Tag Archives: George Brent

Starting out from Scratch: Barbara Stanwyck in ‘My Reputation’

Original poster.

Original poster, and totally misleading: Barbara Stanwyck has been posed and painted to look like Jane Russell in ‘The Outlaw.’

Curtis Bernhardt’s “My Reputation” (Warner Bros., 1946) is one of the best Woman’s Pictures I know. (Bernhardt directed another great one, “Payment on Demand,” which I examined a few weeks ago.) Like “Payment on Demand,” it is unusually adult. Barbara Stanwyck plays Jessica “Jess” Drummond, a youngish widow with two teenage sons; she’s neither ready nor willing to be a widow for the rest of her life, but doesn’t know what she’s to do with her husband gone after a long illness and her two boys off at prep school. To complicate matters, she has a pushy, old-fashioned mother who bullies her, and she’s surrounded by a crowd of catty, gossipy friends: they’re despicable, but hardly unusual. No, they’re standard-issue Woman’s Picture upper middle class women. I’ve been looking at a lot of Woman’s Pictures lately, and with very few exceptions, they positively pullulate with idle female chatterbox parasites in hats and jewels and furs, who get tight at lunch, slander their absent friends, cheat on their husbands and ostracize any member of their set who wants to make herself useful or pursue an intellectual or artistic interest. These pampered ladies are snobs and hypocrites and busybodies — when there’s a war on, they do much of their shopping on the black market and speak scornfully of the patriotic simps who live on ration tickets and abide by the government’s austerity measures; half of them are tramps and the other half are frigid. Here’s an early scene in which we meet some of these poisonous dames at the market. There’s another type of stock villain at the scene’s end, but I’ll have something to say about him a little later on.

There have been Woman’s Pictures since the beginning, but they became a readily identifiable genre during the War Years, when Hollywood studios did what they could to cater to their idea of what women on the Home Front would want to see. The stories in this genre tend to be overwrought romances in which an attractive, sympathetic leading lady is put through tumultuous psychological wringers by antagonists who come in all shapes and sizes. Yet, with much of the adult male population fighting overseas, most of the villains in these dramas necessarily had to be other women; Woman’s Pictures, as a rule, present the vast majority of the adult female population in a harshly negative light: they’re nitwits at best and venomous reptiles at worst. Even when the screenplays were written by women (as this one was: Catherine Turney) or were based on novels written by women (as this one was: “Instruct My Heart” by Clare Jaynes — terrible title!), the pictures were produced and directed by men who worked for studios that were run by men. And of course with the Production Code in full vigor, the conclusions drawn in even the best of these pictures tend to be conservative, to say the least. The Women’s Liberation movement was still decades away.

A Message from Beyond the Grave

In this clip, which comes in the first reel of the picture, Jess reads the letter her late husband wrote for her a few days before he died.

I have great admiration for Stanwyck’s combination of intense emotion and restraint. She doesn’t hide her feelings, but she doesn’t parade them either. She sheds tears, but she doesn’t glory in them. Although “My Reputation” seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle (why isn’t it better known?), it’s one of Stanwyck’s best performances: you can start watching the picture at just about any point and within a few seconds, you’re bound to see her doing something wonderful. But I’ll give you a hint: as good as she is in the first half of the picture, she only gets better as it goes along.

The (slightly misquoted) quotation comes from a sonnet by Christina Rossetti. Jess’s husband Paul remembered the last line only slightly incorrectly, but his paraphrase throws off its rhythm. I like to think Paul got the quote wrong because he was, well, dying and didn’t have time to look it up. Besides, he closes with “your loving but unpoetic husband,” which claim his error confirms.

Remember

by Christina Rossetti
Remember me when I am gone away,
       Gone far away into the silent land;
       When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
       You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
       Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
       And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
       For if the darkness and corruption leave
       A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
       Than that you should remember and be sad.

I rather like the poem, and it’s well suited to the picture, which, like Rossetti’s work, is wet without being soppy. But I can’t help comparing it to a few of Shakespeare’s sonnets on the same subject — for instance, Sonnet 71, which begins “No longer mourn for me when I am dead/Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell/Give warning to the world that I am fled/From this vile world, with vildest* worms to dwell.” Not very comforting, I know, but more bracing and less sentimental. In my book, the dying husband who left that passage for his widow to chew on would be a much more interesting fellow and a greater loss. But this is a Woman’s Picture, and sentimentality is part of the deal. What makes “My Reputation” exceptional in many scenes is Stanwyck’s ability to play the emotions without becoming vague and sentimental. Jessica Drummond is a native of a wealthy suburb of Chicago, but Stanwyck puts a lot of Brooklyn in the woman’s backbone.
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* Most modern editors amend “vildest” to “vilest,” but I disapprove of this liberty: vildest has more bite.

