A Feather in Her Hat

Pauline Lord, a poor, common woman, wants a better life for her son. She owns a small shop, and together with her partner Basil Rathbone, she raises her son to have the manners and speech of a gentleman if ever he should get out of the slums. When he comes of age, she tells him a great secret: he's adopted, and his mother was a very wealthy woman who's left him $1000 to make his way in the world. With this news, Louis Hayward sets off to London to find his family and start a career as a playwright.

While this film might not be as big a tearjerker as others of its kind, it's still very good and entertaining to watch. Pauline Lord gives a great performance, reminding me of a British Shirley Boothe in her tired, sacrificing nature. Basil Rathbone and Louis Hayward are very good as well; you can really sense both their struggles of being a part of the upper and lower classes. Wendy Barrie and Nydia Westman are both sincere, kind, and loving, so when they're pitted against each other, you'll have a hard time rooting for only one in the love triangle! My only complaint is I would have liked the film to be a little longer. All the characters are so interesting, if the running time had been expanded twenty minutes or more, we could have learned a little more about them!

For lovers of Stella Dallas, A Pocketful of Miracles, and Great Expectations, add this English drama to your list. It's an obscure old movie, and you'll be glad you found out about it.

There's one bit I liked in this film A Feather in Her Hat. Rathbone's character and his whiskey flask have spent the night on a park bench. In the morning, Pauline Lord wakes him up and, with barely a how-do-you-do, invites him back to her house with the enticement of a hooker of brandy. Rathbone's character, a drunken WWI vet traumatized by what he describes as "the shrieking of shells, and the bleeding of things," naturally says yes to her offer and links arms with her. He introduces himself and asks her name. He then asks "Miss or Mrs?" She says her husband is dead. Rathbone asks "The war?" Pauline Lord's character answers "Plumbing." Rathbone looks inquiringly at her and she explains "Someone hit him up the head with a lead pipe." It's a good bit of dialogue. Unfortunately, this exchange is the only good bit of dialogue in the film, which is mawkish, sappy, and full of unbelievable plot twists of which my favorite is that the quick sale of a corner newspaper/cigarettes-type shop not only finances an entire West End play production previously turned down by a bigwig as "too expensive." but it also buys a nearby rowhouse AND a house with land in the country. Still, it's always good to see Basil Rathbone. If I found him on a park bench I'd invite him home, too. I should buy a bottle of brandy and keep it in the cupboard in case I come across him in a park someday.

Maybe not quite the birthday gift that "Richard" (Louis Hayward) would want, but at his small 21st anniversary celebration his mother "Clarissa" (Pauline Lord) gives him a bank book with a rather large sum of money deposited, then announces to him and to their close family intimate - and lover of a snifter - "Capt. Courtney" (Basil Rathbone) that she is not, in fact, his mother. A little scrutinising and some detective work soon establishes the true identity of that particular woman and "Richard" takes up lodgings with the now married "Julia" (Billie Burke) and her step-daughter "Pauline" (Wendy Barrie). There's a bit of a love triangle developing now between these two and his first love "Emily" (Nydia Westman) whilst "Pauline" must contend with the loving suit of "Leo" (a few brief appearances from David Niven). The burning question is why did "Clarissa" take such a step. Well, it seems she wanted her lad to get out of the vicious circle of their near poverty existence, and so by making him fend for himself he would be driven to do what he most wanted to do - write a play. Can he make a success of it all and make "Clarissa" proud? Though ultimately tinged with a bit of tragedy, the plot here is not the most taxing. The writing is a bit on the gloopy side at times and Hayward maybe just a little too sterile, but Lord is on solid form, as is Rathbone, and this benefits from a decent story of love and integrity that deserves a telling.

A FEATHER IN HER HAT (Columbia, 1935), directed by Alfred Santell, is an odd little film about a self-sacrificing woman, a theme most commonly found in 1930s dramas made popular by soap opera queens, including the likes of Ruth Chatterton or Kay Francis as prime examples. Pauline Lord (1890-1950), a veteran stage actress with MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH (Paramount, 1934) her screen debut, plays another one of her quietly compelling characterizations that might have set the standard for future film roles had she not made this her second and final screen performance. 

