The Old Maid
Encyclopedia
The Old Maid is a 1939
American
drama film
directed by Edmund Goulding
. The screenplay by Casey Robinson
is based on the 1935 Pulitzer Prize
-winning play of the same title
by Zoë Akins
, which was adapted from the 1924 Edith Wharton
novella The Old Maid: the fifties (taken from the collection of novellas Old New York).
, the story focuses on Charlotte Lovell and her cousin Delia, whose wedding day is disrupted when former fiance Clem Spender returns following a two-year absence. Delia proceeds to marry Jim Ralston, and Charlotte comforts Clem, who enlists in the Union Army
and is killed in battle. Shortly after his death, Charlotte discovers she is pregnant with Clem's child, and in order to escape the stigma of an illegitimate child, she journeys to the West to have her baby, a daughter she names Clementina.
Following the end of the war, Charlotte and Tina relocate to Philadelphia, where Charlotte opens an orphanage
. Delia is the mother of two children, and Charlotte is engaged to marry Joe Ralston, her cousin's brother-in-law. On her wedding day, Charlotte tells Delia that Tina is her child by Clem, and Delia stops Joe from marrying Charlotte by telling him she is in poor health. The cousins become estranged, but when Jim is killed in a horseriding accident, Delia invites Charlotte and Tina to move in with her and her children. Tina, unaware Charlotte is her birth mother, assumes the role of Delia's daughter and calls Charlotte her aunt.
Fifteen years pass, and Tina is engaged to wealthy Lanning Halsey. Still unaware Charlotte is her mother, she begins to resent what she considers her interference in her life, and when Delia offers to formally adopt Tina in order to provide her with a reputable name and a prominent position in society, she gladly accepts. Charlotte intends to tell Tina the truth before the wedding but finds herself unable to do so.
Charlotte confronts Delia and reveals she resents the fact both Clem and Tina loved Delia more than they did her. Delia tells Tina Charlotte sacrificed her happiness by refusing to marry a man who did not want to raise Tina as his own, and she urges her to kiss Charlotte last when she prepares to depart with her new husband. Tina complies, and her gesture leaves Charlotte happy and willing to share the rest of her life with Delia as a friend rather than an adversary.
reported Ernst Lubitsch
had purchased the screen rights to the Zoe Akins play and intended to cast Judith Anderson
and Helen Menken
in a film released by Paramount Pictures
, but nothing came of the project. According to The Hollywood Reporter
, Warner Bros.
bought the rights from Paramount in January 1939.
Humphrey Bogart
originally was cast as Clem Spender, but studio head Jack L. Warner felt he looked neither heroic nor romantic and had him fired after two days of filming. Bette Davis
urged director Edmund Goulding and producer Hal B. Wallis
to replace him with George Brent
, who accepted the role despite the fact it was so small.
This was the first film in which Davis had equal screen time with a female co-star. "I was never mad about the part," she recalled in her 1962 autobiography A Lonely Life, and she proposed she play both Charlotte and Delia. Instead, the more colorful role of Delia went to Miriam Hopkins
, with whom Davis had worked in Rochester, New York
when the two were part of George Cukor
's stock company, where Hopkins was the star and Davis the ingenue. Hopkins resented the fact Davis had won the Academy Award for Best Actress
for Jezebel, in which she recreated a role Hopkins had originated on Broadway
, and she also was convinced Davis had had an affair with Anatole Litvak
during her marriage to the director, whom she was in the process of divorcing. As a result, she did everything she could to undermine her co-star's performance. "Miriam is a perfectly charming woman socially," Davis remembered. "Working with her is another story . . . Miriam used and, I must give her credit, knew every trick in the book. I became fascinated watching them appear one by one . . . Keeping my temper took its toll. I went home every night and screamed at everybody." Cinematographer Tony Gaudio
complained that Hopkins kept altering the makeup designed by Perc Westmore
in order to look considerably younger than Davis in the segments in which both were supposed to be aged. Both actresses cited illness for failing to appear on set at various times, and the production fell eleven days behind schedule.
The film's soundtrack includes "When Johnny Comes Marching Home
" by Patrick Gilmore
, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
" by William Steffe
and Julia Ward Howe
, "(I Wish I Was in) Dixie's Land" by Daniel Decatur Emmett
, "Oh My Darling, Clementine
" by Percy Montrose, and "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
" by Stephen Foster
.
