Quando Vem a Tormenta

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.

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.

It's a shame Shirley Booth never got the high acclaim she deserved. She took a simple and somewhat uninspired script and made it work. The best thing about this movie is in the beginning you actually feel sorry for the Shirley Booth character, but the way Ms Booth plays the role by the end of the movie you get the feeling the character deserves what she got she is so pathetic. Nevertheless it is an excellent film SOLEY do to the outstanding acting ability of Shirley Booth. Other actors in the movie do an adequate job but it the interaction with Shirley Booth's character that makes them stand out. The cake seen is the highlight of film as her character descends into self pity

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.

Shirley Booth was one of those few actresses that could break your heart with a glance over the shoulder, a flutter of the hand, a stumbling voice.

Like Geraldine Page in "A Trip To Bountiful," Cecily Tyson in "A Woman Called Moses" or Jessica Tandy in "The Gin Game," her performance stays with you for years afterward.

I pitied her in this film - a cheating husband; children who tried their best to protect her from the truth while covering for their dad. She was a woman who lived in the past, longing to return to the happier times in her life in a small town where she first met her husband and a town, New Paris, where she had good friends and family.

Anthony Quinn was like a lot of men, who are addicted to sex and loose women. His wife, heavy-set and clinging was quite aware that she could not compete with the younger, shapelier girls her husband craved.

Eileen Heckart was wonderful as her good friend who tried to give her hope, but knew it wasn't possible, that her friend was doomed to failure with this man.

I believe this movie was from a novel by Lonnie Coleman called "Next of Kin," which I thought was a better title for the film. Hollywood had a tendency to "soup up" titles to make them sound sexy to draw in customers. They did the same thing with Joanne Woodward's "The Stripper," which was based on a Broadway play called "A Loss of Roses," clearly a much better title and probably the reason that the picture didn't get much respect.