The Enchanted Cottage (1945 film)

The Enchanted Cottage is a 1945 American supernatural romance film starring Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, and Herbert Marshall, with Mildred Natwick.

It was based on the 1923 play by Arthur Wing Pinero. The Enchanted Cottage was first adapted for the silent screen in 1924, with Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy as the newlyweds. A third adaptation appeared in 2016.

Plot
At a party, guests are waiting for the married couple Laura and Oliver Bradford to arrive. John Hillgrove, a blind pianist, proceeds to perform his tone poem titled "The Enchanted Cottage," which he wrote in their honor. At a seaside New England cottage, Laura Pennington arrives where he meets Hillgrove and his young nephew Danny. Laura had heard fantastical stories about the cottage from her mother before her death. Feeling ostracized for her homely appearance, she is hired as a caretaker by Mrs. Abigail Minnett, a widowed tenant owner. She feels a mutual connection with Laura after losing her husband during World War I. Oliver Bradford, a war pilot, arrives, having rented the cottage with her new fiancée, Beatrice Alexander. Beatrice, however, is displeased with the cottage decor, but Laura reassures the cottage is magical showing her the window where couples have written their names.

Later that night, a honeymoon party is planned for the engaged couple, but Oliver sends a letter stating he will be unable to arrive. He has been called back into military service before his wedding. Beatrice subsequently cancels their leasing agreement. One year later, a telegram arrives, stating Oliver's intention to rent the cottage indefinitely. Oliver arrives, hiding his face inside his trench coat, and locks himself in his room. During a stormy night, Laura enters his room where Oliver reveals his disfigurement from the war. His face is scarred, and his right arm and hand are disabled after his plane was shot down by the Germans.

The next morning, Laura develops a connection with Oliver in the garden. Hillgrove arrives and converses with Oliver, stating that when he became blind, he developed a new look on life by appreciating music. By nighttime, Oliver receives a letter from his mother Mrs. Price, but he refuses to see her and his stepfather in fear of his war injuries. Near the seashore, Laura finds Oliver there. In an attempt to keep distance from his mother, Oliver proposes to Laura, and she accepts.

After their honeymoon, Laura and Oliver return to the cottage, both feeling transformed. A flashback occurs, in which the couple initially reflect on their marriage being a sham until their wedding dinner. Laura tries to declare her love for Oliver but is unable to do. She runs to her bedroom in tears, but Oliver comforts her. He realizes his genuine love for Laura, seeing her as a beautiful, glamorous woman. Laura in return sees him as handsome and unscarred.

At the cottage, Oliver's mother and stepfather arrive, in which Hillgrove unsuccessfully attempts to notify them about Oliver and Laura's "transformation". However, Mrs. Price mentions Laura's "not being pretty" while complimenting her character before she leaves, which breaks the spell of their mutual illusion, and they're "transformed" back to their former selves. The couple turns to Mrs. Minnett, who gives them her validation of their love, telling them that her beloved late husband made her feel beautiful, because that's how people who are truly in love see each other--and that's the real enchantment of the cottage. She then leaves the room. Oliver and Laura hold hands, then proceed to write their names on the window. Back to the present, the couple arrives at the front door, where they happily embrace and kiss each other as their idealized selves before entering the house.

Cast

 * Dorothy McGuire as Laura Pennington
 * Robert Young as Oliver Bradford
 * Herbert Marshall as Major John Hillgrove
 * Mildred Natwick as Mrs. Abigail Minnett
 * Spring Byington as Violet Price
 * Hillary Brooke as Beatrice Alexander
 * Richard Gaines as Frederick 'Freddy' Price
 * Alec Englander as Danny 'Taxi' Stanton
 * Robert Clarke as Marine Corporal
 * Eden Nicholas as Soldier

Production
According to Jeremy Arnold of TCM, Robert Young told Leonard Maltin in a 1986 interview that he considered The Enchanted Cottage to be "the best love story that's ever been written. [It] was one of those films I hated to see end. I wanted it to go on and on and on. It was such a joy to do." Young later named a home he built in California “The Enchanted Cottage.”

Arthur Wing Pinero's play, written in 1921 and first performed in 1922, was filmed in 1924 as a timely story involving physical and emotional disabilities following the First World War. In the stage directions, Oliver is described as an emaciated wreck of a man, broken by the war. The dialogue reveals that he was wounded in the neck and that it is painful to straighten his left leg, but he says his “head,” meaning his mind, is the worst. In the 1924 film, his body is contorted, he walks with a cane, and he cannot put his right foot to the ground. In the 1945 film, most of Oliver's face is scarred, and he has completely lost the use of his right arm and hand. He can walk without aids and there is no visible impairment of his lower body.

