Vera Donovan- The Biggest BITCH Ever?

Not me. Vera was a bitch because was frustrated and bored. My bitchery always has specific, good reasons.

She was a pretty Big BITCH! Vera makes "Delores Claiborne" great!

Quotes

Vera Donovan : Sometimes, Dolores... sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch, to survive... Sometimes, being a bitch, is all a woman has to hang onto.

Vera Donovan : Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why... one is probably dying right now while you're sitting here, weeping... They die, and leave their wives their money... I should know, shouldn't I?... Sometimes they're driving home from their mistress's apartment, and their brakes suddenly fail. An accident, Dolores, can be an unhappy woman's best friend.

Vera Donovan : It's a depressingly masculine world we live in, Dolores.

Vera Donovan : [while Dolores is crying in front of Vera] I insist that all women who have hysterics in my drawing room call me by my Christian name.

Dolores Claiborne : [sobbing] Why? Why'd you do this, Vera?

Vera Donovan : Because I hate the smell of being old.

Vera Donovan : Well, don't look to me, Dolores... All my money is tied up in cash.

Vera Donovan : Don't we have a hair across our ass this morning, Dolores Claiborne?

Vera Donovan : I want my china pig!

Dolores Claiborne : Which one? There's only about two-hundred of 'em.

Vera Donovan : [Vera is ringing a bell] Doloooress!...

Dolores Claiborne : Hell's bells. Look who's up.

Vera Donovan : [to Dolores, who is hanging her sheets to dry] Six pins, Dolores! Six pins, not five!

Vera Donovan : Think what fun you'll have telling all your friends what a bitch Vera Donovan is!

Vera Donovan : Don't you just love the Bossa Nova? I found them in New York and simply had to have them.

My favorite was the hair across our ass line.

Nina Foch interviewed for the role.

OP? If you’re not counting Gregg, then yes.

What am I, chopped liver?

Is she supposed to be Irish or something? Dolores not Vera.

Judy Parfitt should have been nominated for an Oscar.

Dying by falling down stairs is so cartoonish to me.

Judy Parfitt is a long time favorite of mine. Excellent actress.

From way back in the day...

Have you seen The Jewel In The Crown?

R6, the Claiborne name has Anglo-Saxon origins, though some migrated to Ireland.

r11 I meant the accent. I haven't seen this movie in a long time so forgot the details.

Oh, New England accent maybe Maine.

Oh, New England accent - maybe Maine.

Ah ok, thank you R13. I was thinking Bostonian....

Telling bit about class structure was Vera Donovan had more of a received pronunciation common to upper classes from New England states down through Mid-Atlantic. As product of upper classes Ms. Donovan would have had an education that bred any traces of lower class accent out.

OTOH working class Dolores Claiborne like rest of those around like her had a traditional Maine accent. Kathy Bates does a pretty good job, and keeps it up through most of film, but she does lapse in and out at times.

For anyone who hasn't strongly recommend reading actual book "Dolores Claiborne" where Vera Donovan is somewhat more of a sympathetic character.

In film all we know is that Vera Donovan likely killed or arranged her husband's death. For that she grew old and alone in her own private hell relying only upon Dolores Claiborne. Book fleshes things out more thoroughly as to why Ms. Donovan is alone, and that she was in a personal Hell of her own making not long after her husband's death.

When we first meet Vera Donovan there are pictures of her children on table beside that comfy chair she's sitting in while interviewing new maids. But you don't hear about those children in film or even know who they are, there are reasons for this again that are spelled out in book.

For reasons known to them?

oh please, Vera Donovan is a DL goddess

R18

Rather reasons known to Vera Donovan.

One thing I love about DL is the appreciation for Vera Donovan and Dolores Claiborne (the movie).

I've always loved this movie (saw it with my mom) and have never found anybody else, besides my mom, who has seen it and appreciated it.

In retrospect, falling down some stairs seems like a painful way to die. You might even survive it and end up worse than you started.

Thank you for the compliment R21

it might sound cartoonish, but Vera was in so much pain she was looking for anyway she could to die

That's right. I forgot , about 12 years earlier Judy Parfitt played a perhaps even bigger BITCH in The Jewel In The Crown.

DL people, which character was a bigger bitch- Vera Donovan or Mildred Layton?

Vera Donovan likely knew just falling down stairs wouldn't kill her, but counted on devotion and loyalty of Dolores Claiborne to finish job if necessary. The two women shared a common bond of murder already, what was one more?

Again in both book and film if you believe old Hollywood or whatever karma, that evil or at least very bad people must suffer in the end, Vera Donovan got what was coming to her after murdering her spouse, then conspiring to off another.

An accident Dolores, can be an unhappy wife's best friend!

These scene is a master class in acting.

Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hang onto....

