Laurence Olivier in Rebecca

richly and beautifully filmed.

This is one of my all-time favorite movies. But it was "Danny" who stole the film.

Newest Criterion is stunning

Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper

I love his fake gray(ing) hair.

Looks good with his smooth young skin and cleft chin.

Yes, OP, Olivier was divine in this film. Was there anyone else of note in it? Oh, yes - Judith Anderson and George Sanders were also in it. At my age, the memory does falter at times.

I read that Vivien Leigh tested for this but Selznick didn't think she would be believable as a shrinking violet.

Wretched stuff, gimme a chocolate quick!

goodbye my dear, and 'goodluck'!

He's very handsome in this, but he seems constipated in the part.

I think Olivier looked better as Heathcliff.

Leigh's and several other screen tests are on youtube, I believe. Loretta Young and Margaret Sullavan are two of them.

Selznick and his peeps were really spectacularly wise when it came to casting. Of course, Hitchcock was the director but I think Selznick as producer was more instrumental in the casting of Joan Fontaine.

This is the movie that really put Joan Fontaine on the map and she received her first Oscar nomination for Rebecca.

It's a standard 1930s smoking jacket. That's what they looked like, OP. Nothing odd about it.

I thought the right lapel was notched (and the other, not) but now I've looked closer and its just a shadow on the satin.

I love his fluttery eyes in this gif.

So dramatic.

Even his nails and fingers are gorgeous.

Hitchcock wanted the very young (sixteen years old at the time!) Anne Baxter to play the 2nd Mrs. de Winter. Selznick prevailed on him to choose Fontaine instead.

Fontaine was really the right choice--you can see it on the audition reels on the Criterion edition. Baxter is quite fine (she's not nearly so mannered as she became a few years later for films like "The Razor's Edge" and "All About Eve"), but she's just too young. The audition reels for the other actresses are very revealing: Vivien Leigh plays the part almost exactly like she played Scarlett O'Hara, which is completely wrong for the part--she's too kittenish and sexy. Margaret Sullavan, whom i thought would have been great for the role, comes across as too neurotic. Weirdly and unexpectedly, the best performance by far on the audition reels (maybe even better than Fontaine's) is Loretta Young's--she's deeply moving. But she was too beautiful to have played the part--no one would ever believe she would feel in anyone else's shadow.

Director Alfred Hitchcock and Laurence Olivier on the set of Rebecca.

My favorite moment in the whole movie is at r14's clip, when she comes down the Manderley staircase at the grand ball dressed as Maxim's ancestor. She is so proud of herself, and she even rehearses for a moment (when no one can see her) how she'll respond after Maxim sees her in the dress. She imagines he'll be delighted rather than horrified, of course, since she doesn't know Rebecca wore the same costume to the ball a few years before.

Robert Webb does a great Laurence Olivier impression when Mitchell & Webb did their hilarious send-up of "Rebecca." but even can't steal the show from David Mitchell's Mrs. Danvers...

And here is the wardrobe test for all of the other dresses they tried on Fontaine, who seems overwhelmed by most of them (though I guess that was the point to a degree....).

OP--I just watched "Suspicion" last night and was thinking how I'd like to watch "Rebecca" again. Cary Grant calling her "Monkey Face" through the whole movie was some relentless negging. (I named a cat Monkey Face.)

R23---YES! One of the funniest sketches M & W did. I laugh and laugh!

Did they use a wire to pull the hat off her head when she runs back down the hall after being hisssed at by Olivier to go change from the ball gown.

It seems too perfect to happen on it’s own.

Anyone else think that Joan Fontaine played her roles in Rebecca and Suspicion exactly the same? I was watching "The Heiress" the other night on TCM and was really impressed how sister Olivia played a similar role, but really fleshed it out.

r27, you really can't compare the great master Henry James to Daphne du Maurier (the Jacqueline Susann of her time) and whoever wrote that twaddle that became Suspicion.

Olivier is very handsome, and he does fine in the part, but it really is nothing special. The film belongs to Fontaine and of course, the amazing Dame Judith.

Never liked Joan Fontaine.

I never thought he was handsome and never understood why he was supposed to be such a brilliant actor.

He was gay, right?

Olivier looks and acts like a flaming Queen in this.

I actually think this is one of Olivier's lesser performances, and one of Fontaine's few that are excellent.

