Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Fairytale Blogathon: First Love (1939)

by 11 Comments

A few months ago, while preparing for the launch of my own little fairytale retelling, I stumbled across the news of an upcoming movie blogathon on fairytales in film. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to revisit and spruce up my review of one of my favorite movies, which also happens to be a Cinderella retelling, 1939’s First Love. So here it is, as my entry for the Fairytale Blogathon hosted by Movies, Silently.

As the film opens, orphaned Connie Harding (Deanna Durbin) has finished boarding school and is sent to live with her wealthy relatives, the Clintons, in New York City. She quickly falls into the position of a typical poor relation—often overlooked, fetching and carrying, and generally living in the shadow of her pretty but spoiled cousin Barbara (Helen Parrish), society belle and the darling of magazine photographers. Her scatterbrained, astrology-obsessed aunt (Leatrice Joy) and supremely lazy cousin Walter (Lewis Howard) aren’t much help either. Uncle Jim (Eugene Pallette), a man of few words, is only visible ducking between his workplace and his study when the coast is clear, seemingly making it his object in life to spend as little time in his family’s company as possible—and it’s hard to blame him. But Connie quickly endears herself to the household staff (Charles Coleman, Mary Treen and Lucille Ward), who become her firm friends and allies.

Prince Charming enters the picture in the form of Ted Drake (Robert Stack, in his film debut), an eligible young man whose attention Barbara is bent on monopolizing. After an awkwardly comic first meeting on the grounds of a country club while employed as her scheming cousin’s go-between, Connie is smitten too, and sets her heart on attending a ball hosted by Ted’s parents. Barbara, by no means welcoming competition, does everything possible to prevent her from getting there, but Connie’s friends the servants pitch in to see that she has a suitable dress, and conspire with the cook’s policeman brother (Frank Jenks) to keep the rest of her relatives from getting to the ball before midnight so she’ll have a little time to enjoy herself. (One of my favorite lines in the film comes here from Coleman, the perennial movie butler: “You will have an escort of six white bikes, miss!”) Though the ball proves to be a dream come true, the stroke of midnight of course heralds disaster…and it’s up to Connie’s old schoolteacher and friend, the grim-faced Miss Wiggins (Kathleen Howard) to play fairy godmother and try to mend the situation with the help of a silver slipper.

First Love seems to be a relatively obscure movie today, even among classic film fans. At the time of its release it was a big affair, for Deanna Durbin was Universal’s wildly popular singing star, and a flutter of publicity whirled around the movie because it contained her first screen kiss. Perhaps the rather generic and unimpressive title has something to do with its slipping from view—one source says it was originally supposed to be called Cinderella 1939, which would at least have been a bit more descriptive of the story! But it’s such a clever, charming adaptation of the Cinderella story, I still wonder that it’s not better known. The script is sprightly and humorous, filled with amusing scenes—the frustrated Clintons delayed by the laid-back policeman on their way to the ball; Barbara and her so-called friend (June Storey) sweetly trading barbs about each other’s clothes and dispositions; and the hilarious climactic scene where Pallette’s Uncle Jim finally blows his top and lets his family have it.

The whole cast is good, but I was particularly impressed by Helen Parrish as the spoiled Barbara—I’d seen her before playing such sweet, naïve characters, her performance here seemed that much better! She played the “mean girl” to Deanna Durbin’s heroine in a couple of films, but off-screen they were good friends; Parrish was a bridesmaid at Durbin’s first wedding. They eventually got to play sisters in Three Smart Girls Grow Up, the sequel to Deanna Durbin’s first film.

Though the setting is contemporary 1930s all the way, there are a couple little touches that remind us of the fairytale background. A moment where Connie’s reflection in the mirror unexpectedly answers her back might be magic…and then it might just be her imagination. And a lovely special-effects moment comes when Connie and Ted are dancing at the ball, as the other dancers momentarily fade away to leave them waltzing alone to the dreamy strains of a melody from Johann Strauss’ “Roses From the South,” one of my very favorite waltzes. As in any Durbin film, there’s some wonderful music—a spirited rendition of “Amapola,” a medley of Strauss waltzes for the ball scene, and finally, Puccini’s “Un bel di” (sung in English), in a wonderfully out-of-context performance that suits its new usage beautifully.


