The Children's Hour - 1961 Film

Another clip...

Shirley comes out

Vito Russo did not consider this a good movie 🎥, in fact he thought it was homophobic.

Soooo dated but give young people an idea of how awful the hate and prejudice was at the time. Imagine being a 12 or 13 year old gay boy or girl and seeing this movie?

Another winner in the late 69s was a film called The Detective with Frank Sinatra. Brutal.

Late 60’s

Famed documentary THE CELLULOID CLOSET regards the film as, in essence, the gay JEW SUSS.

It's appalling, and horribly overacted.

These Three is a better film.

Love this film

These Three got rid of the suppressed lesbianism so the accusation becomes about 3 people doing unnamed "weird things" with each other and the danger of malicious gossip. It made no sense.

Well, I was a young gayling watching this on TV in the early 60s and just loved the drama and my perceived nobility of it all. I had such a crush on Jim Garner and kept waiting for a shirtless scene that never came - that was my only disappointment.

Bette Davis' old frenemy Miriam Hopkins played the Shirley MacLaine role in the 1936 version and then played the slatternly aunt in the 1961 version. William Wyler directed both.

Yes..great movie. It was on last weekend. Audrey Hepburn, star of the day on TCM.

I've seen it once. It's too sad to watch again.

The title is really misleading

Actually, Hellman didn’t like The Children’s Act and preferred These Three because it better encapsulated the themes of truth, power and witch-hunts. It’s not actually about lesbianism.

And the “weird things” they were accused of doing was taking turns with Joe McCrea.

Lillian Hellman was wrong!

And there's nothing weird about taking turns with Joel McCrea.

The Children’s Hour was awful. Maybe it could have been saved if Hepburn and McClaine swapped roles. Maybe not. The direction was stale, too.

R17 may I ask why more exactly you think the film leads were miscast? And what the direction was lacking? How would you have done it?

Lesbians!

The kid who played Mary was pretty good, and so was Angela Cartwright.

It was Veronica Cartwright, not Angela.

R15, it's based on a real court case. Involving lesbianism! So I don't get the idea that it's not about lesbians

"There is no keyhole on my door. THERE IS NO KEYHOLE ON MY DOOR!!!

R22 it's just the usual lesbian erasure that tends to go on around here, and everywhere else on the Internet. You get used to it, sadly.

R22 You also think Citizen Kane is about a sled, don’t you.

R25, no. Stop being stupid.

I mean this with no disrespect, r26, but are you on the autism spectrum?

R27, look who's talking.

The real court case it was based on

Shirley said she and Audrey never discussed the lesbian underpinning in this film. How is this possible? Seems absurd.

Question answered, r28.

You’re confusing text and subtext, plot and theme.

The Children’s Hour plot features lesbianism. The play itself is not thematically about lesbianism or any more than Ordinary People is about a son who doesn’t appreciate his mother’s French toast.

Of course it's about lesbianism. People always try to downplay gay content in movies. This happened with Brokeback Mountain. "It's not about gays! It's about love! It's universal!"

What sort of details did Shirley expect to discuss with Audrey in regard to lesbianism? After all, Shirley's character's lesbian impulses were all suppressed and Audrey's character was straight and naive. What would Audrey have to say about that to Shirley? But perhaps Shirley meant the character's impulses were not discussed with her director William Wyler?

I remember her comments in The Celluloid Closet. They're a highlight of the documentary.

Put the straw man down. No one’s talking about a Brokeback Mountain.

R32, that's what Steven Spielberg said about the lesbian affair in his film The Color Purple - it's not lesbianism, it's about LOVE!

The Children’s Hour is fundamentally different to Brokeback Mountain and The Color Purple.

The Children’s Hour isn’t about a tragic lesbian relationship any more than The Crucible is about the Salem Witch Trials.

How can anyone watch The Children's Hour and not see it's about the tragedy of suppressing one's true and honest erotic desires? Which happen to be lesbian? But yes, it's also about the danger of malicious gossip.

Wyler may have become squeamish about the lesbian subject - MacLaine said he cut many scenes which showed the affection between the women - but his reveal of Martha's hanging is effective.

Agree with r37

R37 Smell you.

In fundamentals, r37, taboo lesbianism is used in The Children’s Hour movie as a mechanism to explore bogus social structures and human hypocrisy. But it’s just the framework. This play is not The Maids, or The Killing of Sister George, or indeed The Colour Purple (novel and musical) or Brokeback Mountain, where the homosexuality of the characters infuses the work both textually and subtextually. In this film The Repressed Lesbian Spinster is an archetype used as a tragic victim of society built on lies and from its very lowest and supposedly most innocent level - the child.

As r33 pointed out, it’s no surprise that lesbianism wouldn’t have been discussed by Hepburn, because it doesn’t really figure into her relationship with McClaine’s character at all. Hepburn’s performance in this regard is brick wall, she gives nothing back to trembling leaf McClaine. There is no erotic awareness, no power exchange between their characters. I saw a local production that these actual relationship elements are present. But that was half a century later.

