The Gorgeous Hussy

Plot synopsis:
In 1823 Washington D.C., Major O'Neal (Gene Lockhart) and his daughter Margaret "Peggy" O'Neal (Joan Crawford) run an inn that is frequented by politicians. Peggy is outspoken for a woman of her time, and when Tennessee senator Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore) visits, she affectionately refers to him as "Uncle Andy."
Peggy is secretly in love with the well-known Virginia senator John Randolph (Melvyn Douglas), but her feelings are seemingly unrequited. When new inn resident "Bow" Timberlake (Robert Taylor) refers to Peggy as a "tavern girl" while drinking, John slaps him in defense of Peggy. Bow soon falls in love with Peggy himself and proposes, but she refuses, but her feelings lie with John. John spurns her advances, thinking that she is too young and does not really mean it, but begins to have a change of heart. When he finally realizes that they are both in love, however, he learns from Bow that Peggy has finally consented to marry him. Peggy again talks to John about their future, but John again rejects her, thinking that the younger Bow would be a more suitable husband.
On the night of their marriage, "Uncle Andy" hears a commotion in their room, and can't believe that Bow and Peggy are married. But instead of reading their marriage license, Bow shows Peggy his orders. He must leave for a three-month tour of duty aboard the USS Constitution the next day. However, when Constitution returns to Washington, Peggy learns that Bow has died when his men lost track of him.
In 1828, John returns from being the Minister to Russia. Peggy is excited to see him, and he tells her how unhappy he was so far from Washington. At the same time, Jackson is elected U.S. president amid a campaign of verbal attacks aimed at his wife Rachel (Beulah Bondi), whom he inadvertently married before her divorce from her first husband was final. Soon after the election, Rachel dies after asking Peggy to look after Jackson. Having been close to Jackson since the beginning, Peggy becomes his official hostess and confidante. Fulfilling Rachel's premonition, this causes many of the Washington political wives to gossip and snub her. At the same time, Jackson comes under political fire from Southerners such as John Randolph, who feels he has turned against them by his stand on state rights.
At a ball, Peggy's childhood friend, "Rowdy" Dow (James Stewart), wants to fight Southern senator John C. Calhoun (Frank Conroy) because of an insulting remark about Peggy, however, she interrupts and asks him to dance instead. Seeing Rowdy and Peggy dancing, John returns home, but is followed by Peggy, who once again professes her love. This time, John admits his own love and they plan to marry. Soon after telling Jackson what has happened, however, Peggy realizes that differing political views will never allow her and John to be happy, and they part.
A short time later, Secretary of War John Eaton (Franchot Tone), who has loved Peggy for years, proposes. She is fond of him, and believes, like Jackson, that marriage will bring her respectability. A year later, Rowdy comes to visit and tells Peggy that John Randolph has been shot and is near death. She asks Rowdy to take her to see her John, who was shot by Sunderland (Louis Calhern), a Southerner trying to prevent him from revealing to Jackson a proposed violent rebellion. John dies contentedly after Peggy's visit. On the way back to Washington, Peggy and Rowdy's coach is accosted by Sunderland, who demands safe passage to Washington in exchange for not revealing that he has seen them. Rowdy throws him out, but soon Jackson's cabinet members and their wives come to him to demand that Peggy be sent away from Washington. When Peggy arrives at the meeting, Jackson lies by saying she was sent to see John Randolph by him and that Rowdy was asked by John Eaton to accompany her. Jackson then demands the resignation of his entire cabinet, except for Eaton.
Finally, Peggy, who knows that even Jackson's kind lie will not lead to her acceptance in Washington, asks him to send John Eaton as the special envoy to Spain where she knows that they will find contentment.

Tags: romantic, murder

Review:
MGM in trying to expand Joan Crawford's repertoire into period costume pieces spared no expense and gave her one all star cast in this drama about the Peggy O'Neal Eaton affair.