First Love is available as an individual DVD which seems to be currently out of print, and also as part of a Deanna Durbin box set DVD with five other movies. You can click here to see more film stills and behind-the-scenes clippings and trivia at the Deanna Durbin Devotees fansite (all pictures in this post courtesy of the same page).

In the Footsteps of Molly Wood

by 7 Comments

When I read Owen Wister’s famed Western novel The Virginian a couple of years ago, I was, ironically enough, particularly delighted by a few passages taking place in the East. Several chapters dealing with Wister’s New England-born heroine Molly Wood casually drop the names of half a dozen places in Vermont and New York that I’m very familiar with in real life. It’s delightfully strange to find mentions like that in the pages of a classic novel, especially of places that are smaller and not well known outside the area. I thought it would be fun to go on a photographic scavenger hunt of these locations, so readers who might know plenty about what Wyoming looks like could also get a glimpse of what Wister’s Molly came from when she set forth to teach school in the West—or at least what it looks like today.

Bennington

Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont…could have been enrolled in the Boston Tea Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green Mountain Daughters, the Saratoga Sacred Circle, and the Confederated Colonial Chatelaines. She traced direct descent from the historic lady whose name she bore, that Molly Stark who was not a widow after the battle where her lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as to send his name thrilling down through the blood of generations of schoolboys.

Molly’s hometown of Bennington was the site of the Colonial storehouses that the British sent a detachment to capture just prior to the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The actual Battle of Bennington was fought near Hoosick on the New York side of the line, but it is here at Bennington that the monument commemorating the battle stands, along with a statue of Brigadier General John Stark.


Monument Avenue is lined with beautiful old houses, most of which bear plaques with 18th-century dates and the names of notable people who once lived there. A statue marks the location of the Catamount Tavern, which served as headquarters for Stark and for Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, and a little further on is the beautiful Old First Church, where poet Robert Frost is buried in the lovely old cemetery.

Mount Anthony


On a visit back East, Molly is taken for a drive to see the home sights by her Eastern suitor—though there are hints that Molly’s heart is evidently elsewhere:

…While they drove up the valley of the little Hoosic: “I had forgotten it was so nice and lonely. But after all, no woods are so interesting as those where you might possibly see a bear or an elk.” And upon another occasion, after a cry of enthusiasm at the view from the top of Mount Anthony, “It’s lovely, lovely, lovely,” she said, with diminishing cadence, ending in pensiveness once more. “Do you see that little bit just there? No, not where the trees are—that bare spot that looks brown and warm in the sun. With a little sagebrush, that spot would look something like a place I know on Bear Creek. Only of course you don’t get the clear air here.”

I had never been up Mount Anthony before this weekend. Though we were unable to reach the summit, which is only accessed by what is now a private road, the narrow dirt road winding around the side of the mountain, through colorful woods and past hidden farms tucked deep in the hills, was unbelievably beautiful. Above is the peak of Mount Anthony taken from below, and this is a view from the far side of the mountain:


An old chimney beside the road up on the side of the mountain, marking the site of a house long gone. I felt like we were up on Walton’s Mountain.

Hoosic Junction & Eagle Bridge

At Hoosic Junction, which came soon, she passed the up-train bound back to her home, and seeing the engineer and the conductor,—faces that she knew well,—her courage nearly failed her, and she shut her eyes against this glimpse of the familiar things that she was leaving. To keep herself steady she gripped tightly a little bunch of flowers in her hand.

But something caused her eyes to open; and there before her stood Sam Bannett, asking if he might accompany her so far as Rotterdam Junction.

“No!” she told him with a severity born from the struggle she was making with her grief. “Not a mile with me. Not to Eagle Bridge. Good-by.”

I found this little railroad crossing, with a bridge over the Walloomsac River in the background, not far from the location of Hoosic Junction. The junction itself, where the railroad tracks coming from Bennington join another line heading west toward Rotterdam, is hidden back in the woods after the nearest road stops at a dead end.


And at Eagle Bridge, less than five miles from Hoosic Junction, I made my most exciting discovery of the day: the old abandoned railway depot! I’d driven past this place many times (the main road runs parallel with the tracks, off to the left of this shot) but never even noticed the old building tucked behind the trees.


The railroad from Rutland, Vermont to Eagle Bridge, New York was originally built in 1851 by the Rutland and Washington Railroad. By 1870 it was a part of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, which was leased by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. If you look at this 1886 map of the D&H railroads, you can see the Eagle Bridge station prominently marked just east of the larger cities of Schenectady and Saratoga.

