Reel Classics: The Children’s Hour

June is iden­ti­fied as Pride Month, and there is cel­e­bra­tion in and for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.  It began as a recog­ni­tion and cel­e­bra­tion of gay lib­er­a­tion protests at Stonewall Inn in New York that occurred in 1969.  Today Pride Month is cel­e­brat­ed around the world and is a means to acknowl­edge the strug­gles of folks in that com­mu­ni­ty for equal­i­ty, social jus­tice, and respect.  Those efforts stand along­side the efforts of the Feminist and Civil Rights move­ments in our coun­try. 

Today’s Reel Classic focus­es on some of the strug­gles mem­bers of the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty have faced — name­ly prej­u­dice, den­i­gra­tion, rumor-mon­ger­ing — and how intol­er­ance can destroy peo­ple’s lives. 

The film is The Children’s Hour.  This may be one of Audrey Hepburn’s less­er-known films, but she pro­vides an excel­lent and pow­er­ful por­tray­al of her char­ac­ter, Karen Wright.  Co-star­ring with her is Shirley MacLaine, who por­trays Martha Dobie, her part­ner in oper­at­ing a pri­vate school for girls.  James Garner por­trays Dr. Joe Cardin, Karen’s fiancé.

Karen and Martha have been friends since their days togeth­er in col­lege.  Together they opened the Wright-Dobie School for Girls.  They have worked hard to make the school prof­itable and respect­ed.  They have an enroll­ment of twen­ty young girls.  Miriam Hopkins plays the role of Martha’s nosy Aunt Lily, an out-of-work stage per­former who is assist­ing her niece at the school.  One of the girls enrolled in the school is a bit of a trou­ble­mak­er and not well-liked at all by her school­mates.  She is Mary Tilford (played by Karen Balkin) and is the grand­daugh­ter of the very rich and very pow­er­ful Mrs. Amelia Tilford  (Faye Bainter).  Mrs. Tilford also hap­pens to be the aunt of Dr. Joe Cardin. 

Mary is con­stant­ly get­ting in trou­ble and telling lies.  She is not hap­py at the school and has no friends there (due to her behav­iors).  One evening after hav­ing been caught in a lie by her teacher, Karen, she is pun­ished.  She is angry and in a venge­ful mood.  One of Mary’s room­mates over­hears an argu­ment between Martha and her aunt where Aunt Lily is upset with Martha and accus­es her of being jeal­ous of and hav­ing an “unnat­ur­al rela­tion­ship” with Karen.  She repeats what she heard to her angry room­mate Mary, and Mary sees her chance for revenge.  She goes to her grand­moth­er and tells her that the two school mis­tress­es are les­bians.  Mrs. Tilford imme­di­ate­ly starts gos­sip­ing to oth­er par­ents of the chil­dren enrolled in the school, and one by one, the chil­dren are with­drawn.  Mary forces one of her room­mates, Rosalie Wells (played by Veronica Cartwright), to cor­rob­o­rate her accu­sa­tions when con­front­ed by Karen and Martha.

The sto­ry then involves the impact of this gos­sip on the lives of the two friends and the dam­age done to their per­son­al rela­tion­ships, their liveli­hood, and their own well-being.  The destruc­tive pow­er of fear, prej­u­dice, mis­un­der­stand­ing, and intol­er­ance is demon­strat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in this sto­ry.  As stat­ed on the TCM site:  “Mary is flesh-crawl­ing­ly mean, and the reper­cus­sions caused by her fib move the plot of The Children’s Hour to a somber, thought-pro­vok­ing conclusion.” 

Experiencing the reper­cus­sions,  Karen says, “Child, love, friend, woman—every word has a new mean­ing.”  As usu­al, no spoil­ers here. 

