This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela.
This week I dropped the movie with Angela and Warren Beatty that seemed super dark and replaced it with The Long Hot Summer, which I actually watched in 2022 during my first ever movie marathon called The Summer of Paul (Newman that is). For the life of me, though, I could not find that I wrote a blog post about the movie, so I am starting from scratch here.
The Long Hot Summer is not an Angela Lansbury focused movie, but she is in it and fills the screen with her personality when she is on it. The main stars are, of course, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, but Angela provides some comic relief as Orson Welles’ mistress, Minnie Littlejohn.
First, a bit of background/description of the movie with the Google description:
Handsome vagabond Ben Quick (Paul Newman) returns to the Mississippi town his late father called home, but rumors of his dad’s pyromaniac tendencies follow him as soon as he sets foot there. The proud young man’s determination eventually wins over civic leader Will Varner (Orson Welles), who decides Ben might be just the man for his daughter, Clara (Joanne Woodward) — much to the displeasure of Will’s gutless son (Anthony Franciosa) and Clara’s society boyfriend (Richard Anderson).
The movie’s main focus is the sexual tension between Paul and Joan’s characters, which worked out fine since the two were having an affair before this and were on the cusp of being able to announce that since Paul Newman’s divorce was essentially final. Yes, I have always been a fan of Paul, but, no, I don’t like that part of his and Joanne’s story, and I have a feeling there were times they didn’t like it either.
Paul was always good at playing loners, sad men who don’t know who they are or what they want in life except the woman they set their sights on.
It’s the same in this movie, where Paul seems to want prestige but really just wants Clara to like him as much as he likes her. Clara is uptight, though. She does everything proper and never lets her guard down, especially around Ben Quick. She seems to have a feeling if she does let her guard down all of those feelings she’s been trying to protect all her life will spill out.
It’s no surprise since her daddy (Welles), is also pretty uptight and fights for control over everything in his life. That’s why he won’t marry Minnie, who desperately wants to be married.
The movie opens with Ben Quick being told to get out of a county because he is charged with burning a man’s barn because he got mad at the man. There was no proof, though, so instead of jailing him, the town tosses him out.
He rides a couple of steamers down the river to his family’s old town and when he’s hitch-hiking he’s picked up by sour Clara and her bubbly friend.
We find out how sour she is when he asks, “So you girls just take your fun wherever you can find it?” And Clara responds with, “Don’t jump to conclusions, young man, we’re giving you a ride and that’s all we’re giving you.”
The sparring between Clara and Ben kick off right from there and continue on in the movie.
The first sign we see is a welcome sign to Fishermen’s Bend, home to – well, everything owned by someone named Varner.
Ben tells the girls that it sounds like Varner is the man to see about work in that town and the bubbly girl says that he can see Mr. Varner every night at their house. He asks if they are connected to Varner and the girl giggles that they are indeed and then drive off and leave him there at the town hall.
Back at the Varner house, Eula, Clara’s sister-in-law, is gushing to her husband Jody about all the clothes she bought, and Clara is on the terrace sipping lemonade with her friend Agnes when Ben shows up again.
The ladies were talking about how they are single and lonely before Ben showed up. Agnes mentions how he might be an option and Clara quips that they haven’t gotten so desperate as to be turning to strangers.
Ben asks Jody about working one of the tenant farms to make some money off of. Jody agrees before running back upstairs to make out with Eula. The servant comments when he sees muddy footprints on the rug after Ben leaves, “Mister, you sure do leave your calling card.”
That’s a bit of foreshadowing and an understatement.
As the movie goes on Ben will work his way into the family in more ways than one, upsetting the apple cart, so to speak.
Clara walks the carpet back to Ben’s tenant house with a little black boy (yep, another servant down here in the South) and tells him you dirty it, you clean it.
What follows is some great dialogue, which continues throughout the movie.
“A lot of fuss to be making about a rug lady, if it’s the rug that’s bothering you.”
Clara tips her chin up. “What else would it be?”
Ben spits out a watermelon seed. “Well now you correct me if I’m wrong but I have a feeling I rile ya’. I mean me being so mean and dirty and all.”
