The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Few thrillers have ever wrapped terror in such beauty as Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946). Adapted from Ethel Lina White's novel "Some Must Watch", it is one of the crown jewels of the "old dark house" tradition. 

The story takes place in 1916 in a quiet New England village that is shaken by a killer who is stalking women he deems "imperfect." Inside the great Warren mansion, the latest potential target, Helen Capel (Dorothy McGuire), a young mute servant girl, tends to her bedridden employer Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), unaware that danger lurks within the corridors of the house she calls home. 

Director Robert Siodmak, fresh from his work at Universal, infused the picture with the eerie elegance of German Expressionism. His camera glides through the Warren house teasing us with glimpses of views through mirrors and banisters, as though we were the unseen watcher. The most iconic frame of the film is undoubtably his close-up of the killer's eye and its reflection of the titular staircase. 

Dorothy McGuire gives a remarkable delicate performance as Helen. One forgets her muteness entirely, instead we sense her vulnerability and every thought of fear through her expressions alone. The grand old dame Barrymore gives a barnstorming turn as the sharp-tongued ailing dowager, a role which earned her an Academy Award nomination. George Brent and Gordon Oliver are each cloaked in just enough mystery to keep the viewer guessing, while Kent Smith lends a touch of romance to the proceedings as the young Dr. Parry who is anxious for Helen to regain her speech. The always appealing Rhonda Fleming costars as Mr. Warren's secretary; Elsa Lanchester brings some tipsy humor to the household gloom, and Sara Allgood and Rhys Williams round out the cast of servants. 

Visually, the film is a feast. Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography - that deep-focus chiaroscuro he perfected in Cat People and The Seventh Victim - breathes life into Albert D'Agostino's rambling and gloomy Victorian sets. 

The mystery itself may not stump many modern viewers, but The Spiral Staircase was never about surprise...it is about suspense - that exquisite tightening of the nerves as Helen's silence grows unbearable. In its refinement and restraint, The Spiral Staircase anticipates the psychological thrillers of decades to come and remains a Gothic masterpiece preserved on celluloid.

From the Archives : Old Yeller ( 1957 )

Dorothy McGuire is spending a little bonding time off the set of Old Yeller with her leading player, Spike, in this rare candid photo. Spike portrayed "Old Yeller" in the 1957 Walt Disney classic. He later moved on to television work, appearing as a regular in The Westerner and a few episodes of Lassie. 

From the Archives is our latest series of posts where we share photos from the Silverbanks Pictures collection. Some of these may have been sold in the past, and others may still be available for purchase at our eBay store : http://stores.ebay.com/Silverbanks-Pictures

Summer Magic ( 1963 )

Kate Douglas Wiggin's popular 1911 novel "Mother Carey's Chickens" was an ideal bit of literary property for Walt Disney Studios. It featured genteel characters, old-fashioned humor, a sweet story line, and a healthy dose of gaps in the plot ideal for musical intervals.

The story centered around a widowed mother ( Dorothy McGuire ) from Boston who moves her brood out of the city and into a long-vacant farmhouse in Maine. With the generous help of the local general store owner/postman/justice-of-the-peace Osh Popham ( Burl Ives ), they renovate the house unbeknownst to its owner, Tom Hamilton ( Peter Brown ), who is away in China. When Mr. Hamilton returns, he certainly is surprised to find his house being occupied by a family ( and rent free, at that! ).....but he soon comes to be smitten with the eldest daughter and everything turns out honky-dory. 

When Walt Disney decided to film the story in 1963 as Summer Magic, he gathered together some of his favorite leading players ( Hayley Mills, Dorothy McGuire, and Deborah Walley ) and a crackerjack pair of homespun character actors ( Burl Ives and Una Merkel ), dressed them up in colorful Bill Thomas period costumes, and surrounded them with bright and cheerful Carroll Clark sets. But he felt the story still needed some extra pizzazz, and so he asked the Sherman Brothers to pen some nostalgic-sounding tunes.... they came up with seven songs ( you could always trust the Sherman brothers to give more than what was needed ). What resulted was a pleasing, albeit fluffy, version of "Mother Carey's Chickens".

Summer Magic is a leisurely paced film that meanders along like sleepy folk heading home from an evening picnic. It captures that gentle lazy spirit of summer but not in so entertaining a way as Disney's own Pollyanna ( 1960 ) or MGM's Two Weeks with Love ( 1950 ). 

While the songs are fabulous ( especially noteworthy are "On the Front Porch", "The Ugly-Bug Ball", and "Femininity" ), the clever little touches of humor that are present in most Disney films was lacking, and both Hayley Mills and Deborah Walley's talents were wasted in parts that could have had more punch. The few scenes they played together were fun - especially the summer party croquet sequence - but there simply weren't enough of them. Screenwriter Sally Benson is at fault here, which is unusual considering she was the talented writer behind Meet Me in St. Louis ( 1944 ), Junior Miss ( 1946 ), and Come to the Stable ( 1949 ). 

