“Connecticut within the Films: From Dream Homes to Darkish Suburbia”By Illeana DouglasLyons Press, 340 pages
William Gillette, who constructed Gillette’s Fort in East Haddam, wrote the primary approved stage adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and starred in a silent film model in 1916. (San Francisco Silent Movie Competition)
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in “Bringing Up Child” (1938). Grant’s character was based mostly on a Yale paleontologist who named the Brontosaurus. (Photofest)
Jack Lemmon, seen on the set of “It Occurred to Jane” (1959), referred to as Chester, the place the movie was shot, “probably the most restful place he’d seen.” (Peggy Breslin/Chester Historic Society)
Steven Spielberg directs Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman in “Amistad” (1997), which was shot partly in Mystic.
Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones play a pair attempting to revive their marriage in “Hope Springs” (2012), which was shot partly in Stonington. (Photofest)
Within the 1935 movie “The Marriage ceremony Evening,” Gary Cooper performs a New York author who lastly finishes his novel after a salutary change of surroundings.
“I’ve been operating throughout in search of life, and I’ve discovered it proper right here,” he tells his love curiosity.
“Right here” is a farm within the nation, however extra essential, it’s Connecticut. The movie, a part of a style referred to as country-living comedies, wasn’t the primary to characteristic our state, but it surely was among the many first to offer it a silver-screen identification.
Over greater than a century, Connecticut has been the setting for a lot of films, but it surely’s additionally been a shape-shifting character with a shocking historical past. A brand new ebook gives a tour of the state’s movie profession that ranges from intercourse romps to horror to house owner misadventures.
“Connecticut within the Films: From Dream Homes to Darkish Suburbia” would have stuffed a spot in native literature had it executed not more than chronicle the 90-plus films with hyperlinks to the state. However it may not have been a lot enjoyable within the palms of a special writer.
Illeana Douglas, an actress and author, brings appreciable perception to the films and their messages. She’s additionally a Nutmeg State native who’s as excited as anybody to see Connecticut on the large display. She retains herself within the story as a witty tour information.
One minute she’s contemplating whether or not “The Stepford Wives” is a darkish commentary on the ladies’s motion or an insensitive parody of it. The following, in a photograph caption, a less-profound thought reveals her as certainly one of us: “Hey, is {that a} Connecticut license plate?”
Douglas organizes her movie journey thematically (“Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Connecticut Cameos,” and many others.), however a lot of the ebook goes past classes to make an argument that the state has had its personal persona on-screen. Really, a number of personalities.
It began within the ’30s with these country-living comedies. In “The Marriage ceremony Evening,” “Theodora Goes Wild” (1936) and “Citing Child” (1938), Connecticut is greater than a backdrop. It has a recurring function as a restful place the place folks rediscover all that’s healthful and significant, an antidote to the Manhattan rat race.
None of these films have been filmed right here, so the state’s restorative ruralness was a Hollywood idea. However it had roots in actuality, as present enterprise folks engaged on Broadway found the state within the Twenties and ’30s, Douglas writes. Some moved right here, however one star, Katharine Hepburn, personified the state greater than anybody, having grown up in Hartford and summered in Previous Saybrook.
“She might be referred to as an envoy of the Connecticut model,” Douglas writes.
If Connecticut is a spot to get again in contact with what issues, then it’s additionally excellent for spending Christmas, as we all know at the moment from a parade of regionally shot Hallmark films. However two World Battle II-era classics used that concept first. “Christmas in Connecticut” (1945) finds Barbara Stanwyck as {a magazine} columnist whose synthetic persona is made actual when she celebrates at an idyllic farm Douglas calls “Currier and Ives on steroids.”
Then there’s “Vacation Inn” (1942), during which Bing Crosby retires to Connecticut and turns his farmhouse right into a nightclub that’s open solely on holidays. That is the film that gave us “White Christmas,” with its eager for a greater time.
With postwar growth, the agricultural supreme grew to become suburban, which exacted a price, as Cary Grant present in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Home” (1948). Taking part in a New York advert man who strikes out of the town, he will get fleeced by charming locals and finds his dream home is a cash pit. The movie co-stars the writer’s grandfather, Melvyn Douglas, who figures in a couple of Connecticut films.
