Skip to main content

Film Friday: «Johnny Belinda» (1948)

In honour of Jane Wyman's 100th birthday, which was yesterday, this week on «Film Friday» — the first of 2017 — I thought I would bring you the film that gave her the Academy Award for Best Actress, the only Oscar of her career. I saw this film for the first time yesterday and already it has become one of my all-time favorites.
 
Directed by Jean Negulesco, Johnny Belinda (1948) tells the story of Belinda McDonald (Jane Wyman), a deaf-mute young woman who leads a sad, lonely existence in a fishing and farming community on a small island in Nova Scotia. She lives with her father, Black (Charles Bickford), and her aunt, Aggie (Agnes Moorehead), who call her «Dummy» and resent her because her mother died giving birth to her. Belinda is befriended by the new local physician, Dr. Robert Richardson (Lew Ayres), who recognizes her intelligence and teaches her sign language. When Black learns that he can communicate with his daughter, a bond develops between them.
 
LEFT: Agnes Moorehead, Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres and Charles Bickford. MIDDLE: Lew Ayres and Jane Wyman. RIGHT: Stephen McNally and Jane Wyman.

One evening, a group of young people, including bully Lochy McCormick (Stephen McNally) and his girlfriend Stella Maguire (Jan Sterling), Robert's assistant, come by the McDonald farm to collect some flour. An impromptu dance breaks out and Belinda's tentative attempts to dance briefly attract Lochy's attention. Later, having been rejected by Stella, who is secretly in love with Robert, a drunken Lochy goes to the McDonald farm and rapes Belinda, which results in pregnancy. After the birth of the baby, whom Belinda names Johnny, the townspeople begin to shun both the McDonald family and Robert, as they suspect he is father of the child. 
 
When Lochy appears during a storm, Black suddenly realizes that he is Johnny's father and assaults him. In the ensuing fight, Lochy pushes Black off a cliff into the sea, killing him. Certain that Belinda is incapable of caring for her child, the townspeople decide to take the baby from her and give him to Stella and Lochy, who are now married. However, Stella changes her mind when she sees how much Belinda loves Johnny. Locky then tells Stella that he is determined to take the child because he is the baby's father. When he comes to take the baby away, Belinda shoots and kills him. At Belinda's murder trial, Stella initially refuses to disclose the reason why Locky was killed, but finally tells the truth, and Belinda is acquitted. 
 
Dr. Robert Richardson: Your Lordship, I insist this girl obeyed an impulse older than the laws of man: the instinct of a mother to protect her child.

In 1908, writer Elmer Blaney Harris had a summer home built for himself and his wife in the small town of Fortune Bridge on Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada. While there, he became acquainted with a deaf-mute millhand named Lydia Dingwell, whose rape by a fisherman and subsequent pregnancy inspired Harris to pen Johnny Belinda in the early 1930s. Although he had originally written it as a play, he first tried to interest Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in his drama, thinking it might work better as a film. The studio toyed with the possibility, but questioned the commercial value of a picture with a non-speaking heroine and worried about the Production Code's mandate that «rape should never be more than suggested.» When MGM decided to pass on the project, Harris took Johnny Belinda to Broadway.

Produced and directed by Harry Wagstaff Gribble, Johnny Belinda opened at the Belasco Theatre in New York City on September 18, 1940. The cast included Helen Craig as Belinda McDonald, the story's hearing and speech-impaired main character, Louis Hector as her introverted father Black, Clare Woodbury as her spinster aunt Maggie, Willard Parker as Lochy McCormick, the lothario who rapes her, and Stephen McNally as Dr. Jack Davidson, the young physician who teaches her lip-reading and sign language. Most critics found Johnny Belinda overwrought and even offensive. For instance, John Mason Brown of The New York Post deemed it «barely passable,» while Richard Watts Jr. of the Herald Tribune dismissed it as «just trash.» Nevertheless, the play quickly found a loyal public, running for a total of 321 performances until it closed at the Longacre Theatre on June 21, 1941.
 
Helen Craig and Stephen McNally in the stage version of Johnny Belinda.