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

There are several partings in the picture, two of which are at train stations, and all of them are handled extremely well. Max Steiner’s score knocks me out: the way the main theme swells as the train pulls away strikes me as musical scoring at its best. This scene shows Jess as she puts her boys on the train to their private school back East. This is another example of how brilliantly Barbara Stanwyck expresses a complicated, deeply-felt inner life, but without telegraphing it: Stanwyck doesn’t present her emotions to you: she allows you to catch them as they fleet. It’s not only her face that registers what’s going on inside her, but look at her body language: she’s incredibly expressive. But she’s not the only one. I think the two kids in this scene are worth paying close attention to.


Bobby Cooper is the older brother, Keith; Scotty Beckett plays Kim. Bobby Cooper got out of pictures early. Of the two boys, Keith (Bobby) is the somber, soulful one; Kim’s the firecracker. And why not? Scotty Beckett was discovered at the age of three, when a casting agent overheard him singing for his ailing father, in The Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. Scotty’s natural gaiety charmed the nurses: soon he was singing for all the patients on the ward. His father died the following year. Scotty appeared as Spanky McFarland’s co-conspirator in an early season of the Our Gang shorts, and went on to play opposite the biggest stars (including Garbo) at various studios all through his childhood, often portraying the leading character as a child. The kid was talented, extremely cute and a natural show-off, as Kim is. But I consider Bobby Cooper’s Keith to be the more interesting performance: Keith’s a nice looking boy, with more than a passing resemblance to his mother (they have the same eyes and the same jawline), but a melancholic, adult shadow partially eclipses his boyishness. You can see that Keith is at least dimly conscious, as his younger brother is not, of his mother’s loneliness and anxiety. And he sees that Kim is cuter and livelier than he, and knows that he lives in his younger brother’s shadow. I think little, if any, of this is in the script, but the acting is specific enough to make these details evident, without underlining them. (These details are more noticeably on display in other scenes, but they’re also in this scene if you look for them, and I wanted to show one of the nice train station sequences.) Look at the way Stanwyck interacts with her two boys: there’s nothing vague or general about her relationship to them as distinct, uniquely loveable individuals. She’s cheerful and light with Kim; she treats Keith almost as if he were her confidant . . . and the man of the family. The scene is deeply poignant, yet the dialogue is second rate at best. It’s the acting that is first rate. There’s real emotional truth in this parting that lifts the humdrum to something quite a lot better — perhaps better than it deserves. But I’m thankful for great scenes like this, however they happen and wherever I can find them.

You can also see in this clip that Scotty Beckett is already playing all the angles. His life was soon to spiral out of control; by the mid-fifties, he had become a one man “Hollywood Babylon.” Drunken driving, drug addiction, hotel robbery, passing bad checks, attempted suicide, pistol-whipping, wife-beating, a stretch in the stoney lonesome, parole violation . . . you name it, Scotty did it. An overdose killed him at 38 years old, a washed-up has-been. Poor little bastard.

The querulous old bitch of a granny with the chalk-on-a-slate voice is that bus-and-truck Gladys Cooper known as Lucile Watson. She gave the same goddamn performance in every picture she was ever in: the Sweet Old Darling rounded by an acidic brown perimeter; she’s an inferior dessert wine turned to vinegar: simultaneously cloying and tart — sickening. I can’t bear her.

The Masher

The most common stock male villain in Woman’s Pictures is The Masher. Occasionally, he’s a moderately attractive bachelor with bad manners (e.g., Jack Carson in “Mildred Pierce”), but far more often he’s an unattractive, hard-drinking, unhappily married middle-aged man who is under the misapprehension that his boorish double entendres and fulsome compliments are catnip to the ladies, especially when he’s got a half dozen Old Overholt highballs sloshing round in his belly. He usually gets a well-deserved slap in the face, which he interprets as just another step in the timeless dance of seduction. In the War Years (“My Reputation” was shot in 1943, but not released till ’46), The Masher was a more than usually objectionable and obnoxious pest: his being stateside implied he was a coward or unfit for service or unpatriotic — and probably all three. In “My Reputation,” The Masher is played by Jerome Cowan, a reliable, but wholly unsympathetic contract player at Warners.

