Vivien Leigh In Rebecca

Is there a link? Assume was the Youtube.

And with all of those huge criticisms of Joan's performance, R1 ("She couldn't act her way out of a paper bag"), you STILL think she was the better choice for the role just because she was a better fit for it physically and in terms of her personality?

Yes, physically because she had to have that puppy like countenance against Larry's/Max's looks, strength, and guilt. You can see the film on U Tube.

Fontaine was believable enough that the movie remains an enduring screen classic. Sanders stole the show, however, brilliant man. Anderson became her part. Olivier was very well cast as Max. But I think Anderson and Sanders made the film, the remake was pretty meh.

[quote]Joan Fountain

No.

I've always found Joan to be very pretty, even when she's supposed to be dowdy. The worst she gets is mousy, and mousy can still be very cute.

Hitchcock was very much into artifice in his films, using actresses who seemed like unconvincing drama queens to increase suspense, because the audience doesn't want to believe them at first. He uses the overly controlling actor and the comedic sidekick to the same effect. It's a method of distraction, and Fontaine was very good at it, even better at it in Suspicion than in Rebecca, I think.

I always thought Scarlett Johansson looks like a coarser, sluttier Joan Fontaine.

Who was great in these kinds of roles: Rebecca, Suspicion, The Constant Nymph, Letter From An Unknown Woman.

Leigh just does a variation on Scarlett, but sadder and with a British accent. She's much too knowing to play a naive young girl.

Who keeps starting all these obsessive threads featuring Vivien Leigh???

Is it the same loon who poured a barrage of threads on us about autism?

Reply 6: Great observation and sight to Hitch. Learned something. Thanks.

Ooops: INSIGHT INTO HITCH

Is thre somewhere I can stream Joan Fountain?

You can always see the wheels turning in Joan Fountain's head as she "acts." She has a habit of casting her eyes down or to the side when she's doing it.

Anne Baxter also tested for the part, and she would have been all wrong in a different way. Peggy Ashcroft or Celia Johnson would have been more apt for the Second Mrs. DeWinter, but they weren't sexy enough for Hitchcock and Selznick.

Vivien would have been way too beautiful and charismatic to play the second Mrs. DeWinter. She would have been believable as Rebecca who unfortunately is dead before the book/movie starts.

I was surprised at Vivien's acting ability. She was obviously wrong for the role, but you saw her really trying to be shy and innocent, and it worked to a point.

Her Scorpio intensity is always apparent in any role she plays, and it was too much for the shy Mrs DeWinter, but still.

R15 is the screen test up on YouTube or somewhere?

See R8

Leigh would have clocked Danvers the first time they met.

I can see why Vivien didn't get the job. She would have been totally miscast as the mousey Mrs. DeWinter.

R13 Fountain's head...I like that.

They should have written Vivien in via flashbacks as the vivacious Rebecca. It hurts the movie that the character is always talked about but never seen.

Sure, we lavish praise on Joan Fountain... but what about her sister, Olivia de Haveandtohold?

R16

Yes, I've seen it there.

Laurence Oliveoil and Dame Jujube Anderson added just as much to "Rebecca" as Joan Fountain did!

No one has mentioned my favorite character: Mrs. Van Hopper, played by Florence Bates (4:40).

Reply 25 - Absolutely right. I don't think there is an American actress today who could match her.

Fuck me! Look at Florence Bates bio. First paragraph from her IMDb profile:

The American character actress, Florence Rabe, was the daughter of an antique store owner. She gained a degree in Mathematics from the University of Texas in 1906 and went on to a career in teaching and social work. She changed course after being persuaded by a friend to study law, and, passing her bar exam in 1914, practised for four years in San Antonio. When her parents died, she took over the business and travelled abroad extensively to acquire stock, all the while adding to her knowledge of foreign languages (she was, for instance, a fluent Spanish speaker). After the Wall Street crash of 1929, Florence sold the antique store and married Texan oilman William F. Jacoby. Jacoby eventually went bankrupt and the couple moved to California in the late 1930's, briefly becoming proprietors of a bakery.

[quote] Wasn’t Lee living in Hollywood, doing dialogue coaching back then?

No he wasn't. He was a unlovable, superannuated teenage soda jerk in Yonkers.