The popular success of Johnny Belinda caught the attention of producer Jerry Wald, who convinced Warner Bros. to purchase the screen rights for $50,000, arguing that Paramount and RKO had both made films about hearing and speech-impaired women. In Paramount's And Now Tomorrow (1944), Loretta Young awakens one morning to discover that she cannot hear the rain beating against the window. In RKO's The Spiral Staircase (1946), a traumatic experience renders Dorothy McGuire incapable of speaking until the last scene.

To write the screenplay for Johnny Belinda, Wald hired Allen Vincent and Irma von Cube, who made some changes to the original material. For instance, in Harris's play, Black promises to leave Lochy alone when Dr. Jack says he will marry Belinda and give her child a home. Shortly afterwards, Black is killed by lightning while fixing the fence between his farm and Lochy's property. In the film version, however, the two men get involved in a fight on the edge of a cliff, which culminates with Black falling melodramatically to his death.
 
Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford and Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda.

Wald initially wanted Johnny Belinda to be directed by Delmer Daves, but he eventually assigned the project to Jean Negulesco. Born in Romania, Negulesco began his career as painter in Bucharest, before moving to the United States in 1927. He entered the film industry in 1932, when he was hired by Paramount Pictures as a sketch artist and technical advisor, notably designing the rape scene in The Story of Temple Drake (1933) without violating the Hays Code. He worked in various capacities during the remainder of the decade, until he was signed by Warner Bros. in 1940 to direct a series of short subjects. Negulesco made his feature film directorial debut with Singapore Woman (1941) and went on to helm a string of noir dramas, including The Conspirators (1944) and Humoresque (1946), the latter produced by Wald.

Eleanor Parker and Teresa Wright were briefly considered for the lead role of Belinda McDonald, but Wald ultimately hired Jane Wyman on the strength of her Oscar nominated performance in The Yearling (1946), made on loan-out to MGM. By the time Wyman was cast in Johnny Belinda, her personal life was in turmoil. Married to fellow Warner Bros. contractee Ronald Reagan since 1940, she had recently given birth to their third child, a girl born four months premature, who died that same day. She and Reagan were also having marital issues, in part caused by his involvement with the Screen Actors Guild, of which he was president. Wanting to set aside her problems, Wyman welcomed the challenge of playing a deaf-mute woman. 
 
LEFT: Jane Wyman and Stephen McNally. RIGHT: Lew Ayres and Jane Wyman.

To play the young doctor, whose name was changed from Jack Davidson to Robert Richardson, Wald wanted English-born actors Robert Donat or Ronald Colman, while Negulesco preferred Brian Aherne. Eventually, the role was given to Lew Ayres, who had become a star after his heartfelt performance in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). This same film made him a confirmed pacifist and later a conscientious objector to World War II. The news that a Hollywood actor was opposed to the war was a major source of public debate, leading MGM to drop Ayres's contract. His reputation was almost destroyed until it was revealed that he had served honorably as a non-combatant medic from 1942 to 1946. Although Warner Bros. had some reservations about casting Ayres, Wald decided he would make the perfect rural physician, remembering how persuasive the actor had been as Dr. Kildare in the eponymous MGM series.

The part of Black McDonald, Belinda's father, was assigned to Charles Bickford, whose versatility as a character actor had earned him Academy Award nominations for The Song of Bernadette (1943) and The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Negulesco initially wanted Anne Revere or Judith Anderson to play Belinda's aunt Aggie, but ultimately cast Agnes Moorehead, another two-time Oscar nominee — for The Magnificent Andersons (1942) and Mrs. Parkington (1944). Janis Paige was considered for the role of Stella Maguire, but the role was offered instead to newcomer Jan Sterling, in her second film appearance. Although Rory Calhoun was at one point slated to play predatory bully Lochy McCormick, the part was given to Stephen McNally, who had played Dr. Jack in the original stage production under the name of Horace McNally.
 
LEFT: Agnes Moorehead and Lew Ayres. RIGHT: Agnes Moorehead and Charles Bickford.

Johnny Belinda was filmed between early September and late November 1947. Location shooting took place at Fort Bragg, a small town on the coast of northern California, and Mendocino, a lumber village just north of San Francisco.
 
