Waaay OT / Joan Bennett Movie Question

[Patti Feinberg]

Oh, my gosh...I just saw [size=8]THE[/size] most weird movie in my life.

"Mourning Becomes Electra". I'm sure alot of you have seen it/read the play.

My family was dysfunctional before there was such a term; but this family....oyevah & a hail Mary!!!!


It originally caught my eye because it was set in Boston circa 1865 and I was looking at the women's costumes.

but...it was R I V E T I N G!!!! Like a horrible multi-car wreck...I couldn't stop....

This family made 1795 or 1897 Collins' look like the Brady Bunch!

Thanks for letting say.....whoosh!!!!


Also:

I was perusing imdb and (not that it's on tv here) this movie:

"The Secret Behind the Door".
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040766/

Has anyone ever seen it? It's great to see Joan on the title there!!

Patti


PS...wow!!! I never knew Chris Pennock appeared on an ep. of Cagney & Lacey....does anyone have any good screen grabs perhaps/perchance of J. Karlen w/C. Pennock?

[Annie]

Hi Patti just saw The Q-man in some!!!
           Love Anne

[Patti Feinberg]

...in some what Annie??
 

Patti

[Philippe Cordier]

Hi, Patti -- yes, I have read Eugene O'Neil's "Mourning Becomes Electra" but haven't seen the movie version.  I was quite immersed in Greek tragedy in college and one of my professors told me that this was a modern version of one of the Greek plays I was enamoured with -- can't remember which one now, I think it was by Aeschylus and had to do with Clytamnestra killing her husband Agamemnon upon his return from Troy, and then the vengeance the children took on their mother.  I was quite taken with the title "Mourning becomes Electra" more than the play itself, but it would have been interesting to see after all these years.

Just an aside on Joan Bennett ... I was going through a file on Walter Wanger at work the other day and came across an original photograph of Bennett that I believe was her high school graduation portrait.  The photographer was a New York studio but I haven't doubled checked to see if that's where Bennett attended school.

Anyway, what was of interest in the photo -- which was a good quality black and whitel -- was that Bennett's hair color (which I take to have been natural at this early time but that's an assumption of course) was sort of a dark honey blonde.  Not the platinum blonde she donned in Hollywood for a while, but defintely much lighter than her later brunette shade.

 

[Luciaphile]

I was perusing imdb and (not that it's on tv here) this movie:

"The Secret Behind the Door".

Has anyone ever seen it? It's great to see Joan on the title there!!

I own a copy. It's the last film she made with Fritz Lang, and I think most critics would say that it's not the best of the four she did make with Lang (the others are Man Hunt, Scarlet Street, and The Woman in the Window). Joan plays an heiress who marries Michael Redgrave after a whirlwind romance. All is well until they go back to Michael's mansion compleat with all the traditional gothic trappings (housekeeper, sister, hangers on, unexplained deaths nobody likes to talk about). Like many people, Michael has a hobby. Unlike many people, Michael rebuilds replicas of rooms where violent deaths occurred. Joan begins to realize how very little she knows about her husband.

Bad plot aside, it is indeed, as my friend Cheri has said, "the most Joan Bennett of Joan Bennett movies." She's in almost every scene and she even does voiceover. Not great cinema, but highly entertaining.

As far as the hair color goes, Vlad. I'm not sure she graduated--she had been sent to a finishing school/boarding school when she was sixteen in Europe. I believe she ran away shortly thereafter to elope with the man who became her first husband (I would have to dig out her autobiography, but I know she talks about that).

[Philippe Cordier]

As far as the hair color goes, Vlad. I'm not sure she graduated--she had been sent to a finishing school/boarding school when she was sixteen in Europe. I believe she ran away shortly thereafter to elope with the man who became her first husband (I would have to dig out her autobiography, but I know she talks about that).

Hi Luciaphil,

She appears to be between 17 and 19 in the photograph, which is posed in a very standard photography portrait such as a graduation photo, so that seemed logical.  If she didn't graduate from HS, it would be interesting to know the occasion of the photo.  The original photography studio's stamp is on the back as I mentioned -- I forget the name of it but it was in NYC.