The basic facts are true, Peggy O'Neal, daughter of a Washington, DC tavern-keeper and widow of a young Navy Lieutenant, marries the Senator from Tennessee who then is chosen Secretary of War in President Andrew Jackson's original cabinet.
The Cabinet wives however refuse to receive Peggy socially as does the wife of the Vice President John C.
Jackson blows his cabinet up, requests resignations from all involved and Eaton and Peg are sent in exile so to speak as he is made Minister to Spain.The real story is far more complex than that.
Jackson did regard Peggy as a slandered woman, much like his late wife Rachel was.
Beulah Bondi plays her in the movie and it's the best performance in the film.
In real life this whole affair was being maneuvered behind the scenes by John Calhoun and Secretary of State Martin Van Buren taking anti and pro Peggy positions respectively.
Played by Charles Trowbridge, he's given one or two lines in the film.Robert Taylor strikes the right note as the young Naval Lieutenant Bow Timberlake.
It's also not explained here and that leaves the audiences up in the air.Franchot Tone plays John Eaton and I think a lot of his performance is left on the cutting room floor.
In real life there is some question as to whether Eaton and Peggy were involved while she was married to Timberlake.But the most fantastic error in this plot is John Randolph's interest in Peggy.
The real John Randolph was never assassinated, he died of natural causes and had no major role in the Peggy O'Neal affair at all.Maybe some day someone will make a better film of this incident..
The only compelling ingredients in this overlong saga about the controversial hussy Peggy Eaton who wielded much influence over President Andrew Jackson are a few of the performances and the novelty of actual political debates occurring in the context of a love affair; Hollywood seldom mixed those two elements.
Joan Crawford is not particularly persuasive as a young tavern keeper's daughter.
Things liven up with the appearance of Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore) and his unpopular and maligned wife Rachel (Beulah Bondi).
Barrymore may have been a ham who gave basically the same performance in film after film, but at least he puts some juice into the proceedings, making the most he can of the extremely diluted representation of Jackson supplied by the script.
Bondi is touching in her depiction of the ill-fated Rachel, the love of Jackson's life.
Between these bits there are occasionally interesting sketches of the political contentions of the time, mostly about how much power should be granted to the individual states, foreshadowing the Civil War. But we never get a sense of what an extraordinary woman the title character was.
Nothing in Joan Crawford's performance or in the material given her indicates that this is anything other than an unusually attractive and well behaved lady with romantic yearnings  but someone for whose honor and reputation a President would dissolve his cabinet and change the course of US history?
You cannot make a polite film about these characters in this historical period, but this is what MGM tried to do..
Fictionalized historic soaper about Andrew Jackson's friendship and protection of a young woman named Peggy O'Neal.
Lionel Barrymore plays Jackson and Joan Crawford plays Peggy.
Melvyn Douglas, James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, Beulah Bondi, and Louis Calhern....not a bad lineup.
Andrew Jackson's wife dies and asks Peggy to look out for him.
Peggy has a somewhat scandalous reputation of her own, which reminds Jackson of his wife, who suffered at the hands of Washington gossips.
What is that most modern, at least to her time, of actresses Joan Crawford doing in hoop skirts and crinoline?
There is not one look or gesture that she makes that has a feeling of any period but the 20th century.Both stagnant and silly this completely miscast picture takes an interesting and scandalous piece of American history, The Petticoat Affair, and make it seem asinine and trivial when it practically tore Jackson's presidency apart and did lead to most of his cabinet's resignation.
Fanciful, but silly biography of Peggy Eaton (Crawford), a controversial figure during the Andrew Jackson administration in the late 1820s, and her relationships with influential men of that era.
Semi-fiction story is "gorgeous" to look at thanks to elegant period settings and costumes, not so much the performances or script..
Joan Crawford stars in The Gorgeous Hussy, often referred to as her only historical drama.
During her silent years, Crawford was the star of other historical films (Across to Singapore, Rose Marie) and westerns.