Again another master class in acting. Judy Parfitt was robbed, she should have received an Oscar for her performance in Dolores Claiborne.

[quote] "Is she supposed to be Irish or something? Dolores not Vera."

According to a short internet search R6, the surname "Claiborne" has its origins in England and Ireland.

[quote] For that she grew old and alone in her own private hell relying only upon Dolores Claiborne. Book fleshes things out more thoroughly as to why Ms. Donovan is alone...

Never read the book but is this Dolores alluding to them in OP's vid? In the interview part, Dolores mentions "I don't know where she got her ideas, but I do know she was a prisoner of them."

I always thought the actor for Dolores' husband was hot. Although I know the character is awful.

I think he has a big dick.

Damn it, R26! It cut off before the single tear!

Dolores Claiborne is Kathy Bates' career-favorite role. Mine, too. If she were only going to win one, I wish it had been for this, and not Annie Wilkes (although no one could've played it like she did).

Judy was thrilling in that role. Made that movie first rate.

"Take that disgusting sofa out of here!"

Thing about Vera Donovan, and you can see this clearly in Judy Parfitt's excellent portrayal, is the woman isn't evil for evil's sake.

Vera Donovan is a complex creature, she knows what she did was wrong, and it haunts torments her until the end of her days. She tries to go on as the grand lady, but clearly knows why she's been frozen out by her family and others. Though no one actually says anything, everyone knows... That is the other bit bothering Ms. Donovan.

When you commit an unspeakable crime there are three types of justice and or hell.

First obviously is what is imposed by law (if caught). But there is also the justice society metes out regardless of what courts decide (or don't if never caught and or brought to trial). Finally there is the private Hell and self justice that comes from being got at by a tormented conscious.

Truly evil persons kill and or commit other heinous crimes and apparently not suffer any of the latter. Those are psychopaths or others truly wicked to core. Vera Donovan isn't that sort of creature at all, but since she cannot un-ring that bell she's stuck in that private Hell of her own making.

Didn't Vera have a stroke not long after her husband's "accident"?

[quote] When you commit an unspeakable crime there are three types of justice and or hell.

I've never heard about that, but what a fascinating take with the scenarios you describe. I like it! Where is that from?

Please don't tell me from the movie, I haven't seen it in forever.

R29

Dolores was referring to Vera Donovan's grand way of keeping house.

Ms. Claiborne went to work for Vera Donovan in 1995, the latter's ideas about household management (open windows for two hours every day, hand washed and ironed table linens, scrubbing out toilets with backing soda and vinegar, polishing sliver routinely even if it wasn't used.. all of it was right out of Victorian era.

Dolores Claiborne had been a professional housekeeper since a young teen, and that included working in large hotels. She found Vera Donovan's ideas on housekeeping eccentric and antediluvian. But Ms. Donovan was so inflexible that she became a prisoner of her own rules, this even as it drove away staff, and annoyed her family/husband.

R36 No, I understood it in that sense. How Vera was stuck in her eccentric ways. I was thinking more along the lines of a foreshadowing description (metaphor?) along the lines of what R17 mentioned. Just my take in seeing Vera's deterioration over time.

R35

Was speaking in general, but you can find examples in other fiction if not real life.

Another wife who kills her husband Regina Hubbard Giddens in "Little Foxes" believes she's gotten away with things, but her daughter and others know what time it was. Further Ms. Giddens is now afraid to sleep alone in her bedroom, asking her daughter if she will do so with her, an offer the young woman declines.

Jennifer Jason Leigh had the perfect sad countenance it was a depressing movie

She just believed in the proper way of doing certain household chores that was dismissive of doing it any other way

R36 here...

Correction, Dolores Claiborne went to work for Vera Donavan in late 1940's. Even then Ms. Donovan's elaborate and exacting housekeeping standards were something from another century.

A housewife (likely frustrated like Vera Donovan) would have done all that work herself, taking out her frustrations on the house and everything (or one) in it by keeping to rigid and inflexible standards of housekeeping that amounted to so much busywork.

R36 , R41- Those are both wrong. There's a scene in the bank not long after she started working for Vera Donovan and I see the date on the check Dolores is depositing. It's 1973.

Vera Donovan's physical deterioration over time can be seen as karma for her sins.

We're talking a work of fiction here, and in real life Vera Donovan having murdered her husband may have lived a long healthy life afterwards, remaining with it and vibrant until end. But since this is fiction there usually is some sense that scales must balance. Indeed under the old Hollywood code it was mandatory that those who did evil suffered by end of film somehow. Censors were keen to show that people couldn't profit or otherwise get away with committing evil deeds.

R42

Mixed up book with film. In former Dolores Claiborne goes to work for Vera Donovan in 1949 one year before Mr. Donovan dies in an automobile accident.

