Ivy dating history

DarkMarc

The Tag Line for Ivy was, "Ivy, pity the men in her life! Usually period Noir is what is refereed to as "Gaslight Noir." One of the best is Ivy (1947, Universal Pictures) starring Joan Fontaine, Patric Knowles, Herbert Marshall, Richard Ney, Cedric Hardwicke, Lucille Watson, Sara Allgood, and Una O'Connor. Directed by Sam Wood, Screenplay by Charles Bennett, Novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes: The Story of Ivy (she also wrote Letty Lynton 1932 and The Lodger 1911). The song, "Ivy", written for the film by Hoagy Carmichael, has become a jazz standard. From the opening credits in which a stately plant potted plant transforms into a skull, the film opens on a small suburban street. Ivy is seen dressed completely in white with hat and veil and carrying a parasol, she’s crossed by a symbolic black cat, and sure enough when she goes to visit a fortune teller (the marvelous Una O’Connor) she is told that she will come into money. Once she’s gone, O’Connor looks down from her upstairs window at Ivy leaving and murmurs “evil influences are gathering.” Elegant Ivy (Joan Fontaine) and her husband (Richard Ney) are living in a shabby room, down to their last shillings thanks to Ivy's spendthrift ways, when she attracts the attention of wealthy Miles Rushworth (Herbert Marshall). Rushworth arranges a job for Ivy's husband but Ivy wants more...much more. As it happens, Ivy is also having an affair with a doctor (Patric Knowles) who is infatuated with Ivy, and one day while paying him a visit Ivy steals some poison from his office. Ivy has quite the plan, slowly poisoning her husband to death, then letting convenient circumstantial evidence send the doctor to the gallows while she goes to the arms of wealthy Rushworth. However, with Inspector Orpington (Cedric Hardwicke) on the case, things may not go as smoothly as Ivy believes. Ivy perhaps isn’t one of the most memorable dangerous femme fatales of Noir, but she’s a master manipulator. She exploits men’s perceptions of her as a fragile, helpless creature. When her husband confronts her about her reckless spending, she turns on the waterworks and bemoans her own incompetence. It only takes a few seconds before he’s begging for her forgiveness, and when he leaves the room her tears turn into a sly smile. As Ivy's plan goes accordingly soon unexpected things begin to go wrong, and the tension rises appreciably, so that Fontaine begins to panic. Fontaine is particularly good at looking wicked and terrified, and as the net begins to close in on her, her rising sense of desperation is palpable and has us on the edges of our seats. Hysteria and fear take over from cool calculation and cunning. Originally Olivia de Havilland was signed to play the part of Ivy but she had misgivings about the role from the start, fearing that the character was so unsympathetic that audiences would not identify her with her as a murderer and the film would be a commercial disappointment. De Havilland had recently played a pair of twins in The Dark Mirror (1946), one good and one bad, and hated playing the evil sister. Fontaine's elaborate Orry-Kelly wardrobe had been designed to show off Joan as a scheming femme fatale. (Travis Banton completed the costumes after Fontaine entered the picture.) Many of Ivy's lacy gowns are a v*rginal white, offering ironic contrast to her decadent ways. Ivy not only demolished the typecasting mold for Fontaine, leading to more complex and not always sympathetic roles, but established her as one of the movies' true beauties. Russell Metty photographs her as lovingly as any of the film's other gorgeous artifacts, and the result is stunning. The film Ivy comes in between two radically different performances: From This Day Forward (1946, RKO), in which Fontaine played an optimistic bride encouraging her veteran husband (Mark Stevens) in his postwar adjustment, and The Emperor Waltz (1948, Paramount) in which she's a Hapsburg Countess who succumbs to the charms of yodeling American Bing Crosby. At least one thing is for certain, Joan Fontaine's career and choice of film was not dull. The more I see of her work, the more I'm convinced she was one of the cinema's greatest actresses. Lucille Watson is wonderful as Knowles's mother and Cedric Hardwicke, as the police official, steals the scenes he is in with his suspicion of Ivy as the real killer. Also in the cast was Lillian Fontaine, who played "Lady Flora," she was Fontaine's real life mother.