Fontaine is excellent in this. It's a role that easily could have veered into parody but she skirts it expertly. Have to wonder how much of it was managed by Hitchcock.

Fontaine really does a fantastic job as a painfully awkward young girl. For such a beautiful woman it's hard to turn into a thoroughgoing mouse. It must have helped her performance that Olivier was an ass to her during the shoot. I've also read that Hitchcock treated her with disdain.

When I read the book, I pictured Gale Sondergaard as Rebecca. She would have been perfect if her character was actually in the film.

Wow what a dreamboat.

She was, R37.

She usually played the beautiful villainess. My first experience of her was in The Road to Rio. I love that movie.

Daphne du Maurier was NOT "the Jacqueline Susann of her time". She was a popular writer, but she was a very fine writer all the same; Susann was a popular but terrible writer.

Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, and The House on the Strand are all very good books, and Don't Look Now is a superb novella.

Okay, here's Vivien Leigh's screen test for "Rebecca", which took me all of ten seconds to find, you slackers!

IMHO it's the worst acting I've ever seen from her, it's obvious that Leigh had no idea what insecurity felt like, and had never paid a moment's attention to any timid mousy girls in her life. She doesn't have any idea what it felt like to be out of one's depth.

Vivien would be well cast as Rebecca!

Dramatic Expressionist lighting:

Publicity shot for the film:

Rebecca is the kind of movie that makes you fall in love with Hollywood. The beauty and glamour of the cast, the gorgeous b+w photography, the sets, costumes etc. It's like a dream, a beautiful dream.

I have no first name!

I would imagine the main reason Vivien Leigh wasn't cast is the public was still taking her in and and adoring her as Scarlett O'Hara and Selznick felt it would confuse them to see their heroine playing such a different kind of heroine while GWTW was still very much raking in millions.

The second Mrs. DeWinter would have been named Dora, Elsie, Avril, or June.

^ Rebecca starting filming before GWTW was even released. Selznick was pissed that Leigh and Olivier were being so flagrant about their affair, which put his box office at risk. He also knew that Leigh wasn't really interested in the film Rebecca, she just wanted to work with Olivier. He also refused to let her join Olivier in Pride and Prejudice and wouldn't let Olivier join Waterloo Bridge. Leigh and Olivier had to move to theater to work together again.

Vivien Leigh would have been a huge improvement over Greer Garson in Pride and Prejudice. That was a missed opportunity IMHO.

r49, did Leigh and Olivier have contracts with Selznick? Pride and Prejudice and Waterloo Bridge were MGM productions, so how could Selznick influence the casting?

Selznick was notorious for putting people under contract, and "loaning" them to other studios for $$$$ while he obsessively faffed around getting his own projects off the ground.

And, contract or not, Selznick had enormous sway over at MGM.

"The son-in-law always rises."

R51, Leigh did.

Vivian would have been far better than Greer Garson - was it true that they had to change the gowns to a later era because Garson wouldn't look good in an Empire waistline?

Joan was wonderful in the part but I still prefer Joanna David's TV portrayal-although Jeremy Brett played it far too stiff.

I don't know what film you people have been watching. Garson was excellent in Pride and Prejudice.

Joan Fontaine says in an interview that lots of other people tested for Rebecca including Rita Hayworth.

Rebecca was hot property and tons of actresses wanted that kind of exposure. Hitchcock's first Hollywood movie, Olivier in a lead role, from a huge bestseller book, guaranteed Oscar attention (although it only won Best Picture). The search for the female lead resembled the more recent one for The Hunger Games.

I think Hitchcock also said testing so many ladies, most of whim he knew to be wrong for the part, was for publicity. He knew he wanted Fontaine pretty early.

... whom...

Garson at 36 was more than 10 years too old for P&P. Olivier was perfect, OTH.

Leigh was no more fit to play Elizabeth Bennett than Kiera Knightley. Both project the wrong temperament for that role. Not that I like Garson much, since she literally oozes condescension.

I love Fontaine in this. She was so good and vulnerable. Olivier was in a twaddle because this was the second film that they refused to cast him opposite his lady love Viv. The first was WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Though in hindsight, after seeing the beautiful but slightly simpering Merle Oberon in the part, Vivian may have been the better choice. But Joan was so vulnerable. When Olivier treated her so coldly on the set, she ran to Hitchcock complaining. He told that not only did Lawrence hate her, but the entire cast disliked her as well. It made her a nervous wreck, but he got the performance out of her that he wanted.