When reviewers say Crawford was too modern for historical pictures, they conveniently forget the terrific reviews she received for Rose Marie in 1928, now a lost film, and her electric presence in Johnny Guitar.The Gorgeous Hussy is not a popular film.
A lot of people went to see Gorgeous Hussy in its day--more people than saw other films referred to as hits, such as No More Ladies, and yet the high production did not allow it to make a significant enough profit to be considered a hit..
Joan Crawford shines in this movie, despite what many of her detractors have said about her.
It follows an Inn keepers daughter (Joan Crawford at her loveliest) through two marriages and a lasting friendship with Andrew Jackson.
Although her particular character is fictitious, the rest of the story line is fairly historically accurate, especially the portrayal of the close campaign Jackson ran, due to the opposition of his wife Rachel..
This lengthy melodrama does have first-rate production values and intermittent good acting, especially from the quieter performers, Melvyn Douglas and (most of all) Beulah Bondi, as a gentle, pipe-smoking Mrs. Andrew Jackson.
"The Gorgeous Hussy" impressed me at once as a rather trite, artificial history-based (I won't actually call it historical) film about the Eaton Affair scandal of Andrew Jackson's presidency.
A lot of the dialogue is just difficult to swallow or sickly-sweet, and American history is treated with a kind of overly orthodox distorting reverence -- turning the scandal into a stage for Andrew Jackson to be held up as an early defender of the Union in a proto-iteration of the Civil War -- that grates.There are good points too however: Lionel Barrymore creates a wonderfully memorable performance as the raucous and rough yet wise President Jackson.
He makes the former president human even while the script presents him somewhat two-dimensionally as a kind of grumpy but lovable old uncle most of the time (with a few nice scenes where he gets to be principled and statesmanlike in the face of his congress).
Joan Crawford seeps magnetism and sympathy as Margaret, even as we are not really allowed to see the struggles between men that make up much of the movie emotionally dramatized for her.
These actors get to play a few nice dramatic scenes amid the posturing, including a very effective one after President Jackson's wife's death.Unfortunately, the piety with which "The Gorgeous Hussy" treats American history extends to other elements of its subject matter.
There is a huge budget, lavish production values, beautiful costumes (male and female), top-notch acting and, of course, romance.The story centers around Peggy O'Neill, Joan Crawford, an innkeeper's daughter called "Pothouse Peg," for her politics and her men.
The men are a list of Metro's best—Robert Taylor, Jimmy Stewart, Franchot Tone, Melvyn Douglas and Lionel Barrymore.
Andrew Jackson (Barrymore) dominates every scene he's in.
Beulah Bondi, as Rachel Jackson, is equally good.
She won an Oscar nomination for her role.Joan Crawford is usually criticized for appearing in an historical picture because she was too "modern." Here she handles her costumes beautifully, using her skirts to express a range of emotions.
While her acting is fine, she is overwhelmed by the male contingent.Franchot Tone, Crawford's husband at the time, is quietly effective as her second husband John Eaton.
Jimmy Stewart is wasted as Peg's failed suitor."The Gorgeous Hussy" is fun, sometimes moving and a reminder that political behavior wasn't all that different in the 1820s..
When girlish innkeeper's daughter Joan Crawford (as Margaret "Peggy" O'Neal) develops into a beautiful young woman, many men in 1823 Washington, DC desire her.
Ms. Crawford finds sailor Robert Taylor (as "Bow" Timberlake) attractive, but Crawford is saving herself for Virginia Senator Melvyn Douglas (as John Randolph).
Though she still loves Mr. Douglas, Crawford marries Taylor after a fight with Douglas, who thinks Crawford is too young for marriage.Shortly after the wedding, Lieutenant Taylor is called away for three months, to the West Indies.Crawford waits in Washington with an older couple who consider her a companion and ward, politically savvy Lionel Barrymore (as Andrew "Andy" Jackson) and his pipe-smoking wife Beulah Bondi (as Rachel).
