Home from the Hill (film)

Last updated
Home from the Hill
Homefromthehillpost.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Screenplay by Harriet Frank Jr.
Irving Ravetch
Based on Home from the Hill
by William Humphrey
Produced byEdmund Grainger
Starring Robert Mitchum
Eleanor Parker
George Peppard
George Hamilton
Everett Sloane
Cinematography Milton R. Krasner
Edited by Harold F. Kress
Music by Bronislau Kaper
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • March 3, 1960 (1960-03-03)(US)
Running time
150 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2,354,000 [1]
Box office$5,075,000 [1] [2]

Home from the Hill is a 1960 American Metrocolor drama film starring Robert Mitchum, Eleanor Parker, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Everett Sloane and Luana Patten. Directed in CinemaScope by Vincente Minnelli, it was produced by Edward Grainger, and distributed by MGM. The screenplay was adapted from the 1958 novel of the same name by William Humphrey. The film was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. [3] The title is from the last line of Robert Louis Stevenson's short poem "Requiem".

Contents

Plot

Captain Wade Hunnicutt, a notorious womanizer and the wealthiest and most powerful person in his East Texas town, is wounded by a jealous husband. Wade's scornful but beautiful wife Hannah has raised their son Theron to be dependent upon her, but as he reaches adulthood, Theron seeks his father's help in becoming a man.

Wade introduces Theron to hunting and other masculine pursuits under the watchful eye of Rafe, Hunnicutt's loyal employee. Theron admires the slightly older and more worldly Rafe, and rapidly develops into a marksman and skilled hunter. He also learns about women from Rafe.

Theron's new lifestyle leads him into a love affair with Libby Halstead, a local girl from a proper family, but her father Albert's animosity forces a secret relationship. Theron learns from his mother that the reason for Libby's father's scorn is Wade's reputation as a womanizer and that Rafe is his illegitimate half-brother.

Theron becomes disturbed by his parents' poor relationship and his father's treatment of Rafe. Theron rejects his parents as well as the concept of family, and thus Libby, his true love. Though Theron does not know, Libby is pregnant, but she does not want her pregnancy to be the reason for their marriage. Confused and despondent, Libby turns to Rafe, who out of passion and compassion agrees to marry her. Realizing his error, Theron is devastated.

On the day of Libby's newborn son's baptism, her father overhears gossip that his daughter was impregnated by Captain Hunnicutt and is enraged. Wade and Hannah reconcile at home after 17 years. After Hannah leaves the room, Wade is shot down by an unknown assailant who escapes. Theron tracks down his father's killer and sees that it is Albert. Theron kills Albert in self-defense and soon after Rafe catches up. Though Rafe objects, Theron leaves town, never to return.

Several months later, Rafe encounters Hannah at Wade's grave. He offers to include her in the life of her grandson, and she shows him that she has acknowledged him as Wade's son on the headstone.

Cast

Production

George Hamilton was cast after MGM executives were impressed by his performance in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. . [4] He later said: "What Vincente later told me he saw in me was not my tortured soul but that I had the quality of a privileged but sensitive mama's boy." [5]

Husband-and-wife team Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch wrote the screenplay, making some key changes in Humphrey's story to emphasize the core conflicts. They created the role of Mitchum's illegitimate son and made his wife a desirable though bitter woman instead of the aging crone from the book. The writers also tried to capture the cadence of Southern speech and had written another family drama located in the South, The Long, Hot Summer . Minnelli would later call the screenplay "one of the few film scripts in which I didn't change a word." [6]

This film was originally intended for Clark Gable and Bette Davis, but the roles then went to Robert Mitchum and Eleanor Parker.

Filming location

Despite being set in Clarksville, Texas, few scenes were filmed there, though the opening scene shows a hearse driving around Clarksville's downtown square as old men are seen sitting, and whittling pieces of wood, at the base of a monument in the center of the square. Filming took place in Oxford, Mississippi near the University of Mississippi campus,[ citation needed ] and Paris, Texas and its surrounding area. The homes used in the film, particularly for the interior shots, are in Oxford, as is the downtown area. Some hunting scenes were filmed near Lake Crook, the Paris water supply.[ citation needed ] Other scenes were filmed south of Cuthand, Texas in Red River County. Remnants of the steel truss bridge seen in the film still exist near the Sulfur River crossing between Titus and Red River counties. [ citation needed ]

Reception

Critical

In a contemporary review, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that the film lacked focus and that "... the whole thing is aimless, tedious and in conspicuously doubtful taste. Under Vicente Minelli's direction, it is garishly overplayed." [7]

An April 1960 review in The Spokesman-Review praised Mitchum's performance and the film overall: "Every man who ever fired a gun or sired a son will want to see 'Home From the Hill' ... It takes considerable wandering through the highways and byways of emotion to reach a satisfactory and, thank goodness, honorable conclusion." [8]

