The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)

The nominations for Yuletide are up. I noticed one of the movies is The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, which I saw mentioned (I forget where) a few months ago. Seeing it as a possibility for Yuletide has prompted me to watch it.

Having already seen the synopsis on Wikipedia, I know the Breen Office made them tack an “it-was-all-a-dream” loophole ending onto the original play. I think I can live with that, as the characters are engaging enough I’m willing to see them spared via reset; and in the meantime I still get to see them go through some really well-acted hell.

The movie stars Ella Raines—I’ve previously seen her in The Phantom Lady and The Suspect. Here she’s Deborah Brown, a fashion consultant from NYC, brought in to advise at a textile mill in a small town in (I think) New England, who immediately hits it off with graphic designer Harry Melville Quincey (George Sanders). As Deborah, Raines wears a typical 1940s skirt suit and shoulder-length hairstyle and somehow still comes off as boyishly masculine in presentation, swaggering about with her hands in her pockets and eyeing the kind, diffident, dryly humorous Harry, who lives with his widowed older sister Hester and his never-married younger sister Lettie.The latter (Geraldine Fitzgerald*) is a Tennessee Williams character without the Southern accent, and her incestuous desire to hold onto Harry (and the family home, but mostly Harry) is as obvious as Deborah’s attraction to him.

Which is awful for the characters, but great for the viewers, who get to watch the scene in which Lettie gives Deborah the “he’s mine you can’t have him” talk disguised as the “I hope your intentions towards my brother are honourable” talk disguised as the “small towns can be gossipy, be careful” talk. Deborah doesn’t even blink (she’s probably figured out this was coming from the moment she heard Harry describe his sisters), and replied with politely veiled barbs of her own. It doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, because they're talking about a man; the only thing these two women could possibly talk about or have have in common is that particular man; but if you watched it with the sound off you might almost mistake the spark flying between them for romance instead of deadly enemity.

It says something for Sanders’ charisma that his performance isn’t completely overshadowed (or at least no more than it diagetically should be) by those of Raines, Fitzgerald, Sara Allgood (as the Qunicey's grumpily-devoted housekeeper Nona), and Moyna Macgill** as older sister Hester, perpetually lamenting her late husband and fighting Nona for access to the oven so she can bake her pies. I like that the “good” sister in this dynamic is still pouty and argumentative and difficult, because most people are—it’s Lettie who’s superficially placid and reasonable and who keep making mean little passive-aggressive digs.

Anyway part two later once I watch the rest of the movie tonight. There will be poisoned cocoa.

*I just looked at Fitzgerald’s Wikipedia entry and woah. Interesting career. And also she’s Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s mother.

**Meanwhile McGill is Angela Lansbury’s mother.

I Look Pretty Young But I'm Just Back-dated

Due to having recently read a_t_rain's story the other day, I looked up John Heminges' name online and noticed that the Wikipedia entry gave his birth year as 1556, which would have made him thirty-two when he married Rebecca Knell who was sixteen at the time. Startled, I looked at some of the other dates given in the article: that birthdate would also have made him thirty-one at the time he qualified as a freeman of the Grocers' Company, even though he's described as having served a nine-year apprenticeship beginning age twelve.

Checking the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online got a birth year of 1566, which made way more sense, so I went into Wikipedia editing and fixed it (it actually had 1566 already in the header code, the typo was only in a few places).