Crawford's real-life husband, Franchot Tone (as John H.
Otherwise, this historical fiction succeeds as neither.***** The Gorgeous Hussy (8/28/36) Clarence Brown ~ Joan Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Robert Taylor.
The dashingly handsome men who flit around her flame are played by Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Melvyn Douglas, (James Steward is in there, too), and they have the charisma of cardboard.
The true story of Peggy Eaton was so much better and I have no idea why they didn't follow the storyline the way it played out in real life.
It didn't make any sense in this movie to have Joan Crawford's character not be turned on by Francot Tone, who she was married to in real life.
Her husband, at the time, did die at sea and it was rumored that he committed suicide because Peggy was having an affair with John Eaton, who she married a month later.
Then, when she went calling on the Washington Ladies, they snubbed her and called her a "hussy." Andrew Jackson was so mad, he fired his whole cabinet, like in the movie.
This movie didn't make any sense and to call it "Gorgeous Hussy" made people think they were going to get a good soap opera, which they could have if they would have written a script that stuck to the story.
Joan Crawford can't act.
No plot was developed and the political issues of nullification, states rights, Bank of America and Peggy Eaton as the 'hussy' were not developed and if the viewer doesn't know history, this whole movie would be perplexing to say the least.
This movie is only good to see the beautiful sets and costumes of the time.
Joan Crawford was just awful and Lionel Barrymore should have done a little more study on Andrew Jackson, who was a strong and noble gentleman, not a country bumpkin.I only rate this movie as high as I did for the costumes and set design.
A star vehicle for Joan Crawford, who plays Margaret O'Neal, daughter of an inn-keeper, adoptive niece of Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore), hopelessly in love with Virginia Senator John Randolph (Melvyn Douglas), married first to the dashing naval lieutenant Timberlake (Robert Taylor), and then after turning down Randolph because he's intent on breaking up the Union, to steadfast John Eaton (Franchot Tone).
The cast is made more lively by the presence of Beaulah Bondi as the pipe-smoking backwoods Rachel Jackson, by Sidney Toler as Daniel Webster ready to orate at the drop of a hat, by Alison Skipworth as the gossiping Mrs. Beall, and the gosh-shucks comic interludes of a very young James Stewart as Rowdy Dow. This is a sentimental melodramatic revision of history, with historical figures gravitating or (perhaps) orbiting about a beautiful, headstrong, smart young woman.
If the dialogue didn't mention it from time to time it would be hard to remember she's not supposed to be a "lady." Her carriage reflects this problem, too, until it seems that everybody else in the cast is acting while she is delivering Joan Crawford content.
The true story goes like this: Andrew Jackson married a woman who was not divorced from her first husband (oops).
If you recall Charleton Heston's first film about Andrew Jackson, THE PRESIDENT'S LADY, Jackson married Rachel Robarts (Susan Hayward) thinking she was divorced from Lewis Robarts.
THE PRESIDENT'S LADY shows how Rachel's great love for Andrew took him to the White House in 1829, but that the scandalous political campaign against Jackson at her expense killed her.
Beulah Bondi is Rachel, and Lionel Barrymore Andrew, and Beulah dies early in the film, just as Andrew becomes President.
She has a friend here, Peggy O'Neal (Joan Crawford)who tries to confront the widowed President.
She's popular, having at least four beaux: Lt. Timberlake, a naval officer (Robert Taylor - in a very brief early part); Senator John Randolph (Melvyn Douglas), a distinguished spokesman for southern states rights; John Eaton (Franchot Tone), Jackson's Secretary of War; and James Stewart.
But Jackson stands by Peggy O'Neal Timberlake Eaton, and remakes the cabinet and his government to mirror his view of democracy.This film has a lot going for it and a lot going against it: It is a juicy, crazy scandal that makes an interesting tale - and it is true.
