Grande Dame

So today I took the day off and rode the train up to Windsor, CT to look over the Katharine Brush papers in the Loomis Chaffee archives. Loomis Chaffee is a private high school just north of Hartford; Kay's son Thomas Stewart Brush, Jr. went there (Class of '40). In the late 60s, TSB gave money to Loomis to build a new library, completed in 1970 and named after his mother. And he gave them all of his mother's papers, too, which, as I mentioned, they very graciously let me examine. 

Hanging in the library is this colossal portrait of Kay. And "colossal" is hardly an exaggeration: it's 8 or 9 feet tall!

It was painted in 1933 by Leon Gordon, who was known for his celebrity portraits: Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, Helen Keller, Will Rogers, and Dorothy Gish (to name but a few) all sat for him.

If we take Kay at her word, the diminutive authoress was somewhat abashed by the grandiose scale of the thing: "...the effect is distinctly that of a billboard ad for cigarettes, even though the painting is superior."

The portrait originally hung in Kay's apartment at 322 East 57th Street. 


"I'm already beginning to wonder," Kay wrote in 1940, "what the portrait's future is, if any. 



"I think ahead to the days when it will be known to my son and his wife and their offspring as 'Grandma's portrait,' and when the problem of what to do with it will plague them ceaselessly. I even  seem to hear the treble pipe of childish voices, inquiring wonderingly, 'Was Grandma really nine feet high?' 

"No darlings, no. Not really. She was five feet three in her stocking feet. It was just that she took life in a big way, there, for a while."

Kay Brush never had any grandchildren.

Back To School

Kay attended Centenary Collegiate Institute in Hackettstown, NJ from 1914-1917.  Originally a girls' preparatory school, it later became a women's junior college. Blondie's Debbie Harry (Class of '65) is probably Centenary's most famous alumna, at least in terms of name-recognition. The school, now known by the name Centenary College, finally went co-ed in 1988.

I guess by "sanitary arrangements" they
mean indoor toilets? Advertisement from 1911

Greetings from "Healthful and Beautiful" Hackettstown!

1914: Freshman Kay (standing, far
right) played on the field hockey team.

1915: Kay is second from the right (top); 
and back row, far left (bottom photo).

The group photographs above are from Centenary's yearbook, "The Hack", and were very graciously and generously furnished by the Archives Department, to whom I extend my sincerest thanks.

Hollywood Hiatus

After Don't Ever Leave Me failed to wow the reading public, Kay found it difficult to do much writing. A novel begun during this period wouldn't be finished until some 7 years later (and would, quite sadly, end up being her last).


But between the years 1936 and 1941, Hollywood released at leat five motion pictures based on Kay’s work.  Here’s a chronological rundown:

LADY OF SECRETS
Columbia, 1936

Ruth Chatterton starred in this adaptation of Kay’s short story Maid of Honor, originally published in Cosmopolitan in September 1932, and reprinted several times.

The New York Times called Lady of Secrets “a picture that sashays back and forth in space and time without progresing far in any direction,” one that “is scarcely worthy of its cast…[which] moves stiffly and with obvious embarrassment through these morasses of plot and of dialogue…” Kay later defended her original story as “a pretty good one,” even if the resulting picture was an admittedly pretty bad one. 

Lady of Secrets is the only picture of this bunch that I have not seen.

MANNEQUIN

MGM, 1937

Originally titled Marry for Money, the story was adapted as a vehicle for Joan Crawford, and paired her with leading man Spencer Tracy.

The New York Times said the picture

“restores Miss Crawford to the throne as queen of the woiking goils and reaffirms Katharine Brush’s faith in the capitalist system. That system…infallibly provides every poor but pure button-hole stitcher with an eventual millionaire who respects her and dangles a tempting wedding ring.

“So what we have, if you haven’t guessed already, is a sleek restatement of an old theme, graced by a superior cast and directed with general skill by Frank Borzage, who has a gift for sentiment. All that is more than the story deserves.”

Joan went on record saying that she wasn’t thrilled with Tracy, and it kind of shows in their on-screen chemistry. The two never appeared together again.

LISTEN, DARLING

MGM, 1938

Kay’s original screen story (not the screenplay) was developed from a minor background character that made a brief appearance in Don’t Ever Leave Me. The New York Times called it  “winsome,” “a natural, pleasant and sensible little film. Judy Garland (who gets to sing three numbers, including “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart”) and Freddie Bartholomew kidnap their widowed mother (Mary Astor), lock her in a trailer and start touring the countryside in search of a suitable husband.

“If this sounds too cool-blooded and unromantic,” said The Times, “be reassured Freddie Bartholomew and Judy Garland conduct their matrimonial tour with charming unworldliness, despite the surface sophistication of their enterprise.”

