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Foxfire | |
---|---|
Directed by | Joseph Pevney |
Screenplay by | Ketti Frings |
Based on | Foxfire by Anya Seton |
Produced by | Aaron Rosenberg |
Starring | Jane Russell Jeff Chandler Dan Duryea |
Cinematography | William H. Daniels |
Edited by | Ted J. Kent |
Music by | Frank Skinner |
Color process | Technicolor Three-strip |
Production company | Universal International Pictures |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 92 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.9 million (US rentals) [1] |
Foxfire is a 1955 American drama romance western film released by Universal-International, directed by Joseph Pevney, and starring Jane Russell, Jeff Chandler, and Dan Duryea. The movie was loosely based on a best-selling 1950 novel by Anya Seton.
Foxfire is historically notable in that it was the last American film to be shot in three-strip Technicolor, a process that had been supplanted by the coarser-grained and less chromatically saturated, but much cheaper, Eastmancolor single-strip process. [2]
After her car breaks down in the Arizona desert, New York socialite Amanda Lawrence accepts a ride from Jonathan Dartland, a mining engineer, and his friend Hugh Slater, a doctor with a penchant for liquor. Invited to a party hosted by her wealthy mother at the resort where they are staying, "Dart" claims to dislike mothers, especially those of spoiled beautiful daughters, but he and Amanda fall in love and quickly marry. Amanda's mother is not pleased to hear that Dart's mother is an Apache Indian princess, once married to a Boston college professor, who has taken back her Apache name and never sees her son.
Dart works in the mining community of Lodestone for Tyson Copper, where women are not welcome because of miners' superstitions, but wants to re-open the abandoned "foxfire" shaft, where he hopes to find a legendary vein of gold. Amanda adjusts easily to the rustic living conditions of Lodestone, and to the meddling opinions of the wife of the mine superintendent Jim Mablett, but feels devalued when Dart apparently does not want children. When his attention is completely occupied trying to get the foxfire project going, she innocently spends time with Hugh, who makes no secret to others that he is still attracted to Amanda, causing gossip in town begun by the jealous Maria, Hugh's nurse.
Dart is reticent about his background and ambitions. A pregnant Amanda opens a footlocker he mysteriously keeps locked, learning more about Dart's background. Dart resents the intrusion, believing she did so only out of bored amusement. Trying to win his trust, Amanda persuades the reluctant company owner, Mr. Tyson, to back Dart's foxfire project but this also backfires when Dart's pride is injured. She seeks out his mother, who explains her son's cultural attitudes, which include a belief that love is only temporary and that fathers do not acknowledge sons until they come of age and abandon their mothers. Dart has heard the rumors and misdirected by Maria, believes she is having a tryst with Hugh. When she returns, he is intoxicated and accuses her of being unfaithful. After she explains, he is contrite but they continue at cross purposes when she angrily rejects his drunken advances.
Amanda falls during a dizzy spell and has a miscarriage. Dart, unaware she was pregnant, tries to see her in the hospital but accedes to Hugh's dissuasion not to. Hurt by Dart's adherence to the "old ways" and telling him that he has treated her "like a squaw," Amanda intends to return home with her mother. At the foxfire shaft, which legend has is on ground sacred to the Apaches, many of them refuse to continue working after one of them has a seizure. Dart goes into the shaft to overcome their superstitions. It collapses and injures his hands, but he also finds the vein of gold. Informed at the airport by Maria that he's been hurt, Amanda rushes back, where Dart admits that the mine collapse showed him that he needs her and is no longer afraid of love. At the mine a new "Foxfire Gold Company" sign is erected.
