ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST (1948)

The dysfunctional Hubbard family lives in a small town in Alabama. In the summer of 1880, the patriarch Marcus (Fredric March) demands that none of his children attend the Confederate Day ceremonies in town, marking the anniversary of the deadly betrayal of a band of local Confederate soldiers. The Hubbards have been looked down on since the Civil War because Marcus was accused of war profiteering (pricing badly-needed salt supplies sky high), but he resents any implication of wrong-doing. His cold, conniving oldest son Ben (Edmond O'Brien) is trying to close a business deal, but he needs his father's money, which so far Marcus has been unwilling to lend. Younger son Oscar (Dan Duryea) is weak and pitiful—he attends the Confederate Day events behind his father's back and is ordered to leave by the townsfolk—and is treated badly by both Marcus and Ben. Young wily daughter Regina (Ann Blyth) has her dad wrapped around her finger (he refers to her as his only son) and thinks she can control most any man. All three want control of Dad's fortune, which he is loath to give up. Then there’s Marcus' wife Lavinia (Florence Eldridge) who is like a whipped puppy, passive and cringing, and perhaps a bit lost in wishes for better times and a more likable family.  On her birthday, she hopes that Marcus will finally deliver the money he's promised her for the building of a local hospital, but once again he puts her off.

The Hubbards are tied up tangentially with the Bagtrys, a formerly well-off family fallen on hard times. Regina is secretly seeing the Bagtry son John (John Dall) but he doesn't seem nearly sharp enough to keep up with her. A northern carpetbagger named Taylor is in town and intends to loan the Bagtrys money to hang on to their estate Lyonette, but Marcus wants the estate for himself, so Oscar stirs up the local KKK band to run Taylor out of town, hoping to get money from Marcus to marry the local tart, Laurette. John's somewhat flighty sister Birdy (Betsy Blair) then asks Ben if Marcus would loan them the money. All the Hubbards want some share in money or power, and all seem on the verge of getting some, but one night at a party, everything starts to unravel most spectacularly.

This is the prequel to Lillian Hellman's THE LITTLE FOXES, and you will get more out of this if you know that film, set twenty years later, in which Bette Davis plays the middle-aged Regina, but this works as a stand-alone drama as well. Both are morality tales in which we take pleasure in both the corrupt shenanigans of the family members and in the melodramatic comeuppance they eventually get. Women are at the center of FOXES, but the men take center stage here, and all three male leads get to do some solid scenery-chewing. Fredric March gives a performance all the more powerful for being mostly low-key as the corrupt Marcus—and just how corrupt he is, we don't find out until the conclusion; Edmond O'Brien reminded me of one of the conniving sons in THE LION IN WINTER, trying to hide his corruption while reveling in the power he imagines is within reach. Duryea, who plays Oscar's son Leo in LITTLE FOXES, is nicely slimy, though his tone and mannerisms here don't really separate him from the earlier (well, later) Leo; I did chuckle every time he exclaimed what sounded to my ears like, "Squeee!" Blyth has the thankless job of being an early Bette Davis but she's up to the task. Eldridge, March's real-life wife, is fine as the passive Lavinia who gets a little revenge of her own in the end. There's an interesting scene in which physical violence (the beating of the carpetbagger) is juxtaposed with can-can dancers, very much like a scene in Bob Fosse's CABARET. Hard to find, as it apparently has not been licensed to TV very often, but available now on DVD as part of Universal's Vault series. Pictured at top right are March, O'Brien and Blyth; at left are O'Brien and Duryea. [DVD]