I confess I find the scene in the car difficult to watch: what this bastard does to our heroine amounts to attempted rape — when she repulses his advances, his reassurance that nobody “would ever suspect you, anyway” is particularly loathsome. This scene takes place just days after her husband has been buried in the cold, cold ground. Who is this son of a bitch? “No hard feelings, Jess!” Hard feelings?! I’d like to see her go all Phyllis Dietrichson (“Double Indemnity”) on his ass, but that would be a different picture. Moreover, his confidence and persistence suggest that his brutishness has actually worked in the past. In the scene, Jess says, “Women on the loose can be such a mess,” but it’s hard to imagine any woman being quite that messy. I look at this scene and my wits begin to turn: during the Production Code era, a husband and wife couldn’t be shown lying fully clothed in a bed together, unless one of them had at least one foot touching the floor, but Jerry Cowan could be shown manhandling Barbara Stanwyck and smothering her with unwanted kisses, without a murmur of protest from Joe Breen’s office. Nobody gets laid or has any fun, so it’s all right for us to see it. Anyhow, having met his odious wife at the market in an earlier scene, we know that he’ll go home to her and they’ll both make each other miserable. So it all works out.

Eve Arden to the Rescue

Here’s what happens immediately afterwards. I cannot think of a more perfect example of what Woman’s Pictures are all about: serious psychological turmoils addressed with as much seriousness as Hollywood timidity and censorship would allow. Frankly, I much prefer this sort of tame psychoanalysis to what began to show up in Woman’s Pictures of the seventies, such as “An Unmarried Woman.” I love the gorgeous cinematography, the artificial (i.e., non-improvised) dialogue and the polished (i.e., not perfectly realistic) acting. And I especially savor the total absence of underscoring during the scene (the voices are melodious enough to carry it), followed by the plush ripeness of the travel music — it’s all close enough to reality to be believable, but it’s better than mere realism. Noël Coward once said, “When I go to the theatre, I want to see extraordinary people, not a series of ordinary ones.” Amen.

In this picture, Eve Arden is, for once, more wise than wise-cracking. Her analysis of Jessica’s problem isn’t what I’d call penetrating, but she’s certainly on the right track, and I like her combination of earnestness, empathy and toughness. Arden’s diction is precise almost to a fault; her way with a line is mannered and artificial, yet she unfailingly conveys canniness and above all, a warm personality. She lets you know she’s acting, but she also clearly means what she recites. She’s unreal without being phony. I’ve always found her a sympathetic actress, but never as witty as she apparently intends to be. But this is usually because her zingers aren’t good enough.

The Worm Turns

Another standard feature of the Woman’s Picture genre (and the one I like the best) is the obligatory scene in which the beset heroine finally finds the moxie to turn on her antagonist(s) and speak her mind: I call it “The Worm Turns.” “Now, Voyager” has a few spectacular examples of this, when Bette Davis faces down her formidable old tyrant of a mother (Gladys Cooper). Joan Crawford was always camp in such scenes, because she was always itching for a fight and took too much pleasure in browbeating her co-stars. Like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck plays this sort of scene excellently: she hates conflict, she doesn’t want to lose her temper, she’s ashamed of herself for losing control, but she’s got to set things straight. I love the way she lets loose in this scene: seeing it out of context, it won’t mean as much, of course, but I believe you can still get a fair idea of how emotionally satisfying the moment is in the context of the story. Steiner’s underscoring punctuates Stanwyck’s arguments beautifully. Stanny has an even better outburst later in the picture, but I don’t want to give too much away.

Lucile Watson wears that same jeweled brooch in other scenes. It reminds me of the solitary eyeball that the Grææ, the three blind hags who guarded the Medusa’s cave, passed among themselves. I’m captivated by this idea, because it reinforces the idea of Watson as a Gorgon, which she undeniably is.

The Complicated/Doomed Love Affair

Our heroine has to fall in love, of course, and the affair needs must be complicated — perhaps even impossibly so. In “My Reputation,” Jessica is a woman who married in her late teens and has no experience of romantic love outside of her marriage. She’s in her mid-thirties, but has less sexual experience than most girls in their freshman year of college; she appears to be a woman of the world, but she’s terrified of her unexplored sexuality and is afraid of being engulfed by passions that could lead her to her ruin. She’s emotionally stifled, even crippled, by the gossipy females of her social set and by her interfering termagant mother. And she has two boys who are still too young to understand her desire for romance. All the Rules say that she is supposed to immure herself in widowhood, but she falls — against her will — desperately in love with Major Scott Landis (George Brent), who introduces her to a new world of adult sexuality, which had never even occurred to her before. It’s all very complicated and confusing to her. She’s drawn to him, but he is, in his own way, just as bullying as her social set, her adolescent (and therefore selfish) boys, and her horrible old mother. The difference is, Major Landis is trying to liberate her, while they’re all trying to hold her back. The emotional conflicts become extremely intense before the picture comes to a satisfactory end.