R25, R26 But wasn't Florence Bates onscreen for only 5 minutes?

But Faye Dunaway took on that role in one of the tawdry remakes?

Another excerpt from her audition.

^ Yes she's much too lively and scatty for Max.

I believe in L O N G engagements.

Really, Max was an absolute fool.

[quote] I love Hitch, but he couldn’t direct actors… Hitchcock was very much into artifice

OP, R6, it’s pointless you watching this film and complaining about the director.

He said over and over that he takes no responsibility for this movie.

He wanted a taut 90 minute movie but his employee demanded a leisurely 130 minute 'luxe' product.

Thank you OP. Joan Fountain [sic] nearly ruined the movie with her endless hand wringing. Mind you Vivian Leigh was just as bad in that screen test, playing with her buttons, then the book. That scene was lifeless. She could’ve been perfect as the first Mrs. deWinter but, like showing aliens in a horror movie before the advent of CGI, it’s a mistake. Better to use your imagination. The portrait in the hallway though, that should’ve recognizably been Leigh. I don’t know who could’ve played the role of the nameless wife. Maybe Margaret Sullavan?

If you think Vivien Leigh wanted to play Mrs de Winter I've got a bridge to sell you. She was rehearsing for Scarlett the whole way there on the boat, even doing stuff like experimenting with green eyeliner to make her blue-grey eyes look greener. Larry Schmarry.

Congratulations, this thread has achieved Peak Gay.

I think Patricia Roc would have been perfect casting. She was not a "name " in the USA though.

Total trivia but Joan Fontaine related:

She visited the set of South Pacific while Josh Logan was shooting in Hawaii. He asked whether she would like to appear, she said why not, he called wardrobe to dress her as a nurse and she appeared as a background extra in a beach scene.

It's well documented that this happened but no one has ever been able to spot her in the released film.

People wouldn't have bought Vivian in that character because you just know that she was more beautiful than Rebecca.

I always pictured Leigh as the first Mrs. DeWinter.

Re r30's gif: Vivien had to learn how to Charleston for her Tony winning turn in the Broadway musical Tovarich. Then they couldn't stop her! She just kept twirling and kicking! No, Vivien, no!

Anne Baxter has too much of her own personality infused into every role, I never enjoyed her, can't say why exactly.

The second Mrs. de Winter is crippled by a degree of self-loathing and insecurity so severe that she is beside herself with relief when she learns her husband actually murdered his sexually active, nay, sexually depraved former wife and never, no, never loved her! Which is made all the more understandable by the lesbionic tendencies of the scary head housekeeper who still worships that first, boundlessly evil, First Wife, even beyond death, going so far as to suggest to Wife No. 2 that she sniff Wifey 1’s underthings and appreciate how carefully, how perfectly the Sapphic, deranged housekeeper has kept them.

I don’t think there’s a soul in Hollywood courageous enough to write, direct, or act in a faithful rendering of that book nowadays. The book is gloriously incorrect. The tweets would kill it long before it could find an audience ready to love it for how very wrong, wrong, WRONG it is. Maxim is a murderer. Wife 2 doesn’t give a flying fuck. She simply wants nothing more in life than to see it covered up so she can spend the rest of her days doing crossword puzzles in the same featureless rooms with him, free of the hideous nagging fantasies that he might still be jacking off to the perversions and popularity of The Cool Girl he married before her.

Vivien did indeed badly want the part of the second Mrs. de Winter so that she could play opposite Olivier. Likewise she wanted to play Cathy in Wuthering Heights for the same reason. It wasn't going to happen and Miss Oberon was not amused.

Who is this Vivian people keep referring to?

R43 I think VL would’ve been a much better Cathy than Oberon. She wrecks WH for me

[QUOTE] I saw Vivien’s and Joan’s screen tests, and I must say Joan was the better choice to play Rebecca.

But she didn’t play Rebecca.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again AND I FUCKIN' WOKE UP SCREAMING!

No wonder I have so many problems getting asleep, Covid or not.