Her other good performances were in, in my opinion, THE CONSTANT NYMPH and the underrated LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. The latter is a particularly romantic and sad film, but Louis Jourdan was fucking beautiful in it as the callous musician Joan falls in love with and is impregnated by.

I don’t get the fuss about Greer Garson. Terribly mannered and twee actress. And those nostrils.

I thoroughly dislike the Greer Garson version of "Pride and Prejudice". Garson is too old and to smug for the role, Olivier was too much of a jerk, and the look of the film was so fucking dollhouse twee that it was impossible to feel anything for the characters.

It should have been more like "Rebecca", which feels like a film about real people in a setting that seems to border on fantasy, but is real and brings drama with it.

R36 The thought of Gale Sondergaard and Judith Anderson sharing scenes together is riveting, although Sondergaard apparently was mentioned for Mrs. Danvers, and turned it down, having played a similarly black clad housekeeper in "The Cat and the Canary". even though she'd do variations of that part again.

The two best female villains of 1940: Judith in "Rebecca", and Gale in several films, including "The Letter" & "The Blue Bird".

The Mrs. Danvers look was catchy for all the great female villains of the golden age of Hollywood.

Margaret Hamilton in "13 Ghosts".

In Hitchcock's original script for the film, the 2nd Mrs. de Winter was called "Daphne." Selznick had to explain to Hitchock that the audience would want her not to have a first name (as in the book).

I wonder if Sister Olivia was not allowed by her Warners contract to even audition for Rebecca, especially since the studio had so generously rented her out to Selznick for GWTW? She certainly would have been great and logical casting for the Second Mrs. de Wynter.

And if that wasn't a major reason for Olivia to bring her lawsuit against Warners and long-time contracts to the courts?

R4 Florence Bates is one of my absolute favorite character actresses of all times. Fortunately, TCM has made her more famous (I believe she was one of their "what a character!" profiles), so she is more famous than she would have been had old movies been stuck on local late night channels. My favorites of hers are "Love Crazy", "Heaven Can Wait", "The Diary of a Chambermaid" (with Judith Anderson), "The Brasher Dubloon", "Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven" (as a delightful con-artist), and "Lullaby of Broadway", plus SO many others.

Here with William Powell (in drag) & Myrna Loy in "Love Crazy".

Joan was the best choice because to play the second wife.

The second wife was a bit of a mouse. And Joan had a mouse-shaped head.

(I just think it's pity that the divine Larry was made to look so old in his role supporting the mouse)

R66 was Gale the villain in The Letter?

R70 - Do you like her in A Letter to Three Wives?

R69 - According to memos, Selznick wanted de Havilland to play the female lead, but was faced with insurmountable problems: She was already committed to Goldwyn for Raffles , Warner Bros. was being uncooperative about lending her out, she was reluctant to accept the part because her sister, Joan Fontaine, was also under consideration and her agent was Leland Hayward who was promoting his wife, Margaret Sullavan, for the role.

Yeah, Fontaine was just right, she was pretty and sweet enough to attract a man, but so good at being frightened and out of her depth!

Max DeWinter was supposed to be a forty-plus and old for his years, they might have considered Ronald Colman for the role. But Colman was thoroughly good-natured and DeWinter could be horrible if pushed in the wrong direction, Olivier was too young for the role but he was posh-British, and could bring a hard mean edge to a role, as Colman never did.

Selznick attempted to get Colman for the male lead but the actor put off accepting the part because he was afraid that the picture would be a "woman starring vehicle" and because of the murder angle,

Hey, I second-guessed Hitchcock and Selznick, decades after the fact!

I can believe Colman turned down the role, he was seen as a romantic figure and was beloved by millions of women all over the world, and the role of DeWinter would not have been good for his career.

Florence Bates was actually Hitchcock's banker when he moved to America, and he thought she was so striking an individual that he asked her to play Mrs. Van Hopper. It led to a second career for her in later life as a character actress.

[quote] (I just think it's pity that the divine Larry

Mary!

Could Max DeWinter have been gay, or subtly intended to be gay?

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Because according to Max (for what that's worth), the first DeWinter apparently told him right after the wedding that they were going to lead separate lives and they weren't going to have sex and she was going to fuck around, and he was going to put up because she'd be discrete and make sure there wouldn't be any of the scandal he feared. Now no woman would expect a straight man to put up with that sort of behavior, but that's exactly the sort of "arrangement" a gay aristocrat would have made with his wife!