I had to wonder—was this the same building that stood here in the 1880s, at the time The Virginian is set? One can imagine it as a bustling little village station, with timetables chalked up by the ticket window, telegraph machine clicking away inside and passengers waiting on the platform—the center of the town, just across the road from a cluster of buildings that included a small brick hotel. I wonder if any real-life New England girl, excited, frightened, and watching familiar homelike scenes slip behind her as the engine picked up speed, passed through here on a westbound train, headed for unknown adventures in the wild West.

Don’t Knock the Classics

by 9 Comments

I don’t go off on rants very often. I don’t like conflict, and most of the time it just seems futile anyway. But there is one thing that I see cropping up in the world of how-to publishing blogs now and again that always makes me boiling mad.

These are blogs that offer a lot of good basic advice to new authors on how to decide what form of publishing is right for them, how to behave online, how to avoid amateurish mistakes in writing and indie publishing, and so on; a lot of that stuff is very worthwhile. But mixed in with other tips on how to write a book that will sell, I often see advice that boils down to this: don’t pay attention to the classics. Don’t write anything remotely like the great authors of yesterday, because modern readers have no patience for elegant prose or description of any length. I’ve read posts that literally go so far as to claim descriptive passages aren’t needed any more, because nowadays people have already seen pictures of practically the whole world, unlike the ignorant readers of past centuries who needed word-pictures painted for them. Modern readers, they say, are held by such a slight thread of attention that if we use too many long words they’ll drop the book and look for something that’s simpler and moves faster.

I can’t think of a better response than this masterful, no-punches-pulled assessment by 19th-century author and minister J.R. Miller, which I read just this week:

We live in a time when the trivial is glorified and magnified, and held up in the blaze of sensation, so as to attract the gaze of the multitude, and to sell. That is all many books are made for—to sell. They are written for money, they are printed, illustrated, bound, ornamented, titled—simply for money! There was no high motive, no thought of doing good to anyone, of starting a new impulse, of adding to the fund of the world’s joy or comfort or knowledge. They were wrought out of mercenary brains. They were made to sell, and to sell they must appeal to the desire for sensation, excitement, romance, diversion or entertainment. 

So it comes to pass, that the country is flooded with utterly worthless publications, while really good and profitable books are left unsold and unread! The multitude goes into ecstasies over foolish tales, sentimental novels, flashy magazines, and a thousand trivial works that please or excite for a day—while the really profitable books, are passed by unnoticed! 

Hence, while everybody reads, few read the really profitable books. Modern culture knows all about the spectacular literature that flashes up and dies out again—but knows nothing of history or true poetry or really great fiction. Many people who have not the courage to confess ignorance of the last novel, regard it as no shame to be utterly ignorant of the majestic old classics. In the floods of ephemeral literature, the great books are buried away.

Doesn’t that sound like it was written yesterday?

Miller is talking about reading here, but it applies equally well to writing. That passage was written in 1880, but fast-forward to 2014, when hundreds of ebooks are being uploaded to the Kindle Store every single day, and it’s even more relevant.

Now let’s admit it upfront: we do want our books to sell. I want my books to sell. Not necessarily to be runaway bestsellers. I’d like to know people are reading and enjoying them, and I surely wouldn’t mind making a bit of income off them. And I believe 100% that we should expend every effort to make sure our writing meets the highest standard of quality we can achieve, and that we should earnestly endeavor not to bore or confuse our readers. But I’m not in this business to trick a dollar out of someone with an attention span that’s only long enough for things that can be done inside thirty seconds on a smartphone. I am not going to chop my sentences in half and write in words of one syllable with that goal in mind.

I don’t dismiss all contemporary literature offhand either. I’ve read several excellent recently-published books this year, some of which will likely end up on my top-ten favorites list. But for each of those I can think of a dozen instances where I tried a few sample pages of a newer book and gave up in despair at the childishly over-simplified and uninspiring writing.

I know literary styles change over the centuries, and I know that we are not all of us Austens and Dickenses and Tolstoys and Hugos. But the works those authors produced still stand as the benchmarks of our literature, and we are doing a disservice to ourselves and to our own readers if we dismiss them as antiquated and only good for our great-grandfathers (most of whom probably forgot more than we’ll ever know about literature and other things as well). Literature has suffered enough dumbing-down over the past fifty years; it doesn’t need any more help in that direction.