The original play and film were set in England, and the history of the “honeymoon” couples extended back into the Tudor period. The “shadows” of three of the historical couples appeared onstage. Elaborate fantasy sequences, representing Laura's dreams and fears, played key roles in the story. They were eliminated from the 1945 version.

In the play, Mrs. Minnett's uncanny gifts are made more explicit: She comes from a long line of witches (witches can be good, Laura hastens to say). She is more damaged by her grief. The cast of the play is larger, including the local rector and his wife, and the couple's blind friend, Major Hillgrove, believes in the transformation unlike the character portrayed by Herbert Marshall.

RKO Producer Harriet Parsons acquired the rights for her studio for an updated World War II version set in New England. When RKO management took the film away from her and gave it to producer-writer Dudley Nichols, Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper wrote a strongly worded newspaper editorial criticizing RKO for gender bias. The outcry from the column led RKO to change its plan and give the property back to Harriet Parsons.

Parsons wrote an outline of the updated story about a World War II veteran. She engaged DeWitt Bodeen for the screenplay, and the two became lifelong friends. Parsons also selected John Cromwell as director. David O. Selznick lent RKO Dorothy McGuire for the film, and MGM lent Robert Young, who re-teamed with McGuire after her debut in Claudia.

Parsons contributed to the screenplay along with Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was hired by Cromwell to touch up Bodeen's screenplay. Composer Roy Webb wrote a piano concerto for the film that a blinded World War I veteran (Herbert Marshall) uses as a tone poem to describe the story of the two protagonists to a gathering of their friends. Webb was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1945 and performed the concerto at the Hollywood Bowl later that year. Marshall, who had lost a leg in World War I, played his role as a blind man with the help of special contact lenses.

Dorothy McGuire insisted for her character to show her plainness with no makeup, ill-fitting clothes and a drab hairstyle. When McGuire was filmed looking appealing to Robert Young, her character had similar costumes that were well tailored.

Reception
The film was released in April 1945. Not all the critics were enthusiastic. Writing for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther observed "[The play and first film] concerned the illusion of beauty and the moral courage which was mutually found by a homely girl and a maimed war veteran when they viewed each other through the eyes of love. It is a theme which is quite as appealing today as it was back then and one which can bear repeating in modern and practical detail. However, the current film version of the wistful drama... contemporizes the subject in peculiarly obsolete terms. Despite all the marvelous advances in plastic surgery, it assumes that a shattered Air Force pilot would be returned to society with a face very badly disfigured and frightening to behold. It forgets that a casualty quite as bitter as the American hero in this case would be studiously rehabilitated through modern treatment before being dismissed. And it violates an obvious tenet of feminine beauty culture today—which is that a girl of moderate features (and fair intelligence) can make herself look very sweet. [T]he deep and studied poignance of this elaborately heart-torturing film appears not only unreasonable but very plainly contrived. It is hard to believe that a depressed veteran's entire recuperation would be allowed to devolve upon a fustrated girl, an intuitive blind man and a honeymoon cottage possessing charm. And it is fair to insist that no young lady with a face and figure such as that of Dorothy McGuire would permit herself to look so dingy and woebegone as she does in this film."

A review in Variety on December 31, 1944 stated: “Sensitive love story of a returned war veteran with ugly facial disfigurements, and the homely slavey—both self-conscious of their handicaps—is sincerely told both in the script [based on the play by Arthur Wing Pinero] and outstanding direction of John Cromwell.”

In 2018, Jeremy Arnold wrote for Turner Classic Movies that "The Enchanted Cottage is a movie with its heart in the right place. Anyone who has ever been in love can relate to the sensation that one's partner becomes more beautiful as one's love deepens. The Enchanted Cottage illustrates this phenomenon to full and lovely effect, with its allegorical yet delicate story of the power of love to physically transform a couple."

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a rating of 86% among critics and 83% among viewers.

Box office
The film made a profit of $881,000.

Adaptations to other media
The Enchanted Cottage was adapted as a radio play on the September 3, 1945 broadcast of Lux Radio Theater with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire reprising their movie roles, and on the December 11, 1946 broadcast of Academy Award Theater, starring Peter Lawford and Joan Lorring. On May 19, 1949, the play was also presented on the Hallmark Playhouse, starring Richard Widmark.

It was broadcast live on the General Electric Theater radio program on September 24, 1953. Joan Fontaine had the starring role.

The film also forms the basis of one of the films that Manuel Puig used to compose his novel Kiss of the Spider Woman. The movie is the basis of chapter 5 in which Molina tells a film to himself, one in which he imagines the advantages of lovers' bodies being adapted to the "true love" of their souls, a reality that would make possible supposedly impossible romantic possibilities for himself and his married love interest, Gabriel.

On her variety show, Carol Burnett performed a parody of the film titled "The Enchanted Hovel," with herself in Dorothy McGuire's role and Dick Van Dyke in Robert Young's role.