Mind you, I don’t mean to overpraise “My Reputation”: it’s far from great. But once again, it’s a flawed picture that I admire, in large part, for its ambition. Some of the scenes with Brent are, by today’s standards, exasperating: much of what we’re to accept as his perspicacity strikes me as merely presumptuous and insulting. This first scene of him alone with Stanwyck after nightfall offers many examples of what I mean.

“I’ve seen hundreds of people like you . . .” Oh, the dirty swine: how dare he? In a later scene, she comes to his apartment, where he pours gin down her throat while he crowds her on the sofa . . . this is love? Who wants it? (And his gin is warm.) In many of Brent’s scenes, his chauvinism and smug superiority are really infuriating. And yet . . . if you can accept these things (as I do) as a product of their time and a form of getting-it-past-the-censors shorthand for a more complicated and protracted seduction and sexual awakening, at least it makes it possible for a wartime Woman’s Picture to tell a story about an inexperienced woman who learns what sex is, what all the fuss is about, and realizes that she likes it so much that she’s willing to take great risks on its behalf and to make considerable sacrifices to keep it coming. That’s no small matter, especially in a picture from the mid-1940s.

James Wong Howe photographed it beautifully. Max Steiner’s score is lush and, in the main, perfect. I dislike the flutes and the Laurel and Hardy-style mutes on the trumpets in the courtship scenes and the way the orchestrations go all puerile and kittenish in the clinches, but I expect this is intended to downplay Jessica’s sexual excitement and terror, and to emphasize instead the comical varieties of nervousness that are a natural consequence of falling in love. Taken as a whole, “My Reputation” is not nearly as good a picture as “Casablanca,” but I find its conclusion to be as emotionally exhilarating as the last moments between Ilsa and Rick. The last shot in the picture is unforgettable.

‘The Rains Came’ (and the Old Order Went)

Original Poster.

Original Poster. Yet another example of the terrible artwork on 20th Century-Fox posters.

“The Rains Came” was Twentieth Century Fox’s biggest picture from Hollywood’s most celebrated year, 1939. It’s a remarkably effective entertainment, considering the number of things wrong with it. Tyrone Power won Harvard Lampoon’s first Worst Actor of the Year award for his performance. As the beturbaned Indian physician, Major Rama Safti, he’s better than usual — and certainly better than Richard Burton was in the unspeakable 1955 remake, “The Rains of Ranchipur.” In the second half of the picture, he’s quite good indeed — not remotely Indian, of course, but believable as a man in love.

The main trouble with “The Rains Came” is not the acting (which, with a few notable exceptions, is really quite good), but its genial racism. Certainly, every effort is made to be respectful toward the native population of the Subcontinent, but the earnest respectfulness is paradoxically (and unsurprisingly) the problem. It’s a case of the enlightened West’s gazing with bemused tolerance on these little brown heathens and their curious, benighted ways.

The Raj was still very much in effect in 1939; England was newly at war with Germany, and Hollywood studios were anxious to give favorable publicity to the British Empire. For the most part, the British are shown in a favorable light — the odious Lord Esketh (Nigel Bruce) is an anomaly, and he gets what’s coming to him good and hard — and every good Indian knows that Ranchipur would be lost without the balm of British intervention in their affairs. The screenplay, by Philip Dunne (who, during the Blacklist Era, co-founded the Committee for the First Amendment with John Huston and William Wyler) is loaded with uplifting little tributes to Western Civ. Take this exchange between Tyrone Power and George Brent (as Tom Ransome, a dipso British ex-pat artist), from the very first scene:

Power: I didn’t know that you had faith in anything, Tom.

Brent: Oh, well, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve got faith in a lot of things. For instance, uh . . .

Power: For instance . . . ?

Brent: Well, for instance, Queen Victoria. [He points to an iron statue of the Queen standing out in the lawn.]

Power: That old statue?

Brent: To you, she’s only a statue. But to me, she’s an old friend. A living reminder of the fine and brave days before the world went to seed . . . When London Bridge did its falling down to a dance step, not to the threat of tomorrow’s bombs. When every American was a millionaire or about to be one. When people sang in Vienna. There she stands in her cast iron petticoats, unconcerned about wars, dictators and appeasement . . . as serene as ever. God bless her.

