Celebrate Poe

The Best Poe Movie Ever! (Kinda)

November 15, 2021 George Bartley Season 1 Episode 85
Celebrate Poe
The Best Poe Movie Ever! (Kinda)
Show Notes Transcript

Link to The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe  67 minutes
https://archive.org/details/TheLovesOfEdgarAllanPoe

Link to clip or Jane Darwell in “The Grapes of Wrath”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJLvgWx-h54

Link to clip of Jane Darwell and Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Wb_sTdJV

In this episode, George talks briefly about the joys (and problems) in doing a comparative look at two great minds - Edgar Poe and C.S. Lewis.

The majority of the episode is dedicated to a look at the classic 1941 film - The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - while not 100 percent historically accurate in all respects (Poe never met with Jefferson in his office) the movie does a really good job in getting across a tremendous amount of information in an entertaining manner in a little over an hour.  The episode with special kudos for Shepperd Strudwick (who plays Edgar Poe) and the great Jane Darwell (who IS Muddy)

Episode Eighty Five - The Best Poe Movie Ever (Kinda)

What traumas did Edgar Poe and C.S. Lewis both experience?
What did C.S. Lewis think of boarding school?
What are some of the historical inaccuracies in The Loves of
Edgar Allan Poe?
What are some of the good things about The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe?
Who is Harry Morgan?
Did Poe ever meet Jefferson in his office at UVA?
Did Elmyra Roster ever encounter Virginia Clemm on Virginia’s deathbed?
What are believed to be Poe’s last words?
Who is the standout performer in The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe/

00:11 Introduction
00:38 Two Traumas
04:41 Libraries
04:55  “The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe” introduction
10:19  Movie background and early life of Poe
13:00 Colonel Potter from MASH and Poe!   
13:50 Poe’s youth, the University of Virginia, and West Point
19:57 Baltimore, Dickens, and The Raven23:20 Poe’s Death
24:04 Overall view of The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe
25:31 Shepperd Strudwick as Poe
26:13 Jane Darwell as Muddy
28:30 Future podcasts
29:00 Sources
31:11 Outro

 Link to The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - 67 minutes
https://archive.org/details/TheLovesOfEdgarAllanPoe

Link to clip or Jane Darwell in “The Grapes of Wrath”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJLvgWx-h54

Link to clip of Jane Darwell and Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Wb_sTdJVg

00:11 Introduction

Welcome to Celebrate Poe. This is episode Eighty Five - The Best Poe Movie Ever (Kinda). The opening melody for this episode is said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song - Come Rest in This Bosom.  Today’s  podcast episode looks briefly at C.S. Lewis and Poe, as well as the 1942 film - The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe.  Although not always historically accurate, I think The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is the best movie i have ever seen about Poe’s life.

00:38 Two Traumas (Poe and Lewis)

I began doing research on this episode and originally called it Two Traumas - a title I might use later.  Anyway, I originally intended that this episode would be a basic comparison between two great writers - Edgar Poe - one of the great minds and writers of the nineteeth century, and C.S. Lewis - one of the great minds and writers of the twentieth century.  Edgar Allan Poe experienced the death of his mother when he was only three years old - an almost unimaginable horror for a child whose life was largely centered around the person who meant everthing in the world in to him.  Across the sea in England, C.S. Lewis experienced the death of his mother when the boy was nine years old - and the death was a devastating experience for him.  Later Edgar Poe went to England with his foster parents and attended boarding school in Stoke-Newington, a few miles north of London.  C.S. Lewis attended Wynyard boarding school. 

Now, we do not know exactly how young Edgar adjusted to Stoke Newington, though I suspect - and this is just my opinion, that he had a hard time of it largely because he would have been seen as an “outsider.”  Poe would probably have been viewed by his classmates as “different” - the ultimate sin in a boarding school.  C.S. Lewis was very vocal in his writings that his days at boarding school were a terror - he called them a concentration camp - so there is no question that boarding school was a traumatic experience for him.

