Gene Tierney @ 100: "Laura"
Friday, November 20, 2020 at 12:30PM by Nathaniel R
Dear reader, we had such fun doing the Montgomery Clift Centennial that we want to do more of them. Of course not every movie star inspires the same passion in cinephiles, nor has a cooperatively small enough filmography to be completist about. For instance I put out the feelers on Gene Tierney, who made 37 films in her career, and received only 2 volunteers. And herewith a confession: I, myself, despite my love of Old Hollywood, was unfamiliar. I had seen only two of her movies and so long ago that I had next to no recollection. So I queued up her most famous picture, Laura (1944), which I'd somehow never seen even when I was a uncool kid in the horrific "colorizing" days of pop culture who relished seeing old black and white movies...
Like so many stars of Old Hollywood, Gene Tierney first made her mark on the Broadway stage. Coming from a wealthy East Coast society family, they steered her toward Broadway rather than Hollywood when she expressed the desire to act. She was a regular on the boards until the age of 20 when Hollywood saw her in "The Male Animal" and snatched her up due more to her great beauty than the warm reviews from critics (Hollywood had tried earlier before she had even set foot on the stage and proved she was also talented). One oft-repeated anecdote about her stardom is that movie mogul Darryl F Zanuck wanted to sign her after seering her on stage and later the same night at the Stork Club wanted to sign her when seeing her in person... and didn't realize it was the same woman!
That anecdote is a perfect intro to my feelings about Gene/Laura... the star/subject of Otto Preminger's much-loved Laura which arrived four years later, securing her place in cinematic history.
The very entertaining and twisty noir is about a great beauty who is suddenly murdered at her front door (before the movie begins) despite being a woman everyone claims to have adored. Tough noir-type Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews, broodingly handsome and sexy as ever) is called in to investigate and falls head over heels for the dead woman via the stories about her and a fetching oil portrait hanging in her own home, a gift from a former lover.
The ghostly portrait of Laura and the detective out to solve her murder
The suspects are the rude dandy Waldo Lyndecker (Clifton Webb) who was Laura's closest confidante and mentor of sorts, Laura's gold-digging fiance Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), one of Shelby's two side-pieces Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson, excellent as ever), and Laura's obsequious domestic help Bessie (Dorothy Adams).
Laura takes it's sweet timing getting to the star's introduction, egaling us with multiple stories about the titular character before Gene Tierney ever shows up in flashback. While Webb's performance allows that Lydecker is an unreliable narrator, his stories about Laura don't line up with what we actually see once Tierney appears. When we finally get to the first flashback, she barely makes an impression. After the makeover, and in multiple scenes thereafter she is intriguing but vague. Laura never quite lines up to what people are saying about her, and Tierney's command of the possibly impossible character is questionable.
Tierney and Webb in Laura... in a relationship that's clearly coded as gay man and his makeover project/ (girl)lriend
Laura with her shifty fiance Shelby (Vincent Price)
Does she love Shelby? Does she know he cheats on her? Why does she dump every man Lydecker tells her too? Is she an expert manipulator of Lydecker, who has helped her achieve great career and society success, or his obedient plaything? Is she a sweet gentle generous country girl or a slick big city careerwoman employer? Just as Tierney shapeshifted before Zanuck's eyes in 1940... Tierney shapeshifts from scene to scene in Laura, trying on different hats (and actual hats... ohmygod the hats) but never settling fully on one.
But does her identity ever cohere? I regret to inform that I could never get a bead on Laura or quite believe her which is a problem in a title character. A little mystery in a star turn can be riveting of course, but this was closer to flatness. I kept wondering what a multi-facted firestarter like, say, Barbara Stanwyck would have made of the impenetrable role.
In the end, Tierney's Laura left me wanting and not obsessed with her in the way the movie obviously intends. But Otto Preminger's Laura is a delight nonetheless, with its amazing mid-film twist, and the stellar supporting ensemble having so much fun painting her portrait for her, with scenery-chewing affectations and agendas, that the soul of the actual woman can safely remain offscreen.
Tierney's first two big starring roles were in Oscar favourites. Heaven Can Wait (1943) was nominated for 3 Oscars including Best Picture but Tierney was passed over. Laura (1944) was nominated for 5 Oscars but Webb was the only cast member nominated. Perhaps the Academy's acting branch shared my initial reservations about her? Nevertheless momentum is a powerful campaign tool and her lone Best Actress nomination was just around the corner in her third consecutive Oscar hit. Tomorrow: Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
Reader Comments (10)
Glad the lovely, troubled Gene is getting some attention.
I think she's good in a part that would have been a tough job for any actress. Laura is so much a projection of the various characters impression of her rather than a flesh and blood woman before she shows up that it's an impossibly high bar to meet. Original choice Hedy Lamarr (odd little bit of irony Gene's second husband was Hedy's previous mate) always conveyed a bit more mystery which would have suited the part but the film would have had a different feeling with her.
Good though all the performers are the film belongs to Clifton Webb, the part seems written specifically with him in mind but Preminger had to fight to use him. Zanuck must have been jubilant but rueful when Webb caught on and ended up not only scoring an Oscar nomination for this but becoming one of the studios important, albeit unusual, major stars.
This began the peak of Gene's very successful but brief heyday which was complicated by her increasingly troubled mental state. Her autobiography "Self-Portrait" is a fascinating but at times very sad chronicle of the fracturing of her self confidence by various sources but most impactfully the birth of her first daughter with profound disabilities which it turned out were rooted in her contracting rubella when she was pregnant. It caused her issues from the first but when she discovered she caught the disease from a service woman at the Hollywood Canteen who had broken quarantine specifically to meet her it cracked her psyche and made her fearful of most human contact. It was a long spiral down from there though she was eventually able to regain some semblance of equilibrium years later.
