In one of those strangely odd coincidences that manage to surprise me somewhat frequently, the last movie I watched and reviewed happened to be "Blazing Saddles". Harvey Korman portrays a character in that film named Hedley Lamarr, and spends a good portion of his time correcting virtually everyone who calls him Hedy. This morning, as I'm about to select a film to watch from my Mill Creek Entertainment Mystery box set, the very first disc I pull at random offers this entry featuring the real Hedy Lamarr. Decision made.
This was actually my first time seeing Lamarr in a picture, and though she wasn't that impressively good looking following that rippled water effect, her beauty continued to emerge and intensify throughout the story. Ironically, her character was the kind of person you could love to hate, but at the same time, had a vulnerable quality that made you feel sorry for her at the same time. In that regard, her performance was undeniably effective as a conflicted and troubled woman who immediately set her sights on a new conquest no sooner than she had secured her latest victim. And yet she always manages to make it seem so innocently believable. Her explanation to Meg Saladine (Hillary Brooke) for stealing her fiancée is classic - "The storm, and the excitement, and then lightning struck"! Lightning indeed.
I'm really not willing to buy Jenny's first marriage to old Isaiah Poster (Gene Lockhart), even if it set up a convenient path to wealth and security. Isaiah seemed to have that Ebenezer Scrooge thing going for him, which got it's comeuppance in that strange church scene where the minister managed to embarrass the citizenry into funding his church expansion. It seemed to me that Jenny could have been a little more patient and waited things out until she met some attractive young lawyer fresh from Boston, but then we wouldn't have had this story.
By 1946, the idea of a film's leading lady dying at the finale wasn't entirely novel. Bette Davis had theater goers in tears at the end of 1939's "Dark Victory", but hers was a much more sympathetic character. A clue to Jenny's inevitable demise is offered earlier in the story by the traveling Bible thumper Lincoln Pittridge - "Your beauty has made you evil, and evil destroys itself".
This was actually my first time seeing Lamarr in a picture, and though she wasn't that impressively good looking following that rippled water effect, her beauty continued to emerge and intensify throughout the story. Ironically, her character was the kind of person you could love to hate, but at the same time, had a vulnerable quality that made you feel sorry for her at the same time. In that regard, her performance was undeniably effective as a conflicted and troubled woman who immediately set her sights on a new conquest no sooner than she had secured her latest victim. And yet she always manages to make it seem so innocently believable. Her explanation to Meg Saladine (Hillary Brooke) for stealing her fiancée is classic - "The storm, and the excitement, and then lightning struck"! Lightning indeed.
I'm really not willing to buy Jenny's first marriage to old Isaiah Poster (Gene Lockhart), even if it set up a convenient path to wealth and security. Isaiah seemed to have that Ebenezer Scrooge thing going for him, which got it's comeuppance in that strange church scene where the minister managed to embarrass the citizenry into funding his church expansion. It seemed to me that Jenny could have been a little more patient and waited things out until she met some attractive young lawyer fresh from Boston, but then we wouldn't have had this story.
By 1946, the idea of a film's leading lady dying at the finale wasn't entirely novel. Bette Davis had theater goers in tears at the end of 1939's "Dark Victory", but hers was a much more sympathetic character. A clue to Jenny's inevitable demise is offered earlier in the story by the traveling Bible thumper Lincoln Pittridge - "Your beauty has made you evil, and evil destroys itself".