Still, Hayley is a delight to watch and, even with the absence of the traditional Disney sparkle, sitting back with Summer Magic makes a pleasant way to spend a hot summer evening. Also cast in the film were Eddie Hodges, Michael J. Pollard, James Stacey, Peter Brown, and Jimmy Mathers ( younger brother to Jerry "Beaver" Mathers ). 

The Enchanted Cottage ( 1945 )

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

The enchanted cottage...a harborage to a legend of eternal romance. A beautiful cottage left to live in contented independence of the centuries old structure it once belonged to; standing solid amidst the passages of time to cast its romantic spell on the strangers who pass through its portals. Ah! but not anyone can sense its enchantment...only chosen ones.

Our story begins on a cold wintry morning in a small New England town by the sea. Walking among the rustling leaves outside of this cottage is John Hillgrove ( Herbert Marshall )...a blind man. And yet, a man who can truly see, for he possesses the gift of inner sight; the ability to sense the true nature of a being, and to sense the magical aura an "enchanted" cottage, like the one before him, can cast. Being a composer, he seeks inspiration for his musical skill, and on this beautiful December morning Fate brings him to meet Miss Pennington ( Dorothy McGuire ), a young woman who will one day kindle his imagination with the musical strains of an emotion waiting to be set to music.

Miss Laura Pennington is our rather plain-looking heroine. A lost soul seeking a Home; a place of rest; a place where she can feel she belongs. She hopes to find it in her hometown. Returning after an absence of a few years she comes to the cottage to obtain the position of a maid.

Known locally as "The Witch", Mrs. Abigail Minnett ( Mildred Natwick ) runs the place, and having recently rented it to a soon-to-be-married couple, she's looking for a level-headed woman to help with the housework. Miss Pennington says she does not believe the rumor of the cottage being haunted and is readily given the job. It is not so much her superstitious disbelief that makes Mrs. Minnett hire her, but rather her confession to being lonely....a feeling Mrs. Minnett can sadly relate to.

That afternoon Mr.Oliver Bradford ( Robert Young ) and his fiancee ( Hillary Brooke ) arrive to look over the cottage. They are a young society couple and Oliver is obviously taken by the charm of the place and convinces his fiancee that it is the ideal location in which to spend their honeymoon. Within a week they plan on getting married, but that blissful day will never come, for War is declared soon after and being an Army pilot, Mr.Bradford is swiftly given his overseas departure orders.

Over a year later he returns to the cottage a changed man - a disfigured man. This time it is not a honeymoon oasis he is seeking but rather a place of retreat from his family, his fiancee and the society that brands him an outcast and tries to comfort him with pity. A broken man, he is searching for a new foothold on life. It is not only peace that he shall find at the enchanted cottage, but something even more wonderful.....lasting love.

Originally a stage play written by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero in 1923, The Enchanted Cottage was first brought to the screen in 1924 in a silent film production by First National starring Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy. RKO released this film adaption in 1945, and Lux used the same cast in a radio play that year as well. Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire were a perfect team ( they had starred together two years earlier in another stage adaption, Claudia ) for this "enchanting" tale and each brings a unique quality to their roles - Dorothy, with her look of inner sadness and breathless timidness, and Robert with his kind and honest appearance that not even a facial scar can alter. Mildred Natwick is marvelous as usual, as the lonely widow with whom time has stood still. And best of all is the magnificent Herbert Marshall. This man is always a pleasure to behold. 

"Through the eyes of Love, one can see everlasting Beauty " is the theme of The Enchanted Cottage, and yet, lying just beneath the surface the film tells other tales. It's a story of kindness: a lonely woman welcoming a stranger into her home, befriending her, and sharing in her happiness and sorrow; a young woman reaching out to a man in need of compassion and sympathetic understanding. It's a story of acceptance: accepting your situation in life and wanting to see it in a brighter perspective; accepting others for who they are and loving them for it. Its a story of Time: the Past frozen on a calender for a widow to remember, the Present being days of war and personal hardship, the Future being the only bright star of hope and happiness. And most importantly, it's a story of truth: eyes that see the true, the real, in a blind world. John Hillgrove tells Oliver that his blindness has opened up new worlds for him allowing him to use senses that show things as they really are, making nature and human beings all the more beautiful to him.....

" Sometimes I feel that before I was blind, and only now I can see "

The Enchanted Cottage is an atmospheric romantic fantasy with lovely music by Roy Webb ( nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score ) and beautiful cinematography. It leaves a memorable impression on the viewer, and you will want to see it many times over.

Swiss Family Robinson ( 1960 )

"It was a good thing we set out to do. We were right, and all that hasn't changed just because we were shipwrecked."