She was a lovely presence on screen who should be better remembered. I think the fact that she had to withdraw for many years from public life played a big part in her not being as well-known now.
Here's my top 10 of her films in order of preference:
Heaven Can Wait-Just a lovely film with Gene at her most fetching.
Leave Her to Heaven
The Mating Season-The film is owned by Thelma Ritter and to a lesser extent Miriam Hopkins but Gene has several good scenes.
Laura
The Razor's Edge-She aces the underlying cruelty of the seemingly charming Isabel.
Rings on Her Fingers
Toys in the Attic-Probably her best latter day performance when all she could handle were small roles.
Whirlpool-This foreshadows her mental struggles.
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Night and the City
When I was a baby cinephile, I used to get Laura and Rebecca confused because of the similarities and overlaps: a great beauty adored and hated; Judith Anderson; the Clifton Webb-Vincent Price-George Sanders axis; murder; etc. Now I'm embarrassed to admit that. Laura's a weird little noir, but I love it.
But Leave Her to Heaven, another weird one, is my favorite Tierney film and performance. I'm a sucker for a gorgeous psychopath.
A very interesting actress, Laura is one of her best performances, but I prefer Leave her to heaven and The ghost and Mrs Muir
"Laura" is classic film noir
Gene Tierney! I can never get enough of her. Though it's not my favorite Tierney performance, I don't share your reservations about her work in "Laura". Her beauty, poise and the general air of fascination she imparts all make her close to ideal casting in a hard to cast role.
At the outset of her film career, Tierney's voice was not an asset, but - oh, how it evolved! I've read that one of the ways she deepened and developed it was via deliberate chain-smoking. Whatever she did, the results are quite stunning. Add to that sterling instincts on just how to deliver a line for maximum effect. By the mid-40's, that amazing beauty of hers was merely one of the arrows in her quiver. You could close your eyes and just coast on the joy of listening to her.
She's hypnotic in "Leave Her to Heaven". And - no - I don't condone murder. But unlike many who consider her Ellen the blackest of villainesses, I find a part of me identifying with the character's motivations as communicated by Miss T. Love her as a Gothic heroine in the beautifully appointed period piece "Dragonwyck". And I can't imagine a better Isabel than the one she offered in "The Razor's Edge". Possibly my favorite Tierney performance. Faced with the impossible choice of choosing between Tierney in that film or Joan Crawford in "Humoresque", 1946 Academy members ignored both and went for Olivia de Havilland in the feeble "To Each His Own".
Tierney continued to please in lesser known items like "Way of a Gaucho"(1952) and "Never Let Me Go"(1953), a personal favorite - opposite Gable and sporting an ever so fetching Russian accent. And I love her in Michael Curtiz's deluxe peplum "The Egyptian"(1954). Mesmerizing as a Phaoronic princess with decidedly masculine ambitions. And - boy - did she rock that Ancient Egyptian wig.
60's performances in "Advise and Consent" and "Toys in the Attic" proved the magic was still very much there. Yes, Tierney's physical beauty was straight-up staggering. But she brought so much more to the party. Golden Age cinema would be decidedly less golden without her.
The shot of her just standing there smoking a cigarette is what makes black and white movies so great. Dazzling, to me.
I just watched the remastered version of Leave Her to Heaven. Tierney clearly knew how to move her body in very slight and subtle ways to bring characters to life. There are times in the movie where she subtly spreads her body out to overpower others on the screen, particularly Jeanne Crain (perfectly reasonable for the character) and times when she seems so small. A really great performance. And can we talk about those sunglasses in the "scene" in Leave Her to Heaven? Classic. Absolute classic.
Laura, Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Mating Season, The Wonderful Urge ... I love them all, largely because of her.
Gene's autobiography is very sad indeed. It gives you a sense that she could have done so much more. Very sad.
I always think of Laura as a straight up classic, so it's fun to read a less than enthusiastic review. Gene Tierney was very good at giving off a feeling of, oh, not quite mystery but maybe unknowability. I think she was pretty perfect for this part and someone who burns up the screen like Barbara Stanwyck (or Davis or Crawford) would have been less right for the role.
Leave Her To Heaven is great and I think it was may be the biggest boxoffice around for 20th Century Fox. I'm surprised they couldn't make her an even bigger star.
I had a professor in film school who despised LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN because she claimed that "noirs shouldn't be in color."
Yeah. I'll never forget that gem.
I'm a fan of LAURA but I admit to sharing some of Nathaniel's reservations. It's very far from my favorite of the genre. At the same time, it's a great text to analyze through a number of theoretical lenses, e.g. psychoanalysis, gender studies, genre, etc.
I love Laura, and Nathaniel's observations about the character ring very true. She's a bit of an enigma in a way, but somehow it works within the story. The characters (and actors), the dialogue, and the structure of the film all work so well.
In the bigger picture, as much as I really like Gene Tierney, it's often less about her and more about the films. I guess she's not an actress that's ever the whole show for me, dominating a movie the way Davis or Crawford or Stanwyck does, yet her presence makes the movie better. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Mating Season are my two other favourites.
Her life would make a fascinating biopic. The whole "Mirror Crack'd" pregnancy story alone is terrible yet straight out of a movie, and her battles with mental illness and the way she helped reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues would also make a great story.