“Mr. Quick, you being personal with me, I’ll be personal with you. I spent my whole life around men who push and shove and shout and think they can make anything happen just by being aggressive and I’m not anxious of ‘nother one around the place.”
Ben smirks. “Miss Clara, you slam a door in a man’s face before he even knocks on it.”
All Clara says is for him to have the rug at the house by 6.
It shows how bigger than life Varner is when he comes back into town in an ambulance or police car (not sure which ) with the sirens blaring. The people in town who watch him drive through talk about how he was in the hospital and had something cut out of him.
Then it’s time for Angela, the point of this here Summer marathon. She comes running out of the Littlejohn Boarding House and Hotel as soon as he pulls up, wearing a tight and tiny white dress, and throws her arms around him. Her Southern accent is so jarring being familiar with her original accent and the American one she ended up developing as the years went on.
He laughs and declares she seems to be getting fatter and blonder on him.
Oh yeah…Didn’t I mention what a charmer he is?
He tells her he will be back…later. *wink* *wink*
He greets his family at home, with a clear critical eye on his son who seems desperate to please his father. That will come to play in a big way in the movie.
Orson Welles’ color is so horrible in this film, and I don’t know if that is because he is supposed to look sick or if it was bad makeup or if Orson Wells was that color back then. Then again, a couple of the other men had that weird color to their skin too. Maybe it was just bad makeup or the film itself.
Despite his color, Minnie wants to marry Daddy Varner, and she lets him know that. He avoids her as much as possible, preferring to keep control of his world.
What Angela said about the movie:
Angela’s plays a playful flirt in this film, not a dark femme fatale like A Life At Stake and she credited the director, Martin Ritt, for bringing that playfulness out in her.
“Martin Ritt had a wonderful enthusiasm and earthy sexy quality himself,” she said. “He loved the idea of the dirtiness of the carryings on, and he certainly brought every bit of kind of naughty sexuality out of me in that role.”
As for Orson Welles, Angela agreed with others who said he was used to getting his own way because he normally had control of his own projects. This project wasn’t his though.
“He was always nudging and pushing for things and wanted to change lines,” said Angela. “But had to be carefully handled so that he didn’t always get his way because his way wasn’t necessarily the best way for everybody else in the scene.”
Welles would irritate his co-stars by overlapping his own lines with their dialogue, ad-libbing, and mumbling to the point where his lines were barely comprehensible, she added.
Despite him being annoying, Angela also said of him: “There was something you couldn’t resist about Orson.”
In a 2001 interview, quoted on TCM.com, Angela said of Paul and Joan: “They seemed to have such a total understanding of each other that they were able to work in scenes where they were at each other’s throats or falling under each other’s spell.”
My thoughts on the movie:
I like the Southern feel of this movie, the acting, the complex relationships. I love watching Ben try to break through Clara’s hard exterior. No matter how hard she tries to resists him or how many times she pushes him away he keeps trying.
I love how the women are very strong in the movie but not so strong that they are outright disrespectful, even though they probably should be in some cases.
Paul’s smirk works well in just about every movie he’s in but it really works in this one. It’s hard to read what his real motives are sometimes, but deep down I feel like he does want something better than what he’s had. I feel like he does want a family and to be successful on his own merit.
This movie has a Tennessee Williams feel to it even though it is based on one main story and other stories by William Faulkner. It did not have a Tennesse Williams’ ending, at least.
On a more shallow level, I don’t know what they were thinking with Joanne’s big eyebrows and those way too short bangs. Despite how much I didn’t like the look they went for, I really enjoyed watching her character develop and blossom and reveal herself to be different than who we think she is for the first half of the movie.
Watching the jealousy unfold in Jody as he desperately tried to be what his father wanted him to be was difficult to see. The poor guy has no idea how to be a man of his own and is always trying to be what he thinks his daddy wants him to be.
Orson really wasn’t good in this movie. He really wasn’t. I don’t know what happened to him or why he performed so awful but from what I read online it was flat out jealousy over his younger counterparts who were associated with the Actor’s Studio. I also read he was only 10 years older than Paul in this film – 42 years old – but he looks terrible! He wore a prosthetic nose which I can not figure out the point of.
