The Foxes of Harrow

Maureen O'Hara is always stunning, but I don't remember seeing Rex Harrison so young and handsome. Even so there wasn't much romance between two such intransigent characters as Odalie D'Arceneaux and Stephen Fox. Their relationship is tragic enough, but the film also makes no apologies for the institution of slavery that haunts the background of so many scenes. Fox starts out as a decent "maitre," who'll work alongside his workers and slaves, but he never recognizes the parallel between his own loss of family and birthright and that of Little Inch, whose fierce mother Belle intends to be a warrior. In that sense "Harrow" may be a more useful look at slavery than in more enlightened films.

In her memoirs of a few years earlier Maureen O'Hara declared her lack of fondness for Rex Harrison and learning what was obvious to anyone who would watch The Foxes Of Harrow can see, that this was a film designed with Tyrone Power in mind. As O'Hara had already worked with Power on The Black Swan and found him a delight to work with, I'm sure she signed on to The Foxes Of Harrow with him in mind.

Harrison who had come over to this side of the pond on the strength of what he did in Blithe Spirit to a Fox contract did not make himself popular in Hollywood especially among the women. When Carole Landis committed suicide his career at that point toasted. She too was a 20th Century Fox contract player and word got around about way before she did the deed.

In some ways the antagonism between them personally probably helped the tone of The Foxes Of Harrow. Harrison is a notorious gambler/adventurer who was of illegitimate birth and given a chance in the western hemisphere was going to establish his own name. O'Hara and sister Vanessa Brown are a pair of high bred Creole princesses and the daughters of Gene Lockhart, a mover and shaker in New Orleans society.

Harrison's gambling skills win him a big plantation at the expense of Hugo Haas whom he then has to kill in a duel. It also wins him Maureen who leaves her home in New Orleans. But there's is a tempestuous relationship very much like Scarlett and Rhett.

There are a lot of similarities between Gone With The Wind that I won't go into, but one big difference. Harrison due to his upbringing or lack thereof identifies a lot with the slaves he's also inherited. He's a sugar cane planter as a lot on the Mississippi river were. You'll find him working along side his slaves to insure his crop's successs. Not something you would see among the gentry gathered at the Wilkes plantation of Seven Oaks.

The African slave trade was abolished in 1806, but that still didn't mean that it wasn't practiced illegally. Harrison is in the market as well and he buys Suzette Harbin for the head of his slaves. She hasn't learned the slave etiquette and never does. Her death scene which also involves Harrison is unforgettable and daring beyond belief for a major Hollywood studio to portray at the time.

Victor McLaglen has too small a role as the leader of a gang of river cutthroats who saves Harrison's life. I got the feeling his part in the original novel was bigger, I wish we had more of him. This is also the only movie where the Panic of 1837 plays a role, something akin to the Civil War in Gone With The Wind.

Harrison's estate of Harrow isn't the same as Tara and the films look the same, but have a different point of view. The Foxes Of Harrow did get an Oscar nomination for Black&white art&set decoration. It holds up very well for today.

I have been reviewing the films of John M. Stahl recently -- not an easy task as their availability is quite limited -- and they are a very mixed bag. From the gripping melodrama of "Back Street" (probably his best film), to the original versions of "Magnificent Obsession" and "Imitation of Life," both very different from and as interesting in their own ways as Sirk's remakes, and "Only Yesterday," to the excellent period comedy "Holy Matrimony" and the comedy/drama "Letter of Introduction," when Stahl is engaged with his material he is unique and interesting. All these films have a tone of serenity and patience which is not in the least boring. (It's there, too, in the unique noir/Technicolor melodrama, "Leave Her to Heaven," Stahl's uncannily brilliant success -- a great picture that uses color in a highly controlled and most original way). When he is less involved-- both here and in "Parnell," for two examples, the serenity disappears, yet without a compensatory excitement. Both of these films have a strange, disengaged quality. Stahl seems less than comfortable with the grand gesture -- certainly the political scenes of "Parnell" are remarkably lifeless, and the sweeping quality of a "Gone with the Wind" -- to which it bears some narrative resemblance -- is largely missing from "The Foxes of Harrow." It starts off well, and Rex Harrison is dynamic and exciting in the first hour, as he courts the ever-reluctant Maureen O'Hara. This courtship goes through very rough waters (her resistance is iron), but ultimately -- and in a beautifully played scene --Rex clearly has genuine tears in his eyes -- he does win her over. Then the trouble starts all over again, for, no sooner has she overcome her scruples than she gets them back again -- understandably as Fox (Harrison) drunkenly rapes her on their wedding night! The relationship is not unlike that between Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker in "Home from the Hill," but nowhere near as interesting. Rex's panache, unfortunately, disappears with the leaden problem-filled second half, and there is little that is really engaging after that. (We can be grateful, I think, that Stahl was removed -- after several weeks of shooting, apparently -- from "Forever Amber," which no doubt would have arrived equally stillborn had not the great Otto taken over and made it into a really exciting picture.) O'Hara, fine actress though she is, often got stuck in these reluctant maiden parts -- she fares only a little better in Borzage's "The Spanish Main" or Nick Ray's "A Woman's Secret." Thank God she got to work for John Ford, for whom she is always delightful, nowhere more so than in "Rio Grande," where -- again! -- she is playing an estranged wife with scruples. I guess scruples were Maureen's main hindrance! To sum up: there's not much magic in this one, despite a promising start.

This is a Cliff's Notes version of a heavily plotted historical novel dealing with Stephen Fox's rise and fall in New Orleans plantation society during the 1820's-1830's. Film has plot points similar to GWTW and "Anthony Adverse." Fox is Yerby's version of Rhett Butler; Odalie, his version of Scarlett. Rex Harrison is sadly miscast as Fox; Maureen O'Hara is waxy and cold as Odalie. Treatment of black characters is the most condescending I've seen in a film from this era (1947). Received top notch production values; should have been in color. But '47 was the year Fox made "Forever Amber" and its color went into that historical romance.

Forget Frank Yerby's novel and take this fine movie on its own terms and you'll find Rex Harrison -- a great actor from my father's era -- as Fox; an orphan boy from Ireland who makes his own fortune in America in the 1810's. Winning a plantation in a lucky game of cards, from a sore loser who also forfeits his life, Fox sets out to establish a new Harrow, one with a benevolent attitude to the slave workers, and to pursue and marry Maureen O'Hara --- where the trouble begins.

The story will involve the Panic of 1821 and other matters which make for a great story whose description ought to end right here.

In the South (as well as in most northern states; particularly New York and New Jersey) they had slaves working on plantations and elsewhere in the 1810-1821 era. Slavery has set current day Hollywood into a tizzy and state of confusion, thus films of historic accuracy made by a pre- Political Correctness film industry are not only misjudged but are under suppression. Thus Foxes of Harrow and virtually any other film portraying slaves (except revisionist history like Steven Spielberg's foolish and unsuccessful Amisted) are no longer available for public view. Foxes of Harrow has never been released in video.