Classic Movie Fans at Midnight Showing

On February 26, 2011, I presented the Academy Award winning film classic Johnny Belinda (1948), starring Jane Wyman at Facet Film School, Chicago. Wyman won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Belinda MacDonald, a poor deaf mute living with her father and aunt on a farm in Novia Scotia.

The midnight crowd right before the screening of Johnny Belinda

Introducing a Classic
The crowd of 22 was wide awake (accept for one man who fell asleep) and ready to see a film that they had never seen before. Instead of being disappointed by this (although some had heard of it), I enjoyed introducing the film to an audience without any preconceptions. As a classic movie fan, I sometimes think I know it all, but I'm always surprised and impressed by the insights "newbies" share during the after-film discussions. The screening of Johnny Belinda was no exception. Many appreciated Wyman's inspired performance, but they also noticed the beautiful black and white cinematography, the effective use of closeups, and the contrast between Belinda and the townspeople. Belinda, to many viewers, was almost angelic compared to some of her self-righteous neighbors.

Jane Wyman (left) as Belinda and Charles Bickford as Black MacDonald, her father in Johnny Belinda

Midnight Series Continues at Facets Film School
Johnny Belinda was part of a midnight series of films: Heroine Addicts. The series features women as the main protagonists in a wide range of film genres. For a complete schedule of the films being screened, click here.

Silence is Golden: Jane Wyman's Oscar-Winning Performance in "Johnny Belinda"

Jane Wyman paid her dues. When she arrived in Hollywood in the early 1930s, Wyman worked steadily, but no one knew her name. During this early period in her career, she appeared in dozens of films, some classics, including an uncredited part in My Man Godfrey (1936).

A Hollywood glamor shot early in Jane Wyman's career

In 1937, as a contract player at Warner Brothers, Wyman had her first credited part as “Dixie the hatcheck girl” in Smart Blonde starring Glenda Farrell as journalist Torchy Blane. From 1932 to 1936, Wyman appeared in 19 films. In 1939, she stepped into the role of Torchy Blane in Torchy Blane…Playing With Dynamite. But it would be six long years before Wyman would get a role she could sink her teeth into.

Ray Milland and Wyman in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945)

In 1945 Wyman got what would prove to be her breakout performance. On loan to Paramount, she played Helen St. James, Ray Milland’s sympathetic girlfriend in The Lost Weekend. The film was a huge critical and commercial hit, winning Oscars for Milland and director Billy Wilder. It also won the award for Best Picture. Tough New York Times critic Bosley Crowther took notice of Wyman’s performance in Weekend. He said, “Jane Wyman assumes with quiet authority the difficult role of the loyal girl who loves and assists the central character—and finally helps regenerate him.” From a critic like Crowther, this was a rave.

Claude Jarman Jr., Gregory Peck, and Wyman in a publicity still from The Yearling (1946)

After her success in Weekend, Wyman’s home studio, Warner Bros. didn’t give her better scripts. Loaned out again in 1946, this time to M-G-M, Wyman costarred with Gregory Peck and Claude Jarman Jr. in the Clarence Brown production of The Yearling. The 10-month shoot was tough on Wyman and the rest of the cast. In spite of the production difficulties, Wyman received the first of her four Best Actress Academy Award nominations for her portrayal of Orry Baxter. She didn’t win, but Wyman was now a certified movie star.

Wyman as Belinda McDonald in Johnny Belinda (1948)

In 1948, Warner Bros. adapted the stage play Johnny Belinda and cast Wyman in the lead. Since the play was a modest success, the expectations for the film version weren’t too high. Under the steady direction of Jean Negulesco, Wyman gave the performance of a lifetime. As deaf mute Belinda, she never uttered a line of dialogue. Wyman managed to convey the frustration and longing of a young woman considered less than human by the local villagers in her Cape Brenton [Canada] home. She did this through her expressive eyes and physical gestures. Although by today’s standards, the movie is somewhat dated, Wyman’s performance is not. This is what Crowther said of Wyman's performance in his review of the film in The New York Times on October 2, 1948: “Miss Wyman brings superior insight and tenderness to the role. Not once does she speak throughout the picture. Her face is the mirror of her thoughts.”

Johnny Belinda lobby card

Johnny Belinda was nominated for a total of 11 Oscars. It lost in every category except Wyman’s surprise win for Best Actress of 1949 (Wyman expected Irene Dunne to win for I Remember Mama).

Jane Wyman would go on to further film successes, working with legendary directors like Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock, but her performance in Johnny Belinda is a master class in film acting technique, making Wyman a legend in her own right.  

A special midnight screening of Johnny Belinda will be held at Facets Film School on Saturday, February 26, 2011. Admission is $5.

Becoming Grace Kelly

Everyone knows the name Grace Kelly (1929-1982). But do they know the person behind that name? Is she the glamorous movie star who took the mid-1950s by storm and then gave it all up to marry a prince? Or is she the shy girl, who did not quite fit in with the athletic and outgoing Kelly clan?

