The Ghost of Romance Past

Hollywood, it seems, loves ghosts. Just think of the Ghostbusters franchise, and the schmaltzy romance beyond the grave known simply as Ghost. In that 1990 film, Patrick Swayze appears post-mortem to his love, played by Demi Moore, to the throbbing strains of “Unchained Melody,” in what has turned out to be the sexiest pottery-making scene of all time.

 Much earlier in the 20^th century, there was another popular ghostly romance, though one decidedly more prim.  In 1947 the ubiquitous Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, based on a popular British novel though shot entirely on the coastline of California. The starring roles were taken by Gene Tierney (yes, Laura herself) and Rex Harrison (fresh from the male lead in the non-musical Anna and the King of Siam).  She plays a young widow too independent in spirit to commit to life with her former mother-in-law. Decamping with her young daughter (an 8-year-old Natalie Wood, already a screen veteran), she falls in love with a seaside home that is rumored to be haunted. And so it is . . . by an irascible ship’s captain determined to scare off potential buyers. Though his original hope is to convert the house into a home for aged seamen, he soon develops a soft spot for the plucky widow who alone can see him.

 Mrs. Muir is determined to be what she considers a modern woman. (At several points, the characters remind one another that they’re now living in the 20^th century, though they still light gas lamps and her skirts trail the ground.) When Capt. Gregg persuades Mrs. Muir that she should be on the lookout for a living male who can love and sustain her, she falls for Uncle Neddy, a successful author of children’s books. Since he’s played by the often dicey George Sanders, the audience certainly wonders how this human romance is going to play out. Though Sanders was yet to take on his most indelible role, that of the cold-blooded Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, he ultimately shows himself here as an equally untrustworthy type. Poor Mrs. Muir—but when we skip ahead in time we get a conclusion that is both bittersweet and entirely satisfying.

 I won’t give away the ending of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir here.  Suffice it to say that its charms are of an old-fashioned sort, one that demands that the plight of its characters be taken seriously. I’m assuming that the same held true in the several radio and television versions of this popular material that surfaced between 1947 and 1974. But when it was transformed into a TV series that ran from 1968 to 1970, with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare in the leading roles, the emphasis was on sitcom hijinks. In April 1994, Variety reported that there would be a Twentieth Century Fox remake of the movie, with Sean Connery perfectly cast as the irascible but ultimately tender Captain. Alas, it was not to be.

,In its own day, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was perhaps best admired for its romantic Bernard Herrmann score, and for its Oscar-nominated cinematography. But romantically-inclined voters from the American Film Institute have chosen it as #73 among its 2002 listing of 100 Years . . . 100 Passions. Casablanca was named #1, Gone With the Wind #2. West Side Story #3. And The Way We Were, about which I’ve recently written, came in at an unlikely—to me, at least--#6, ahead of such unarguably romantic flicks as Doctor Zhivago, Love Story, and The African Queen. Oh well.    

 

Joe Mankiewicz Sticks His Finger in “The Honey Pot”

The Mankiewicz brothers were genuine Hollywood legends.  Elder brother Herman co-wrote Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and literally hundreds of other classic films, starting in 1926 and ending not long before his early death in 1953. But Herman was something of an underachiever compared to younger brother Joseph. Joe (1909-1993) is credited with writing almost 40 films, and directing 22. In 1950-1951 he achieved the remarkable feat of winning four Oscars, two for directing and writing the adapted screenplay of A Letter to Three Wives, and two more for writing and directing All About Eve. He nabbed his last Oscar nomination in 1973 for directing his last film, Sleuth. (The expert in all this is my colleague Sydney Ladensohn Stern, for her fascinating 2019 study, The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics.)

 It was near the end of Joe Mankiewicz's fabulous career—which also included everything from the notorious Cleopatra to a documentary on Martin Luther King—that he wrote and directed 1967’s The Honey Pot. This dark-hued farce, set in a Venice palazzo, has some of the qualities demonstrated by  Rian Johnson in 2019’s Knives Out. In both there’s a lavishly decorated set, a cluster of mismatched people, and more than a whiff of murder most foul. Knives Out boasts, along with a lot of clever business, a subtle and highly amusing Stephen Sondheim joke. The Honey Pot is even more esoteric, basing its plot on Ben Jonson’s black comedy from 1605, Volpone. As a true English major, Mankiewicz clearly enjoyed esoteric references to his source material. His leading character’s surname, Fox, is a clear nod to the “sly fox” of Volpone’s English translation. And Fox’s henchman (Mosca in the original) is now William McFly. (Get it?)

 The crafty Fox is played to perfection by frequent Mankiewicz star Rex Harrison. I’ve heard obnoxious stories about the real-life Harrison, but in this film he’s delightfully devious. (Serious hilarity comes from the fact that, as a man obsessed with ballet, he madly pirouettes around his home to endless repetitions of Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” Yes, that’s the piece to which the hippos cavort in Disney’s Fantasia.)  Other major players include Cliff Robertson as the sidekick Fox recruits for his nefarious schemes, as well as the salty Susan Hayward,  the elegant Capucine, and the brassy Edie Adams, all of them playing former loves who are tricked into appearing at Fox’s fake deathbed in hopes of inheriting his fortune. I need a separate mention for Maggie Smith, who also takes part in the macabre festivities, in the role of Hayward’s rather prim and veddy British nurse and companion. In 1967, Smith was not brand-new to films. But she was hardly the legendary dowager she has since become in such productions as Gosford Park and TV’s Downton Abbey. In her early 30s, she was a pretty and rather vulnerable-looking redhead, one who had just received an Oscar nomination for playing Desdemona opposite a blackfaced (but highly impressive) Laurence Olivier in a filmed version of Othello. Her role in The Honey Pot seems modest at first, but proves to have hidden depths that take us by surprise. Her scenes of give-and-take with Harrison, in which she plays the innocent and he offers a nicely ironic disquisition on the passage of time, are at the heart of this film.

 

But all is not perfection. Along with the movie’s wit and such inspired moments as the crafty local police detective watching TV’s Perry Mason dubbed into Italian, there are key plot strands that simply make no sense. Maybe that’s part of the joke too.