And for the second Mrs. DeWinter, he picks a sweet naïve virgin, who looks fertile and who won't screw around, and who has no idea what sort of things bored aristocrats get up to. And who accepts separate bedrooms during the honeymoon as normal. You tell me... does that add up to a closeted gay hero?

R77 1. Colman was right in turning down the role of Max. Max is definitely the supporting actor to 'Daphne'.

2. Hitchcock also wanted Colman for 'Paradine Case' but again was forced to use a Selznick contract-player wearing unconvincing fake make-up.

3. Have you noticed that Daphne du Maurier twice used Biblical names for her two biggest star characters 'Rebecca' and 'My Cousin Rachel'.?

R78, I'm curious where you heard that Florence Bates was Hitchcock's banker. She was a fascinating and multifaceted woman, but I don't think she was ever a banker. She'd become an actress by the time she met Hitchcock.

Does anyone reading r80s SPOILERS still think Du Maurier wasn't a forerunner to Jacqueline Susann?

I read My Cousin Rachel last fall and found it total hokum. I personally think the film of Rebecca is what gives the novel its "masterpiece" status.

R83 I agree Du Maurier is for women only.

The plot for Rebecca is a re-working of 'Jane Eyre'.

1. Mousey second wife. 2. Broody husband. 3. Fascinating first wife. 4. Burning down the house.

I think that Joan was even better in the aforementioned "Letter from an Unknown Woman". She was a heartbreaking nymph in that film and was one of the few actresses who could get away with playing younger than she was. She was totally believable as a thirteen year old girl who falls for the sophisticated Louis Jourdan. She and her then husband William Dozier, produced it. You can watch it here. It really is a great romantic film.

Maybe he meant Bates was Hitchcock's baker, not banker. From Wiki: In 1929, following the stock market crash and the death of her sister, Florence married a wealthy businessman, William F. Jacoby. When he lost his fortune, the couple moved to Los Angeles and opened a bakery, which proved a successful venture.

Datalounge ruined Jourdan for me with the factoid that he had putrid breath.

Jourdan was pretty until he reached 30. Hitchcock thought he was too pretty and effeminately soft for 'Paradine'

Unfortunately Jourdan lost his looks when his head turned into small cube. And he was incapable of getting the intonation right in Frederick Loewe's lyrics.

Florence Bates also was an attorney, the first woman to pass the bar in Florida. According to various biographies of her, she was in an extremely happy marriage, and never got over her husband's death. She continued to work and was quite loved on the set, and even though her performances on TV shows like "I Love Lucy" and "Our Miss Brooks" were well regarded, she wasn't as happy just going to work, and basically died out of extreme grief.

It's obvious that she was quite aware that she would be typecast because of her matronly looks and decided to play that part to the hilt. In about a dozen of her films, it is obvious that the writers created stronger parts for her to show her amazing comic abilities. In that sense, she reminds me of Margaret Hamilton who knew that she would be cast as the hatchet-faced spinster and decided that since her personality was nothing like that, she would make it seem that she was giving the finger to that sort of character, just as Florence did with the high society matrons she probably thought were insufferable. It seems that both actresses like to see those types of characters get their comeuppance.

R89 I meant Texas, not Florida. No idea how that ended up being typed. Bad fingers! Bad fingers!

Larry was gorgeous at that time.

It's criminal he had to have white dye in his beautiful hair.

R72 Writer of R66 here. I agree, Bette Davis was the villainess, with Gale secondary as "the other woman" who is vindictive but not the main "dark lady", even though her mysterious demeaner gives off dark intentions, especially with absolutely no dialogue.

As Gale was regal but not quite evil in "The Mark of Zorro", I single her out for one of the top villain roles in "The Blue Bird", with Judith Anderson my favorite villainess of the year for "Rebecca", and Blanche Yurka in "Queen of the Mob", Bette Davis ("The Letter"), Barbara O'Neil ("All This & Heaven Too") and Ethel Griffies ("Anne of Windy Poplars") as other contenders that I could think of off hand.

The only scene in this with Laurence Olivier I found rather clumsy was actually the opening after the narration where Laurence awkwardly tries to get rid of Joan Fontaine after she thinks he's going to jump off the cliff. The dialogue is just too abrupt and awkward, but fortunately the next two and a half hours of the film is far more brilliant. There is something about the way he dismisses her that nearly makes me dislike him and almost wish he'd just jump. But then if he did, we'd have no story!

