The Great Lie (1941)
Mary Astor
Who’s Child Is This? Part Two
The Great Lie (1941)
Studio: Warner Bros • 107 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 12 Apr 1941
Re-release: Warner Bros (Apr 2008)
Series: Bette Davis Collection, Vol 3 (6-DVD)
Starring: Bette Davis, George Brent, Mary Astor, Hattie McDaniel
Dir: Edmund Goulding
A few days later, Pete’s plane is lost and he is presumed dead. In the ensuing months, Maggie discovers Sandra is pregnant with Pete’s child and makes a bargain that they go away together so Sandra can have Pete’s child but Maggie will claim the child as her own. Sandra would be free to return to the stage and visit the child only when she wants to — all responsibility for “little Pete” would remain with Maggie. As luck would have it, Pete’s not dead and turns up several months after “little Pete” is born. But Sandra returns to their lives: will she reveal the great lie? How will chivalrous big Pete react?
George Brent was a reliable actor, convincing, capable, but rarely inspiring. This was the 13th of 14 collaborations with Davis — all at Warner Bros during the glorious studio era. Brent’s winning charm, and his conviction once he’s turned over a new leaf, provides a fine counterbalance to the raging furies of the two women. Bette Davis, playing the determined spouse intent on keeping some piece of Pete alive in the form of raising her late husband’s son, is tender throughout; but fierce when it comes to protecting her turf. Her ongoing relationship with Sandra, a woman she despises, is nuanced — given the storyline, it’s to her credit her performance never dips down into mere archness.
Mary Astor won Best Supporting Actress award for her role, all the more remarkable when you recall she was also in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, arguably her lifetime “signature” role. Mary Astor, known as “Rusty” to her friends, was born as Lucile de Vasconcellos Langhanke in 1906; those who put up marquees are eternally grateful she changed her name. It’s a fine performance, less nuanced than Davis, but providing fine counterpoint. In some ways, it’s hardly much different than her protrayal of Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon — a driven woman, willing to manipulate anyone to get her way, and certainly not above shredding the truth to suit her evil ways without an ounce of second-thought. Her most memorable scenes are those in which she is softened, a little, by Davis’s tenderness with respect to Pete and little Pete.
In other supporting roles, Hatty McDaniel, who plays the maid Violet (and won an Oscar as Mammy in Gone With The Wind), sparkles. Her onscreen husband, Sam McDaniel, was her brother in real life. As always in this studio contract era, the supporting roles are graced with capable performances in efficient character actor short-hand. Given the convoluted story line, it’s a tribute to the actors that the whole plot actually hangs together believably. That is also clearly a strength of the director’s talent, who was known for his ability to bring out the best in his crew and cast without imposing his own “auteur-ness”. There’s really nothing identifiable as a “Goulding” film in the way we recognize and celebrate a Ford, Hitchcock, Welles, Lubitsch, etc. film.
Director Edmund Goulding was a talent too easily forgotten today. Born in England in 1891, his career encompassed that of actor, writer, singer, composer, director, producer. At the age of 22, he performed in a London stage version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; two year’s earlier he’d made his film acting debut in 1911’s Henry VIII. But by 1916, he’d moved to the US, reprising a small role in the first filmed version of Dorian Gray and having his first film as writer produced with no less a figure than Rudolph Valentino … in a bit part! Within five years he’d scripted several films, including Tol’able David, one of the silent screen’s most celebrated features, in 1921. By the mid-20s, he’d begun to direct; his second film co-starred Constance Bennett and Joan Crawford in Sally, Irene and Mary. Two year’s later he triumphed with a silent version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina called Love, and starring a sizzling pair of lovers, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
As director, his first sound film was The Trespasser, in 1929, starring Gloria Swanson; he also wrote the screenplay; Swanson was nominated for an Oscar. A year later he wrote and directed The Devil’s Holiday which won an Oscar nomination for its star Nancy Carroll. But it was 1932 that brought Goulding his first great triumph: he directed MGM’s star-studded spectacular, Grand Hotel, featuring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery and Lionel Barrymore; it also won Best Picture. In all, Goulding was credited as director in 34 films (and worked on several others, uncredited, including Hell’s Angels and A Night at the Opera).
Eight years earlier, screenwriter Lenore J Coffee, had a hit in a Claudette Colbert melodrama, Torch Singer, in which a young unmarried woman, forced to give up her child as an infant, later seeks her out after building a successful dual career as nightclub torch singer and children’s radio host. For The Great Lie, two women fight over one man using the child as pawn (the man doesn’t know he had a son as he was drunk at the time of conception and flew out of town shortly after). Coffee was involved in several projects with a similiar theme, including White Banners in 1938, also with Edmund Goulding at the helm.
The sound and print are superb. For this series, Warner has piled on extras in the form of other forgotten shorts from the year of the main film. These include cartoons, newsreels and memorable, if low budget and somewhat hokey, longer shorts. At the Stroke of Twelve is a 20 min featurette based on a Damon Runyon story and directed by no less a talent than Jean Negulesco. Relegated to churning out these features, many of which were band musicals, within three years his career sky rocketed with The Mask of Dimitrios, Three Strangers, Humoreske, Johnny Belinda, and several others of the late studio era. Craig Stevens stars as a gangster who meets a recluse, old woman whose eccentric behaviour inadvertently saves him from a murder conviction. There are no commentaries.