All the performers play their parts well, from Crawford and her beaus to Bondi and Barrymore, Sidney Blackmer (as Daniel Webster) and Louis Calhern as a fictional villain.
One hopes another attempt is made at telling the story of Peggy Eaton - one that is not so full of errors, and explains how petticoat politics got out of control in the early 1830s..
Certainly, the studio was still dickering with the film on 15 August 1936.COMMENT: Joan Crawford's rare period picture wasn't received well by the fans.
At least Franchot Tone manages to invest Eaton with a degree of charm, while Melvyn Douglas gives Randolph a similar degree of conviction.
Taylor is not out of his depth as the superficial fun-loving Bow Timberlake and there is a happy selection of character players to help things along.
He seems much closer to the real Jackson than Lionel Barrymore (who makes a much better Ebenezer Scrooge in the A Christmas Carol audio recording than he does our 7th president)..
Senator Andrew Jackson, about to become president, and his wife Rachel arrive in Washington and meet many famous people -- Daniel Webster, John Randolph, John C.
One of the less famous people the Jacksons meet -- less famous because mostly fictional -- is Joan Crawford, dressed in hoop skirts and dozens of ringlets.
I lost count, but among them are Jimmy Stewart, playing a comic suitor named "Rowdy", and handsome, dashing Robert Taylor as "Bow" Timberlake, a naval officer in a tight, fancy uniform.
I'll give you an example of how historical events are related to romance.We see President Andrew Jackson, Lionel Barrymore, looking less like Andrew Jackson than anyone possibly could.
The gossip about Joan Crawford comes to a head and Uncle Andy saves her from being shunned by the stuffy old ladies of Washington.
1952's "The President's Lady" cast Charleton Heston and Susan Hayward as Andrew and Rachel Jackson, the very controversial couple that once faced charges of bigamy when her first marriage wasn't actually final upon their union.
In "The Gorgeous Hussey", it is the quite different Lionel Barrymore and Beaulah Bondi who play this couple, already aging, with him about to be elected president and her ailing as a result of both the affects of smoking a pipe and the sadness by how her reputation as a supposed fallen woman has affected his public image.
The women of Washington are all resentful of a pipe-smoking first lady (who sadly never makes it into the White House) and their resentments and extremely petty jealousies move on to his surrogate daughter, Peggy Eaton, whom they consider beneath high society in a still infant nation.The film shows these women (among them Alison Skipworth and "The Wizard of Oz's" Clara Blandick) gossiping non-stop, so viciously that you wish the president could pass a law against it that would put each of them into solitary confinement.
The hysterically funny Zeffie Tilbury has a great moment telling off the hags in this social circle and gets a good wink in later when the wives of the president's cabinet meet with Barrymore who is revealing some changes.Peggy is played by Joan Crawford, the only historical character she ever portrayed, the widow of a Naval hero (Robert Taylor) and now wife of the Secretary of War (Franchot Tone) whose love for one of Barrymore's rivals (Melvyn Douglas) was cause of scandal of its own and lead to murder.
James Stewart, still a rising young star, has a small role as one of Crawford's confidantes, and Louis Calhern plays a political villain.
A lot of real-life American heroes of this time (the 1830's and 1840's) appear in the story, so in spite of its somewhat inappropriate title, this is a fairly good history lesson of the early years of our country, then only 24 states and even then faced with trouble.This is a film also about rising above ridicule and the importance of understanding why gossip is a vile evil which needs to be continuously smashed.
It is obvious as to why these petty women hate both Rachel and Peggy; They are ladies who remained free from the temptations of the tongue and were true to themselves, their men and their ideals.
The society women are more concerned with status, power and a misused sense of respectability which makes them keep their husbands prisoners and is ultimately the disease which destroys them.Powerfully acted, especially by Crawford and Bondi, it is extremely well directed by Clarence Brown who directed many of MGM's most lavish epics of the time.
Lionel Barrymore gives his all to the powerful role of Andrew Jackson and in spite of bellowing many of his lines is riveting.