Hitzewelle

One of Shirley Booth's four starring motion pictures, HOT SPELL is the least remembered, least acclaimed of the quartet but nevertheless is a quite engrossing drama with yet another brilliant performance from it's star. Quite obviously derivative of Tennessee Williams and William Inge dramas, nevertheless the movie has much merit of it's own.

Shirley Booth stars as a New Orleans housewife who lives in denial. She has a lousy, cheating husband (Anthony Quinn) and three rather selfish, not particularly loving children in their teens and early twenties but in her eyes they are all one happy family. She does acknowledge something in amiss though and frequently pines for the days they lived in rural Louisiana in the (fictional) town of New Paris back when the children were younger. Eventually Shirley's fantasy world comes crashing down and opens her eyes not only to the present but to the past.

Shirley Booth is brilliant in this movie, her most poignant screen turn next to her Oscar-winning COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA. She also has a wonderfully comic scene though with neighbor Eileen Heckart (great performance) as a local gal who tries to loosen her up, relax and have a beer and say "hot damn". Of the three children, Earl Holliman stands out as the hardened elder son who sees his father Quinn all too clearly and hates him with a controlled passion yet fails to acknowledge his own flaws. Shirley MacLaine is not particularly good as the burgeoning floozy daughter and Anthony Quinn is a bit tiresome as pig of a husband but Shirley Booth is always worth seeing and this engrossing little drama is a fine showcase for her.

I have a tape of this film that I haven't seen in about 8 years. Therefore, plot details have escaped me. But, in short, it's a rather sad tale of a small, small-town family whose patriarch, played by Anthony Quinn, has a mid-life crisis and philanders about while his sad, lonely wife, played with typical sensitivity and pity by Shirley Booth, sits at home, overlooking his transgressions. I remember enjoying the whole film, including Shirley MacLaine's turn as their daughter. However, one scene which stands out takes place between Eileen Eckhart and Shirley Booth. It's in the middle of the afternoon, and Eckhart teaches Booth how to drink in, I believe, Booth's kitchen. It is quietly HYSTERICAL, and proves how wonderful Eckhart was as an actress. This scene could have gone on another five minutes, it was just so entertaining.

I don't know whether it's Shirley Booth's uniquely pathetic acting persona, or simple typecasting, but I always mix this movie up with her other dramas from the 50s, particularly Come Back, Little Sheba. Similarly, I repeatedly misremember this movie as a scenario by William Inge. It is 50s drama at its dankest and Inge-iest, the story of a sad family who live in a frame house in nowheresville, with a Shirley Booth mother who fears losing her husband, feels guilty about not having been a showpiece of a wife, and most of all yearns for a golden past that is probably imaginary. I wonder whether the whole thing isn't really just a recombinant pastiche of TV-playhouse clichés from the early and mid -50s: not only derivative of William Inge but with a generous dose of Paddy Chayefsky and some Tennessee Williams thrown in for good measure. The people who made this film were manufacturing a product to satisfy what they perceived as a popular taste. But I wonder if anyone could have enjoyed it or recommended it to their friends. More likely they felt depressed and unclean and eager to forget the whole thing.

It's a shame that Hot Spell wasn't given a chance on the stage; the screenplay was based off an unproduced play. The script is fantastic. Lonnie Coleman's work would have been wonderful in front of a live audience. All the elements to a great play are present: a dysfunctional family, infidelity, tragedy, young lovers, and of course, a hot, Southern summer.

In Hot Spell, Shirley Booth is preparing a birthday dinner for her husband Anthony Quinn. She's baked a chocolate cake, bought presents for each of her three children to give him, and takes lessons from her neighbor and friend Eileen Heckart on how to turn her husband's head. The audience can see the writing on the wall from the opening scene, and the tragedy squeezes pity for her out of every pore. The family dinner does not go as she planned. Quinn is having an affair with another woman, as we find out in the opening scene. He fights at the dinner table with his son and leaves the house to meet his mistress before the cake is cut.

As depressing as the story is, it really is a quintessential play, so it's expected to be sad. The story is great, but the acting is where the film really shines. Everyone does a spectacular job, but for some reason, this film was completely ignored by the 1959 awards season. Booth is heartbreaking and incredibly easy to root for. Anyone watching her denial of her husband's affair will cry in sympathy. Quinn is fantastic. It would be easy to play his character as merely "the bad guy" but he gives so many layers to his performance, showing the audience his frustration and deep feelings. Shirley MacLaine must have been on a roll in 1958; this same year she gave a career-best performance in Some Came Running, and in Hot Spell, she's truly heartbreaking. Any girl who's ever been in love will cry alongside her and feel her humiliation deeply.

Those who like to go to the theater will be in a position to appreciate Hot Spell. If you like lighter films, you probably won't like it, but for those who aren't faint of heart, it's a very good movie.

HOT SPELL is a 50s family drama that seems rather tame now, but in 1958 this was hot stuff. Adapted from a novel by Lonnie Coleman and directed by Daniel Mann, this film offers terrific performances from nearly all involved.

Mann, who also directed Shirley Booth in both COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA and ABOUT MRS. LESLIE, gets a top-notch performance from his star once again. At age 60, Booth here plays a mid-40s housewife with touches of Lola from SHEBA and also Amanda Wingfield from THE GLASS MENAGERIE (which Booth starred in on TV in 1966). Her Alma here is a rather lost lady who clings to the "good old days and places" just as Carrie Watts does in THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL. She also tries to cling to her philandering husband (a vicious Anthony Quinn) and her grown-up children (Earl Holliman, Shirley MacLaine, and Clint Kimbrough). Alma still thinks that a chocolate cake and a "family supper" will bring everyone together, but everyone has already left the premises.

MacLaine plays the vulnerable daughter who is trying to snag a medical student and makes the mistake of not seeing his true motives. Holliman is the older son trying to find his way as a man, but he's constantly squashed by the brutish Quinn. Kimbrough, in the only bad performance, is the geeky younger son who just wants to be noticed. Alma's only outside connection seems to be a married friend, superbly played by Eileen Heckart.

So during a New Orleans "hot spell," the family suffers through one last series of family feuds based on lies and desire and the wanting to be away. Everyone clashes with the others' plans and nothing turns out right. Through it all Booth's Alma holds fast to the idea that if they could only escape the city and its heat and go back to some town where they were happy 20 years before that everything would be right.

There's a great scene where Heckart tries to teach Booth to be more "sophisticated" by learning to drink and smoke. And Booth has another terrific scene, a lesson in acting, where she sits on the front porch and tries to dissect her own life and where it's all gone wrong. Then tragedy strikes.

In the end, once the family ends up in that little country town, Booth realizes that you can't go home again and that her yearning for the old days has been wrong. With her grown children around her, she bravely marches toward the train that will take her back to the steaming city and the rest of her life.

Shirley Booth had a long and stellar career on the Broadway stage. Most of her stage roles went to other actresses when movie versions were made. Booth made only 4 films in the 1950s. THE MATCHMAKER was also released in 1958. In the 60s she turned to TV and had a smash hit in HAZEL, the role she is best remembered for. Yet the 4 films she starred in are a showcase for her dramatic and comedic talents.