Before production began, Wyman prepared for her role by studying for six months at the Mary E. Bennett School for the Deaf in Los Angeles, where she learned the proper facial and manual requisites of a deaf-mute person. She also spent hours screening 16-mm movies of a deaf girl so that she could become fluent in sign language. Normally right-handed, Wyman used her left hand throughout the film to capture Belinda's uncertainty of motion. She also devised a special way of walking, starting not with the right, but with the left foot. As soon as filming started, Negulesco and Wald noticed that Wyman's facial expressions suggested that she could hear what was being said. To fix this problem, she was fitted with plastic ears and cotton earplugs.
 
Jane Wyman, Charles Bickford, Lew Ayres and Agnes Moorehead during filming.

Studio head Jack Warner was outraged when he saw the daily rushes of Johnny Belinda, complaining that Negulesco was spending too much time showing scenery. He was also horrified that Wyman, one of the studio's biggest female stars, was devoid of glamour and ordered Negulesco to have her wear makeup. In addition, Warner wanted narration added to her close-ups «to tell the public what she was thinking When Negulesco ignored all of his suggestions, Warner threatened to fire him, but Wald came to the director's defense, saying: «If Negulesco leaves the picture, I leave the studio.» Warner was so displeased with the film that he let it sit on the shelf for nearly a year before releasing it.

Johnny Belinda had its world premiere in Hollywood on October 14, 1948, nine days before being released to the general public. Critical reviews were generally positive. The notoriously stuffy Bosley Crowther of The New York Times compared the film favorably to the original stage production, calling it «quite moving,» while Variety described it as «tastefully handled.» The cast was uniformly praised, with Jane Wyman receiving the best notices. Crowther deemed her performance «sensitive and poignant» and Variety called it «a personal success.» Grossing $4,100,000 at the box-office, Johnny Belinda was the fifth biggest moneymaker of the year.
 
Jane Wyman holding her Academy Award for Best Actress.

When the 21st Academy Awards were announced, Johnny Belinda was nominated in a total of twelve categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Lew Ayres), Best Actress (Jane Wyman), Best Supporting Actor (Charles Bickford), Best Supporting Actress (Agnes Moorehead), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Black and White), Best Art/Set Direction (Black-and-White), Best Sound Recording, Best Score and Best Editing.
 
On March 14, 1949, the awards ceremony took place at the Academy Theatre in Hollywood, where Ronald Colman announced that Jane Wyman was the winner for Best Actress. She was so surprised by her win that she dropped her purse and the contents spilled out on to the floor. She then rushed to the stage and delivered the evening's shortest acceptance speech: «I accept this very gratefully for keeping my mouth shut for once. I think I'll do it again.» Hers was the only Oscar that Johnny Belinda received that night. Jean Negulesco lost to John Huston for The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948), which also gave Walter Huston the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In turn, Agnes Moorehead lost to Claire Trevor for Key Largo (1948), while Lew Ayres lost to Laurence Olivier for Hamlet (1948), which was named Best Picture that year.


______________________________________________
SOURCES:
The Films of Agnes Moorehead by Axel Nissen (Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2013) 
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre by Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak (Oxford University Press, 2004)
The President's Ladies: Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis by Bernard K. Dick (University Press of Mississippi, 2014)
The Women of Warner Brothers: The Lives and Careers of 15 Leading Ladies by Daniel Bubbeo (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002)

Comments

  1. Who played the role of the infant, Johnny Belinda, in the 1948 production?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Golden Couples: Gary Cooper & Patricia Neal

It was April 1948 when director King Vidor spotted 22-year-old Patricia Neal on the Warner Bros. studio lot. A drama graduate from Northwestern University, she had just arrived in Hollywood following a Tony Award-winning performance in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest . Impressed by Patricia's looks, Vidor approached the young actress and asked if she would be interested in doing a screen test for the female lead in his newest film, The Fountainhead (1949). Gary Cooper had already signed as the male protagonist, and the studio was then considering Lauren Bacall and Barbara Stanwyck to play his love interest.          Neal liked the script and about two months later, she met with the director for sound and photographic tests. Vidor was enthusiastic about Patricia, but her first audition was a complete disaster. Cooper was apparently watching her from off the set and he was so unimpressed by her performance that he commented, « What's that!? » He tried to con

