Olive Higgins Prouty's NOW, VOYAGER Challenges Western Gender CODE!

ANNIVERSARY TODAY:

January 10, 1964 - On TV: The Jack Paar Program (NBC), Shirley appeared as herself.

Writer Olive Higgins Prouty was born today in 1882 (died March 24, 1974).

Actor Paul Henried was born today in 1908 (died March 29, 1992).

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Both Prouty and Henried share a minor milestone in film history, namely the 1942 film Now, Voyager. Prouty is best known for writing the story, and Henried played the male lead in the film.

Now, Voyager is one of those films that strangely seems to get better with repeated screenings. The story is about a repressed woman named Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) who suffers from the poisoning effects of a domineering mother played to perfection by British actress Gladys Cooper.

Eventually, through the assistance of an understanding therapist (Claude Rains), Charlotte finds love at first, and ultimately the peace that empowerment and self-assurance brings. It's probably among the top ten best love story pictures ever made!

Bette Davis (April 5, 1908 - October 6, 1989) is compelling and fascinating in playing this part. Davis' success as an actress came from staying in movies with her superb talent, just as Shirley Booth successfully stayed on the stage and avoided the movies as much as she could. Both Davis and Booth excelled at what they did, and were definitely among the 20th century's finest actresses. Along with Shirley Booth, Bette Davis is among my favorite actresses of all time.

Besides the fine acting from a stellar cast of Bette Davis, Paul Henried, Claude Rains, and Gladys Cooper, there's Max Steiner's beautiful score which rightly won the Academy Award that year.

The men are very likeable in this film (Paul Henried & Claude Rains), but the women certainly leave much to be desired - from Henried's miserable wife who we never see, Charlotte's niece June who certainly sickeningly loves to torture her aunt with nasty jibes, and most importantly, Charlotte's tyrannical mother who thinks that being a good mother means controlling everything your adult child feels and does.

For many reasons Now, Voyager has stood the test of time as "The Woman's Film." The story, written by Prouty, has a screen adaptation by Casey Robinson that leaves amazingly intact much of the original story and actual lines of dialogue. It's a wonderful story of a woman suffering serious psychological problems and how she breaks free of her mother's domination to choose her own destiny.

I initially sensed that the writer seemed to have studied this situation or went through such an ordeal. Prouty's writing is keen on women and mental issues. There's an interesting autobiographical element to Now, Voyager. Indeed Prouty was the right person to tell such an unusual story about the mentally ill Charlotte Vale. She herself was from a fine Boston family and she too herself suffered a mental breakdown as an adult in 1925 after the death of her one-year old infant (She also had an earlier breakdown at the age of twelve). Prouty went to a sanitarium for recovery where she met two therapists - one of them encouraged her in her writing career.

So Prouty knew what she was writing about when she created Charlotte Vale. Do you remember the story Stella Dallas? That too was written by Prouty. However, she was not too happy with the melodramatic screen and radio adaptations.

The point that seems evident is that Charlotte Vale is not really better off at the bittersweet conclusion than she was at the start....She might still seem to have some issues to work on, depending on how you want to see her decision to play surrogate mother to a married man's child. However, at least she has finally stood up and chosen her own destiny despite the consequences. Charlotte is liberated finally....That's what I liked about Now, Voyager.

Now, Voyager's character of Charlotte Vale is interesting, especially when you consider the time when this story was written. In short, Charlotte overcomes her mental problems and becomes a complete person thanks to the aid of a caring therapist Dr. Jacquith (Claude Rains). She learns to win and assert her independence, first by dumping repressive family ties and then overcoming those limiting gender restrictions which society brainwashes us at an early age to accept as normal and the only sensible way.
 

Charlotte is a character that finally exhibits strong empowerment. She achieves her stated goals of having a home (inheriting her tyrannical mother's house), having a child (through being a surrogate caretaker of her "ex-lover's" daughter) and having a man to call her own (via a very non-traditional friendship with a married man). In achieving these goals in an unusual manner, she frees herself from the patriarchy of the traditional male-dominated, anti-feminine, Western gender code. I must say that the writer, the story and the film is worthy of intense study for challenging that code!

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For Bill, His Pinup Girl: The Shirley Booth & Bill Baker Story
by Jim Manago
Foreword by Leslie Sodaro
Published December 1, 2010
Further details at: http://shirleybooth.blogspot.com

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Now available on Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076ZCBM2

Love is the Reason for it All: The Shirley Booth Story
by Jim Manago
Radio Research by Donna Manago
Foreword by Ted Key
BearManor Media, May 2008
http://bearmanormedia.bizland.com