Quiet Grace

Grace Patricia Kelly is all of the above. The third of four children, Grace was quiet and solitary in contrast to her older sister, Peggy, older brother John, and younger sister Lizanne. How she became a movie icon is a Hollywood story if ever there was one, but it’s also about timing. If there weren’t a Grace Kelly in the mid-1950s, we would have had to invent her.

New girl in town

Kelly was part of a new crop of female movie stars, a crop that also included Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren, groomed during the waning days of the old studio system. She signed a seven-year contract with MGM, but they didn’t seem to know what to do with her. Her best movie roles came by way of other studios on loan outs.

Mogambo (1953), was her biggest role at this point in her career. She played opposite two undisputed superstars: Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. But she almost didn’t get that role. Gene Tierney (who starred with Gable in Never Let Me Go that same year) was director John Ford’s (and MGM’s) first choice. Due to her developing mental illness, Tierney had to drop out. It was then that Kelly was given the role of the unfaithful wife who falls for Gable’s character, but loses him in the end. For this role, Kelly received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. But even with the nomination, Kelly’s stardom wasn’t a sure thing.

The New York Times’s movie critic, Bosley Crowther gave a rather lukewarm review of Mogambo, waiting until the very last paragraph (first sentence of a two-sentence paragraph at that) to even mention Kelly. That was all about to change; the public and Crowther would soon take notice.

Kelly gets noticed

In 1953, Alfred Hitchcock was searching for a female lead for a film he was directing at Warner Bros., Dial M for Murder. While looking for an actress to cast, he reviewed an old screen test Kelly had done at Twentieth Century Fox and watched Mogambo. While Hitchcock thought Kelly was stiff, if not a bit wooden, he saw that she had potential. Almost immediately, the master of suspense started to mold Kelly into the prototypical cool Hitchcock blond. When Dial M for Murder was released, the reviews were good, some even thinking it better than the stage play upon which it was based. This time, Crowther mentioned Kelly in the sixth paragraph (out of seven) of his review saying, “Grace Kelly does a nice job of acting the wife's bewilderment, terror and grief.” From the likes of Crowther, that was absolutely glowing praise.

Edie Doyle or Lisa Fremont?

Almost on the back of filming Dial M for Murder, Hitchcock requested Kelly’s services again for Rear Window. At the time the role of Lisa Carol Fremont was offered to her, Kelly was considering the role of Edie Doyle for On the Waterfront,the role that eventually went to Eva Marie Saint. Kelly loved the Rear Window script and decided she'd rather portray a model from Manhattan than a middle-class girl from New Jersey. She could not have imagined how fortuitous a choice that would be.

Careful collaborations
Once again, Hitchcock took complete control of Kelly’s image and introduced her to screenwriter, John Michael Hayes. As Hayes would state in an interview before his death in 2008, Hitchcock asked him to get to know Kelly and study her speech patterns. Hayes was instructed to write dialogue that would seem natural coming out of Kelly’s mouth. Hitchcock thought (and rightly so) that if Kelly collaborated with Hayes on some of her dialogue, her characterization would avoid the stiffness of some of her earlier roles. The fact that Hayes’s wife was a former model made him the perfect person to write for Kelly.

Another person Hitchcock introduced to Kelly was renowned costume designer Edith Head. Under Hitchcock’s direction, Head went to work on creating a wardrobe that would be true to Kelly’s character as well as showcase her incredible beauty. With Kelly, Head had a clean canvas upon which she could create a look that was stylish, chic, and deceptively simple in design.

When Rear Window opened at the Rivoli in August of 1954, 2,000 people attended the premier, a benefit for the American-Korean Foundation. It was an immediate commercial and critical success and people took notice of Grace Kelly in what would become an iconic role for the then 25-year-old actress.

Five movies in one year!

In 1954, moviegoers couldn’t avoid Grace Kelly. That year, she had no fewer than five films in release: Dial M for Murder (May), Rear Window (August), The Country Girl, The Bridges at Toko-ri, and Green Fire (December). For her performance in The Country Girl, she was awarded the Best Actress Academy Award for 1955. The competition was unusually stiff that year, with Kelly besting Dorothy Dandridge (Carmen Jones), Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession), Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina), and Judy Garland (A Star is Born). Garland was the sentimental and the odds-on favorite, so Kelly’s win was a bit of a shock to many. Supposedly, six votes separated the two stars.

A star is born and then she's gone

As quickly as Kelly’s star rose, so did her departure from Hollywood. She would have one film released in 1955, To Catch a Thief, again working with Hitchcock and Edith Head. In 1956, she would have two films in release, The Swan and High Society, which would be her last. On April 19, 1956, Kelly wed Prince Rainier of Monaco. Rumors of a comeback never materialized. Grace Kelly remained Princess Grace of Monaco until her traffic death in a car accident on September 14, 1982. She was 52 years old.