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October 28, 2007
Best of the Jewish Blogosphere # 138 Plus Susan Peters
Haveil Havalim #138 is up and Soccer Dad has done a wonderful job of organizing all the entries. Yup, if you want to feel the pulse of the best of the Jewish blogosphere, this is one-stop shopping at its best.
We'd like to thank Soccer Dad for including Seraphic Secret's Google Earth Used to Target Israel in this fine edition.
And now, as I promised last week. The great actress hardly anyone has ever heard of.
Susan Peters
Random Harvest is the great amnesia movie. This movie grabs you by the heart and just doesn't let go. There's a second act shock-reveal that, no matter how many times I've seen this movie, never fails to elicit a huge gasp from yours truly.
I mean, I just melt into a jello-like puddle.
The film stars Greer Garson and Ronald Colman. These stars had two of the most gorgeous speaking voices on planet earth. It's one of the great secrets of the golden age of Hollywood: most stars had lovely voices. It makes a huge difference. Listen to our movie stars today, they sound like, well, chalk on a blackboard. One reason Meryl Streep is such a great star is her voice. She knows how to use it like a musical instrument.
This was Greer Garson's follow-up to her huge hit Mrs. Miniver. She was under the proverbial microscope; was she a one-hit wonder?
In those days, a film's success could be measured by how long it ran at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Mrs. Miniver ran for 10 weeks.
Random Harvest ran for 11 weeks.
That's gigantic.
Anywhoo.
Grason and Colman are wonderful. But the film was stolen by a supporting performance by Susan Peters, an unknown ingenue. She plays Colman's step-niece and her performance is simply luminous. She goes from being a restless teenager infatuated with her step-uncle to a fashionable young woman yearning for his love. It's a profoundly nuanced and controlled performance that's just heartbreaking in its intensity.
Susan Peters in Random Harvest
Peters was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress for her performance in Random Harvest.
Her future was brilliant. She appeared in several more films and Peters was named Star of Tomorrow in 1944 along with Van Johnson.
Peters was paying her dues, climbing the Hollywood ladder of success. Her roles were getting better and bigger.
And then in 1945 tragedy struck.
Peters, married to British actor Richard Quine, were on a duck hunting trip in San Diego when her gun accidentally discharged and a ricochet lodged in her spine. She was paralyzed from the waist down and permanently confined to a wheelchair.
From IMDB:
MGM paid for her bills but was forced to settle her contract. In 1946 Susan and Richard adopted a son, Timothy, but two years later she and Quine divorced, some say because she felt she was too much of a burden. She made a film comeback with The Sign of the Ram (1948), the story of an embittered wheelchair-ridden woman who tries to destroy the happiness of all around her, but audiences were not receptive. She also turned to the stage with tours of "The Glass Menagerie" and "The Barretts of Wimple Street." In March of 1951 she portrayed an Ironside-like lawyer in the TV series "Miss Susan" (1951) but it ran for less than one season, folding in December of that year. After this, the actress, who was constantly racked with pain, went into virtual seclusion suffering from acute depression. Plagued by kidney problems and pneumonia, she lost her will to live and died at age 31 on October 23, 1952, as a result of starving herself to death. A sad and unnecessary end to such a beautiful spirit.
If you have not seen Random Harvest, run out and get the DVD, it's a wonderful film; and let's be thankful that at least we have this brief snippet of Susan Peter's extraordinary talent.
You can also see Song of Russia and Sign of the Ram, but both films are very hard to locate and anyway, to my mind, Random Harvest is her best movie and the performance on which her precious legacy will be remembered.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at October 28, 2007 09:04 AM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
Small correction. Richard Quine was American, not British. He later became quite a well-known director in the 50s and 60s (The World of Suzie Wong), dying tragically himself, a suicide.
Posted by: Andrew at March 17, 2008 09:55 PM
Andrew:
Thanks so much for the correction. I must have been asleep at the editing console.
Posted by: Robert J. Avrech ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.seraphicpress.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 18, 2008 01:56 PM