Review of The Little Foxes (1941) by Ricardo O — 17 Nov 2010

Bette Davis Playing Happy Families Again.

According to the back of the box, author Lillian Hellman based the story on her family's fight over an ancestress's diamond ring. I personally have a deep and bitter resentment over the fact that a great aunt's jewelry got divided among my sisters and my cousin, and I got essentially nothing. This, however, has more to do with my distrust of the sister who did the dividing. I have a friend whose grandfather's estate took years to settle; the saying holds that you can tell it was a compromise because no one involved was happy with the results. It is also generally said that you can tell the strength and goodwill of a family by how they weather the death and subsequent division of property of a loved one. My aunt and my ex-step-aunt are probably never going to speak to one another again, but they never liked each other anyway.

Horace Giddens (Herbert Marshall) isn't even dead. However, he lives in Baltimore while his wife and her family live in the South. Regina (Bette Davis) and her brothers, Leo (Dan Duryea) and Ben (Charles Dingle), want to invest his money in it-doesn't-matter-what. They believe his $70,000 will make a million. However, relations between Horace and the Hubbard clan are uneasy at best, hence Horace's living states away. So Regina sends their daughter, Alexandra (Teresa Wright), to Baltimore to fetch him. Horace is very ill, but he doesn't seem able to refuse his daughter, so they make the trip south together. Once there, he and the Hubbards are caught up in bitter resentment of one another. Horace has no interest whatsoever in the investment, perhaps especially because it is something Regina wants so very much. It's not a pleasant reunion, and somehow, Alexandra managed to think it would be.

Really, I hate all of these people, with the possible exception of little Alexandra. Yes, Regina freely acknowledges that she married Horace for his money, but I have a hard time believing that he didn't know that already. It initially seems like a thing she said to hurt him, and perhaps there was some fondness there once. However, she has hardened herself beyond where she must have been hardened even in the past. She is a petty, grasping woman, selfish as the day is long. There isn't even the standard claim that she did it all for love of her child. I'm not sure she does love Alexandra. The child seems to exist more as a club to wield against Horace. The idea that the daughter is not merely her property to dispose of as she pleases never occurs to her. Really, it's why she sent Alexandra to fetch him in the first place.

Horace is, I believe, supposed to be sympathetic for all that. However, there is a deep bitterness to him which cuts that. He is actively planning to hurt Regina. I suspect he is planning it even before the discovery which sets the final events in motion. He should have known that coming back with Alexandra would not end well for any of them, but I suppose his weakness for her is intended to counter Regina's callousness. He goes with her because she asks him to, for all he must know why she's asking. He must know the Hubbards couldn't possibly want him for anything benign or even advantageous. He must know that, even if Regina loved him once, she feels only contempt for him now. He is willing to enter that malignancy, and it makes him the less sympathetic. The better for him and for Alexandra--and, even, the Hubbards--if he stays away.

Still, there is that sense of inevitability to the whole of the story. In the end, Horace goes to see his wife and her brothers because he must. There is no choice. Alexandra is given a love interest in the movie who is not in the play, I think possibly in the implication that she, at least, can escape. She is her father's daughter, not as Hubbard as her mother. The implication we are left with is that Regina was raised in genteel poverty, determined never to experience that again. She is going to be able to afford to do whatever she wants, and no one is going to stop her, no matter what it takes for her to achieve that end. On the other hand, Alexandra was raised in genteel wealth. She is gentle and kind, and she has never wanted for anything. The question, in the end, has only to do with whether it is circumstances which made her mother so awful or whether it is circumstances which meant Alexandra was not.