Golden Couples: Henry Fonda & Barbara Stanwyck

In the mid- and late 1930s, screwball comedy was in vogue and practically every actress in Hollywood tried her hand at it. Barbara Stanwyck never considered herself a naturally funny person or a comedienne per se , but after delivering a heart-wrenching performance in King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937), she decided she needed a « vacation » from emotional dramas. In her search for a role, she stumbled upon a « champagne comedy » called The Mad Miss Manton (1938), originally intended as a Katharine Hepburn vehicle. Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda as Melsa and Peter in The Mad Miss Manton .   Directed by Leigh Jason from a script by Philip G. Epstein, The Mad Miss Manton begins when vivacious Park Avenue socialite Melsa Manton finds a corpse while walking her dogs in the early hours of the morning. She calls the police, but they dismiss the incident — not only because Melsa is a notorious prankster, but also because the body disappears in the meantime. Sarcastic newspaper editor

Film Friday: «Who Was That Lady?» (1960)

Theatrical release poster Directed by George Sidney , Who Was That Lady? (19 60 ) begins when che mistry p rofessor David Wilson (Tony Curtis) is caught by his wife Ann (Janet Leigh) kissing one of his female st u de nts. To stop her from divo rcing him , he a sk s for hel p from his good friend, television writer Michael Haney (Dean Mart in), who invents a crazy story that Davi d is working undercover with the FBI and kissed the student — a foreign agent — in the line of du ty. To convince Ann, Mi ke tricks Schult z (William Newel l), a prop man at the T V studio, into fabricating an FBI identification card for David and s up plying him with a g un. Ann is so t hrilled by the idea of being married to a secret agent t hat she forgives David. Meanwhile, Mike sets up a date wi th the Coogle sisters, Gloria (Barbara N ichols) and Florence ( Joi Lan sing), and takes David along , telling Ann that the girls are foreign agents. Just as Ann realizes that her h usband ha s

Golden Couples: Clark Gable & Jean Harlow

  At the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony, MGM's hugely successful prison drama The Big House (1930) earned writer Frances Marion an Oscar for Best Writing. Hoping that she would be inspired to repeat that accomplishment, Irving Thalberg, head of production at Metro, sent Marion to Chicago, Illinois to research story ideas. While flicking through the pages of The Saturday Evening Post , she found an article revealing that, in a city where people distrusted the police, a small group of leading citizens met in secret to arrange their own justice for criminals. Marion took inspiration from that story and wrote The Secret Six (1931), in which Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone, stars of The Big House , play two mobsters prosecuted by a half a dozen vigilantes. Thalberg was pleased with the leading roles Marion wrote for Beery and Stone, but asked if she could also fill out one of the minor leads for Clark Gable , a tall, dark and handsome 30-year-old actor whom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recen

Christmas in Old Hollywood

The beautiful Elizabeth Taylor with an extremely cute little friend. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall with their son Stephen (early 1950s). Here they are again. What an adorable picture! Paulette Goddard looking rather uncomfortable next to her Christmas tree. Boris Karloff and Ginger Rogers at a Hollywood Christmas party in 1932. The adorable Shirley Temple chatting with Santa. Here she is again with a dolly friend. Look how cute she looks here, modeling a new Christmas dress (1935). The fur-tastic Joan Crawford. Doris Day asking us to "do not disturb until Christmas." Don't worry, Doris, we shall not. Though it's past Christmas now, so I'm sure Doris won't mind if we disturb just a little bit. Priscilla Lane looking sparkling drapped in her garlands. A VERY young Carole Lombard sitting next to her tree (1920s). Jean Harlow looking stunning as always. Janet Leigh looking extra cute unde

