The Children's Hour

Two women running a girls' boarding school are destroyed by a lie invented by a punished pupil, who says they are in love with each other. Parents withdraw their daughters, a lawsuit follows, and their lives end. William Wyler is filming this play for the second time. In his 1936 version, These Three, the Hays Code forced the accusation to be changed entirely into a love triangle. By 1961 the Code had loosened enough for screenwriter John Michael Hayes to restore what the accusation actually was. Wyler kept much of Hellman's dialogue and changed the ending, with Martha hanging herself rather than shooting herself as she does on stage. There is an odd continuity in the casting: Miriam Hopkins, who played Martha in 1936, appears here as Aunt Lily. James Garner makes his first film appearance, having been informally blacklisted after winning the lawsuit that freed him from Maverick, and Wyler's casting broke that. Shirley MacLaine said something revealing in the 1996 documentary The Celluloid Closet: she and Audrey Hepburn never once discussed their characters' supposed homosexuality. She also said Wyler cut scenes hinting at Martha's feelings for Karen out of concern about how critics would react. On a 3.6 million dollar budget it grossed between 1.8 and 3 million. Who it is for: viewers interested in the history of representation and the period just after the Code. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by a film that treats homosexuality as tragedy. Seen now, that is its most contested quality.