There is more a frisson between Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon in These Three because they were more convincing as friends and colleagues with a flesh and blood relationship and frantic over rumours they are in a throuple with Joel McCrea. But prim, butter-wouldn’t-melt Audrey and quirky, miserable Shirley can’t bring this energy. Hepburn didn’t have it in her and still at that time, the simple honesty of a woman loving a woman still wasn’t the thing that Proper, Givenchy-Clad Ladies of the time we’re comfortable with. The film is appalled by the danger of and power of a scandal-mongering child, but it oh-so-slightly understands why discovering your short-haired best friend is a dyke was a bit gross to many people. Another 5 or 10 years and it wouldn’t have needed to be so damningly tasteful.

And that’s why Hellman is right that the film of These Three is the better adaptation.

R41, so, Brokeback was about being gay in a world where that could get you killed but Children's Hour wasn't about being gay in a world where being gay could get you to kill yourself at all? So, gay men exist as characters but lesbians are just symbolic? Oh, okay.

r41, I am both posters r33 and r37.

I had to look up the word f r i s s o n . I never heard it before. The more you know! I love it when Posters use fancy words.

No, r42. You are taking something specific - the way that Children’s Hour exists in the tradition of morality theatre and political writing - and are dumbing it down into broad strokes in your rage because that not every agrees with you that this is great lesbian theatre - it’s not. McClaine’s character’s homosexuality existed to posit her tragic figure that was destroyed society’s moral squalor.

Gee, I can only wonder why Lillian Hellman didn't originally write the two ladies as straight (as in These Three) if loved that film version so much and she was so dead set against her play being thought to be about lesbianism?

I literally thought to play was about mayonnaise.

R45 can't think for himself and just spews the crap he read in his film studies class. And, rage? So anyone disagreeing with you is raging? I'm not the poster you've been talking to in this thread but we can now see how narrow and reactionary you are. You are the simplistic one. You can't think for yourself or see that your theory is directly impugned by the very content of the play and the writer of the play herself. But, thanks for mansplaining the lesbian movie to the lesbians on here while also erasing their existence. I can't even imagine how pompous everyone who meets you in real life thinks you are...behind your back, of course, because no one wants to hear your defensive diatribes brought on by countering your "wisdom".

Any time, diddums.

I knew you were that type, R49. Can't handle it when people don't bow down to your self-proclaimed greatness. You are a sad person. The fact that that is so obvious on a simple thread about a film makes it even worse. Your real life must be lonely.

Can't we all please just get along??

Your hypocrisy is almost comical, r50.

Get help.

R52, you're just adding to what we can all see with every response. Like I said...sad.

It's super fascinating to others when two people on a thread get in a pissing match.

They showed this on TCM during Pride month, and afterward Dave Karger and Alicia Malone were discussing it, and Dave said, "I felt so sorry for Shirley MacLaine's character at the end. I wanted to tell her, "Hey, it's fine! There's a great lesbian bar just over in the next town! You should go!"

I don’t want to set you off, r53. Consider this a mental health check.

Go watch the L Word and touch up your purple roots already.

[quote]Wyler may have become squeamish about the lesbian subject - MacLaine said he cut many scenes

Any "affectionate" scenes between MacLaine and Hepburn would have been cut anyway because of censors and the subject matter. Plus Shirley is not known to be truthful much of the time.

Affection is a loose term. Look at Stanwyck and Capucine in Walk on the Wildside from the same era. No problem with censors.

Take 42! OK, Miss Stanwyck, find your light.

Merle Oberon was offered the role of the grandmother in Children’s Hour but turned it down. I like CH but These Three is really a much better film. At the end Martha goes off with her aunt and Karen runs to her doctor beau who has moved to Paris. Nobody kills themselves and they all move on with their lives.

Audrey Hepburn is overly retrained and boring in this.

[quote] At the end Martha goes off with her aunt and Karen runs to her doctor beau who has moved to Paris. Nobody kills themselves and they all move on with their lives.

Given how awful the aunt was and how void the doctor was, that's not really a much happier ending.

[quote] At the end Martha goes off with her aunt and Karen runs to her doctor beau who has moved to Paris. Nobody kills themselves and they all move on with their lives.

Except the grandmother and that little bitch Mary Tilford, whose lies the grandmother repeats, and whom the three sue for slander. They lose in court, but in the end the grandmother finds out the truth, and is left to deal with her little cunt of a granddaughter.

Going off to Paris with young Joel McCrea?

Yaaassssssss!

The vicious little girl in "These Three" should be a DL icon - she was so nasty!

Bonita Granville was indeed vicious. Wonderful actress who also played Bette Davis’s cunty niece in Now, Voyager.

Fay Bainter outshone them all.

The girl in The Children's Hour was way brattier than Bonita Granville

Ms Bainter received a well deserved Oscar nom for her performance.

And, of course, Bonita Granville played Nancy Drew!

And fucked Mickey Rooney.

There’s a joke in there about Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow somewhere.

I like to think of a vicious and nasty Nancy Drew.