The Little Foxes is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman, considered a classic of 20th century drama. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15, of the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Set in a small town in Alabama in 1900, it focuses on the struggle for control of a family business.[1]Tallulah Bankhead starred in the original production as Regina Hubbard Giddens.
The play's focus is Southerner Regina Hubbard Giddens, who struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th-century society where fathers considered only sons as their legal heirs. As a result of this practice, while her two avaricious brothers Benjamin and Oscar have wielded the family inheritance into two independently substantial fortunes, she's had to rely upon her manipulation of her cautious, timid, browbeaten husband, Horace. He's no businessman, just her financial support; although he's pliable enough for her ambition, that ambition has driven him into becoming merely the tool of her insatiable greed. He uses a wheelchair.
Her brother Oscar married Birdie, his much-maligned alcoholic wife, solely to acquire her family's plantation and cotton fields. Oscar now wants to join forces with his brother, Benjamin, to construct a cotton mill. They need an additional $75,000 and approach Regina, asking her to invest in the project. Oscar initially proposes marriage between his son Leo and Regina's daughter Alexandra—first cousins—as a means of getting Horace's money, but Horace and Alexandra are repulsed by the suggestion, as is Birdie. Horace refuses when Regina asks him outright for the money, so Leo, a bank teller, is pressured into stealing Horace's railroad bonds from the bank's safe deposit box.
Horace, after discovering this, tells Regina he is going to change his will in favor of their daughter, and also will claim he gave Leo the bonds as a loan, thereby cutting Regina out of the deal completely. When he has a heart attack during this chat, she makes no effort to help him. He dies within hours, without anyone knowing his plan and before changing his will. This leaves Regina free to blackmail her brothers by threatening to report Leo's theft unless they give her 75% ownership in the cotton mill (it is, in Regina's mind, a fair exchange for the stolen bonds). The price Regina ultimately pays for her evil deeds is the loss of her daughter Alexandra's love and respect. Regina's actions cause Alexandra to finally understand the importance of not idly watching people do evil. She tells Regina she will not watch her be "one who eats the earth," and abandons her. Having let her husband die, alienated her brothers, and driven away by her only child, Regina is left wealthy but completely alone.
Background
Lillian Hellman in 1939
The fictional Hubbards in the play are reputedly drawn from Lillian Hellman's Marx relatives. Hellman's mother was Julia Newhouse of Demopolis, Alabama. Julia Newhouse's parents were Leonard Newhouse, a Demopolis wholesale liquor dealer, and Sophie Marx, of a successful Demopolis banking family. According to Hellman, Sophie Marx Newhouse never missed an opportunity to belittle and mock her father for his poor business sense in front of her and her mother. The discord between the Marx and Hellman families was to later serve as the inspiration for the play.[2][3][4]
The title "The Little Foxes" was suggested by Dorothy Parker.
Bankhead played every performance of The Little Foxes on Broadway and on tour, and she was angry when Bette Davis was awarded the role of Regina in the 1941 motion picture.[5]:90
Produced and directed by Herman Shumlin, the original Broadway production of The Little Foxes opened February 15, 1939, at the National Theatre. It closed February 3, 1940, running for 410 performances before its two-season tour of the United States.[6][7]
On October 30, 1939, Eugenia Rawls replaced Florence Williams in the role of Alexandra Giddens. Rawls had made her Broadway debut as one of the students in Lillian Hellman's 1934 play, The Children's Hour, which was also produced and directed by Herman Shumlin.[9] Rawls played Alexandra for the rest of the play's Broadway run and the national tour that followed.[8][10]
The 104-city tour of The Little Foxes began February 5, 1940, in Washington, D.C., and ended April 15, 1941, in Philadelphia.[5]
Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay for a 1941 film version, a Samuel Goldwyn production directed by William Wyler. Other contributors to the screenplay included Arthur Kober, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. The touring production of The Little Foxes went on hiatus for three months during filming, and Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle, Dan Duryea, John Marriott and Carl Benton Reid all reprised their stage roles in their motion picture debuts. Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall and Teresa Wright star as Regina, Horace and Alexandra Giddens.[11]
Geraldine Page played Regina in a production in which she starred opposite her husband Rip Torn (in the role of Benjamin Hubbard) directed by Philip Minor. It was staged for the Academy Festival Theater at Barat College in Lake Forest, Illinois and received a rave review from William Leonard of the Chicago Tribune: "Geraldine Page is giving one of the greatest performances of her glorious career in Lake Forest and she is surrounded by a cast so superb that the Academy Festival Theater's production of "The Little Foxes" becomes a powerful, searing, unforgettable show... it is a harrowing and ennobling evening in the theater-the kind that comes along all too seldom. We have seen other stars in the role of the malevolently, ruthlessly scheming Regina Giddens—Tallulah Bankhead years ago in her greatest triumph, Eileen Herlie five seasons back at the Ivanhoe. Geraldine Page is a whole new story—I have seen Geraldine Page in innumerable roles, ever since she was playing in East Lynne with the Lake Zurich Players back in the '40s. I've never seen her more thrillingly convincing than in this production."[16] The legendary Kim Stanley once said of Page's Regina that it "was possibly the finest performance" she had ever seen.[17]
A 1997 revival, again at the Vivian Beaumont, ran for 27 previews and 57 performances from April 3 to June 15. Directed by Jack O'Brien, the cast included Stockard Channing as Regina, Kenneth Welsh as Horace, Brian Kerwin as Oscar, Brian Murray as Benjamin, and Frances Conroy as Birdie. Murray was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, and John Lee Beatty was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design.[20]
The production was revived at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, from June 3 to 28, 2009, with Venida Evans, Ron Brice, Deanne Lorette, Brian Dykstra, Fisher Neal, Kathryn Meisle, Einar Gunn, Philip Goodwin, Lindsey Wochley, Bradford Cover, and directed by Matthew Arbour.[21]
Another revival was produced by Cleveland Play House in the 75th anniversary year of the original Broadway production, September 12–October 5, 2014, in the Allen Theatre (Playhouse Square) in Cleveland, Ohio. The production was directed by Artistic Director Laura Kepley.[22]
Manhattan Theatre Club produced a Broadway revival that began previews on March 29, 2017, and opened officially on April 19 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. It starred Laura Linney (who was nominated for a Tony Award—Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play) and Cynthia Nixon who alternated the roles of Regina Giddens and Birdie, with direction by Daniel J. Sullivan. Cynthia Nixon won the Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Play for her turn as Birdie. The production team included Scott Pask, Justin Townsend, Jane Greenwood, Fotz Patton, and Tom Watson.[24][25][26] It played its final performance on July 2, 2017.[27]
Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. With a career which spanned four decades across film, stage, and television, Page was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as nominations for four Tony Awards.
Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams that tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his hometown as the companion of a faded movie star, Alexandra del Lago, whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies. The main reason for his homecoming is to get back what he had in his youth, primarily, his old girlfriend, whose father had run him out of town years before. The play was written for Tallulah Bankhead, a good friend of Williams.
Lillian Florence Hellman was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist views and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer questions by HUAC, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party.
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). She also had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television. In all, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles during her career. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981.
Lois Maureen Stapleton was an American actress. She received numerous accolades becoming one of the few actors to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting winning an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Tony Awards. She has also received a British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award.
Margaret Leighton, CBE was an English actress, active on stage and television, and in film. Her film appearances included Anthony Asquith's The Winslow Boy, Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn, Powell and Pressburger's The Elusive Pimpernel, George More O'Ferrall's The Holly and the Ivy, Martin Ritt's The Sound and the Fury, John Guillermin's Waltz of the Toreadors, Franklin J. Schaffner's The Best Man, Tony Richardson's The Loved One, John Ford's 7 Women, and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between and Galileo. For The Go-Between, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Blanche DuBois is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire. The character was written for Tallulah Bankhead and made popular to later audiences with Elia Kazan's 1951 film adaptation of Williams' play; A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.
Eileen Cecilia "Patricia" Collinge was an Irish-American actress and writer. She was best known for her stage appearances, as well as her roles in the films The Little Foxes (1941) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943). She was nominated for an Academy Award and won a NBR Award for The Little Foxes.
Austin Campbell Pendleton is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and instructor.
Regina is an opera by Marc Blitzstein, to his own libretto based on the play The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman. It was completed in 1948 and premiered the next year. Blitzstein chose this source in order to make a strong statement against capitalism. In three acts, the musical style has been described as new American verismo, abounding in the use of spirituals, Victorian parlour music, dance forms, ragtime, aria and large, symphonic score.
Carl Benton Reid was an American actor.
Vivat! Vivat Regina! is a play written by Robert Bolt. It debuted at Chichester in 1970 and later at the Piccadilly Theatre London. Principal actors were Sarah Miles and Eileen Atkins. The play was directed by Peter Dews and designed by Carl Toms. Richard Pearson also played a role. Later, the play had a successful run on Broadway in 1972.
Mary Eugenia Rawls was an American actress.
The Little Foxes is a 1941 American drama film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Lillian Hellman is based on her 1939 play The Little Foxes. Hellman's ex-husband Arthur Kober, Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell contributed additional scenes and dialogue.
Another Part of the Forest is a 1946 play by Lillian Hellman, a prequel to her 1939 drama The Little Foxes.
Another Part of the Forest is a 1948 American drama film starring Fredric March. Directed by Michael Gordon, its screenplay was adapted by Vladimir Pozner from the 1946 Lillian Hellman play of the same name, a prequel to her 1939 drama The Little Foxes
Looped is a play by Matthew Lombardo about an event surrounding actress Tallulah Bankhead. It had a Broadway run in 2010, after two previous productions in 2008 and 2009, all three of them featuring Valerie Harper.
The Trip to Bountiful is a play by American playwright Horton Foote. The play premiered March 1, 1953, on NBC-TV, before being produced on the Broadway stage from November 3, 1953, to December 5, 1953.
Robert Pastene was an American actor who appeared films, television and on stage. He acted in a variety of television dramas during what is known as the Golden Age of Television throughout the 1950s and 60s. On Broadway he performed in plays by Shakespeare, Strindberg, Brecht, Aeschylus, Shaw and Lillian Hellman. In the 1960s and 70s he had a significant career at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, which began in 1963 with the theater’s inaugural season.
Maria Tucci is an American actress.
References
↑ "The Little Foxes". Theater Scene. September 27, 2011. Archived from the original on November 9, 2012. Retrieved May 28, 2011.
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.