[quote] Jennifer Jason Leigh had the perfect sad countenance it was a depressing movie

IMO, JJL was kind of weak in that role. She kind of overdid it, I think. She reminded me of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club.

Young David Strathairn aka Joe St George in the film.

Speaking of which: David Strathairn has said he thinks his performance as Joe St. George "wasn't very successful". I'm not exactly sure what he meant by that, but it's my favorite by him. Otherwise, I've never heard him speak about the film, or the role.

She plays the strict matriarch of a Victorian family in the murder mystery The Blackheath Poisonings.

R45 That’s true and unfortunate. Leigh’s mumbling, ‘slow motion nervous breakdown’ wasn’t a great performance, and it was eclipsed by Bate’s and Parfitt’s mastery.

Straithairn is an amazing actor with a pretty charmed life and career, but this role isn’t one of his best. To be fair, Leigh and Straithairn had tough roles to play. These weren’t Hallmark Hall of Fame characters.

Bates was excellent with the exception of her accent in a few places.

King’s narratives don’t always translate to the screen that well, and some take a few versions to work out. The films seem dated before they’re released.

While one perhaps can find a bit of sympathy (somewhere) for Vera Donovan, Mildred Layton was an ice cold hard bitch.

Pity Mildred carrying on with Captain Coley never got out. That would have brought her down a peg or two...

Early Judy Parfitt role in "The Edwardians..."

Parfitt is still alive. She turned 86 the other day. She still works too (on Call the Midwife), full-time. She also is an ambassador for dementia.

I love Dolores Claiborne the movie (I haven't read the book, but maybe I should). There are some obvious flaws that have been mentioned here. I can see how someone might think JJL was overdone and I can see why Straithairn may not be secure with his work here (he seems kind of over-the-top at times with his voice), but these elements have grown on me and I like them and I wouldn't change a thing. It's such a dramatic and engrossing film and it touches on a lot of issues that weren't even acknowledged back then.

The film lensed the Summer of 1994 and came out in the Spring of 1995. It was probably the best strategy for a dark thriller with two female leads. Being a solid adaptation of a Stephen King novel helped as it still made x2 its budget back. I doubt Sony was ever inclined to push it for awards (they already had Sense & Sensibility and Miramax was starting to take over the races), but in an alternate universe, I like to think they would have managed and got Parfitt nominated. She was just so damn good. Unbelievably good.

I thought Jennifer Jason Leigh was just as good as the others. She's done great work in films for decades and deserves an Oscar.

JJL pings

I read the thread title as "Val Doonican - The Biggest BITCH Ever?" Now, that's a thread I'd like to read.

John C. Reilly also did well in his part. Christopher Plummer as well (to say the least).

Strathairn ... I can see why he was ambivalent about his performance. Could have been wrong casting. Also, the character was a thorough bad guy and maybe that role needed more mixed traits.

R57, I felt he overacted . He was clown like hateful

The scene where Bates’ character goads Straithairn’s into falling down the well was pretty amazing, very cleverly engineered. I think they built a revolving soundstage.

The story was so sad . Child molesters , especially incest ones kill souls .

[quote] The scene where Bates’ character goads Straithairn’s into falling down the well was pretty amazing, very cleverly engineered. I think they built a revolving soundstage.

Yes, that was a great scene. Bringing home the eclipse viewers, getting dolled-up, buying a big bottle of whiskey, frolicking through the field, etc. The whole build-up was excellent as well.

I'm glad to hear that Kathy Bates enjoyed the role.

I aspire to be Vera at the Eclipse party.

Judy Parfit played Vera Stanhope's common-law stepmother in two seasons (or was it just one season?) of the Vera series.

Ha. Vera turned me on to the bossa nova! "I'll have my eclipse".

A staaah!

Dolores Claiborne's Best Comebacks

"That is the last time you ever hit me! Next time, one of us is going to the bone yard."

I love saying this to people.

R67 do you get hit a lot?!

A YOUNG Judy Parfitt.

Judy as the Queen of France in Ever After.

She was appeared in Shoulder To Shoulder (1974). Her character in that was not a bitch at all and was somewhat lacking in confidence.

Judy is a scene stealer. She made that film Misery and I watch it for her.

King Ralph

she was in Misery?

I bet Betty Bacall was pissed when she saw this movie.

Why R75? They two were robbed of awards attention (which Betty wanted) and it wasn't a big hit.

Plus Judy had to have no glamor in the later scenes as a bedbound old woman who has to pee into a pan.

Bacall could forego glamour. And she probably could have mounted an Oscar campaign, even if she wouldn't have been as good in the role as Judy Parfitt.

Wrong movie! Not misery!

R51- Mildred Layton is being POUNDED . Isn't that what we ALL want.