Hitchcock said the story was 100 minutes long but prolix Selznick insisted on two and a half hours.

I'm the one who somewhat hijacked this by bringing Gale Sondergaard into the mix. Perhaps she needs her own thread.

Gale has a nice small part in East Side, West Side.

Manderley:

Enough help?

It must be said the Gale was also the first actress to win an Oscar in the Featured category in Anthony Adverse in 1936.

Sadly, Florence Bates (banker, baker, lawyer, actress....is there anything she couldn't do?) never played a character with even enough screen time to be nominated in the Featured Actress category. I'm kidding....I love her, too!

Florence made the most out of her "Rebecca" part, stomping her cigarette out in her cold cream and demanding another chocolate because her cold medication tasted horrible. The following year, she was a nasty "secret shopper" spying on Charles Coburn in "The Devil & Miss Jones", not realizing that he's the store owner in disguise as a shoe clerk. She has a very funny single scene (in hell!) in "Heaven Can Wait" where Satan himself can't stand to be around her for very long and discreetly pushes the "chute" button that opens the floor beneath after she shows off her gamely legs to Don Ameche. The scream she lets out is delightfully shrill, and I'm sure she enjoyed watching herself being prepared to get fricasseed.

R18 Those hands!

R80---I am not discounting your Maxim DeWinter is Gay theory, but I read tons of this kind of fiction in my early teens. Rich people in big houses always had their own bedrooms and adjoining dressing rooms, and I guess someone came to visit on fuck nights. It's in all the Victorian, Edwardian and more recent times. In "Sudden Fear" (1952) Joan Crawford and Jack Palance have separate bedrooms in her SF mansion. In the early episodes of "Downton Abbey" the daughters and parents commented on how unusual it was that the parents slept in one bed together. It was like it was scandalous even for a married couple, and implied that they were doing it, ALL THE TIME, for pleasure rather than for England.

My take on the first Mrs De Winter was that she was a HOOR, with HOORISH WAYS! She wanted to do her thing and wasn't that into the guy she married, when pretty much the only choice for women was to marry some guy. So Rebecca made the best of a bad situation. Her nastiness to Maxim could be explained if turned out to have been a lousy lay, even without being gay, but that isn't going to be explicitly stated by the offended husband as part of his explanation to his new rube of a wife. It makes me want to reread the novel and see if MdW shows any signs of not being into the ladies for deeper reasons.

R98 I would have loved to have been the Butler in charge of sucking Maxim’s cock.

R103 Was it the butler's job, or Frank Crawley's secret which caused Rebecca to blackmail him?

"It makes me want to reread the novel and see if MdW shows any signs of not being into the ladies for deeper reasons. "

Yeah, R102, now that I've shocked myself by being the very first person on the Datalounge to suggest that an particular attractive man is gay, instead of the fiftieth, I want to re-read the novel and keep my eyes peeled for clues and subtext. Because yes, separate bedrooms were common enough in those days, and frankly I think letting each spouse have a room of their own is great for a relationship, but still.

A gay aristocrat who married a beautiful woman WOULD make an arrangement of that kind with his wife, and we only have Max's belated and guilt-fucked word that the sexless marriage and separate lives was forced on him by an evil wife. I mean SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER how honest is a man going to be, when he's telling his second wife the story of how he killed the first?

In the novel didn't Maxim murder just straight up murder Rebecca? I seem to recall that the film changed this because the production code wouldn't allow it, hence that long monologue of Olivier's where he talks about Rebecca falling and hitting her head.

the picture quality is good but the audio is hollow sounding.

Mrs. Danvers makes this film for me, the look she gives the second Mrs on meeting her is hilarious.

^ Isn't Larry gorgeous?

He's prettier than Erroll.

Why didn't the second Mrs D tell Maxim what Mrs. Danvers did about Rebecca's dress of the portrait? Then he could have fired that bitch.

"In the novel didn't Maxim murder just straight up murder Rebecca?"

Yes, and in the 1930s people just accepted that a woman who fucked around on her husband deserved killing. The second Mrs. DeWinter seems to have accepted it too, she tries to save Max from any legal consequences, and never pauses to think that it's wrong for men to kill their wives.

Of course, we really only have Max's word that Rebecca was a slut or an abusive spouse.