Taken from a novel by I.A.R. Wylie, Pauline Lord plays an English widow named Clarissa Phipps, proprietress of 'Clarissa's Corner Shop' located on the poor section of town on Little Egbert Street. In a prologue set in 1925, Clarissa witnesses a gathering at Hyde Park where Captain Randolph Courtney (Basil Rathbone), a limping war veteran and alcoholic aristocrat, giving a speech to the crowd. After he collapses, Courtney is placed on a park bench for a rest. Believing he could be a good influence on her son, Richard (William Martin), Clarissa decides to take the cultured man home with her so he could have the boy grow to become a gentleman. Move forward, 1935. Richard (Louis Hayward), now a young man, has one ambition in life, to become a playwright. On his 21st birthday, he's told by Clarissa that she is not his mother but only a woman entrusted to him by her employer. Having done her part in raising him, Clarissa entrusts Richard with a bank book of a thousand pounds so he could go out on his own and make a success. Going through a bunch of old letters, Courtney informs Richard of his natural mother being an actress named Julia Trent (Billie Burke), now remarried to Paul Anders (Victor Kilian - resembling that of actor Paul Lukas from LITTLE WOMEN (1933) right down to his accent), and living somewhere in town. Locating her whereabouts, Richard takes up lodging at her residence under his supposed real name of Richard Orland.  Although loved by Emily (Nydia Westman), his childhood sweetheart, Richard falls in love with Juliet's step-daughter, Pauline (Wendy Barrie), a young socialite loved by producer Leo Carthwright (David Niven). Clarissa, who favors Pauline, does her best to discourage Emily from seeing Richard. During the premiere of Richard's first play, "Song of Sixpense," starring Julia Trent, Clarissa, in attendance with a feather in her hat, reveals another secret to Richard after the performance.

With Pauline Lord as the leading character, much of A FEATHER IN HER HAT belongs to Louis Hayward, though the more outstanding but less challenging performance goes to Basil Rathbone. With 1935 being Rathbone's busiest and most productive year on screen, with such notable roles in David COPPERFIELD, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, CAPTAIN BLOOD and THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, this production, the least known of all,  provides him the opportunity to play a kindly yet dignified gentleman, in contrast to menacing villains, and a chance to age slightly as the story progresses. One of the main flaws with A FEATHER IN HER HAT is how under developed it is, especially during its opening minutes which seems to have been tightened through the editing process, leaving out perhaps important details that would have been beneficial to the plot. Pauline Lord appears more confident as a movie actress than she was in MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH, but sometimes breaks away from speaking with British accent.

Other members of the cast include Thurston Hall (Sir Elroyd Joyce, producer); J.M. Kerrigan (Mr. Robjoy); Nana Bryant (Lady Drake); and Lawrence Grant (Doctor Phillips).

If the underscoring heard during the opening credits sounds familiar, its one lifted from Columbia's 1934 Academy Award winner, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, and used as introductory score again in other Columbia products as TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934) and SHE MARRIED HER BOSS (1935). A FEATHER IN HER HAT, which runs at 76 minutes, has become one of a great number of long forgotten features from the Columbia library that has turned up in recent years on Turner Classic Movies (air date: November 8, 2008). Alhough not the best in the lot, it's a worthy rediscovery, especially for film buffs looking for hard to find movies such as this one. (**1/2)

After failing as a leading man in Hollywood when talkies came in, Basil Rathbone came back as a character actor five years later. He had a remarkable 1935: David Copperfield, Captain Blood, Anna Karenina, and The Last Days of Pompeii especially showcased his range as a "villain," from pious sadist to laughing cavalier to haughty aristocrat -- each time acting with a subtle twist that made his character the most interesting one in the film.

And this little movie, in which he's not a villain but a gentleman drunk who becomes a surrogate husband and father to a poor shopkeeper and her son. It's not great literature; in fact it's pretty disgustingly condescending to the "little people" and their plucky spirit. As a story, it's about as interesting as an old doily fished out of grandma's trunk. Because I love him, I'd like to say that Rathbone saves it with a remarkable performance, but he's too much of a live wire to play a mild, passive weakling, and he doesn't have much chemistry with Pauline Lord, who plays the sacrificing mother we're supposed to be interested in. It's a part better suited to Roland Young or Donald Crisp... or Nigel Bruce.

Still, as a Rathbone completist, I was happy to get a chance to see it, having first read about it in Michael Druxman's biography of Rathbone waaaaay back in 1974... the recent airing by TCM is the first showing I'm aware of since then. Now if I could only get my hands on "Loyalties."