It has been a great experience reading about C.S. Lewis, and trying to enter his world and follow the evolution of this thinking. He is a fantastic writer.  Dr. Harry Lee Poe, the distant relation to Poe, who I mentioned in the last episode - has written several excellent books on C.S. Lewis -one about his early years, his later, and the Inklings - the group of Oxford dons who actively wrote and often met to read their works to each other. Perhaps the most famous member of the Inklings was J.R.R. Tolkein - the creator of Middle Earth, the Hobbitt, and the Lord of the Rings.

One other surface similarity between Edgar Poe and C.S. Lewis that they both married women almost 20 years younger - in what some might say were unconventional circumstances.  But they were both deeply in love - but both their wives died a slow and agonizing death, and the writers were forced to come to terms with the slow demise of their respective wive’s deaths and the accompaying unspeakable pain.

Now originally I wanted to do a episode devoted to a comparison of the two writers - concentrating on their similarities - I checked out the library, hoping to find a book or two about C.S. Lewis that I could wrap my head around - I HAD NO IDEA that the library would have hundreds of books and DVDs about C.S. Lewis.  It became obvious that if I was going to begin to do justice to a comparison, then I really need to delve into C.S. Lewis’s life and the evolution of his faith, thoughts, and writings.  I certainly intend to do this in future episodes, but it is going to take some time.

04:41 Libraries

Anyway, while I am on the subject of libraries, let me give a shoutout to Chris - an employee of the library, and is one of the “background” people responsible for obtaining items for the library’s collection.

04:55  “The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe” introduction

For the rest of this podcast episode, I would like to talk about what I feel is the best movies out there about Poe’s life.  Oh, it has its problems with historical accuracy - problems I can certainly understand.  But I don’t think any one SERIOUSLY goes to the movie for detailed history lessons.  Although not always exactly accurate in its protrayals, The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe does so many things right that I think it deserves a lot more credit and attention than it has gotten.

It all started when I saw a book on amazon called The Poe Cinema: A Critical Filmography of Theatrical Releases Based on the Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Don G. Smith.  I thought that could make an interesting series of reviews of films based on Poe works.  But the book’s price at the time was about 99.00, and I could not justify spending nearly one hundred dollars for a book that may or may not suit my needs.  Fortunately, the price has come down to around 20.00, but I found a copy at the local Indianapolis Public Library.

There are naturally lots of reviews of movies related to Poe or his works.  Some films look like they are very good, and several really don’t have that much to do with Poe, and are really quite bad.  But I knew there was a lot to work with - enough to add a new segment to this podcast. So in the future, I plan to have reviews of some of those Poe-related films.  And as much as possible, I want to stick to forms of media that are easily available, and if at all possible, free and hopefully accessible.

I ran across a 1942 film by the name of The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - one of the few good films about Poe’s life that has sound.  Oh - don’t get me wrong.  There are several excellent silent Poe related films out there - such as the dreamlike La Chute de la Maison Usher from France produced in 1928. Translated, the title is The Fall of the House of Usher - but you probably figured that out.  And I ran across one film from 1942 called The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - now World War II had begun three years before and the systematic deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto had taken place - parts of the world were definitely in chaos.  So a biographical movie from that time might be expected to serve as a sort of escapism from turmoil outside the theatre.

I tried to find a copy of that movie to see what it was about - The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe WAS listed several times on youtube, but all it really had from the movie was a one-minute clip from the begining.  So I checked the title out on amazon and ebay - at that time, it was around 20.00 - well, I thought that might be worthwhile if there was a commentary on it, but it turns out that it doesn’t seem to have one.   And again, I could not justify spending twenty or thirty dollars for something that MIGHT be what I want - do that every week, and after two or three years you could easily buy a new computer or food!

I searched and searched with no luck - ran into several sources that said they could not find the movie anywhere.

Then one day, I was looking for something else - I don’t remember what it was - and ran into a version online.  And you couldn’t beat the price - free.
It did have Spanish subtiitles hard wired into the film but the dialogue was in English.  After a few minutes, you get used to the Spanish subtitles, and who knows - you might learn a word or two of Spanish.

