We realised later that the problem (if that is the right word) with Martha Ivers is that there are so many interesting people in it that I could spend the whole time talking about the cast and that still wouldn't cover half the stuff about the film. In the end, to make the review any reasonable length of time, Mr Kitty convinced me to slice a whole chunk out of it - about the juvenile leads. There are, in particular, two really strong juvenile leads in this film. The first - Janis Wilson as Young Martha, and the second - Darryl Hickman as Young Sam.
The first 15 minutes of this film is set in 1928 when they are all around 12 years old. Young Martha is desperate to get away from her controlling Aunt (Judith Anderson) and Young Sam is fascinated enough by her to try to make it happen. Needless to say - things don't turn out the way that they want them to.
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darryl_Hickman |
You don't often watch a film that starts with the young versions of the main characters and think 'Hey - you guys are AWESOME.' I really really did with these guys. Darryl Hickman, as Sam, has been one of those weird Pops Up On Your Radar people who then all of a sudden seem to be popping up everywhere. I watched him in "Leave Her From Heaven" with Gene Tierney and Cornell Wilde (which is just the most MELODRAMATIC film of all time which is both its strength and its weakness) and then he was in 'Tea and Sympathy' and der-brain that I was, I did not even link the two of them up. It took The Internet to do that for me. And then of course he turned up here. I can't imagine what it must be like to be so young and so used to being in film after film. By the time he was 21 he had been in over 100 films. That's atleast 5 a year- depending on what year he started acting. That's pretty intense - no matter how small the part. The thing I admire even more about him - is once he realised that the parts were dying down and that he wasn't going to be a famous adult star - he transitioned himself really successfully to behind the scenes work. Congratulations, sir.
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Janis Wilson and Bette Davis in 'Now Voyager"
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And Janis Wilson is terrific. I have gone on to read a little more about her - and apparently she gave up acting at 18 because she said she did not photograph well. How's that for pressure. How ghastly it must have been to be perfectly acceptable looking - just not a Knockout - and to give it up? Blergh. She appears to have been perfectly happy, however, so perhaps I am just getting thingy about not getting to see her in any other films as opposed to accepting what made her happy. As a very famous emotionally repressed ice sorceress once said - 'Let It Go'.
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Young Walter and Young Martha. Does this look like a healthy relationship?
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The one - the only. Dame Judith Anderson.
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Finally - the one - the only - Judith Anderson. No one can play malevolent the way she can. She is an inredibly famous and well reknowned actress, and what's better - is an Australian! I was always very impressed with that piece of information when I was going through my I Want To Be An Actor phase. She is also on my list of people to see on Broadway when I have built my time machine (she is famously linked with both Lady Macbeth and Medea). The other extremely impressive thing about Dme Anderson is - when she was 87 she played the High Priestess in 'Star Trek III: The Search for Spock". I shall say no more.
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| http://www.startrek.com/database_article/tlar |
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