The Children’s Hour was adapt­ed from a 1934 play writ­ten by Lillian Hellman.  This was the sec­ond film adap­ta­tion of the play, inter­est­ing­ly both direct­ed by William Wyler.  The first adap­ta­tion was titled These Three and was released in 1936.  Because of the cen­sor­ship of the Hays Code, there was no allowance for even a hint of les­bian­ism.  Hellman assist­ed in the adap­ta­tion and changed the focus of the lie to an alle­ga­tion that Martha had slept with Karen’s fiancé.  Even the name of the film had to be changed due to Production Code objec­tions.  That film starred Miriam Hopkins as Martha, Merle Oberon as Karen, and Joel McCrea as Dr. Cardin.  Yes, that is the same Miriam Hopkins who played Aunt Lily in The Children’s Hour. 

The remake in 1961 allowed Wyler to be more true to Hellman’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, keep­ing a good amount of the orig­i­nal dia­logue from the play.  Again Lillian Hellman assist­ed in writ­ing the adap­ta­tion.  William Wyler was a bit coura­geous in oth­er stances he had tak­en.  James Garner had to sue Warner Bros. Studio to get out of his com­mit­ment to the TV series Maverick.  After that, he was “unof­fi­cial­ly” black­list­ed and had trou­ble find­ing roles.  Wyler cast him in this film, and Garner’s career was resurrected. 

Another exam­ple was Wyler’s rela­tion­ship with Lillian Hellman.  It has been stat­ed that not only is The Children’s Hour a state­ment against the destruc­tive efforts aimed at the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, but also against the sim­i­lar efforts direct­ed at var­i­ous Hollywood per­son­al­i­ties dur­ing the lash­ing out by the House Committee on Un-American Activities dur­ing the McCarthy era.  Lillian Hellman had become a vic­tim of those efforts.  After speak­ing out against the damn­ing rhetoric and accu­sa­tions made against many in Hollywood, she too was black­list­ed.  When William Wyler died in 1981, Hellman told a reporter with The New York Times that when she was broke and had no job prospects in the 1950s, Wyler opened up a bank account for her and assist­ed her through those dark times. 

The Children’s Hour was nom­i­nat­ed for five Academy Awards, includ­ing Best Supporting Actress (Fay Bainter).  Bainter lost out to Rita Moreno (West Side Story).  Variety report­ed, “Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine ... beau­ti­ful­ly com­ple­ment each oth­er.  Hepburn’s soft sen­si­tiv­i­ty, mar­velous pro­jec­tion, and emo­tion­al under­state­ment result in a mem­o­rable por­tray­al.  MacLaine’s enact­ment is almost equal­ly rich in depth and sub­stance.” 

Interestingly, two oth­er very well-known actress­es were con­sid­ered for the roles of Karen and Martha — Katherine Hepburn and Doris Day.  Also of note, Veronica Cartwright (Mary’s room­mate and col­lab­o­ra­tor as a gos­sip spread­er) went on to appear in oth­er well-known films, includ­ing The Birds (1963),  The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978), and  Alien (1979).

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) rates the film at 7.8 out of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes has a crit­ics score of 80% and an audi­ence score of 84%.  In search­ing free stream­ing sites, I found it avail­able on sev­er­al, includ­ing Tubi, Pluto TV, ROKU Channel, and Kanopy (avail­able with your library card).  Unfortunately, it is not avail­able at the Clark County Public Library.

In clos­ing, I would like to quote a pas­sage from a very recent arti­cle on this film by Lisa Laman, pub­lished on the “Collider Site” in November of last year:  “...The Children’s Hour was a shock­ing­ly for­ward-think­ing movie that shows empa­thy for soci­etal out­casts and an insight­ful eye to the destruc­tive pow­er of intol­er­ance.  As America still grap­ples in 2022 with the hys­te­ria sur­round­ing queer peo­ple ... movies like The Children’s Hour trag­i­cal­ly show how endur­ing all that big­otry is while offer­ing an artis­tic means to cope with the bru­tal­i­ties of reality.”

Let us acknowl­edge and rec­og­nize Pride Month and remem­ber the “destruc­tive pow­er of  intol­er­ance.”  And so, until our next Reel Classic, I’ll leave you with the trail­er below and what has, for me, become a mantra — a line from my all-time favorite Beatles song:  “All you need is love.”