For his work in Home from the Hill, Mitchum won his only major acting award when the National Board of Review named him Best Actor for his work in the film as well as in The Sundowners . Peppard was also named Best Supporting Actor for his performance. [6]

The film is often recognized as one of the great melodramas directed by Minnelli late in his career. [9] Dave Kehr cited Home from the Hill as a "superb example" of these celebrated melodramas, in which "Minnelli's characters don’t simply act out their discomfort with the roles they’ve been thrust into or the relationships they’ve chosen to endure, but project their feelings onto the visual and aural fabric of the film. Where Minnelli's musicals express emotions through song and dance, his melodramas express feeling through color (of which he was one of the medium's great masters) and set design." [10]

Box office

According to MGM records, the film earned $3,275,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $1.8 million elsewhere, but because of its high production cost, it incurred a loss of $122,000. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Peppard</span> American actor (1928–1994)

George William Peppard was an American actor. He secured a major role as struggling writer Paul Varjak when he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and later portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers (1964). On television, he played the title role of millionaire insurance investigator and sleuth Thomas Banacek in the early-1970s mystery series Banacek. He played Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, the cigar-smoking leader of a renegade commando squad in the 1980s action television series The A-Team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deborah Kerr</span> British film and television actress (1921–2007)

Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE, known professionally as Deborah Kerr, was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first person from Scotland to be nominated for any acting Oscar.

<i>How the West Was Won</i> (film) 1962 film

How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film directed by Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall, produced by Bernard Smith, written by James R. Webb, and narrated by Spencer Tracy. Originally filmed in true three-lens Cinerama with the according three-panel panorama projected onto an enormous curved screen, the film features an ensemble cast formed by many cinema icons and newcomers, including Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne and Richard Widmark. The supporting cast features Brigid Bazlen, Walter Brennan, David Brian, Ken Curtis, Andy Devine, Jack Lambert, Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln, Agnes Moorehead, Harry Morgan as Ulysses S. Grant, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Shaughnessy, Harry Dean Stanton, Russ Tamblyn and Lee Van Cleef.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Mitchum</span> American actor (1917–1997)

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American actor. He is known for his antihero roles and film noir appearances. He received nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1992. Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema.

The Sundowners is a 1960 Technicolor comedy-drama film that tells the story of a 1920s Australian outback family torn between the father's desires to continue his nomadic sheep-herding ways and the wife and son's desire to settle in one place. The Sundowners was produced and directed by Fred Zinnemann, adapted by Isobel Lennart from Jon Cleary's 1952 novel of the same name, with Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, and Peter Ustinov, Glynis Johns, Mervyn Johns, Dina Merrill, Michael Anderson Jr., and Chips Rafferty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Simmons</span> British actress and singer (1929–2010)

Jean Merilyn Simmons was a British actress and singer. One of J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Great Britain during and after the Second World War, followed mainly by Hollywood films from 1950 onwards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Hamilton (actor)</span> American actor

George Stevens Hamilton is an American actor. His notable films include Home from the Hill (1960), Where the Boys Are (1960), Angel Baby (1961), By Love Possessed (1961), A Thunder of Drums (1961), Light in the Piazza (1962), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), The Victors (1963), Looking for Love (1964), Your Cheatin' Heart (1964), Viva Maria! (1965), Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967), Jack of Diamonds (1967), The Power (1968), Evel Knievel (1971), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), Once Is Not Enough (1975), Love at First Bite (1979), Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), The Godfather Part III (1990), Doc Hollywood (1991), Once Upon a Crime (1992), 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997), Hollywood Ending (2002), and The Congressman (2016). For his debut performance in Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (1959), Hamilton won a Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for a BAFTA Award. He has received one additional BAFTA nomination and two Golden Globe nominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vincente Minnelli</span> American stage and film director

Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director. He directed the classic movie musicals Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi (1958). An American in Paris and Gigi both won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Minnelli winning Best Director for Gigi. In addition to having directed some of the best-known musicals of his day, Minnelli made many comedies and melodramas. He was married to Judy Garland from 1945 until 1951; the couple were the parents of Liza Minnelli.

<i>Key Largo</i> (film) 1948 film noir crime drama

Key Largo is a 1948 American film noir crime drama directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lauren Bacall. The supporting cast features Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor. The film was adapted by Richard Brooks and Huston from Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play of the same name. Key Largo was the fourth and final film pairing of actors Bogart and Bacall, after To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Dark Passage (1947). Claire Trevor won the 1948 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of alcoholic former nightclub singer Gaye Dawn.

<i>Ziegfeld Follies</i> (film) 1945 film

Ziegfeld Follies is a 1945 American musical comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, primarily directed by Vincente Minnelli, with segments directed by Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, Robert Lewis, and George Sidney, the film's original director before Minnelli took over. Other directors that are claimed to have made uncredited contributions to the film are Merrill Pye, Norman Taurog, and Charles Walters. It stars many MGM leading talents, including Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, Lena Horne, Gene Kelly, James Melton, Victor Moore, William Powell, Red Skelton, and Esther Williams.