Yeah, reply 46, you are right. Mrs. deWinter. My bad

I quote the great movie book “Flesh & Fantasy” (Penny Stalling) all the time here. She wrote that Joan’s timorous performance was a result of the cast of British pros treating her like the unproven actress she was (though she had a British background herself). Larry was sufficiently frustrated by Vivien not being cast that he used to whisper profanities and insults into Joan’s ear during close-ups. Hitch didn’t stop it as it caught Joan off-guard and helped embody the insecurity felt by the second Mrs de Winter.

Joan must have learned her lesson because, according to Stalling, she gave the same treatment to Cary Grant when they made “Suspicion” the following year. Nothing personal; she just found him to be a tremendous boor.

I saw Rebecca for the first time a month ago and really didn't enjoy it very much (which surprised me). This:

[quote]Joan Fountain at that stage of her career couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.

I completely agree with. I keep having flashbacks to that scene where she's walking down the stairs in her new dress, and I cringe.

I think the movie just comes across strangely in 2021, because our expectations of the setup of the story, ie, the way Olivier's characters talks to Joan's, are that her husband is an abusive piece of shit. But half way through we're meant to buy that his behaviour is justified by his experience with Rebecca and it looks so weird when Joan is all over him, telling him how much she loves him after she's been treated, without it being portrayed as her being totally brainwashed. It just feels like it should've been a different type of film.

R50 You say that her husband was abusive but half way through became sympathetic.

You need to know that the book was written from within the mind of the young unhinged mousey wife. The whole book is presented as a personal journal.

Her ideas are subjective and inconsistent because she was cracking up.

And also, Hitch didn't much sympathy for female characters and their unconscious traumas.

I've not read the book, R51, so that was really interesting to read. I wish they'd gone more down that road in the movie, where it didn't seem to be like that at all.

The young mousey wife writes it as a personal journal and doesn't even give us her name.

Daphne du Maurier wrote 'Rebecca' as a 'first person narrative' by a mousey woman.

Just like the film 'The Fallen Idol' is presented as a 'first person narrative' by an irritatingly-clueless little boy.

These narratives impose a deadening hand on the director and the actors.

The last time I saw a Vivian in a Rebecca was at Miranda's after hours party...

Reply 49: I doubt Larry mistreated Joan. He was much too professional and was never known to do juvenile stunts to fuck up an actor's concentration or performance. At worst, he gave her the cold shoulder, and relegated her to amateur status, like he did Merle. Yeah, he was pissed Vivien didn't get cast, but he was riding a trifecta comeback in the late 30's: WH, Pride, Rebecca, and That HW to boot. He was making up for the humiliation of being fired by Garbo, and the fact that none of the films he was cast in, in those first 3 years of his Hollywood contract, never made any money. He was a poor man's Ronald Coleman without the voice and looked more like the figurine man on the wedding cake. His contract was not renewed and by 1933 was a has been. His late 30's, early 40s films were a triumphant comeback. He made it in films, and then told Hollywood to fuck themselves, and went on to become the greatest stage actor of the 20th Century. He only came to Hollywood twice after 1941. Carrie and Spartacus. He said if he stayed in Hollywood he would probably become as eminent as Cary Grant. In other words a very utilitarian, but limited, polished, polite, charming, safe English actor. That's not a put-down. Cary Grant was great!

[quote] Ronald Coleman

Ronald Colman

[quote] then told Hollywood to fuck themselves

I very much doubt that. He praised Wyler for 'Wuthering Heights'; he asked Wyler to come to England to direct 'Henry V' and he later appeared in Wyler's 'Carrie' in '52.

R33, R38, R55

[quote] Vivian Leigh

Vivien Leigh

Quite well-known relationship between Wyler and Larry, and yes, Larry did ask Wyler to direct HV. Of course, the relationship got off to rocky start after Larry pooh-poohed movie-making. He was coming off his Old Vic success as Hamlet and Henry V, and I guess now could claim stage bragging rights, though Goldwyn cut him down to size threatened to close down the picture because Larry O's acting was hammy and stagey. See Larry's entertaining reenactment of the encounter on the interview he did with Cavett in 1973. It's on UTube, along with the Wyler-Olivier battles over Larry's over the top performance as Heathcliff. They worked it out, cause Larry ws magnificent.

Was Joan related to Pete Fountain?

