The Little Foxes

This was a surprisingly good movie - for me, not people who like Bette Davis and melodramas. They got what they hoped for, another solid film with her starring in it. I don't particularly care for Davis or "soaps," but I liked this film and see it more of a straight drama, anyway, especially because of the crisp dialog.

It's a story about money and how to use it or how to acquire more of it through deceit and greed. Davis, as "Regina Gidden," is the most greedy of the Gidden clan, vying for more money with her brothers who aren't exactly trustworthy people themselves. Among the three, there wasn't anyone to root for since the family shared in their lust for money. Davis does her normal excellent acting job but I enjoyed Charles Dingle as "(Uncle) Ben Hubbard" best. I liked his lines more than anyone's and the way he delivered them. Carl Benton Reid played the other greedy Hubbard brother, "Oscar" and Dan Duryea was interesting as Oscar's dumb son, 'Leo."

Herbert Marshall was good, too, as Regina's husband "Horace." He was an honest, principled man and thus, the black sheep in that household. Unfortunately, he was dying and his death played a big part in this story.

The sub-plot in this tale is the coming-of-age of Hubbard daughter "Alexandra" played by Teresa Wright. Her "coming of age" translates to finally standing up to her domineering mother. Richard Carlson plays her reluctant boyfriend "David Hewitt" who, in the end, is won over when "Alexandra" grows up.

So, this excellent cast, complemented by an outstanding director in William Wyler and world-class cinematographer Gregg Toland all adds up to a solid, memorable film.

This film fully deserves its reputation as one of the most scorching dramas of greed and corruption ever placed on celluloid. A deceptively slow start soon draws into the machinations of the Hubbard clan whose brazen backstabbings and betrayals even today make our jaws drop. Davis' stunning portrayal of the supremely grasping Regina Giddens leads a stellar cast which does a superb job of delineating a finely drawn group of characters. Charles Dingle's deceptively warm smile masks the cooly intelligent deviousness of Ben Hubbard. Carl Reid's Oscar Hubbard is just as malicious but his inferior intelligence makes him yield to his brother's and sister's lead. Dan Duryea nicely portrays the imbecilic and immature Leo Hubbard, a characterization which borders on but never crosses over into comedy. Patricia Collinge breaks our hearts as the broken-spirited and alcoholic Birdie, Oscar's wife. Herbert Marshall's performance as the doomed Horace, Regina's husband, delineates the pain, anger, and sense of betrayal burning beneath his deathly illness. The star of the proceedings, however, is clearly Davis. Wyler's superb direction blends all these characters into a masterful whole.

Hellman's skill as a dramatist must be credited for much of this, but her Marxist inclinations clearly peep through the seams of the dialogue.

I'm glad I finally had a chance to see this undoubted classic. Thanks again to that great channel, American Movie Classics.

Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes went from Broadway to Hollywood after it ran 410 performances in the 1939-1940 season through the good offices of Sam Goldwyn. Five members of the Broadway cast came west and repeated their roles, Patricia Collinge, Carl Benton Reid, Charles Dingle, Dan Duryea, and John Marriott. But the lead part of Regina Giddens which gave Tallulah Bankhead her career role on Broadway went to a proved movie name, Bette Davis. Bette then made the part all her own.

Davis is the sister of Ben and Oscar Hubbard, Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid. They are a family of trades people, poor white trash in those halcyon years in the South before the Civil War. When the war laid the genteel planter class low, these are the people who prospered and became what was euphemistically entitled 'the new South.'

They're a tough and ruthless family, but they are survivors though the next generation shows little promise because Dan Duryea who is the son of Reid and Patricia Collinge is an idiot and Teresa Wright, the daughter of Davis and Herbert Marshall will be rejecting the values of the previous Hubbard generation.

I don't think Lillian Hellman's Marxist leanings were ever more prominently on display in her writing as in The Little Foxes. Though the characters she creates are brilliant, the elder Hubbards are a rather heavy handed symbols for greedy capitalism. It's not quite clear where Teresa Wright and her suitor Richard Carlson will be on the political spectrum having rejected Hubbard family values.

The plot of the play itself is that Dingle and Reid are ready to invest in a cotton mill with northern businessman Russell Hicks. But they need more money which they're hoping Marshall and Davis will provide. That leads to all kinds of complications, legal and moral for the family.

Hellman left it open as to what will happen. My guess is that she honestly didn't know. Like most Marxists of the day, especially American Marxists, they sat and waited for the great come and get it revolution like fervent Pentacostals waiting for the Judgement Day. Wright in fact wishes for a society where people like her mother and uncles don't run things.

Sadly and this is the weakness of The Little Foxes is that Hellman drew her characters too well. I'd be willing to bet that Ben and Oscar would find a way to wind up Commisars if they had been transplanted into Russia during the revolution. Idealists had a short life span in the early days of the Soviet Union, never more so than after Joseph Stalin took over. Whatever else they are, the Hubbards ain't idealists.

Still The Little Foxes is a riveting drama that will keep your interest through the whole film even if you don't buy the message totally.

I have been a fan of Bette Davis since I was a young child. Her riveting performance in this movie made me conscious of what a truly good actor can do. Regina (Bette) and her covetous brothers made the biblical passage "the love of money is the root of all evil" come to life.

The Little Foxes is an apt name. As animals Regina, Horace and Oscar not only would tear others to pieces to get what they want; they would eventually turn on each other to gain satisfaction.

The performance of Herbert Marshall made me immediately search for his other movies to view; I've not been disappointed. I am thankful his character was included to offset the viciousness of Regina and her brothers.

A gleefully macabre and intensely suspenseful movie based on the Lillian Hellman play. Bette Davis sinks her teeth into the role of icy bitch Regina Giddens with such relish that you can practically hear her sighing with satisfaction at getting away from the noble sufferer roles that had so recently made her famous in films like "Jezebel" and "Dark Victory." She's monstrous here as the frigid wife of Herbert Marshall, waiting impatiently for him to die so that she can get her talons on his inheritance. A group of conniving brothers are trying to outsmart her and claim the inheritance for themselves, but they have no idea who they're dealing with. We ultimately can forgive Davis for her reptilian selfishness, because she's driven to it out of survival. If you want to play with the big boys, the movie seems to say, you have to learn to be one yourself.

This is a lesson her sister-in-law, Birdie, hasn't learned, and as a result is a fluttering, neurotic mess of a woman, bulldozed by her husband and supreme example of exactly the kind of woman Regina refuses to be. Birdie is played by Patricia Collinge in a devastatingly heartbreaking performance. Just watch her in the scene where her husband slaps her; you can almost literally see the life drain out of her as she accepts her misery as a cage from which she doesn't ever really hope, or feels she deserves, to escape.

And as the moral conscience of the film, Teresa Wright plays Regina's daughter, Alexandra, slow to pick up on the treacherous games her own mother is playing.

The classic scene in this film is the one in which Regina's husband actually dies. She's sitting feet away from him, watching him gasp for breath while refusing to get the medication that could save his life, and Davis's creepy, empty expression shows us just how little compassion or sympathy, or even any emotion other than greed and vengeance, remains in this grotesque, twisted creature. Marvelous!

Grade: A+