The critic for Time
thought the film was "hardly more than the sum total of two good, sometimes brilliant, performances . . . Though the musty setting of The Old Maid is enough to make anyone susceptible to historical hay fever squirm, few will be unimpressed with the skill with which director Edmund Goulding manages his spirited costars. Instead of trying to divide the fat parts between them, he so deals out their histrionic diet that they bank as did Jack Spratt
and his wife, cooperatively."
Variety
called the film "stagey, sombre and generally confusing fare."
released the film as part of the box set The Bette Davis Collection, Volume 3, which also includes All This, and Heaven Too, The Great Lie
, In This Our Life
, Watch on the Rhine
, and Deception.
1939 in film
The year 1939 in motion pictures can be justified as being called the most outstanding one ever, when it comes to the high quality and high attendance at the large set of the best films that premiered in the year .- Events :Motion picture historians and film often rate...
American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Edmund Goulding
Edmund Goulding
Edmund Goulding was a British film writer and director. As an actor early in his career he was one of the 'Ghosts' in the 1922 British made Paramount silent Three Live Ghosts alongside Norman Kerry and Cyril Chadwick. Also in the early 20s he wrote several screenplays for star Mae Murray and...
. The screenplay by Casey Robinson
Casey Robinson
Casey Robinson was an American producer and director of mostly B movies and a screenwriter responsible for some of Bette Davis' most revered films...
is based on the 1935 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
-winning play of the same title
The Old Maid (play)
The Old Maid is a 1935 play adapted by American playwright Zoe Akins from Edith Wharton's 1925 novel, The Mother's Recompense.The Irish dramatist Arthur Murphy also wrote a play of the same name, which was first produced in 1761.-External links:...
by Zoë Akins
Zoe Akins
Zoë Akins was an American playwright, poet, and author.- Early years :Born in Humansville, Missouri, Akins was educated in Illinois and later in St. Louis, where she began her writing career...
, which was adapted from the 1924 Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
novella The Old Maid: the fifties (taken from the collection of novellas Old New York).
Plot
Set during the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the story focuses on Charlotte Lovell and her cousin Delia, whose wedding day is disrupted when former fiance Clem Spender returns following a two-year absence. Delia proceeds to marry Jim Ralston, and Charlotte comforts Clem, who enlists in the Union Army
Union Army
The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...
and is killed in battle. Shortly after his death, Charlotte discovers she is pregnant with Clem's child, and in order to escape the stigma of an illegitimate child, she journeys to the West to have her baby, a daughter she names Clementina.
Following the end of the war, Charlotte and Tina relocate to Philadelphia, where Charlotte opens an orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
. Delia is the mother of two children, and Charlotte is engaged to marry Joe Ralston, her cousin's brother-in-law. On her wedding day, Charlotte tells Delia that Tina is her child by Clem, and Delia stops Joe from marrying Charlotte by telling him she is in poor health. The cousins become estranged, but when Jim is killed in a horseriding accident, Delia invites Charlotte and Tina to move in with her and her children. Tina, unaware Charlotte is her birth mother, assumes the role of Delia's daughter and calls Charlotte her aunt.
Fifteen years pass, and Tina is engaged to wealthy Lanning Halsey. Still unaware Charlotte is her mother, she begins to resent what she considers her interference in her life, and when Delia offers to formally adopt Tina in order to provide her with a reputable name and a prominent position in society, she gladly accepts. Charlotte intends to tell Tina the truth before the wedding but finds herself unable to do so.
Charlotte confronts Delia and reveals she resents the fact both Clem and Tina loved Delia more than they did her. Delia tells Tina Charlotte sacrificed her happiness by refusing to marry a man who did not want to raise Tina as his own, and she urges her to kiss Charlotte last when she prepares to depart with her new husband. Tina complies, and her gesture leaves Charlotte happy and willing to share the rest of her life with Delia as a friend rather than an adversary.
Production
In 1935, the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
reported Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
had purchased the screen rights to the Zoe Akins play and intended to cast Judith Anderson
Judith Anderson
Dame Judith Anderson, AC, DBE was an Australian-born American-based actress of stage, film and television. She won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award.-Early life:...
and Helen Menken
Helen Menken
Helen Menken was an American actress, born Helen Meinken to a German-French father, Frederick Meinken, and an Irish-born mother, Mary Madden....
in a film released by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, but nothing came of the project. According to The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
bought the rights from Paramount in January 1939.
