There's a graphic going up tomorrow morning by PD about interconnections and this movie this evening was also about connections. One question was why heroine Joan Evans had top billing, given the low amount of screen time, she's also still around at 87.
More curious is her bio:
When Evans was 17 years old, she announced that she would marry a car salesman named Kirby Weatherly. Her parents asked godmother Joan Crawford to dissuade her from marrying since Evans was so young, but Crawford not only gave the couple her blessing, she also had the wedding ceremony performed right in her own house without having the parents present. Evans's marriage to Weatherly lasted, but the friendship between Evans' parents and Crawford ended. The Weatherlys had a daughter on August 16, 1955. In 1984, Joan Evans and her husband signed a tribute to Joan Crawford in Daily Variety.
Well well well. I wasn't exactly searching for a film with a similar denouement to the last Merry Anders film run here but YT just provided it a couple of days ago. Also, on Gab, there was a story earlier of a single mother jailed for allowing her 14 year old daughter to babysit the brood, which has connections with Joan Evans's father's book he wrote, which was made into a film:
I've two questions - firstly, did Joan Evans know what a trollop Joan Crawford, whom she was named after, was? And how did Joan Crawford react to an actual stable marriage? Was that Joan Evans's rebellion against her seemingly ambitious parents? Second question was about that jailed single mother - I presume the kids are being mothered by the fourteen year old or if not, have the monsters now got the mother out of the way, kids go to care, hello abuse?
And so to the film [spoilers]. If you read the reviews:
... they seem to sum it up well this time ... but with the proviso, yet again, about the ending.
What is it about reviewers? Why do so many want bad endings of misery all the time? And just as with the last Merry Anders film here, where the happy ending was logical and built up to, not tacked on as an afterthought to keep the public happy, so it was here. Admittedly it was a twist this time, but of course a logical twist, easy to see coming, as she had top billing, remember.
And why not, I ask? Has society these days become so sick that no good woman can be found? One who can set a bad boy onto the straight and narrow? Was it a female fantasy back then [1960]?
These and other questions must wait until another day. [End spoilers]
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