A Feather in Her Hat
(1935), 72 minutes, b&w

A Feather in Her Hat is a charming little melodrama about a self sacrificing mother who wants a better life for her son. The film starts in 1925. Pauline Lord plays Clarissa Phipps, a cockney shopkeeper, who attends a gathering in Hyde Park and hears war veteran Captain Courtney (Basil Rathbone) talking about the importance of a good education. He is apparently unemployed and he drinks to excess because of his traumatic experiences during the Great War (World War I). Despite his fondness for brandy, Clarissa engages Courtney to teach her son, Richard, how to speak and behave as a gentleman. She believes that her son will be able to have a better life if he is cultured.


"Come on now, up with you!" says Clarissa Phipps when she finds Captain Courtney in Hyde Park. Photo by Earl Crowley, Columbia Pictures

We fast forward to 1935. Richard is now 21 years old (and played by Louis Hayward).  On his birthday, Clarissa tells Richard that he is not her son but the child of a famous actress who must remain nameless. She says that his real mother couldn't keep him because it would have caused a scandal. She gives Richard money that was supposedly provided by this actress. Courtney tells Richard that Clarissa used to work for an actress named Julia Trent. Richard suspects that Trent might be his mother.

With the money Clarissa has given him, Richard is able to move to the West End. Confident that the stage is in his blood, he seeks a career as a playwright. He actually rents a room in Julia Trent's house, but doesn't tell her of his suspicions. Romance begins to bloom between Richard and Julia's stepdaughter, Pauline (Wendy Barrie).

Richard writes a play especially for Julia Trent. She loves it, but her producer friend won't spend the money to produce the play. When Clarissa learns of this, she sells her shop to finance Richard's play.


"Hello. Where'd you come from?" asks Richard (William Martin) of Courtney (Basil Rathbone) when his mother (Pauline Lord) brings Courtney to their home.
photo by Earl Crowley, Columbia Pictures

Louis Hayward, Pauline Lord, and Basil Rathbone
Richard's 21st birthday dinner

Unknown to anyone but Clarissa and her doctor, she has very high blood pressure. The doctor warns her to avoid any kind of excitement. She ignores the warning and pretends that everything is fine.

Clarissa, Captain Courtney, and Richard's childhood friend Emily go to the opening night performance of Richard's play. Clarissa insists on sitting in the gallery, but climbing the steps to their seats proves a strain on Clarissa's heart. That strain combined with the excitement of seeing her son's play (a great success) results in Clarissa having a heart attack immediately following the play.

Clarissa is taken home. Richard finds her in bed. She confesses that she lied to him; she really IS his mother. She explains that she wanted him to have quality. Then she dies.

In the touching final scene, Courtney tells Richard that he wished that Clarissa had lived longer so that they could be together. It is never made clear if Clarissa and Courtney have become romantically involved, married, or are just good friends. When Richard left home, Courtney commented that his job was done, so he should be on his way, but Clarissa asked him to stay so that she wouldn't be alone. At the very least, they cared about one another.


Clarissa and Courtney, watching her son's play

Captain Courtney laments Clarissa's death

A Feather in Her Hat is a sweet love story — some might say it's sickeningly sweet. The film won't appeal to everyone, and neither did it appeal to everyone in 1935. The reviews were mixed, but even the negative ones praised the fine acting and lamented that the talents of capable actors were wasted in this film. Here's the review from Variety:

I.A.R. Wylie's Feather in Her Hat, which amounted to little as a novel, makes no more headway as a picture. Basically contrary to the rules of good screen entertainment, it proves unworthy of the sympathetic production and good performance accorded it. Appeal of the picture will be distinctly limited.

For Pauline Lord, the playing of Clarissa Phipps required a shift to cockney accent while assuming a tragic role. What very easily might have turned into a low comedy takeoff, is kept within the story's bounds by an expert performance. But Miss Lord is wasted herein, along with several others who turn in first class jobs.

Mother love is the essence of the plot. The lady shopkeeper gives her son a fictitious account of his antecedents, denying she's his real mother, all in order that he will escape his poor surroundings and enjoy the benefits of a better environment. At the finish she dies in a tender scene, and tells the boy, as well as the audience, that she lied about not being his mother. To the boy it's a surprise, but to audiences it will be suspected after the first reel or so.

Contending with Miss Lord for performance honors is Nydia Westman, who handles a difficult assignment beautifully. As a sappy lass whom the boy airs for the prettier Wendy Barrie, Miss Westman steals the interest whenever she's on. But Miss Barrie in the opposite corner doesn't do badly either, being a good looking ingenue with plenty of class. Billie Burke's eccentric actress part is a soft touch for the competent lady. Basil Rathbone's playing is flawless, although as a broken down, brandy guzzling ex-gentleman, he doesn't age sufficiently in appearance. Victor Varconi has little chance to strut his stuff.