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
originally was cast as Clem Spender, but studio head Jack L. Warner felt he looked neither heroic nor romantic and had him fired after two days of filming. Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
urged director Edmund Goulding and producer Hal B. Wallis
Hal B. Wallis
Hal B. Wallis was an American film producer.-Career:Harold Brent Wallis was born in Chicago in 1898. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros...
to replace him with George Brent
George Brent
George Brent was an Irish film and television actor in American cinema.-Early life:He was born George Brendan Nolan in Raharabeg, County Roscommon on the opposite bank of the River Shannon from the town of Shannonbridge, County Offaly, Ireland, the son of a British Army officer.During the Irish...
, who accepted the role despite the fact it was so small.
This was the first film in which Davis had equal screen time with a female co-star. "I was never mad about the part," she recalled in her 1962 autobiography A Lonely Life, and she proposed she play both Charlotte and Delia. Instead, the more colorful role of Delia went to Miriam Hopkins
Miriam Hopkins
Ellen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border...
, with whom Davis had worked in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
when the two were part of George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
's stock company, where Hopkins was the star and Davis the ingenue. Hopkins resented the fact Davis had won the Academy Award for Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for Jezebel, in which she recreated a role Hopkins had originated on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, and she also was convinced Davis had had an affair with Anatole Litvak
Anatole Litvak
Anatole Litvak was a Ukrainian-born filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in a various countries and languages...
during her marriage to the director, whom she was in the process of divorcing. As a result, she did everything she could to undermine her co-star's performance. "Miriam is a perfectly charming woman socially," Davis remembered. "Working with her is another story . . . Miriam used and, I must give her credit, knew every trick in the book. I became fascinated watching them appear one by one . . . Keeping my temper took its toll. I went home every night and screamed at everybody." Cinematographer Tony Gaudio
Tony Gaudio
Tony Gaudio was an Italian American cinematographer and the first to create a montage sequence for a film....
complained that Hopkins kept altering the makeup designed by Perc Westmore
Perc Westmore
Percival Harry Westmore was a prominent member of the Westmore family of Hollywood make-up artists.-Partial filmography:*The Man Who Played God*The Roaring Twenties...
in order to look considerably younger than Davis in the segments in which both were supposed to be aged. Both actresses cited illness for failing to appear on set at various times, and the production fell eleven days behind schedule.
The film's soundtrack includes "When Johnny Comes Marching Home
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
"When Johnny Comes Marching Home" is a popular song of the American Civil War that expressed people's longing for the return of their friends and relatives who were fighting in the war.-Origins:...
" by Patrick Gilmore
Patrick Gilmore
Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was an Irish-born composer and bandmaster who lived and worked in the United States after 1848. Whilst serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, Gilmore wrote the lyrics to the song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", the tune he took from an old Irish antiwar folk...
, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a hymn by American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the song "John Brown's Body". Howe's more famous lyrics were written in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It became popular during the American Civil War...
" by William Steffe
William Steffe
William Steffe collected and edited a camp-meeting song with the traditional "Glory Hallelujah" refrain, in about 1856. It opened with "Say, brothers, will you meet us / on Canaan's happy shore?" The tune became widely known....
and Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".-Biography:...
, "(I Wish I Was in) Dixie's Land" by Daniel Decatur Emmett
Dan Emmett
Daniel Decatur "Dan" Emmett was an American songwriter and entertainer, founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition.-Biography:...
, "Oh My Darling, Clementine
Oh My Darling, Clementine
Oh My Darling, Clementine is an American western folk ballad usually credited to Percy Montrose , although it is sometimes credited to Barker Bradford. The song is believed to have been based on another song called Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden by H. S...
" by Percy Montrose, and "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair
"Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster . It was published by Firth, Pond & Co. of New York in 1854. Foster wrote the song with his wife Jane McDowell in mind. "Jeanie" was a notorious beneficiary of the ASCAP boycott of 1941...
" by Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster
Stephen Collins Foster , known as the "father of American music", was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century...
.
Cast
- Bette DavisBette DavisRuth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
..... Charlotte Lovell - Miriam HopkinsMiriam HopkinsEllen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border...
..... Delia Lovell Ralston - Jane BryanJane BryanJane Bryan was an American actress who was being prepared by the Warner Bros. studio to become one of their leading ladies until she married a drugstore magnate in 1940 and retired....
..... Clementina - Donald CrispDonald CrispDonald Crisp was an English film actor. He was also an early motion picture producer, director and screenwriter...