Films I Saw in 2020

For the past four years, I have shared with you a list of all the films I saw throughout 2016 , 2017 , 2018 and 2019 , so I thought I would continue the «tradition» and do it again in 2020. This list includes both classic and «modern» films, which make up a total of 161 titles. About three or four of these were re-watches, but I decided to include them anyway. Let me know how many from these you have seen. As always, films marked with a heart ( ❤ ) are my favorites. Sherlock Jr. (1924) | Starring Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire and Joe Keaton The Crowd (1928) | Starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman and Bert Roach Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) | Starring Henry Fonda, Alice Brady and Marjorie Weaver Brief Encounter (1945) | Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard and Stanley Holloway The Bells of St. Mary's (1945) | Starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman The Girl He Left Behind (1956) | Starring Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood Gidget (1959) | Starring Sandra Dee, Cliff Robertson an

Wings of Change: The Story of the First Ever Best Picture Winner

Wings was the first ever film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Since then, it has become one of the most influential war dramas, noted for its technical realism and spectacular air-combat sequences. This is the story of how it came to be made.   A man and his story The concept for Wings originated from a writer trying to sell one of his stories. In September 1924, Byron Morgan approached Jesse L. Lasky, vice-president of Famous Players-Lasky, a component of Paramount Pictures, proposing that the studio do an aviation film. Morgan suggested an «incident and plot» focused on the failure of the American aerial effort in World War I and the effect that the country's «aviation unpreparedness» would have in upcoming conflicts. Lasky liked the idea, and approved the project under the working title «The Menace.»   LEFT: Byron Morgan (1889-1963). RIGHT: Jesse L. Lasky (1880-1958).   During his development of the scenario with William Shepherd, a former war correspondent, Morga

80 Reasons Why I Love Classic Films (Part II)

I started this blog six years ago as a way to share my passion for classic films and Old Hollywood. I used to watch dozens of classic films every month, and every time I discovered a new star I liked I would go and watch their entire filmography. But somewhere along the way, that passion dimmed down. For instance, I watched 73 classic films in 2016, and only 10 in 2020. The other day, I found this film with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. that I had never heard of — the film is Mimi (1935), by the way — and for some reason it made me really excited about Old Hollywood again. It made me really miss the magic of that era and all the wonderful actors and actresses. And it also made me think of all the reasons why I fell in love with classic films in the first place. I came up with 80 reasons, which I thought would be fun to share with you. Most of them are just random little scenes or quirky little quotes, but put them together and they spell Old Hollywood to me. Yesterday I posted part one ; her

Top 10 Favourite Christmas Films

Christmas has always been a source of inspiration to many artists and writers. Over the years, filmmakers have adapted various Christmas stories into both movies and TV specials, which have become staples during the holiday season all around the world. Even though Christmas is my favourite holiday, I haven't watched a lot of Christmas films. Still, I thought it would be fun to rank my top 10 favourites, based on the ones that I have indeed seen. Here they are.  10. Holiday Affair (1949) Directed by Don Hartman, Holiday Affair tells the story of a young widow (Janet Leigh) torn between a boring attorney (Wendell Corey) and a romantic drifter (Robert Mitchum). She's engaged to marry the boring attorney, but her son (Gordon Gebert) likes the romantic drifter better. Who will she choose? Well, we all know who she will choose.   Holiday Affair is not by any means the greatest Christmas film of all time, but it's still a very enjoyable Yule-tide comedy to watch over the holi

The Sinatra Centennial Blogathon: Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly

  In January 1944, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer happened to see a young crooner by the name of Frank Sinatra perform at a benefit concert for The Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles. According to Nancy Sinatra, Frank's eldest daughter, Mayer was so moved by her father's soulful rendition of « Ol' Man River » that he made the decision right then and there to sign Frank to his studio. Sinatra had been on the MGM payroll once before, singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the Eleanor Powell vehicle Ship Ahoy (1942), although it is very likely that Mayer never bothered to see that film. Now that Frank was «hot,» however, Metro made arrangements to buy half of his contract from RKO, with the final deal being signed in February of that year. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in  Anchors Aweigh Being a contract player at the studio that boasted «more stars than there are in the heavens» gave Frank a sudden perspective regarding his own talents as a film performer. The «g