Highlights Archives
Jane Eyre: Six Degrees of Sep-Eyre-ration
It's hard to believe that a mid-19th-century romance novel set in the English countryside has so many connections to the collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR). Not the original novel itself, true, but rather the many 20th-century renditions of Charlotte Bronte's novel — and the artists who created them — are well documented in our collections.
The 1944 motion picture Jane Eyre, starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine is considered the finest film version of the Bronte classic novel. The film will be shown at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, January 23, in the Wisconsin Historical Society auditorium, the third film in the "Classic Book & Movie Club" series.
Orson Welles once said, "I never blamed my folks for Kenosha — Kenosha has always blamed my folks for me." Welles was born in Kenosha in 1915, and spent his precocious youth here. Current Biography, May 1941, says of him: "From an early age Orson moved in a welter of talented personalities: he met painters, musicians, actors, and cartoonists, who treated him as if he were an adult." His first love was the theater, however, and he left Wisconsin to perform with the famous Gate Theatre company in Dublin and then toured with Katherine Cornell back in America.
Our small but rich Orson Welles collection has an annotated script for "Macbeth," a production he directed as the head of the Negro People's Theatre. The next year, he was hired by the Federal Theatre Project in New York City. One of the productions he directed for the Federal Theatre, The Cradle Will Rock, written by Marc Blitzstein, inspired Tim Robbins' 1999 film of the same name. Welles then founded the Mercury Theatre and when he went to Hollywood in 1941, he took his colleagues John Houseman and Agnes Moorehead with him. Moorehead also has a connection to the Badger State; she went to college at the University of Wisconsin.
Soon after, legendary independent producer David O. Selznick joined United Artists Corporation, intending to produce a film version of Jane Eyre, to be released through United Artists. Selznick, perhaps best remembered as producer of the classic film Gone With the Wind, chose Orson Welles as Rochester. But financial troubles forced Selznick to sell his rights to 20th Century Fox. The film credited Welles as assistant producer and Aldous Huxley, John Houseman and Ketti Frings wrote the screenplay. The title role of Jane is played by actress Joan Fontaine, whose sister, film star Olivia de Havilland immortalized the role of Melanie in Gone With the Wind. Agnes Moorehead plays the role of Jane Eyre's cruel aunt, Mrs. Reed.
Fun factoids:
- We have two television versions of Jane Eyre that can be viewed at the WCFTR Film Archive: a 1961 show produced by David Susskind and a 1970 BBC version starring George C. Scott (also star of David Susskind's Eastside/Westside.)
- Of the many film versions of Jane Eyre, two are connected to Wisconsin collections. In 1921, Hugo Ballin wrote, produced and directed a popular version of the story. Ballin was also a painter, and in 1913 he painted a mural in the Wisconsin State Capitol which you can still see today.
- Monogram Pictures Corporation, the studio that produced the 1934 Jane Eyre is aonther well-documented WCFTR collection.
- Lee Simonson was a noted Broadway stage designer and co-founder of the Theatre Guild. His collection contains annotated costume designs for a proposed Theatre Guild Production of Jane Eyre. Theater greats Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were active in the Theatre Guild in its early days and worked regularly with Simonson. Lunt, a Milwaukee native, and Fontanne's collection is also found at the WCFTR.
The Classic Book & Movie Club is a joint venture of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, and The Capital Times. Other films in the series include "A Farewell to Arms" (1932) based on Ernest Hemingway's 1927 novel and "The Big Sleep" (1946) adapted from Raymond Chandler's 1939 mystery classic.
:: Posted January 18, 2005
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