I put the URL at the top of the transcript and at the top of the show notes for this episode on celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com

Now up til now, Celebrate Poe has concentrated on taking a deep dive - really going into detail about Poe’s life.  But The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe allows you to go into almost ALL of Poe’s life - from life with the dying Virginia Poe to young pupil to tortured writer to mysterious death - all in one hour.  Oh sure, there are some excellent documentaries - especially by PBS - about his life from a more historical standpoint. I will certainly delve into Poe documentaries later, but today I want to talk about The The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - pure entertainment with a historical slant - more or less.

10:19  Movie background and early life of Poe

The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is certainly not 100% historically accurate - but I think it is much better than most .  The movie begins with an actual illustration of the city of Richmond from around Poe’s time.  As you will see throughout The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - and it is only 67 minutes long - the filmakers have really done their homework.  The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe has some really great talent for the period - for example, the lead for the screenwriters of the movie had written the screenplay was Samuel Hoffenstein - he was a poet and musical composer born in Russia.  Samuel Hoffenstin immigrated to the United States and wrote the scripts for the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the 1943 Phantom of the Opera, and the 1939 Wizard of Oz.  Now the Wizard of Oz certainly differed from the novel by Frank Baum in many respects, but the film versions is one of the most memorable movies ever made.

The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe begins in 1811 as Edgar Poe is adopted by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia after the death of his mother. It is really awesome to see such scenes as the young Edgar at the bed of his dying mother instead of just reading about it.  And there is a wonderful scene where Mrs. Frances Allan and the young Poe speak to each other for the first time in the Allan’s comfortable home.  Mr. John Allan is somewhat reticent to accept Poe as a member of his family, and asks the young Edgar his name.  Young Edgar’s legs are dangling from the chair he is sitting in, and he looks up and says “Edgar Poe” and giggles.  The young actor has one of the cutest giggles I think I have ever heard - like the cooing of a young child. It is obvious that Mrs. Frances Allan is becoming devoted to the orphan while Mr. John Allan is developing an animosity towards him.

Now throughout the movie, there are small incidents that I don’t think we have documentation for - such as what Poe might have said in a schoolroom - but such filmed incidents are not outlandish, could easily have taken place, and most importantly, make a better and more entertaining story and further the narrative.

13:00 Colonel Potter from MASH and Poe! 

At a party in the movie, there is a brief section with Ebenezer Burling - basically a minor role.  In real life, Burling was a close friend of Poe’s who probably met the writer at the school of Joseph Clark.   When I first saw the actor who played him in the movie, I thought, “Who IS that?’  I have seen the face somewhere believe.  Then the actor started talking, and my reaction was “I would know that voice ANYWHERE!”  It was a much younger Harry Morgan - the actor who played Colonel Potter on the TV version on MASH. 
13:50 Poe’s youth, the University of Virginia, and West Point
 
The movie does a great job of showing the relationship between Poe and the writer’s first love, Elmira Royster.  When the writer was at the University of Virginia, Edgar Poe wrote her letters, and she sent him love letters.  But we learn later that her father disapproved of the marriage and intercepted the letters they sent each other.  Poe thought she had lost interest in him, and Elmyra thought Poe had lost interest in her.

According to several sources I read, sections of the movie were actually filmed at the University of Virginia.  I recognized the area on the lawn in the center of the University - the most prestigious area for a student to reside, but I don’t see how some of the scenes actually used Poe’s original room.  In the film, there were sometimes crowds and quite a bit of action going on in the room where Poe lived, and I don’t think there would have been enough room in the original room - it is pretty cramped.

In one scene, Edgar Poe and the founder of the University, Thomas Jefferson meet in Jefferson’s office.  The scene communicates some ideas, such as how Jefferson admired Poe’s talents, for him to stick with writing, and be more patient with his parents.  The character of Thomas Jefferson asks Poe how we was able to write a story that made Jefferson stew so much - Poe simply says the recipe is to combine the bizarre, the analytic, and romantic - put them all together and the reader stews.   The script writer must have had some insight into Poe’s style - because I have read academic scholars write volumes trying to communicate that Poe’s style was made up of those three elements.  And here the character of Poe in a movie was summing up some rather complicated literary concepts with three words.

Now let me take a sidebar here with one of my memory aids - BAR - that b for bizarre and A for analytic and R for romantic.   B bizarre  A analytic  R Romantic

And in another matter -  Up to now, I’ve had a degree of confidence finding any historical innacuracies in the first part of the movie because I am more familar with the earlier period of Poe’s life.  But, by the time this podcast is over, I intend to be as familar with the later part of Poe’s life and works.