The film was based on a 1950 novel by Anya Seton, who had family members involved with mining and researched the novel's setting by spending time in Gila County, Arizona, visiting gold mines and spending time in an Indian reservation. [3] [4] [5]
Film rights were bought by Universal in July 1953. [6]
Though Seton's novel takes place during the Great Depression and Prohibition era, the film's script is set in contemporary times. The film retained most of the novel's characters, locations and many plot events but substantially reworked the storyline. Villains intrinsic to the original story were eliminated, as was a melodramatic quest by three embittered treasure seekers for a Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine. The main characters' motivations and emotional responses were significantly altered.
In July 1953, Universal-International announced that June Allyson, who matched Seton's description of her heroine, would co-star with Jeff Chandler in a film adaptation of the novel, [7] [8] with filming slated to begin in April 1954. [9]
Filming was pushed back as Allyson dropped out and Jane Russell was offered the lead role. [10] Russell was paid $200,000 and was granted the right to employ Chandler for a future film for her own production company. [11]
Chandler described the role as one of his favorites as "I don't have to be so darned monosyllabic in this one." [12]
Linda Christian was to play the role of the girl in love with Chandler, but Universal decided to cast her in another film and gave her part to Mara Corday. [13]
Filming started on July 27, 1954 and ended in September, taking place at the Apple Valley Inn in Apple Valley, California and in Oatman, Arizona.
A.H. Weiler of the New York Times said: "Jeff Chandler, who wrote the lyrics of the title tune, and who, we are told, sings it, does well by the role of the brooding, brawny and handsome engineer. Although his problems appear to be bigger than they actually are, he makes a fine, romantic figure of a man. Miss Russell, if the appraisal isn't redundant by now, is a fine figure of a woman in a variety of revealing gowns and negligees. Her cheerfully sincere efforts to make her marriage work are worthy of sympathy, but, all things considered, Mr. Chandler's acting rings truer." [14]
Jack Moffitt of The Hollywood Reporter said: "...Jane Russell, as the wife, does some of the best work she has done to date," [15] while Variety wrote: "Miss Russell is extremely likable in her breezy characterization, playing it with becoming naturalness." [16] Saturday Review said: "[T]he [role of the] socialite, well played by Jane Russell is a surprising sensible girl ... Ketti Fring's script probes unusually deep in analyzing the position of women in an Apache tribe and their relationship to their men." [17] Hazel Flynn of the Beverly Hills Daily Newsline said: "Jane here continues in the trend she has been following of late...that is, acting instead of just exhibiting her charms. She is really good in "Foxfire" as is Jeff Chandler as the Apache with whom she falls in love." [18]
In June 1955, Decca Records released the film's theme, sung by Chandler, as a single. Billboard said of the release: "That very good movie actor, Jeff Chandler, sings pleasantly, albeit with little 'fire,' on the haunting theme from his new picture, Foxfire."
On December 11, 2018, Foxfire was released on both DVD and Blu-ray for the first time in the United States by Kino International under its subsidiary Kino Lorber Studio Classics. Both formats present the film in its theatrical aspect ratio of 2:1 (the film was originally shot in the academy ratio at 1.37:1). Reviews of the Kino Lorber release were excellent and praised the performances of both Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler.
Anya Seton, born Ann Seton, was an American author of historical fiction, or as she preferred they be called, "biographical novels".
Jeanne Elizabeth Crain was an American actress. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her title role in Pinky (1949). She also starred in the films In the Meantime, Darling (1944), State Fair (1945), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Centennial Summer (1946), Margie (1946), Apartment for Peggy (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), People Will Talk (1951), Man Without a Star (1955), Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), and The Joker Is Wild (1957).
June Allyson was an American stage, film, and television actress.
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was an American actress and model. She was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s. She starred in more than 20 films.
Jeff Chandler was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was one of Universal Pictures' more popular male stars of the 1950s. His other credits include Sword in the Desert (1948), Deported (1950), Female on the Beach (1955), and Away All Boats (1956). He also performed as a radio actor and as a singer.