It’s not giving anything away to say that the husband arrives, in the form of Walter Pidgeon.

Listen, Darling is certainly the best picture of this group.

HONEYMOON IN BALI

Paramount, 1939

Though Kay gets screen credit (along with Virginia Van Upp and Grace Sartwell Mason), virtually nothing of her 1936 story Free Woman was used, beyond the fact that the heroine is a successful and single career woman. Hardly an original idea.

And if, as The New York Times asserted, “the writers have reaffirmed the male prejudice so cogently and have given their own sex such short shrift,” if parts of the picture are “inexcusably tiresome,” one can hardly blame Kay; I've read the story and seen the picture, and I say that with absolute confidence. I actually find Honeymoon quite enjoyable.

 Very interesting is that fact that, according to a 1936 announcement in The New York Times, Paramount intended to borrow Jean Arthur from her home studio Columbia to star her in an adaptation of Free Woman. That's the picture that should have been made!

ANDY HARDY'S PRIVATE SECRETARY
MGM, 1941

The New York Times didn't much care for this one, which is obvious from the opening line of Bosley Crowther's review:

“Thank heaven that Andy Hardy has finally graduated from high school and is on his way to college—the college of hard knocks, we hope.”

Rooney is really quite unbearable, full of snobbish condescension as the BMOC of Carvel High. He patronizes two poorer classmates (a brother and sister) by very generously allowing the brother to decorate the auditorium for the graduation exercises, and hiring the sister (Kathryn Grayson making her film debut) as his “Private Secretary.” 

Because he’s spread himself so thin (because he’s such a vital force at Carvel), he flunks his English exams and nearly doesn’t graduate. But everyone rallies 'round their Andy, who, in the end, is rewarded with a shiny new roadster. “We hardly think Andy deserved it,” quipped Crowther. Of course, without access to Kay’s original story, there’s no way of knowing if the unpleasant changes noted in the Andy Hardy character can be attributed to the writing…

Kathryn Grayson, however, rated much higher in Crowther’s estimation:

“[She] makes [Andy] look like a chump by her grace and modesty.”

She sings in the picture, too. A little bit too much.  I have to confess: I have never been a fan of Grayson’s.  She’s always been a little too cute, a little too saccharin-sweet for my palette.

I absolutely HATE the ’51 remake of Showboat. Which is mostly her fault. 
Sorry.

Should've Left Well Enough Alone

First appearing in Cosmopolitan magazine, Kay’s 1935 novel Don’t Ever Leave Me did not, despite mostly favorable reviews (The New York Times was quite generous in its praise), enjoy success similar to that of its predecessors. Kay would later lay the blame on her own constant tinkering, her incessant re-writing. In fact, she told The Times in 1942 that the novel wasn't written at all—it was “carved.” Kay was, however, she further explained, ultimately pleased with the result. Along with a few other writers, bless their hearts.

Sidney Cunningham dances with Don Lamont at the Labor Day dance.
Was the one wandering white strand inlaid in her otherwise black hair
grown or manufactured?  And what was the story of the little black cat
tattooed on her back? Magazine illustration by McClelland Barclay.

Reading the reviews today, I am reminded of that assessment by the Times in 1944: “the interesting thing about Katharine Brush's work has always been not so much what she says as how she says it.”

Regarding the how of Leave Me, one finds little in a negative vein:

“The large audiences that were captured by Young Man of Manhattan and Red-Headed Woman will not be disappointed…” (Leane Zugsmith, NYT)

“[Brush is] very readable for the moment…devilishly adept…” (John Chamberlain, NYT; “Books of the Times”)

“[Brush] has achieved a slick-as-cream smoothness which lesser popular writers must envy desperately…On certain contemporary matters her work is definitive.” (Edith H. Walton, The Youngstown Daily Vindicator)

The what, on the other hand, left the same critics unsatisfied.

Here’s Chamberlain:

Superficially, Miss Brush is a novelist of Scott Fitzgerald’s order. But only superficially. Both of them have very retentive memories for the ephemeral that gives each year its special tone. But…Fitzgerald is interested in character, in people making moral decisions. Miss Brush tries to be. But the typical and the topical are always diverting her…[T]he world of character, of moral decision, is neglected…

And although Walton thought the novel warmer than Red-Headed Woman, and found in it “faint, undeveloped traces of social consciousness,” she predicted that the book would be “unbearably nostalgic” ten years into the future. She twists the knife a bit by concluding that Don’t Ever Leave Me “will disappoint only those naïve optimists who once supposed, on the basis of her short stories, that Katharine Brush might develop into a writer of consequence.”

Ouch.

Left: the rather drab dust jacket of the first edition; Kay's name is now larger than the title. Right: Inscription inside Swanie's copy of Leave Me