Brent: Ode to an Iron Petticoat.

Brent: Ode to an Iron Petticoat.

This adoration of Queen Victoria as a demi-goddess and, more especially, the veneration of her figure cast in iron, strikes me as highly ironic in a story that is so deeply concerned with conflicts between Western rationalist traditions and Oriental mysticism. The first time I heard the speech, I was reminded at once of a moment in “Jane Eyre” when the very Christian Mr Brocklehurst condemns the heroine, who in his opinion is, “worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut.” Queen Victoria is in for a rusty time of it before the waters subside, but her head never goes under for a moment.

(A quick word about George Brent: Until recently, I’ve always misjudged him as being a stolid, dull actor. I owe him an apology. He played a lot of stolid, dull characters, but he was nearly always better than the parts he played. Having looked at a lot of his work lately, I see now that he was a fine, imaginative actor, and that he handled difficult, sometimes impossible material, such as the speech quoted above, with great finesse and ease. I’ve come to have great admiration for his skill. When he was cast in an interesting role, such as the bounder Buck Cantrell in “Jezebel,” he usually stole most of the scenes he was in — but never from his leading ladies.)

Though the fictitious state of Ranchipur (located in the northwest corner of India, next door to modern Pakistan) is actually under British rule, the ancient Maharajah (H.B. Warner) and his wizened Maharani (Maria Ouspenskaya) are allowed “To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks” without interference from their English puppet masters, so long as they keep the millions of ragged natives under control. Throughout the picture, we’re reminded that these two despots are, by dint of their Western leanings, more enlightened than the savages under their rule, and that they mean to drag their country out of the murky foolery of Eastern mysticism and into the blaze of Western thought and jurisprudence. Throughout the picture, little pinpricks of racism keep piercing the fabric of the story; each one of them is certainly regrettable, but they also hand me many a shame-faced chuckle. For instance, there is the case of Mr Bannerjee (Joseph Schildkraut) a Subcontinental (by way of Vienna) social climber and bon viveur, whom we first meet at a lavish party at the Maharajah’s palace, where he’s the very image of a Weimar dandy, with Macassar-slicked hair, monocle, mascara, moustaches (carefully waxed), white tie, tails and champagne dish — everything but the monkey (the de rigueur pet of the Weimar boulevardier). Mr Bannerjee says, with a curt little bow, “We flatter ourselves to be jolly well abr-r-r-reast of the times.”

Nigel Bruce, Joseph Schildkraut, H.B. Warner, Maria Ouspenskaya

Nigel Bruce, Joseph Schildkraut, H.B. Warner, Maria Ouspenskaya: ‘We flatter ourselves to be jolly well abreast of the times.’

When The Rains Come, Mr Schildkraut-Bannerjee turns native in einem Augenblick, as it were, and then there he is, sitting in lotus position on a verandah, naked except for his capacious diaper, and troubling the Hindoo pantheon with his bootless cries, and jabbering and chattering in an ecstasy of superstitious terror . . . It’s the most overtly racist moment in the picture, especially since it’s hard to accept it as anything but a cruel sight gag.

Even without the pro-British angle, condescension would be unavoidable because at its heart, the story concerns the love affair between Lady Edwina Esketh, a white American socialite (Myrna Loy), and an Indian doctor; the Production Code did not allow romance to exist across color barriers. As it was, the story of an adulteress pushed the Breen Office to the limits of its narrow-mindedness, and was permitted because at no point do we ever see the lovers kiss.

So what is there to like about this picture? As I mentioned, most of the acting is quite good. It’s nice to see Myrna Loy play against type (at Metro, she was invariably cast as “the perfect wife”) and it’s fun to see Nigel Bruce play a hateful son of a bitch. I don’t know if I’ve ever liked Myrna Loy more than I like her in this one, and I like Myrna Loy in just about everything, including “The Best Years of Our Lives,” which is a picture I whole-heartedly detest. “The Rains Came” is also full of beautiful cinematography. Here’s a scene that features the first onset of rain (the real rains come about twenty minutes later in the picture, and go on for a long, long time). “The Rains Came” won the first Academy Award for Special Effects (Fred Sersen and Edmund H. Hansen), which are spectacular. But I prefer the simple effects in this scene, particularly the imaginative use of light and shadow on the curtain. The director of photography was three-time Oscar winner, Arthur C. Miller. (He was nominated for this one, but lost to Gregg Toland for “Wuthering Heights.”)