Ann Marie Blyth is an American retired actress and singer. She began her acting career on Broadway in Watch on the Rhine (1941–42), and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Veda in the 1945 Michael Curtiz film Mildred Pierce. Her other notable film roles include Brute Force (1947), Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948), Once More, My Darling (1949), The World in His Arms (1952), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), Rose Marie (1954), The Student Prince (1954), Kismet (1955), and The Helen Morgan Story (1957).
Celia Lovsky was an Austrian-American actress. She is best known to fans of Star Trek as the Vulcan matriarch T'Pau, and to fans of The Twilight Zone as the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.
Joseph Herman Pasternak was a Hungarian-American film producer in Hollywood. Pasternak spent the Hollywood "Golden Age" of musicals at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, producing many successful musicals with female singing stars like Deanna Durbin, Kathryn Grayson and Jane Powell, as well as swimmer/bathing beauty Esther Williams' films. He produced Judy Garland's final MGM film, Summer Stock, which was released in 1950, and some of Gene Kelly’s early breakthrough roles. Pasternak worked in the film industry for 45 years, from the later silent era until shortly past the end of the classical Hollywood cinema in the early 1960s.
The Opposite Sex is a 1956 American musical romantic comedy film shot in Metrocolor and CinemaScope. The film was directed by David Miller and stars June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, and Ann Miller, with Leslie Nielsen, Jeff Richards, Agnes Moorehead, Charlotte Greenwood, Joan Blondell, and Sam Levene.
Ross Hunter was an American film and television producer and actor. He is best known for producing light comedies such as Pillow Talk (1959), and the glamorous melodramas Magnificent Obsession (1954), Imitation of Life (1959), and Back Street (1961).
Mara Corday is an American retired showgirl, model, actress, Playboy Playmate and 1950s cult figure.
George Sherman was an American film director and producer of low-budget Western films. One obituary said his "credits rival in number those of anyone in the entertainment industry."
Willard Parker was an American film and television actor. He starred in the TV series Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955–1958).
Away All Boats is a 1956 American war film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Jeff Chandler, George Nader, Lex Barker, and Julie Adams. It was produced by Howard Christie from a screenplay by Ted Sherdeman based on the 1953 novel by Kenneth M. Dodson (1907–1999), who served on the USS Pierce (APA-50) in World War II and used his experiences there as a guide for his novel. He was encouraged in his writing by Carl Sandburg, who had read some of Dodson’s letters, written in the Pacific. The book is about the crew of the Belinda (APA-22), an amphibious attack transport. The book became a best seller. The film was produced by Universal Pictures.
The Girl Most Likely is a 1958 American musical comedy film about a young woman who becomes engaged to three men at the same time. The film, a remake of Tom, Dick and Harry (1941), was directed by Mitchell Leisen, and stars Jane Powell, Cliff Robertson, and Keith Andes. The choreography is by Gower Champion.
Lady Godiva of Coventry is a 1955 American Technicolor historical drama film, directed by Arthur Lubin. It starred Maureen O'Hara in the title role. Alec Harford, the English actor who portrayed Tom the Tailor, died eight months before the film's release.
Yankee Pasha is a 1954 American romantic adventure film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Jeff Chandler, Rhonda Fleming and Mamie Van Doren. Shot in technicolor, it was produced and distributed by Hollywood studio Universal Pictures. The film is based on the 1947 novel Yankee Pasha by Edison Marshall.
Sign of the Pagan is a 1954 American historical drama film directed by Douglas Sirk, shot in CinemaScope, and released by Universal Pictures. The film stars Jeff Chandler, Jack Palance, Ludmilla Tchérina, and Rita Gam.
A Stranger in My Arms is a 1959 American CinemaScope drama film directed by Helmut Käutner and starring June Allyson, Jeff Chandler, Sandra Dee, Charles Coburn, Mary Astor and Peter Graves.
Foxfire is a 1951 novel by Anya Seton. It was published by Houghton Mifflin. It was adapted as the 1955 film Foxfire starring Jane Russell, Jeff Chandler, and Dan Duryea.