First glimpse of Bingley and Darcy
Turner Movie Classics offers a website with trailers and featurettes about its films. Click on this link to hear Ann Rutherford speak in two featurettes about the making of Pride and Prejudice 1940.
Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy
Of his part as Mr. Darcy, Laurence Olivier said in his autobiography: ”I was very unhappy with the picture. It was difficult to make Darcy into anything more than an unattractive-looking prig, and darling Greer seemed to me all wrong as Elizabeth.”
If I may put in my two cents, I agree heartily with Mr. Olivier’s assessment. Considered a classic in the 20th century, the film now seems anachronistic and outdated. Except for a few excellent portrayals, (Mary Boland as Mrs. Bennet, Edna May Oliver as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Edmund Gwenn as Mr. Bennet, Marsha Hunt as Mary Bennet, and Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins) I would not bother to see the film again.
Lizzy at the window looking like a matron in Little Women
From the notes on the TMC website: “M-G-M took several liberties with Jane Austen’s novel, among them moving the time period of the story forty years ahead. According to modern sources, this was done in order to allow for more ornate costumes.” Anne Rutherford said in a JASNA interview: “But I must say, that when the studio, in its infinite wisdom, when they changed the wardrobe from the wet-nightgown look, that empire look, to the ship-in-full-sail [Victorian] – they did such a wise thing. Because the sight of Mary Boland [Mrs. Bennet] bustling down the street with all of her little goslings behind her in their huge voluminous skirts, and all of them chattering at once – it wouldn’t have been nearly as delightful a sight-gag if we had all been in little, skinny wet-night-gown-type things.”
Again, I beg to differ. Notice the delightful picture these actresses in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation make in their regency gowns:
Bennet women 2005 Pride and Prejudice
- Over view of Pride and Prejudice, 1940 on TMC website. Images from that site.
- The film’s movie posters on Jane Austen Today
Found in the vaults of Pemberley are three letters that Elizabeth Darcy wrote to her sister Jane describing a shocking discovery about her husband. These letters have been published for the first time.
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I wonder if the movie was trying to bank on the popularity of “Gone with the Wind”, which came out the year before. The costumes were a big focal point in that film, and they probably wanted to draw on that to bring in audiences. Just a theory. Times change, tastes change. Modern audiences love seeing the simpler, freer styles of the Regency era rather than the restrictive and overbearing styles of the Antebellum/Civil War period.
Sara, I think you are correct. Also, Ann Rutherford tells that the decision to use costumes of another age was a deliberate decision.
Thanks for pointing these featurettes out. They were fascinating – I want more!
I love Lawrence Olivier as an actor, but I really don’t like this version of P&P. I agree that Greer is all wrong as Elizabeth and the costumes are terrible. I also can’t get over the coach race at the beginning to find the new men in town. AHH!
Laura, I had forgotten about the coach race! Yes! I own a DVD version of the film and each time I start it I cannot finish viewing it because of these helpful “touches.”
Larry was just miffed because Greer–his protege, and some allege, a former lover–was a big star in the U.S. and he, despite his smashing success in 1939’s Wuthering Heights, wasn’t even as famous as Vivien Leigh. Plus, I think he wanted Vivien as Lizzie, just as Vivien wanted Larry in everything she did as well (the two were rather obsessed with one another). However much the movie deviated from the book, I am a huge Greer Garson fan and found this MGM version full of verve and wit. I also didn’t mind the costumes as I cringe whenever historical romances are set in the 1820/30s, as though it’s still the Regency era with its slim silhouette, instead of the explosion of ribbons and furbelows it was. Nice to see that the costume designer wasn’t afraid to show off the fashions of that decade.
We have largely forgotten that Olivier’s and Leigh’s love affair was a scandal that studio head Louis B. Mayer wanted to hush up, and thus he nixed Vivien’s participation in the film, even though she had asked George Cukor to speak on her behalf.