The clip below is a splice of Nigel Bruce’s last two scenes. He plays Lord Esketh, the cuckolded husband of Lady Edwina; his inability to digest the curries of India have left him bedridden while his straying wife is out trying to seduce the noble surgeon played by Tyrone Power. In his hand is his tabulation of his wife’s various lovers. Esketh’s long-suffering valet, Bates, is played by veteran character actor, Herbert Evans. In the second part of the clip, which takes place when The Rains Come, you will see how Bates gets a brief moment of triumph over his hateful master before both lose their lives in the flood.

Plague follows in the wake of the earthquakes and floods. Lady Edwina goes to work in the hospital, where her devotion, selflessness and Western stoicism win the heart of “the light copper Apollo” (as Lady Edwina calls Dr Safti). But the lady is an adulteress, and no amount of heroism can mitigate the Production Code’s stringent calculation of the Wages of Sin. Consequently, I feel I am not betraying a secret to mention that Lady E. needs must contract the plague, and the lady must die of it. The news does, however, come as a shock to the good doctor, who suffers an emotional collapse when he realizes that his best efforts are not sufficient to sponge the writing from her tombstone. For reasons I don’t understand, Power plays this emotional scene without benefit of turban — he rarely looked more dashing. Once again, George Brent is on hand to remind him of his duty to Our Side against the Powers of Oriental Darkness.

Brent: Rama, this won’t do: you’ve got to get a hold of yourself.

Power: It’s no use. I can’t. We’re different. Deep down, where it matters. I’m an Indian! I can’t be calm and unemotional. I wanna tear my clothes and wail like a. . . like Bannerjee!

Brent: You’re not Bannerjee: you’re a man! You’re a doctor!

Power: I’ve failed. I can’t save her.

Brent: Rama. Rama! Rama! Listen to me. If you lose your way now, you’ll never find it again. Think of the Maharani and your duty, the Maharajah and all he planned for you. Think of the people who worship and respect you. For them you’re a symbol, something clean and courageous that’s been born in the darkness and filth that was India. You are India! The New India! Don’t betray all of us who have faith in you.

Power: [A short pause during which he runs his fingers through his silken black tresses.] I’m sorry, Tom. I’m all right now. It won’t happen again [pronounced to rhyme with a-main]. Thank you.

So well-meaning, so eloquent, so wrong! The stew of White Man’s Burden-style racism and patriotism is irresistible.

The tiny, chain-smoking Madame Maria Ospenskaya gives the most interesting performance in the picture. She was born in Tula, Russia, and was a member of Stanislavsky’s famous Moscow Art Theatre. As the Maharani, she had ample opportunity to be soft and sentimental, but she resolutely refused to take that bait. She’s wily as hell, and occasionally coy, but there’s real danger in her performance: she is decidedly not a sweet old darling. In a late scene, the Maharani is considering what to do about Lady Edwina, who has made herself invaluable to Ranchipur during the outbreak of the plague, but who is likely to undo the Maharani’s careful plans for Dr Safti: “I want to do the right thing. I’d trample her without mercy. But then, of course, I was brought up in the hills, where charity is a sign of weakness.” Few actresses could speak these lines with the simplicity and lack of irony of Maria Ouspenskaya. She made her Hollywood debut in William Wyler’s 1936 “Dodsworth,” in which she appeared as the Baroness Von Obersdorf — she was onscreen for a little less than six minutes, but was nominated for that year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar (she lost to Gale Sondergaard in “Anthony Adverse” — also a debut performance). If Mme Ouspenskaya is known at all today, it is for her memorably silly turn as the old gypsy woman, Maleva, in two Wolf Man pictures (“The Wolf Man” and “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man”). In the late thirties and early forties, however, she appeared in several prestige pictures, including “Love Affair,” “Waterloo Bridge” and “Kings Row,” and was also a highly respected acting teacher. Respected, yes; liked, no. Mme Ouspenskaya was a White Russian through and through: she was an unapologetic autocrat and a passionate believer in the occult, a combination that proved maddening to her colleagues. By no means could she be persuaded to perform when her stars were less than favorable. She had almost daily consultations with Carroll Richter, the astrologer for the Los Angeles Times. For most of her career, she was intensely hated by nearly everyone she worked with. But there’s no escaping how effective her performances are. In 1949, she fell asleep while smoking in bed and was badly burnt. She died of a stroke three days later. She was seventy-three years old.