Evening star., 1947-10-10

called 1t virtually everything. Frank
ment. 1t became best seller and re
came the best sale of all, the deal v
goth Century-FoX studios.
Now, in the course of more time,
1.-THE Foxes of Harrow" has become
a screenplay. 1t therefore becomes
the movie critics turn to find a
new and better descriptive adjective,
or at least to settle for the best of
the old ones. 1t is quite certain that
nothing they discover will have the
slightest effect upon the popularity
of the picture which opened yester-
day at the Palace.
The Foxes of Harrow is one OF
those fiorid. overripe costume
dramas which flattens resistance as
imperturbably as its hero levels his
enemies.
With Rex Harrison playing it up
one side and Maureen O'Hara down
the other-and a slew Of others
swashbuckling in between-it is
everything the dust-jacket fellow
implied. So many violent and str1-
dently vocal characters, in such opu-
lent costumes, have not met head
on, and heart on, in six previous
extravaganzas of life In early New
Orleans.
The point Yerby is making is that
it was a hell of life these people
lived, and that no other word de-
fines it.
There has been snide intimation
that Yerby's novel aspired to be a
Gone With the Wind" about New
Orleans, of course, since Atlanta al
ready had been so well covered.
This not without logical basis
for there is a clear Scarlett-Rhett
resemblance in the heroine and hero
of the screenplay at the Palace.
There are Melanie and Ashley
Wilkes types too, and even an olive
beauty who might be a refinement
of Belle Waiting, although she bears
the more elegant and exciting name
OF Desiree.
The South, of course, may have
been packed with such types and
possibly Yerby could not have
avoided them if he had wanted to.
X y
For the benefit of those who
waited for the movie version. IT.
should be reported that THE Foxes
of Harrow" is volcanic excerpt
from New Orleans history told in
terms of Stephen FoX's life. A child
of shame-the shame Of a great
Irish house-Stephen turns up IN
New orleans. He is reckless, at
tractive, urbanely arrogant and pre-
pared to gamble his way into con-
troll OF the great fortunes OF the
place.
His purpose is to create the Amer
ican equivalent of the harrow out OF
which his illigitimacy cheated him.
There is never a doubt in his mind
that he can gamble himself into the
money, and only slightly less Ger
tainty that he can pick off the prize
belle (Miss O'Hara to head his
house once he has built it.
In both of these assumptions,
Stephen is eventually correct but not
before a series of emotional explo-
sions which might well have blown
New Orleans to bits.
John Stahl has directed The
Foxes of Harrow" with quite har-
rowing sense of its bigness. He sees
to it that everything about it has
grandeur. His New Orleans markets
are the most colorful. his estates the
most spacious, his houses the most
palatial, and his fields the most fer
tile anyone ever saw. And, most of
all, the emotions of those who move
across this splendor are never less
than titanic.
The center of the story's 'turbu-
lence is occupied, of course, by
Stephen and Odalie, the latter the
fiery patrician daughter of the city's
greatest house. Her beauty goads
him to new highs of recklessness, by
which she is attracted and repelled
In the same breath. (This is a diff
cult thing to illustrate on the screen,
but Miss O'Hara gives it a brave
try
The marriage of Stephen and
Odalie, whose pet. name is Lily, is
even more stormy than their court
ship. After the first night of their
honeymoon, she lives behind locked |
door. The proud, angry Stephen
counters this coldness by becoming |
a kind of lonely night rider whose
rides end at the door of Desiree, who
lives down on the Ramparts.
Ruin lies in this relationship and
1t comes with swift violence that is
climaxed in financial panic with
crops rotting in the fields, cotton
rotting on the wharves, and the
aristocrats rotting in their palaces
and favorite bars. In the end, how
evar ovarropo hoe Jearne6 biS or her