I love Greer Garson in almost everything movie I’ve watched her in except this one. At the time the film was made she was 36 years old. Her lighthearted comedic touch would have been better suited to Mrs. Bennet, but I suppose that at that stage of her career, she would play nothing but leading lady parts. Mary Boland, though a delight to watch as Mrs. Bennet, was close to 60 when she portrayed a middle aged woman. I know that there had been a long tradition of older actresses taking on the roles of teenagers, but this was for the stage. (Thankfully, men no longer portrayed women!) On film, where every line and wrinkle is heightened, the tradition of using actors who are much older than the characters they portray seems especially ludicrous. I could barely stand Joe Wright’s version of 2005’s P&P, but one thing he did get right was the ages of the actresses who portrayed the Bennet girls. He then fell down miserably with the Bennet parents, hiring 70-year-old Donald Sutherland and 59-year-old Brenda Blethyn to portray the characters.
I can tolerate many deviations from the original novel for the “sake of the film”, but Robert Z. Leonard, the director, took too many unnecessary liberties, from the opening scene in which the Bennet women find out about Mr. Bingley’s arrival in a haberdashery shop in Meryton, to that ghastly ending, where Edna Mae Oliver as Lady Catherine waits in her carriage to learn from Darcy if he proposed to Elizabeth. As for Olivier, it is very obvious that his heart was not in the film. Had it not been for Greer Garson’s lighthearted banter, I fear he might have fallen asleep in front of the camera.
As an aside, I wonder if Aldous Huxley, one of the script writers, was an admirer of Jane Austen, or one of her detractors? I did find this quote from an article about the film in a 1986 article in JASNA’s Persuasions: “Huxley worked manfully at the script, but never seemed to be delighted with the task. In a letter to a friend he called it “an odd, crossword puzzle job. One tries to do one’s best for Jane Austen, but actually the very fact of transforming the book into a picture must necessarily alter its whole quality in a profound way.”
Oh, I’m aware that Vivien and Larry’s scandal needed to be patched up, but having seen him in a few romantic comedies, it wasn’t his strong suit. His somnambulist performance, IMO, was less because Darcy was a prig and more because he was probably doing this for the paycheck and the star appeal.
Regarding Greer’s age, yes at 36 she did look ludicrous play 20 yr old Lizzie Bennett, but MGM was attempting to pass her off as younger than she was since they had kicked her around without any of the starring roles they’d promised her when she came to the US four or five years previous. P&P was part of their apology to her–and since she was so obviously British, what else to do than to cast her in penultimately English roles like this?
But as for the ages of other actors and other versions, I do like that Wright cast actresses matching the ages of the characters, by Brenda and Donald looked good together and look alarmingly good for their ages. Back to P&P ‘40, this book admits that the studio changed the movie’s setting to hearken back to the successes with GWTTW and Wuthering Heights, but I’d also argue that the movie was a film adaptation of a play adaptation of the book. I’d like to get my hands on a copy of the stageplay to compare it to the movie.
Oh I couldn’t agree more! I remember seeing this vintage film about a year ago and was sooooo disappointed in it.. thinking to myself… did the studio even read the book? Laurence as Mr. Darcy? Yawn~ ha ha No wonder the BBC version was and still is the BEST movie version!
I didn’t know all that background info on the romance though. hmmm A bit saucy for its time! lol
Thanks for the link! I think this film is light fun – actually, I think it shares of lot of things with the 2005 film, and that that film will similarly probably not age as well. But that’s just my opinion. And I love behind the scenes stuff – I just wish they put them on a nice 70th anniversary dvd or somesuch.
Having done a brief presentation at JASNA in 2000 about the (then) 3 P&P versions, I find it curious that TMC now posts info on their website about this version of P&P including these featurettes, when at the time they refused to give my family and I copyright permission to show a ‘clip’ at our presentation. Can you say, “Jane Austen Bandwagon?”
This version is such a hoot! Love Olivier and Garson, but at D & E, they just don’t seem to be able to make it work. And the ball that is more like a lawn party? Again, it’s painful, but fun! (Thanks for the insight about Gone with the Wind-likeness. I’d forgotten that it was just after it!)
I think the movie is pretty fun to watch. As someone once told me, if we weren’t all put out regarding the liberties they took with P&P, we could like it a lot more. It is a fun movie, it’s just not P&P.