..... Dr. Lanskell - Louise FazendaLouise FazendaLouise Fazenda was an American film actress, appearing chiefly in silent comedy films.-Early life:Of Portuguese ancestry, she was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Her father, Joseph Fazenda, was a merchandise broker. After moving west Louise attended Los Angeles High School and St. Mary's Convent...
..... Dora - James StephensonJames StephensonJames Stephenson was a British actor.-Career:British stage actor James Stephenson made his film debut in 1937 at the age of 48 with parts in four films...
..... Jim Ralston - Jerome CowanJerome CowanJerome Palmer Cowan was an American film and television actor. At eighteen he joined a travelling stock company, shortly afterwards enlisting in the navy in World War I. After the war he returned to the stage and became a vaudeville headliner, then gained success on the New York stage...
..... Joseph Ralston - George BrentGeorge BrentGeorge Brent was an Irish film and television actor in American cinema.-Early life:He was born George Brendan Nolan in Raharabeg, County Roscommon on the opposite bank of the River Shannon from the town of Shannonbridge, County Offaly, Ireland, the son of a British Army officer.During the Irish...
..... Clem Spender - William LundiganWilliam LundiganWilliam Lundigan was an American film actor. His films include Dodge City , The Fighting 69th , The Sea Hawk , Santa Fe Trail , Dishonored Lady , Pinky , Love Nest with Marilyn Monroe, The House on Telegraph Hill , I'd Climb the Highest Mountain and Inferno...
..... Lanning Halsey - Cecilia LoftusCecilia LoftusCecilia "Cissie" or "Cissy" Loftus was a Scottish actress, singer, mimic, vaudevillian and music hall performer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.-Family:...
..... Grandmother Henrietta Lovell - William HopperWilliam HopperWilliam Hopper, born DeWolf Hopper, Jr. was an American actor. He is best-remembered for playing Paul Drake on television's Perry Mason.-Early life:...
..... John Ward
Critical reception
Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times observed, "It probably is not a good motion picture, in the strict cinematic sense, professing as it does such strict allegiance to its theatrical parent; unquestionably it is as dated as the Victorian morals code which scourges its heroine through eight or nine reels; in the rudest terminology, it is a tear-jerker. But there can be no doubt about its popularity. It should go on and on. For a bad play, it makes a surprisingly good drama; or, if you feel that away about it, for a good play it fits surprisingly well on the screen . . . Scenically, it is a trifle on the static side, which could not be avoided altogether. But dramatically it is vital, engrossing and a little terrifying . . . As the old maid, Miss Davis has given a poignant and wise performance, hard and austere of surface, yet communicating through it the deep tenderness, the hidden anguish of the heart-broken mother. Miss Hopkins's Delia is a less certain characterization, gentler than Miss Akins had contrived her, suggesting but seldom the malignance lurking beneath a charming manner."The critic for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
thought the film was "hardly more than the sum total of two good, sometimes brilliant, performances . . . Though the musty setting of The Old Maid is enough to make anyone susceptible to historical hay fever squirm, few will be unimpressed with the skill with which director Edmund Goulding manages his spirited costars. Instead of trying to divide the fat parts between them, he so deals out their histrionic diet that they bank as did Jack Spratt
Jack Spratt
Jack Spratt is the protagonist in a series of alternate history science fiction fantasy novels by Jasper Fforde. He is the same character from the English nursery rhyme. As revealed in The Big Over Easy, for example, he hates eating fat, and was once married to a woman who ate nothing else .Spratt...
and his wife, cooperatively."
Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
called the film "stagey, sombre and generally confusing fare."
DVD release
On April 1, 2008, Warner Home VideoWarner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
released the film as part of the box set The Bette Davis Collection, Volume 3, which also includes All This, and Heaven Too, The Great Lie
The Great Lie
The Great Lie is a 1941 American drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Bette Davis, George Brent, and Mary Astor. The screenplay by Lenore J...
, In This Our Life
In This Our Life
In This Our Life is a 1942 American drama film, the second to be directed by John Huston. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1941 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Ellen Glasgow. The cast included the established stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland as sisters and...
, Watch on the Rhine
Watch on the Rhine
Watch on the Rhine is a 1943 American drama film directed by Herman Shumlin. The screenplay by Dashiell Hammett is based on the 1941 play of the same title by Lillian Hellman.-Plot:...
, and Deception.