In certainly one of many pleasant particulars Douglas finds, she tells us that as a promotion, 73 duplicate Blandings homes have been offered as kits, and 4 survive in Wethersfield, Hartford, Trumbull and Bridgeport.
Connecticut’s on-screen identification modified as American society grew to become extra complicated. The suburbia of Mr. Blandings was of the sooner world, however by the ’50s and ’60s it had develop into a spot the place forbidden want lurked beneath the floor. A string of intercourse comedies starring Paul Newman, Richard Widmark, Janet Leigh, Shelley Winters and others mirrored a spicier Connecticut that wasn’t G-rated.
However it wasn’t all enjoyable and video games. Suburbia bred frustrations that went past the perils of constructing a home, and Connecticut hosted tales that mirrored the down facet of marriage, unfulfilled goals and life gone awry.
Examples embrace Gregory Peck’s hole existence as an govt commuting to New York in “The Man within the Grey Flannel Go well with” (1956), and infidelity rocking the wedding of George Segal and Eva Marie Saint in “Loving” (1970).
Two of the bleakest entries are “The Stepford Wives” (1975), during which males exchange their wives with robots that higher go well with their fantasies, and “The Swimmer” (1968), the place Burt Lancaster makes his approach residence by means of his Fairfield County neighbors’ swimming pools. When he will get there, the unraveling of his life is revealed. A photograph from this curious movie is on the ebook’s cowl, evoking the “darkish suburbia” of its subtitle.
Decoding these films to hint the altering portrayal of Connecticut is the ebook’s marquee achievement, however there’s extra floor to cowl.
Our neck of the woods was too distant to determine within the escape-Manhattan theme, however we’re nicely represented elsewhere, from William Gillette’s “Sherlock Holmes” to Eugene O’Neill’s “Lengthy Day’s Journey Into Evening.” The native angle is very wealthy in a chapter titled “Location, Location, Location: The City is the Star.”
In “It Occurred to Jane” (1959), Chester stands in for Maine, the place Doris Day runs a lobster enterprise and lands Jack Lemmon. Residents are in each scene, and a co-star, Max Showalter, liked the place a lot he moved there.
“Parrish” (1961), starring Troy Donahue, Claudette Colbert and Karl Malden, takes the prize for many native ties. Taking pictures areas included Previous Saybrook, Essex and Groton. Each the Naval Submarine Base and the Chester-Hadlyme ferry are featured. The movie was tailored from a ebook by New London native Mildred Savage, and Delmer Daves wrote the screenplay on the Bee and Thistle Inn in Previous Lyme. Who knew?
The film with the last word starring function for a city needed to be “Mystic Pizza” (1988), and Douglas proclaims it “indubitably the best-known movie related to Connecticut — I imply, it has Mystic proper there within the title.”
The approaching-of-age story that made stars of each Julia Roberts and an area eatery continues to be acquainted, however do you know it began with one other Mystic restaurant? Douglas recounts how Amy Holden Jones was in search of fried clams whereas touring and located them at Sea Swirl. Strolling by means of city afterward, she noticed Mystic Pizza’s signal and thought, “That might be a terrific title. What’s the film?” She answered the query by writing the screenplay.
Douglas makes time for again tales like this in addition to enjoyable information. “Parrish” is ready on the state’s tobacco farms, and we study {that a} younger Martin Luther King labored on certainly one of them. The Waterbury setting of “Stanley & Iris” (1990) is motive sufficient to notice that the town’s brass factories produced uniform buttons for “Gone With the Wind.” And the bell that heralded angel wings in “It’s a Fantastic Life” was made in East Hampton.
A handful of movies spotlight Connecticut historical past. Along with Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad” (1997), there are retellings of much less well-known episodes like “Marshall” (2017), during which Chadwick Boseman portrays future Supreme Courtroom Justice Thurgood Marshall arguing a Connecticut case early in his profession.
Perhaps probably the most fascinating slice of historical past is “Boomerang!” (1947), director Elia Kazan’s have a look at an obscure however fascinating 1924 homicide trial in Bridgeport. Dana Andrews performs a state’s legal professional who questions the guilt of the person he’s prosecuting.
Some Connecticut movies, “Boomerang!” amongst them, make for completely happy discoveries whereas others are established classics. However their quantity and selection are a revelation. Douglas has executed her fellow Nutmeggers a service by bringing them collectively for film followers to understand.
j.ruddy@theday.com