My first introduction to (Dame) Judith Anderson was the Easter perennial showing of "The Ten Commandments", fragile but determined as the elderly slave, Memnet, who knows the truth about Moses' identity and pays for it by confronting Anne Baxter. ("Take care of her, old frog. She'll croak too much!") But a few years before I saw "Rebecca", I got to see two films she made right afterwards at Warner Brothers: the phenomenal "King's Row" and the World War II spy thriller "All Through the Night" where she is the Nazi collaborator with Conrad Veidt, under the respectful image of auction shop hostess in the Manhattan neighborhood of Yorkville which housed many German immigrants during World War II.

Once again wearing a long black dress (this time with sequins!), Anderson is glamorous and formidable, revealing details to the audience in her confrontations with the blackmailed German immigrant Kaaren Verne. The film is action packed and very funny. I watch it at least once a year. Ironically, the film features Jane Darwell who beat her out of the Oscar in 1941 for "The Grapes of Wrath", as well as a shit load of famous faces from TV and stage, including William Demarest, Phil Silvers & Jackie Gleason.

Larry was a beauty.

Judith Anderson's 'uncomely' appearance did stereotype her as a villainess.

(She starred as child-killer 'Medea' in the 50s. My mother was in the audience and thought it the most hammy performance of all time. Worse than Streep.)

So I was intrigued that AFAIK she only appeared in one (mindless) comedy 'Don't Bother to Knock' in 1961.

Larry was beautiful, but only from the waist up. He had horribly spindly legs. A fact that he was quite conscious of.

Anderson also portrayed Barbara Stanwyck’s would be stepmother in the uneven but compelling THE FURIES. In the film’s best scene, she slashes Judith in the face with a pair of scissors. Can’t find the GIF that used to be online...

From my memory it's a very adept slash because Stanwyck throws the scissors and hits Anderson, though the actual cut is off-screen.

R114 Larry's self-consciousness about his legs was evident in 'Hamlet' in '48.

The film was black and white, he wore black tights and the dark castle halls were as artfully-lit as any American-noir.

Wasn't Judith Anderson in the first film version of And Then There Were None? Not the one with Hugh O'Brian.

Did Rebecca marry up, or down?

All Through the Night is one of my favorite movies too! It has every character actor in it except William Frawley I think.

Sorry R108, Larry may have held up longer but Errol has him beat when they were both in their prime.

[quote]The Mrs. Danvers look was catchy for all the great female villains of the golden age of Hollywood.

It even permeated an Abbott & Costello film (The Time of Their Lives)

Heading home from New York City Center where there is a flashing photo board of top livr performances there over the years. One of them was an incredible photo of Dame Judith Anderson in "Medea", bringing it back for a 1949 engagement after touring following the original Broadway run.

R114 Larry's self-consciousness about his legs was partly resolved in around '63.

He said he became obsessive in the gym then because he had to bulk up in order to go shirtless and wear short skirts for 'Othello'.

R115 Barbara is about to throw the scissors!

I think I've just been hit with a pair of scissors!

R122, how was I Married an Angel? I've been hearing very mixed and contrary things.

Meanwhile, here is the famous Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of MacBeth starring Maurice Evans and Dame Judith. They had had a hit with it on Broadway. It's hammy and represents a performance style that's been out of style for decades but I love it.

This is a kinescope of the original 1954 live broadcast. In 1960, they filmed it in color for a new Hallmark broadcast but that version seems to have disappeared from youtube. Evans and Anderson both won Emmies for the 1960 Hallmark film.

^ It seemed very easy for Lady Macbeth to dominate Macbeth in that production. Maurice Evans seemed such a wishy-washy, tubby actor. He was good enough for the U.S. but not for England.

Wiki tells me he never married and he often played the effete King Richard II.

Well I just found the 1960 Hallmark MacBeth film on youtube but it's a wretched, wretched print, both visually and audibly. Probably best to skip it. There used to be a pristine color print there but it's gone.

R118 Yes, she played Emily Brent.

Later she was T'Pau.

the way Judith Anderson reacts to the fire and the way Hitch films her moving across the room=just brilliant

Judith Anderson was in a Broadway revival of Medea in the early 1980s but she played the Nurse to Zoe Caldwell's Medea.

In spite of her harsh demeanor I believe she was a highly beloved and respected actress among her colleagues on Broadway and in Hollywood.