Dialog is good, but the locale is London, and everything must be decidedly British in speech, manner and weather. The weather is understandable, but they're not likely to gander the talk everywhere over here.

In the story the boy becomes a playwright, and a producer turns his first play down on the grounds that, although good, it would be "too expensive" to produce. So the boy's mother sells her store for $5000 and bankrolls the producer. The latter, apparently, when turning the show down at first, wasn't figuring on the picture rights.

Bige, Variety, October 30, 1935

Read the New York Times review here: http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B07E4D91F3DE53ABC4D51DFB667838E629EDE


Clarissa rushes to Richard's bedside when she learns of his injuries in an automobile accident. Although she insists that Richard is not her son, even though she has raised him to manhood, she is desperately worried about him.
photo by Irving Lippman, Columbia Studios

Basil Rathbone and Pauline Lord

Theater owners reported to Motion Picture magazine how the film fared in their theaters. The owner of a theatre in Texas reported, "The slow tempo and British atmosphere of this picture did not please our patronage, and business would have suffered had it not been for a strong supporting feature. Pauline Lord gives a stirring performance and is assisted by an able cast, but the film belongs in the class picture category" (Motion Picture, Feb 29, 1936). A theatre owner in Ontario played the film one night and then pulled it. "It did not suit our situation," he wrote (Motion Picture, May 23, 1936). A theatre owner in South Sioux City, Nebraska wrote, "This English stuff don't go in our town. Can't see why they insist on making it" (Motion Picture, April 25, 1936).

Motion Picture Daily wrote:

By dint of an able cast fired with a "do or die" spirit, the palsied plot of A Feather in Her Hat has been literally forced into an entertainment realm that must have been far beyond its author's most ambitious fancies; to wit, the realm of an average program feature. What toll in histrionic effort was paid to accomplish this may best be judge, perhaps, by the situations in which the principals are found in the closing sequences. Pauline Lord has passed on to her just reward; Basil Rathbone, the companion of her declining years, disappears wearily, yet gratefully, into a London fog, while the young lovers, Wendy Barrie and Louis Hayward, joined forever at last, relax in silence before the hearth fire.

The Lawrence Hazard screen play from the I.A.R. Wylie story presents again the saga of mother love which endureth much in order that the child may be free of its mean beginnings and enjoy the better things. To accomplish this Miss Lord, the mother, brings into her shopkeeper's home off the streets a gentlemanly drunkard, played by Rathbone, and commissions him to impart to her growing son the secrets of gentlemanly behavior in return for his (Rathbone's) board and keep. When the boy, Hayward, comes of age she tells him she is not his mother, then turns over her life's savings to him and orders him from the house lest he become, like herself, one of the accursed, but comfortable middle class.

Instead, he becomes a playwright and, in order to put his first effort on the boards, mother sells the old shop and turns the proceeds over to the cautious producer, who refuses to risk his own cash. But the strain, or perhaps the surprise, of the successful first night is too much for mother. Not even "God Save the King" from the theatre orchestra can keep her on her feet longer. Rathbone wanders off in the fog and Miss Barrie, whom Harward wanted for wife but hesitated, because of his confused ancestry, to propose, enters bearing silent comfort.

Billie Burke, Victor Varconi and Nydia Westman strive with the others to invest this with credibility. Alfred Santell's direction evinces sheer bravery. The camera work of Joseph Walker is excellent.

Motion Picture Daily, October 25, 1935

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"Beautifully acted, sentimental but strongly appealing story of humble English mother devotedly sacrificing all to make her son a gentleman. Fine realism in character, dialog, and London atmosphere." —The Educational Screen magazine (1935)

"Story of a poor shopowner's success in raising her son to be a gentleman. Excellent, restrained acting by the entire cast make it an immensely moving and appealing picture." —National Board of Film Review


Courtney with two of his drinking buddies (J.M. Kerrigan and ?)

Captain Courtney tells Richard that Clarissa has died.
photo by Earl Crowley, Columbia Pictures

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GOOD HUMAN INTEREST DRAMA IN MOTHER-SON STORY WITH NICE ACCOMPANYING ROMANCE

A generally appealing production has been made from the I.A.R. Wylie story about a British shopkeeper widow who, on her son's 21st birthday, disowns herself as mother in order to make him go forth and become one of the "quality" folk. The theme holds a strong vein of human interest, aided greatly by the performance of Pauline Lord as the mother and Louis Hayward as the son, plus excellent surrounding portrayals by Basil Rathbone, a down and out veteran whose soapbox oratory inspires the mother to make the sacrifice for her son; Billie Burke, a former stage star in whose home Louis goes to live and for whom he writes a play that becomes a hit; Wendy Barrie, the girl of class whom he finally marries, and other. After having achieved her ambition for her son and witnessing the successful opening of his play, the mother is stricken and dies, but not before she reveals to him that she really is his mother. The direction by Alfred Santell is appropriately sympathetic.