As for Angela, she pulled off her part well and it was fun to watch her with a thick Louisiana accent. Every time I see her in one of her early movies, I really do find myself forgetting she was Jessica Fletcher. She would have been so much better in this one if she hadn’t had to act across from Orson who was way over acting.
Trivia and Facts:
- Orson Welles always wore a fake nose when he worked, so when he would sweat on this film, his fake nose would slip. Make-up people had to keep applying material to keep the fake nose from falling. (source TCM.com)
- The director was Marty Ritt and Paul filmed five other films with him including Hombre, Paris Blues, The Outrage, Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man, and Hud. (source, excerpt from Paul Newman biography on Lit Hub)
- In his biography Paul Newman wrote of Orson: “Orson couldn’t understand screen generosity, where one actor allows another player in his scene to deservedly get the best camera shots. Screen generosity was not part of Orson’s vocabulary. After a number of retakes on a scene he did with me, Orson asked Marty if he could have a private word with him. They stepped away together, and seemed to be discussing something rather serious. When they came back, we did another take, and afterwards, I asked Marty what was going on.
“Orson thought you were submarining him,” he said; it was an actor’s way of saying someone was stealing his screen time.” (source, excerpt from Paul Newman biography on Lit Hub)
- The director, ‘Martin Ritt’ , was forever known after this movie as the man who tamed Orson Welles. During filming Ritt drove Wells into the middle of a swamp, kicked him out of the car and forced him to find his own way back in the hot Louisiana heat. (various/several sources)
- Joan and Paul were married in January 1958 and the movie released in March. (TCM.com)
- When the movie was complete, the director and others watched it and noticed they could barely here Orson at times. The director felt sure Orson had purposely mumbled his lines to make the sound more difficult because he was unhappy with not having control.
- From TCM.com: “The success of The Long, Hot Summer helped Martin Ritt reestablish himself as a major director following his 5-year blacklisting from Hollywood. It also showcased the talents of young up-and-comers Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, who won Best Actor that year at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of Ben Quick. It marked both the beginning of long and distinguished careers for the talented couple as well as the beginning of one of Hollywood’s longest and happiest marriages.”
- The Long, Hot Summer was based on the works of southern writer William Faulkner, most notably his 1940 novel The Hamlet. (source: TCM.com)
- The movie was turned into a television series in 1965. It starred Roy Thinnes as Ben Quick, Nancy Malone as Clara, and Edmond O’Brien as Will Varner. O’Brien eventually left the show and was replaced with Dan O’Herlihy. Legendary director Robert Altman directed the pilot. (source: TCM.com)
- Copied directly from TCM.com’s article because I thought it was interesting and I didn’t want to summarize it: Although William Faulkner was best known as a novelist and short story writer, he did work as a screenwriter in Hollywood for 20th-Century-Fox during the thirties and forties. A good deal of his work went uncredited and he was never successful in adapting any of his own work for the screen (although he did do a screen treatment for “Barn Burning” but it was never produced). He did, however, receive credit for the screenplay adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not (1944), Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (1946) and a few other scripts such as Submarine Patrol (1938) for director John Ford and The Road to Glory (1936) for director Howard Hawks.
Other William Faulkner film adaptations include The Story of Temple Drake (1933, based on his novel Sanctuary), Intruder in the Dust (1949), The Tarnished Angels (1958, based on his novel Pylon), The Sound and the Fury (1959), Sanctuary (1961), The Reivers (1969), Tomorrow (1972, based on his story), and an uncredited Russian adaptation of Sanctuary entitled Cargo 200 (2007, aka Gruz 200).
Have you ever seen this one?
My last Angela movie will be Something for Everyone. I don’t know anything about it so I’m going into it blind.
If you want to read about some of the other movies I watched, you can find them here:
Sources:
Paul Newman on the Lusty Time He Had Filming The Long Hot Summer with Joanne Woodward
Behind the Camera, The Long Hot Summer: https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/308663/the-long-hot-summer#articles-reviews
The Long Hot Summer and The Newmans: https://vanguardofhollywood.com/the-long-hot-summer/
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