Now back to the movie.

The scene between Poe and Jeffeson is a good one, and communicates some relevant ideas very well - the main problem is that it did not happen - there is no evidence that Poe and Jefferson ever met - oh, Jefferson did have a custom where he invited students at the university to have dinner with him - but there is no definite proof that Poe was one of those who dined with Jefferson - and we definitely have no record of Poe talking to Jefferson in a UVA office.   And Jefferson compliments Poe for writing his story The Gold Bug - the problem is that Poe attended the University of Virginia when he was in his late teens - he did not write The Gold Bug until he was 34.

Again, I would give the makers of the movie a pass - they communicted some what could be tedious ideas to a mass audience by using two figures that most people could relate to - and again, no one goes to a movie to seriously learn history.

The movie then deals with Poe loosing a great deal of money gambling and his very wealthy father refusing to help him.  John Allan greatly opposed Poe’s goal to pursue a literary career and disowned him.

But through John Allan, Poe was later able to obtain an appointment to West Point.  The movie shows how Poe learns he was not suited for a military career, so he skipped classes.  His refusal to attend academy functions led to his dismissal from West Point. Later, Poe is disowned by John Allan.  Poe joins the Army and through Allan obtained an appointment to West Point. A military career was not suited for him, so he skipped classes and did not attend functions at the academy, which led to his dismissal.

Now according to the Twentieth Century-Fox Produced Scripts Collection, at the UCLA Arts--Special Collections Library, the set used in the Fox film Ten Gentlemen from West Point was to be used for scenes showing Poe at West Point, but somehow those shots never made it into the final version.   However, the shots from the University of Virginia that I mentioned did make the final version.  This is also true of several shots from the area of Phildelphia where Poe lived - an area where the historical Poe did some of his most creative work.

19:57 Baltimore, Dickens, and The Raven

But back to the movie - now disowned and destitute, Poe tried to find help in Baltimore with Muddy Clemm and her daughter Virginia Clemm.  Muddy and Virginia take him in and provided Poe with some semblance of domestic stability - a group of people he could depend upon.  This was probably the closest he had ever come to belonging to a family that fully accepted him.

After the marriage, Poe became the editor and writer for the Southern Literary Messenger and Graham’s Magazine.  There are certainly quite a few dynamics involved in his relationships with those magazines that this podcast will explore in future episodes, but would just get in the way of an hour movie and probably bring its narrative flow to a halt.

I was especially glad that the movie dealt with Poe’s support of copyright laws.  This led to Poe meeting the author Charles Dickens in 1842 when the English author had a speaking tour of the United States. Their meeting was a great scene - the friendly confrontation of two great minds, with Dickens telling Poe that he is the greatest writer in the United States.

Poe, Virginia, and Muddy decide to move to Fordham University in New York. There is a lot of emphasis in The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe regarding her disease and that they live in great poverty.  Poe is convinced that he has written his greatest work - a work that will make them wealthy.  He writes “The Raven,” and sells it for 25.00  Actually, “The Raven” was about as close to a genuine success as Poe ever had.  He certainly became well-known for the poem.

The next scene might come across as moving - for the frequently sentimental sensibilities of the period.  It is a scene where the character of Elmyra Roster visits the dying Virginia and basically offers her money.
Virginia melodramtically refuses, saying to Elmira - you may be his past, but I am his present and his future.  This incident might have tugged at the heartstrings of audiences of the period - but this event never happened.

Poe then offers The Raven to Rufus Griswold, and is turned down.  Then Griswold asks Poe to read ther poem to his staff of printers for their opinions. They basically all dislike it as well, except for a youth who believes that is is wonderful.  I guess the viewer is supposed to view this as irony, because The Raven was to become the most famous and successful poem in all American literature.

Edgar Poe returns to Virginia and tells her that he has sold the poem for a substantial sum.  She dies from her illness, and the words of “Annabelle Lee” are heard.