As a child I confused Judith Anderson, Agnes Moorehead and Tallulah Bankhead.

R133 Ironically, I find them very similar in different ways. When I first saw Tallulah on TV, her voice reminded me of Judith's. Apparently, Judith turned down "The Little Foxes" on Broadway because she thought the play to be vulgar. Later, she went to see Tallulah and was overwhelmed by her performance. They are both in "Stage Door Canteen" in separate scenes. Tallulah & Agnes appear together in the 1952 film "Main Street to Broadway" with Agnes as Tallulah's agent. Around the same time, Judith was on Broadway in "John Brown's Body" while Agnes was in "Don Juan in Hell", both plays recorded for Columbia records. They both had Maurice Evans as a leading man, another coincidence.

R127 "I Married an Angel" is probably the least interesting Encores production I've seen. Only two memorable Rodgers & Hart songs, and the production numbers were energetic but generic. It was probably more racy in 1938, and even in 1964 when there were two stock productions, one of whom featured Elaine Stritch as the hero's sister who is the most interesting character of the story. I actually liked the much different 1942 movie version.

R127 (Continuation from R134) Back to Judith & "MacBeth"/Shakespeare; I've been hoping to see the 1960 color version for years, and have found very interesting production shots. I've see the 1954 TV version as well as the 1959 and 1983 filmed productions of "Medea". Ironically, I'm seeing "King Lear" with Glenda Jackson on Saturday. I wish I had been around to see Judith (post-damehood) as Hamlet. I'm excited to see the 1960 version irregardless of the quality. I saw the one man Alan Cumming version (very strange) and the 2013 Lincoln Center production (on Halloween night of all nights!), and had to go home and shower to get the vibe of John Glover's witch off of me.

In regards to "The Furies", it is considered one of two quintessential western film noir, the other being "Pursued" (Warner Brothers, 1947), starring Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright & Judith in one of her very best film performances, certainly as award worthy as her Mrs. Danvers was. "The Furies" is also one of my very favorite westerns, and Barbara and Judith play off each other with such delightful cunning and venom. In a smaller role, Blanche Yurka (another great stage legend, best known to film audiences as the vengeful Madam DeFarge in the Selznick production of "A Tale of Two Cities") plays Gilbert Roland's mama, seeking revenge on Walter Huston.

Being a huge fan of the British "I Claudius", I've always compared Judith's role of Herodias in "Salome" (1953) to Sian Phillip's Livia in the 1975 BBC mini-series. Sian underplays Livia amazingly well, while Judith is calling in her Greek tragedy and Shakespeare background to essay the increasing evil of Herodias. (Glenda Jackson did an interesting take on Herodias in "Salome's Last Dance", the story told Ken Russell style).

R132 I knew the late James Prideaux, a playwright who wrote several TV movies for Katharine Hepburn & a few plays for Julie Harris. He would always go up to Santa Barbara to see Dame Judith and bring me back tales of their visit. One time I gave him a TV print I had gotten of "Blood Money" (1933), and she sent a note back thanking me and saying that actor George Bancroft, pretending to drive, had to be pulled by a driver in another car in front, since he didn't know how to drive himself. Interviews with Nicolas Coster and Louise Sorel of their time together on the soap "Santa Barbara" indicate that she was formidable in certain areas (demanding that they change the character's name from Birdie to Minx), yet passive in others, basically at that stage of her life just grateful to work and wishing that they had given her more to do. Her role, when she was used, was very similar to Big Mama from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and YouTube commentators all agree on one thing: she stole every moment she was on screen.

Judith Anderson's nose = Barbra Streisand's nose

Selznick preferred Anne Baxter to Fontaine in terms of performance but had a problem with her looks. "She has more sincerity than Fontaine, and that she is much more touching, in the words of Cukor, in the scenes. I think she is a shade young, although it is entirely possible that this would turn into an advantage. She is ten times more difficult to photograph than Fontaine, and I think it is a little harder to understand Max de Winter marrying her than it would be for Fontaine."

To think that ANYONE could think Ann Baxter comes off as sincere......

It would have been ironic to see Judith Anderson attempting to get Baxter to jump out of the window considering what Baxter did to her years later in "The Ten Commandments".

Does she kill her by throwing a pair of scissors?

When will some clever dick upload the home-movie of Larry's nude frolic about in that LA pool in 1936?

The footage belonged to Jill Esmond and Tarquin Olivier.