That screen test of Vivien's at R8 is awful. I haven't a high opinion of Ms. Fontaine's acting in general but she was perfect for the role. Since it was only a year earlier when she stunk up the screen in The Women (she's the only wrong note in the film, performance-wise), then either learned quickly or she just didn't have much to work with in The Women.

Interesting to think of Vivien in Wuthering Heights. Oberon was stunning but not a great actress. Leigh would've acting circles around her, and the chemistry between her and Heathcliff would have been amazing.

I love the movie and book of Rebecca but I haven't read it in years-can't remember if Maxim and the 2nd Mrs. de Winter had a satisfying *conjugal" relationship in the book. Did he fuck her silly on the reg? Heaven knows the poor gal deserved something for putting up with him.

[quote] Did he fuck her silly on the reg?

I don't remember that scene in the first movie, nor Charles Dance doing her silly on the reg in the later TV version.

But I'm definitely hoping Armie Hammer will expose his buttocks doing her on the reg in the new upcoming version.

Daphne du Maurier stated she did not give her character her name for the simple reason she could not think of one. I think it adds to the strange charm of the book.

Yes , there is a scene where they fall to the floor and start kissing madly, apparently confessions of murder do wonders for your sex life.

R56, interesting points but as I said, I was quoting the book. No way to know exactly since all concerned are long gone.

I think Joan is better than Olivier in Rebecca. Dame Judith and George Sanders are the MVPs.

PA-LEEZE!

R54 I love Fallen Idol! Using the little French kid as the narrator was brilliant and making the hero a working-class butler idolized by an ambassador's kid was a fascinating conceit.

Dear R68, the conceit may have been brilliant for child-lovers. But that child was as ignorant as his pet snake, he knew nothing and his shrill, hight-pitched voice was as annoying as an electrified penny-whistle.

Graham Greene was trying to discuss ideas about Catholic grace and the betrayal pf innocence but a shrieking child is not a conducive medium in which to do so.

R69 piss off. Michele Morgan was so beautiful then and that was the only role Richardson ever had where he actually had sex appeal.

Vivien would have been a much better Cathy. Oberon only rang true once she became the smug married Mrs. Linton.

Oberon was hopeless.

She specialised in utter fakery from 1932 to 1972.

Ann Baxter made a wonderful screen test for Rebecca but her age was against her, she was 16. Margaret Sullivan wasn’t considered for the role because she wouldn’t have been believable. The producer knew her and thought she was too formidable in real life. Leigh wanted the part but she was still occupied with GWTW when Rebecca started filming. She was busy with pick up shots and looping dialogue.

Joan Fountain read for the part of Melanie in GWTW and arrived wearing sables. Cukor admonished her saying she was much too chic for the part and cattily, Fountain suggested her sister for the role!

Joan Fountain played the same role in this movie and the next.

She was mousey in this movie and Cary Grant called her Monkey Face in the next.

Funny. When I got around to sending her a telegram to let her know Mother had died and was about to be buried, I sent it "Joan Fountain" myself.

Accidentally, of course. It was regrettable, I am sure. That imperious simpering. No one could bear THAT.

Can woke Hollywood make an all-Black version of Rebecca, or would that be considered cultural appropriation? And who be your dream cast?

Beyoncé as the second Mrs. de Winter and Jay Z, Denzel or Will Smith as the husband. And I'll pass.

Lizzo as the second Mrs. de Winter and Bobby Brown as the husband.

R36 Are you kidding me?

That woman with the fake name was always over-dressed and over-groomed to cover the fact that she had a fat face.

Here face was as fat as Deanna Durbin's.

I would cast Catherine Zeta-Jones as Rebecca if they ever do another remake. They never show the chilling dream the unnamed wife has about her.

What do we think of Loretta Young's screen test as the second Mrs D?

More of Loretta Young's test from 2.30.

Even if the OP has been red-tagged, he's correct about this. Leigh had absolutely no idea what it was like to be shy, awkward, and to be less than attractive. Okay, Joan Fontaine was a beautiful young woman, but she made is believe that the second Mrs. DeWinter thought she was plain and drab.

Which totally works in the context of the film, a person might have a hard time believing that this arrogant and murch-pursued straight man would marry a girl who really was plain, but it's very plausible that an arrogant straight man would go for a beautiful girl who had no vanity, or self-esteem.