23:20 Poe’s death

In the final scenes, a voice describes what is happening while Poe staggers through the streets of Baltimore and eventually is taken to a hospital.  He lingers for three days before dying.  His last words were, “Lord help my poor soul” while in the movie he recites from his poem “A Dream Within a Dream”

You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.


24:04 Overall view of The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe


The working title for the film was Edgar Allan Poe, The Man Who Walked Alone - the emphasis was not on The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe.  Actually after Virginia’s death, Poe’s loves included such ladies as Sarah Whitman and Fanny Osgood - characters who are not mentioned in the movie.
But I feel the emphasis of the movie was on Poe as a creative geunius and the obstacles he overcame.

The film has a sympathetic and understanding view of the genius of Edgar Allan Poe.  It does vary from history occasionally, but I personally feel in most cases it is for a good reason.  And by sometimes not sticking to the exact facts I think The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is more entertaining and points to a higher truth.

Now I like to end the main part of this podcast episode by talking about what I feel are the two best performances of the movie - one is one of the best performances I have ever seen in ANY movie.

25:31 Shepperd Strudwick as Poe

First, Shepperd Strudwick had the meaty part of Edgar Allan Poe.  He had dark, matinee-idol good looks but with a shady countenance that prevented him from becoming a genuine leading man.  One thing that impressed me was that fact that Strudwick’s Poe did not have a moustache until the last few years of his life - the historical Poe also did not have a moustache until the end of his life.

26:13 Jane Darwell as Muddy

Then there was Poe’s mother in law - Muddy - played by the great Jane Darwell.  I like to think her role was similar to Renfield in Dracula - she had a supporting part and stole the show.  Jane Darwell was in over 100 movies, and is instatnly recognizable as the kind, loving motherly type.   She was in Gone with the Wind, had the lead in Tugboat Annie, and got an academy award as best supporting actress in “The Grapes of Wrath.”  Her lines are beautiful, and she gives you chills with just the expressions on her face.  Underneath the URL for The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, I have included the URLs for two youtube clips - the first is from Grapes of Wrath where she is getting ready to leave Oklahama for what is hopefully a beter life during the Depression.  Along with her family, she has been uprooted from her home through no fault of her own.   Her family is cast out on the road, and in this brief scene she is trying to decide which items to take with her. Watch her face in this less than two minute clip - especially her longing look when she holds a pair of earings up to her ears. She was such a great actress that she could make a simple action like holding up some old jewelry a moving statement about memory and loss.

And the second URL is from the first version of Mary Poppins.  It is said that Walt Disney wanted her for the role of the Bird Woman - in her eighties at the time, Jane Darwell had retired from show business and was living in a retirement home.  She told Walt Disney no, and he personally drove out to her retirement home to convince her to change her mind and she eventually agreed.

28:30 Future podcasts
 

In this next podcast, I want to go back chronologically to Poe’s days in England - especially at Boarding School at Stoke Newington.  While Poe’s life at boarding school is not as well-documented as future years, I believe that this is an important time in Poe’s intellectual and imaginative development.  Exploring this period in his life should be a lot of fun.

29:00 Sources

Sources for this episode include The Poe Cinema: A Critical Filmography of Theatrical Releases Based on the Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Don G. Smith, Evermore by Dr. Harry Lee Poe: Edgar Allan Poe and the Mystery of the Universe, “The movies in the Rue Morgue: Adapting Edgar Allan Poe for the Screen” by Paul Woolf from Nineteeth-Century American Fiction on Screen, articles about The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe on the sites wikipedia, TCM Movie Database, IMDb, and the American Film Catalog.

And why not visit my podcast web site at celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com - click on the episode you want to learn more about to see its show notes and a transcript.   And don’t forget to view The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe by going to celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com - then select this episode The Best Poe Movie (Kinda)  Here you can access the transcript and the show notes.
Both transcript and the show notes have the URL for The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe - a movie that is hard to find.  And under the URL that leads to the movie, are the URLs to two short clips with the great Jane Darwell.

31:11 Outro

Congrats for making it this far, as we take a deep dive into the life, works, and influences of America’s Shakespere - Edgar Allan Poe.

As usual, this podcast began and ends with the melody of Come Rest in This Bosom - said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song.

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.