Excessively literal-minded viewer here. Why did Rebecca go to a strange doctor and use a fake name, instead of just going to her regular doctor (I assume she had one)?

Did her remains end up in the family vault? If so, was the dead women mistakenly identified as her reburied elsewhere, or did the bitchy Rebecca have to share her final resting place with a stranger?

"Why did Rebecca go to a strange doctor and use a fake name, instead of just going to her regular doctor (I assume she had one)? "

Presumably she didn't go to the local Manderly-area doctor, because it was the kind of small town where everyone knows everything about everyone, and if she suspected something was seriously wrong she wouldn't want the doctor's secretary telling the whole world that Mrs. DeWinter was terminal. Actually, the normal thing in those days was for the country gentry to go to Harley Street in London for high-quality medical care, is that what she did? I forget the details.

I got to see Glenda Jackson today as King Lear. I wish there was an audio recording of Dame Judith as Hamlet. Glenda sounds exactly like Judas in so many ways, ironic because they both played herodias in different productions of "Salome". Dame Judith is being delightfully remembered nearly 30 years after her death, and I am very happy to see how much she is appreciated.

It is obvious that the character of O'Brien on "Downton Abbey" was written impart to be based on Mrs. Danvers. A storyline involving Maggie Smith came straight from "Mrs. Miniver". Certain characters that Dame Maggie has played are based in part on Mrs. Danvers.

The TV version of Rebecca with Diana Rigg as Mrs. Danvers is quite different than how Judith played her. Faye Dunaway in that version in the Florence Bates role is also quite different. It's a completely different ending and probably more true to the Daphne Du Maurier book where Mrs. Danvers simply just disappears. I'm wondering how the musical version would have been. The marquee was up for the musical twice on Broadasy and both times just came down without warning and with little news past the fact that finances had just fell through.

R144 Judith, not Judas.

Half of the story lines in Downton Abbey were lifted from either Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins.

It’s implied that Rebecca went to a London doctor to conceal her condition not only from her husband, but also Mrs. Danvers. The doctor was not a Harley Street specialist either, but a sort of second- or third-rate practitioner from the looks of his shabby little office, selected by Rebecca to ensure her anonymity. He was played by Leo G. Carroll, who also appeared in NBNW, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, THE PARADINE CASE, SPELLBOUND, and SUSPICION.

DL Eldergays will fondly remember Leo G. Carroll as the eponymous star of TV's TOPPER.

R146 More story lines in 'Downton Abbey' were lifted from 'Gosford Park', 'Neighbours' and the lives of Jessica Mitford and Nancy Mitford.

R113 By some coincidence last night I was talking to an eldergay on the fringes of the theatrical world in some colonial outpost. He set up a scenario that he was an ASM and doorman at the best theatre in town some time ago (I googled afterwards and realised it was 1973). He set up the anecdote but he wouldn't reveal what happened in the dressing room when the ailing knight Sir Michael Redgrave had a visit from Dame Judith.

Off topic. In Spain, a femenine cardigan (like the ones Joane Fontaine wears in the film) is called a "rebeca". The word is included in the dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española.

R151 Can you be sure the Spanish femenine cardigan was named after Joane Fontaine's?

^ You type Spanish.

Have I told that I think Larry is absolutely delicious?

Someone here said Errol was was prettier but he went to seed in just a decade.

R152 Yes. I am a Spaniard, I can confirm that. Rebecca in Spanish is "Rebeca", the title of the movie was translated as "Rebeca". Is common knowledge. There is an interview with Joane Fontaine in Spain, where the journalist ask her if there is another country where this garment is called "rebeca". She knows the story behind the name, and confirms that only in Spain. Very interesting interview. It's on youtube.

R152 Here the entry to the word "rebeca" from the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. The origin is explained

https://dle.rae.es/?id=VJiIP9x

Sorry. This link.

The thing about Maxim de Winter is he's something of a prick - you needed someone of Olivier's to lend him something more. But he nailed the oblivious English aristocrat's short-tempered annoyance with other people's issues perfectly, whilst giving him moody attractiveness. He was divinely handsome at that time, as well.

But really - occasionally you want to reach through the screen and slap him for his obtuseness about the trepidations of his inexperienced young bride.

Glamour Judy......

R158 He treated her like shit, and she was totally submissive. I want to slap both of them. His obssession with his wife loosing her youthfullness is disturbing.

R152, R153. Thank you!