Tag: Bette Davis

The opening scene of Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” in which Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) first glimpses his cousin, Ellen Olenska, during a performance of Gounod’s “Faust,” was actually shot at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. I remember the call for anyone with a tux to come down to the Academy so that they could fill out the balconies with extras. Sadly, I had to work (not that I owned a tux).

“The Age of Innocence” is but one of the films we’ll be treating this week on “Picture Perfect,” as the focus will be on adaptations from novels of, or about, the Gilded Age. “The Gilded Age” was a term coined by none other than Mark Twain to describe the era extending roughly from the end of Reconstruction (following the Civil War) to the turn of the 20th century. He didn’t mean it as a compliment. A gilded age is one which conceals serious social problems beneath a veneer of gold.

“The Heiress” (1949) was adapted from a play by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, which in turn was based on the Henry James’ novel, “Washington Square.” Olivia De Havilland is the “plain Jane” heiress of the title, Ralph Richardson her overbearing father, and Montgomery Clift, the adventurer who may or may not be out for her fortune. De Havilland won an Oscar for her portrayal, as did the music, by Aaron Copland.

“The Age of Innocence” (1993) is based on a novel by one-time James correspondent and close friend, Edith Wharton. The book was published in 1920, but looks back to the 1870s, its story dealing with the impending marriage of an upper class couple and the appearance of a disreputable interloper who threatens their happiness. The title is an ironic play on the outward manners of New York society, in contrast to its inward machinations. The novel earned a Pulitzer Prize, the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. The film was something of a curve ball from director Martin Scorsese, who made his name on meaner streets. Veteran composer Elmer Bernstein provided a lovely, Brahmsian score.

“The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942) is based on another Pulitzer Prize winner, this time by Booth Tarkington, from 1918. The novel is part of trilogy that tells the story of the declining fortunes of three generations of an aristocratic Midwestern family, between the end of the Civil War and the early years of the 20th century. With industrialism on the rise, the Ambersons’ “old money” wealth and prestige wane.

“Ambersons” became the basis for only the second film directed by Orson Welles. By that time, however, the fall-out from “Citizen Kane” caused the film to be removed from Welles’ control and re-cut by the studio, shaving a full hour off the original running time. It says something about the quality of the film that it yet remains in itself a magnificent achievement.

The score was by Bernard Herrmann, CBS staff composer from Welles’ radio days. Herrmann had followed Welles to Hollywood to provide the music for “Citizen Kane.” Like the film, the score was drastically edited, with half the music removed. The famously irascible Herrmann, who had just written his Academy Award winning music for “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” was so angry that he threatened legal action if his name was not removed from the credits.

The action of “Mr. Skeffington” (1944), based on a 1940 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, begins at a point some consider the end of the Gilded Age, the eve of World War I. Bette Davis stars as a woman so enamored of her own beauty and the suitors it attracts that she fails to value the affections of the man who eventually becomes her husband. Mr. Skeffington, played by Claude Rains, is a Jewish financier, riding high in the ‘teens, but his fortunes change when he’s caught in Europe during the rise of the Nazis.

Both Davis and Rains earned Academy Award nominations for their work. The vivid score is by Franz Waxman. Davis was going through a period of emotional turmoil during the filming, so that she was allegedly insufferable to everyone during the entire shoot. Someone finally poisoned her eyewash. When the police questioned the director, Vincent Sherman, he wished them good luck with their investigation. “If you asked everyone on the set who would have committed such a thing, everyone would raise their hand!”

Certainly all that glitters is not gold, this week. We peel back the veneer of prosperity with “Novels of the Gilded Age,” on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EST on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.