Hepburn’s Flame

Published January 11, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Nervous, against the grain types were often Katharine Hepburn’s specialty. Unsurprisingly, the fluttery traits of the quirky spinsters she played have also found emotional root with the awkward titular characters in May, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Rosemary’s Baby and a host of other femme focused terror fests.

Chronic terror viewers also know that secrets and murderous deeds often beat at the heart of many a gothic vixen. These attributes are something at least one of Hepburn’s characters was very familiar with, as well.

Working alongside frequent collaborators like director George Cukor and actor Spencer Tracy, Hepburn brought the high toned Christine Forrest to life in 1942’s Keeper of the Flame. As the widow of a revered public servant, Forrest presents a shifty figure. Trying hard not to detonate the image of her revered politician husband, Forrest keeps to the shadows, praying to remain illusive as possible after his sudden death. But the attention of Tracy’s Steven O’ Malley, a skilled reporter, endangers this.

Once O’Malley discovers that the calm diplomat had turned into a megalomaniac racist with thoughts of world domination – sound familiar, anyone?!? – he also soon realizes that Christine might have cottoned to this radical switch over, as well. Even more importantly, one very storm swept night, she might have decided to do something very definitive about it. A washed-out bridge is always very convenient for an accidental death, right?!?

Although, filmed lushly and with a sense of overheated (occasionally damp…. see above) drama by Cukor, the production of this all-star vehicle was apparently very troubled. The script was constantly rewritten – with Hepburn, who was devoted to Tracy, even demanding that the traits of her character be strengthened while his be weakened, as was apparently true to the source material the screenplay was based on. Executives and reviewers alike were also dismayed at the bad light the story brought to American officials and their often-questionable policies.

The fact that her character partook in a form of vigilantism also, seemingly due to the ever-present Hayes Code, found Hepburn’s counterpart in hot fire in the project’s final moments. This jarring sense of patriarchal morality, thankfully, is something we no longer have to forcibly experience as our celluloid femme fatales can often sin without death reaching out its hands for their proudly upright necks.

But, on second thought, (check Rosemary) is a devil baby clamping on their nips really all that much better?!?

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Va-Va-Villainess: Jayne Meadows

Published June 24, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Often revered for her comic antics, the surprisingly creative Jayne Meadows was also a decorated feminist. She often played creative thinkers like Margaret Sanger and Elizabeth Barrett Browning on PBS’ Meeting of the Minds, which was created by her husband Steve Allen, exposing society to important female historical figures. MS Magazine even paid special tribute to her upon her death (at the age 95) in 2015.

The other surprising side to the eternally glamourous Meadows has to be the aptitude she had for playing characters who embraced the underside of society. Emphasizing her youth and looks, many of her first film roles in the ’40s found her playing spoiled society types. There, she threatened the happiness of such stalwart cases as Katherine Hepburn (in Vincente Minnelli’s moody and gothic Undercurrent) and Anne Baxter (in the more lighthearted The Luck of the Irish). The whimsical Enchantment (1948) was a nice detour in that more seductive course. This feature allowed her to play a stern, uncompromising type against David Niven, the project’s charming lead.

A veteran of 6 Broadway shows before her screen debut in 1946, one of her most highly praised early roles, though, was in the inventive noir Lady in the Lake (from that same year). Here, her dexterity with language was revealed, as she often cut away at her dialogue with a clipped antagonism. Her character here was also more of a deadly construct. While her other roles hinted at the possibility of evil deeds, this project found her committing them with vigor and resolve.

Nicely, her latter-day work contained certain diabolical elements, as well. While her kindhearted madame on an episode of Matt Houston (1983’s The Beverly Woods Social Club) was merely rouged a bit around the jawline, her self-involved cosmetics queen on Murder, She Wrote (1986’s Murder by Appointment Only) allowed her to employ her way with a quip and an arched eyebrow. Catty and demanding, she simply steals the show out from under such experienced performers as Robert Culp and even series star Angela Lansbury, herself.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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Ruthless – Two Genre Credits of Ruth Gordon

Published March 29, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

The people I really want to meet at conventions are often long gone. Here and there, someone like Shirley Jones or Russ Tamblyn will pop up at a show, but the magic of old Hollywood is often only present in a secondhand way. This does have its certain charms, though. Last weekend, for example, I was able to ask two celebrity attendees at Days of the Dead in Chicago about their experiences working with legendary actress-writer Ruth Gordon.

“I don’t think she liked kids.” – OR, Don’t Go to Sleep

Oliver Robins, there to highlight his work as Robbie in the Poltergeist films, appeared with Gordon in Don’t Go to Sleep (1982), often described as one of the creepiest television films of all time. In keeping with her role, a wizened mother-in-law mourning the loss of her favored grandchild, Robins recalls that the celebrated performer kept to herself, arriving on set to only do the one or two takes needed to get her scenes with him completed. Age, Robins reasons, surely paid a part in this professional curtness, as well.

Despite that un-familial remoteness, Gordon, beloved for her Academy Award winning work in Rosemary’s Baby, turns in a complex performance in the project. Her scenes with Valerie Harper and Dennis Weaver, her adult co-stars, ring with the layered sadness and regret of Bernice, her character in this ghostly piece. In particular, she and Weaver go forehead-to-forehead in an emotional confrontation at the film’s mid-point. Each blame the other for the death of their beloved Jennifer, the specter haunting the proceedings, both emotionally…and, seemingly, physically. Ned Wynn’s script is often brutal, killing off core characters imaginatively and ever the trooper, Gordon even finds herself looking down the beady eyes of a mischievously placed iguana named Ed.

As an aside, Robins did have a wonderful memory of the connection that Steven Spielberg and Weaver had due to their work on Duel, another seminal television horror project. Spielberg sent a note to Weaver on the DGTS set urging him to “Be nice to Oliver!”

“She thought I was her assistant.” – CS, Voyage of the Rock Aliens

Craig Sheffer, booked to celebrate his work with Clive Barker in Nightbreed, appeared with the pint-sized super star in the bizarre, early ’80s musical Voyage of the Rock Aliens. The first day that they met, she asked him to go get the shoes that she needed for the upcoming scene…and then continued to have him run errands for her throughout the shoot. Sheffer found the whole experience amusing, though. Hell, if you’re going to be a go-fer, it might as well be for a charismatic character actress of certain renown.

Gordon, who invested her full energy into Voyage‘s diminutive conspiracy-believing sheriff, also appeared in such genre projects as Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, Isn’t It Shocking? and Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? throughout the years. Outside of her work in Rosemary’s Baby and Harold and Maude, the cult film that endeared her to a generation of film buffs, her most prominent artistic achievements occurred with her playwright husband Garson Kanin. Their scripts for Pat & Mike and Adam’s Rib gave Katherine Hepburn, whose many against the grain characterizations provided the prototype for a host of scattered, nervous lasses in horror, two of her most noteworthy mid-career roles.

Viva la Gordon…and thanks for the memories, guys!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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