.

Stop trying to silence me, typical racist. r86

Jodie Foster was great in this.

Which character did Bette Davis play? I don't remember her.

How many times are we going to get the Jodie Foster/ Tatum O'Neal "Foxes" joke? Was once not enough?

I'm one who finds Davis' performance too dry. She doesn't seem to be someone who could seduce anyone successfully as Regina plans to do with the Chicago businessman (don't remember the character's name). Nevertheless there is a lot of her performance that works particularly in the latter part of the film.

I saw Linney as Regina and she was excellent so I don't know what R72 is taking about. Cynthia Nixon was also terrific as Birdie.

Pauline Kael said that Bette Davis was too stone-faced and lacked the sensuality and power of Tallulah Bankhead.

By all accounts, Tallulah gave a once in a lifetime performance as Regina; most critics who saw it said no one has been able to come close.

Interestingly, the movie includes a number of actors from the original cast: Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid, and Dan Duryea, all of whom are very good.

Years ago, there was a series of lp recordings, called something like “The A.N.T.A. Series of Great Theatre,” consisting of excerpts of scenes from classic Broadway plays, performed by members of the original casts. Audio only, of course. One volume had scenes from “The Little Foxes,” with Tallulah Bankhead, including a couple confrontations with Horace, and the ending with Alexandra. I always thought Bankhead sounded pretty subdued.

I love the movie. But I always found Davis stilted. At one point, I saw a summer theater production of it, with a friend of my older brother playing Regina, and she was great. We have to see that Regina can be full of charm when she wants to be. And I felt Davis emphasized more her distant, calculating side.

I also saw Taylor, whom I praised for her courage, but frankly found her performance workmanlike. I was more impressed by Margaret Leighton, who took over Regina in the touring company of the Mike Nichols production, though Leonard Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre, was only adequate as Birdie.

Alexandra in that production was played by Geraldine Chaplin, on the heels of her debut in “Doctor Zhivago,” who also was really only adequate. At the end, when she leaves, I always wondered where is she going to go? Which is why I actually prefer the movie script, because it not only has a viable answer to that question, but also affords her opportunities to confront her own selfe-centeredness.

Carol Burnett is a genius.

I didn't like the Stockard Channing revival either: her performance had no juice and the production just plodded along.

Sam Goldwyn very much wanted Lillian Gish to play Birdie Hubbard, and I believe Bette did too, but she was doing "Life With Father" on the road, and the producers refused to let her out of her contract to do the film. She was so perfect to play Birdie, it's too bad.

Doesn't that Nichols's production get ripped to shreds in The Season?

The Stockard production was pretty dull. The Taylor was enjoyable but the very cute Christopher was dreadful.