<i>The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i> (1962 film) 1962 film

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a 1962 American drama film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb, Paul Lukas, Yvette Mimieux, Karl Boehm and Paul Henreid. It is loosely based on the 1916 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which had been filmed in 1921 with Rudolph Valentino. Unlike the first film, it was a critical and commercial disaster, which contributed greatly to the financial problems of MGM.

<i>Undercurrent</i> (1946 film) 1946 film directed by Vincente Minnelli

Undercurrent is a 1946 American film noir drama directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor, and Robert Mitchum. The screenplay was written by Edward Chodorov, based on the story "You Were There'" by Thelma Strabel, and allegedly contained uncredited contributions from Marguerite Roberts.

<i>Moonrunners</i> 1975 film by Gy Waldron

Moonrunners is a 1975 action comedy film starring James Mitchum, about a Southern family who runs bootleg liquor. It was reworked four years later into the popular long-running television series The Dukes of Hazzard, and the two productions share some similarities. Mitchum had co-starred with his father, Robert Mitchum, in the similar drive-in favorite Thunder Road 18 years earlier, which also focused upon moonshine-running bootleggers using fast cars to elude federal agents. Moonrunners, a B movie, was filmed in 1973 and awaited release for over a year. Its soundtrack reflects the outlaw music boom of the 1970s during which the film was released.

<i>Operation Crossbow</i> (film) 1965 film by Michael Anderson

Operation Crossbow is a 1965 British espionage thriller set during the Second World War. This movie concerns an actual series of events where British undercover operatives targeted the German manufacturing facilities for experimental rocket-bombs.

The 32nd National Board of Review Awards were announced on December 22, 1960.

<i>All the Fine Young Cannibals</i> 1960 film

All the Fine Young Cannibals is a 1960 American drama film directed by Michael Anderson, based on the novel by Rosamond Marshall, starring Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Susan Kohner, George Hamilton and Pearl Bailey. Hamilton said that the film "combined Southern Gothic with a biopic of jazzman Chet Baker."

<i>Two Weeks in Another Town</i> 1962 drama film directed by Vincente Minnelli

Two Weeks in Another Town is a 1962 American drama film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Kirk Douglas and Edward G. Robinson. The supporting players include Cyd Charisse, Claire Trevor, Daliah Lavi, George Hamilton, and Rosanna Schiaffino. The film was based on a 1960 novel by Irwin Shaw and depicts the shooting of a romantic costume drama in Rome by a team of decadent Hollywood stars during the Hollywood on the Tiber era. The picture contains several references to The Bad and the Beautiful, a previous successful MGM movie directed by Minnelli and produced by John Houseman a decade earlier, also with a screenplay by Charles Schnee, music by David Raksin, and starring Kirk Douglas as the lead character.

<i>Looking for Love</i> (film) 1964 film by Don Weis

Looking for Love is a 1964 romantic musical-comedy film starring popular singer Connie Francis.

<i>A Life of Her Own</i> 1950 film

A Life of Her Own is a 1950 American melodrama film directed by George Cukor and starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland. The screenplay by Isobel Lennart focuses on an aspiring model who leaves her small town in the Midwest to seek fame and fortune in New York City. The film was produced by Voldemar Vetluguin and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

<i>Dark Places</i> (2015 film) 2015 film directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Dark Places is a 2015 American mystery film written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, based on Gillian Flynn's 2009 novel of the same name and stars Charlize Theron, Christina Hendricks, Nicholas Hoult, and Chloë Grace Moretz.

References

  1. 1 2 3 The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
  2. ↑ US and Canada figures see "Rental Potentials of 1960", Variety, 4 January 1961 p 47.
  3. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: Home from the Hill". festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on 2012-02-04. Retrieved 2009-02-15.
  4. ↑ Scheuer, Philip K. (Mar 13, 1959). "'Bull Halsey' Role Readied by Cagney: Robert Montgomery to Direct; Bikel Opposed Sheriff Role". Los Angeles Times. p. A7.
  5. ↑ George Hamilton & William Stadiem, Don't Mind If I Do, Simon & Schuster 2008 p 130
  6. 1 2 Miller, Frank. "Home from the Hill". TCM. Retrieved January 31, 2019.
  7. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (1960-03-04). "Screen: 2 1/2-Hour Drama: 'Home From the Hill' Bows at Music Hall". The New York Times . p. 19.
  8. ↑ Costello, Ed (1960-04-13). ""Home From the Hill" Rated Good Theater". The Spokesman-Review . p. 5.
  9. ↑ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (26 October 1985). "Home from the Hill". Chicago Reader. Retrieved January 31, 2019.
  10. ↑ Kehr, Dave (30 January 2007). "New DVDs: 'Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection,' 'Van Gogh' and 'Corsair'". The New York Times. Retrieved January 31, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.