Papa Robinson's plans of providing a new home for his family in the burgeoning colony of New Guinea go awry when the ship carrying them from Switzerland to the new land gets shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean after a fierce storm. Robinson ( John Mills ), his wife ( Dorothy McGuire ), and their three sons Fritz ( James MacArthur ), Ernest ( Tommy Kirk ), and Francis ( Kevin Corcoran ) find themselves abandoned by the ship's crew and left to survive on their own. They construct a raft and make their way to a nearby island where they build a home and make a new life for themselves, all the while awaiting to be rescued.

Swiss Family Robinson is loosely based on Johann Wyss' classic novel of the same name published in 1812. Wyss' story had potential but it lacked the action that Disney was seeking for this family adventure film. 

As director Ken Annakin recalled...

"While we were in the mountains near Zermatt shooting Third Man on the Mountain, I remember Bill Anderson saying to me that The Swiss Family Robinson was the subject Walt was toying with as a next picture. I read the book. It was very old-fashioned, and I wondered what Walt's approach was going to be. Bill Anderson and I returned to Burbank and we sat down with Walt. He said, 'Well now, let's throw the whole book out the window. Let's just keep the idea of a Swiss family emigrating, trying to emigrate to America. They get shipwrecked, but they are able to save all the things in the ship. They then make a life on an idyllic island, I think you ought to think of all the things you might like to do, all the animals you could use in an entertaining way. Let's make it a wonderful show for the whole family, with all ideas possible.'"

Walt Disney assigned sketch artist John Jensen to work with director Ken Annakin in creating a storyboard for Swiss Family Robinson. Every scene and every camera angle was plotted in detail. Disney then took the storyboard to screenwriter Lowell S. Hawley and told him to write a story based on what was drawn. It was a novel way to pen a script and turned out to be an excellent way! 

Swiss Family Robinson became Walt Disney's grandest live-action film to date. The entire film took 22 weeks to shot at a cost of approximately $4,000,000. It was also one of the few Disney pictures to be filmed in widescreen. No Hollywood studio sets were used in the making of the movie. It was shot entirely on the Caribbean island of Tobago, providing an authentic tropical backdrop for the intrepid family's escapades. A menagerie of animals were assembled - exotic birds, snakes, tigers, zebras, elephants, lizards and monkeys - and flown to the island to give the appearance that the Robinsons got stranded on a South Pacific island filled with wild creatures. 

The elaborate jungle sets, designed by John Howell, John Hoestli, and Peter Murton, took 5 months to build. The most impressive was, undoubtedly, the tri-level family treehouse which included a stove, hot running water, a skylight roof, and a pirate-proof living room....all the comforts of home. The treehouse became such a beloved edifice that it was given a permanent home at Disneyland, where it was re-constructed in 1962.

"The world is full of nice ordinary people living in nice ordinary little houses on the ground. But didn't you ever dream of a house up on a tree top?"

A previous film version of Swiss Family Robinson was released by RKO in 1940 starring Thomas Mitchell, Edna Best, Tim Holt, Freddie Bartholomew and Terry Kilburn. This adaptation focused on the father's desire to stay on the island and have his sons grow into capable men through the survival skills they were learning on the island, while his wife pined to go home to London to resume her social life.

Walt Disney's version had a much happier tone and the Robinson family displayed the proper attitude that one should have when getting stranded ( in any situation ) : to make the best of it.

As with most Disney films, casting was paramount and Swiss Family Robinson was filled with seasoned and attractive players.  John Mills is ideal as the patriarch of the family striking just the right note of commanding know-how, tempered with humor. Clearly he was a man not disappointed with the situation but thoroughly enjoying the whole escapade. 

Unlike Edna Best's portrayal of Mother, McGuire has her become a woman who supports her husband in his decisions and keeps quiet about the trials of the island...unless worry prompts her to cry out.

The lovely Janet Munro joins the cast as Roberta, the young woman whom Fritz and Ernst rescue from pirates when they take their kayak journey around the island. MacArthur and Kirk were certainly a drawing feature for the young female audience who no doubt would have loved to have been stranded on an island with the boys. Moochie is the only performer who gets out of hand in the film, and seems to be bent on getting himself, and the family, into danger. Rounding out the cast is the legendary Japanese actor Sessue Kayakawa as the leader of the pirates, and Cecil Parker as Roberta's grandfather.

Swiss Family Robinson was released just before Christmas, on December 21, 1960. Critic reviews for the film were mixed, with the New York Times calling it a "grand adventure yarn" while other reviewers found it overlong and the final pirate attack a slapstick travesty. Those critics had their blinders on and failed to realize that the film was made in the spirit of fun and reckless abandon. Nevertheless audiences realized this and they came in droves to see it. The film became the No.1 grossing picture of 1960, earning over 20 million dollars at the box office, nearly twice the return of the second top-grossing film of the year, Psycho.

Swiss Family Robinson gives audiences a ripping good adventure to enjoy and makes for ideal Saturday morning viewing. It has all the key ingredients of an entertaining film - a great story, perfect cast, stellar special effects, and beautiful cinematography. Through the Robinsons we can vicariously enjoy the life of castaways and live out the dream of having a sprawling tree pad...and all within the short span of two hours.