The Film Daily, October 25, 1935

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Trivia—

  • The role of Courtney is one of the few non-villain roles that Rathbone played in the 1930s.
  • Ruth Chatterton was originally cast as Clarissa. After working on the film for two weeks, she bowed out. and was immediately replaced by Pauline Lord
  • Pauline Lord, a stage actress, made only two movies; A Feather in Her Hat was the second one.
  • Louis Hayward, who played "Richard Orland," later married Ida Lupino, Rathbone's co-star in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Both of them were friends of Rathbone and were invited to parties at Rathbone's home.
  • David Niven had had a few bit parts in films, but his role in A Feather in Her Hat was his first significant role, the first meaty part.
  • The Frank Benson who is listed as part of the uncredited cast (playing "man") is an Australian actor; he is NOT Sir Frank Benson, cousin of Basil Rathbone.

Go to Page Two to see more pictures from the film.

Go to Page Three for pictures of posters, lobby cards and promo photos from A Feather in Her Hat.

       

Cast

 

Credits

 
Basil Rathbone ....... Capt. Courtney Production Co. ......... Columbia Pictures Corporation
Pauline Lord ............. Clarissa Phipps   Producer .................. Everett Riskin
Louis Hayward ......... Richard Orland   Director ................... Alfred Santell
Billie Burke .............. Julia Trent Anders   Asst. Director .......... Charles C. Coleman
Wendy Barrie ........... Pauline Anders   Screenplay ............... Lawrence Hazard
Nydia Westman ........ Emily Judson   Story  (novel) .......... I.A.R. Wylie
Victor Varconi .......... Paul Anders   Film Editor ............... Viola Lawrence
Thurston Hall ........... Sir Elroyd Joyce   Cinematographer ...... Joseph Walker
Nana Bryant  ............. Lady Drake   Film Editor ............... Viola Lawrence
J.M. Kerrigan ........... Pobjay   Art Director .............. Stephen Goosson
Doris Lloyd .............. Liz Vanning   Costume Designer ... Murray Mayer
David Niven ............. Leo Cartwright   Sound ........................ George Cooper
John Rogers .............  Henry Vining   Original music ......... Howard Jackson, Louis Silver, Phil Boutelje
Uncredited cast, listed alphabetically      
Lowden Adams ......... man
Harry Allen ............... Alf      
Jimmy Aubrey .......... taxi driver      
Ambrose Barker ....... Cockney man      
Wilson Benge ........... butcher      
Frank Benson ............ man      
George Bunny ........... Cockney man      
Alma Chester ............ Mrs. Wheeler      
Ivan Christy ............... man      
E.E. Clive .................. Higgins, pub owner      
Phyllis Coghlan ........ woman      
Joyce Colby .............. woman      
D'Arcy Corrigan ....... Cockney man      
Robert Cory .............. stage manager      
Carrie Daumery ........ woman      
J. Gunnis Davis ......... man      
Kay Deslys ................ barmaid      
Larry Dods ................ ticket seller      
David Dunbar ............ truck driver      
Gladys Gale ............... woman      
Douglas Gordon ....... intern      
Lawrence Grant ........ Dr. Phillips      
Robert Hale .............. cab driver      
Mildred Hardy .......... woman      
Sam Harris ................ man      
Herbert Heywood ..... fish monger      
Leyland Hodgson ..... leading man      
Eleanor Huntley ....... woman      
Olaf Hytten ............... taxi driver      
John Irwin .................. bouncer      
Dorothy Johnson ....... woman      
Lorimer Johnston ..... man      
Richard Lancaster .... man      
Connie Leon ............. woman      
Lois Lindsay ............. woman      
Gordie Mackay ......... messenger boy      
William Martin ......... Richard, as a boy      
Dan Maxwell ............. driver      
James May ................ butcher      
Thomas R. Mills ....... stage manager      
Henry Mowbray ........ man      
Leonard Mudie ......... orator      
Doreen Munroe ........ Mrs. Pobjoy      
Ottola Nesmith ......... Susan      
Mrs. Wilfrid North ... woman      
Vivien Patterson ....... nurse      
Gil Perkins ............... ticket taker      
Reba Phillips ............ woman      
Tempe Pigott ............ Katy      
John Power ............... Cockney man      
Elsie Prescott ........... Mrs. Guernsey      
Sonny Roe ................ Cockney man      
C. Montague Shaw .... man      
Phillips Smalley ........ man      
Nellie St. Clair ......... scrub woman      
Agnes Steele ............. Mrs. Probert      
Minnie Steele ........... scrub woman      
John Van Eyck ........... hospital attendant      
Fred Walton ............... heckler      
Frank Ward .......... man      
Corinne Williams ..... nurse      
Bruce Wyndham ....... man      
Peggy Wynne ............ Cockney woman      
         

 

 

 

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All original content is © Marcia Jessen, 2015