Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones in Ernst Lubitsch's production of "Cluny Brown"

Cluny Brown (1946) is a romantic comedy produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Margery Sharp. The cinematography was by Joseph LaShalle (Laura 1944). The supporting cast includes Peter Lawford, Helen Walker, Reginald Owen, Reginald Gardiner, Richard Haydn, C. Aubrey Smith, Sara Allgood, Florence Bates, Margaret Bannerman, and Una O'Connor.

Cluny Brown (Jones) is an orphan who lives with her uncle (Billy Bevan), a plumber. Cluny has learned all about plumbing from her uncle, but her uncle doesn't think being a plumber is good for a young woman. By coincidence, Cluny meets Adam Belinski at the London home of Mr. Ames (Gardiner). Mr. Ames is having plumbing issues and Cluny manages to fix the issue, much to the surprise of both Belinski and Ames. Cluny and Belinski hit it off and seem to make a special connection.

Unfortunately, Cluny's uncle procures a job for Cluny as a parlor maid at the country estate of Sir Henry Carmel (Owen) and Lady Carmel (Bannerman). As fate would have it, Belinski is the invited guest of Andrew Carmel where he meets Cluny once again. Their relationship continues while Belinski is a guest in the Carmel home.

Will Cluny be content with the life of a parlor maid, or will she and Belinski build a life of their own?

Charles Boyer, Reginald Gardner, and Jennifer Jones

Ernst Lubitsch (1892 – 1947) was a German-born film director who became famous for his sophisticated comedies during the pre-code era. Silent film star Mary Pickford lured Lubitsch to Hollywood in 1922. He directed Pickford in Rosita, which was a huge, hit and cemented his reputation in Hollywood. Lubitsch’s films were so unique that they were described as having the “Lubitsch touch.” Some of Lubitsch’s classic films include Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Cluny Brown (1946). Lubitsch was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his work in film.

Charles Boyer (1899 - 1978) was a French-American stage and film actor. Boyer was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award four times. He became a major movie star in the late 1930s in films like The Garden of Allah (1936), Algiers (1938), and Love Affair (1939). He starred as the evil husband of Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight (1944). Boyer starred opposite most of the top female stars of the period including Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine, Katharine Hepburn, and Olivia de Havilland. As he grew older, Boyer played supporting roles in film and also starred on Broadway in Kind Sir (1953 - 1954) and The Marriage-Go-Round (1958 - 1960).

Jennifer Jones (1919 - 2009) was an American actress. She received five Academy Award nominations, including one win for her performance in The Song of Bernadette (1943). At age 25, Jones was one of the youngest Best Actress Award winners. She was a major movie star throughout the 1940s and 1950s. She starred in Duel in the Sun (1946), Portrait of Jenny (1948), Madame Bovary (1949), and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Jones was married to producer David O. Selznick who carefully managed her career. 

Jennifer Jones takes direction from Ernst Lubitsch on the set of Cluny Brown.

Cluny Brown trivia

• This was director Ernst Lubitsch's last completed film. He died while filming That Lady in Ermine (1948).
• In the novel Adam Belinski is Polish. In the film, he's Czech but retains the name Belinski which is Polish.
• Richard Haydn and C. Aubrey Smith starred together in And Then There Were None (1944).
• Reginald Owen and Billy Bevan appeared together in National Velvet (1944).
• Reginald Gardiner and Una O'Connor appeared together in Christmas in Connecticut (1945).

To watch the film on YouTube, click on the link below.

To join the discussion on May 23, 2022, at 6:30 p.m. Central Time, click here. Once you RSVP, you will receive an invitation and a link to the discussion on Zoom.

Discussion questions

1. Did you think the relationship between Adam Belinski and Cluny Brown was believable?
2. Was there chemistry between Boyer and Jones?
3. Was there a theme or message? Do you think Ernst Lubitsch was making a statement of some kind with this comedy?
4. The film is filled with some of the greatest character actors. Did any one of the character actors stand out to you?
5. Did this film remind you of any other films you've seen?

Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones in a publicity photo for Cluny Brown

The "Wright" Stuff: Teresa Wright Makes Her Mark

Studio portrait of Teresa Wright

"I only ever wanted to be an actress, not a star."
During the early 1940s, few movie actresses made the impact that Teresa Wright did. Wright was Oscar-nominated for the first three movies she appeared in, a record that no other actor or actress has accomplished. Embraced by the public and critics as well, Wright never wanted to be a movie star.

Muriel Teresa Wright was born in 1919 in New York City. After seeing Helen Hayes on the stage, Wright decided she wanted to be an actress. After gaining experience in regional theater, she decided to try her luck on Broadway during the late 1930s.

Early Broadway Success
Almost immediately, Wright found herself playing a small role in Thorton Wilder’s Our Town. During the play’s run, she understudied for Martha Scott, who had the lead role of Emily. When Martha Scott left for Hollywood, Wright stepped into the lead. After her success in Our Town, she was cast as Mary Skinner in an even bigger success, Life With Father. During one performance, a talent scout from the Samuel Goldwyn studios noticed something special about Wright.

Goldwyn was looking for someone to play Bette Davis’s daughter in his production of The Little Foxes, someone who would be able to stand up to the formidable Miss Davis on the big screen. The talent scout thought Wright was up to the task. Before long, she was brought to Hollywood and signed a long-term contract with Goldwyn.

When The Little Foxes was released in 1941, Wright was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, alongside Bette Davis who was nominated for Best Actress. The Goldwyn talent scout’s faith in Wright was validated.

Hot Property
Samuel Goldwyn immediately arranged for Wright to costar in William Wyler’s production of Mrs. Miniver at MGM starring Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon. After she completed that film, she was costarring opposite Gary Cooper in The Pride of the Yankees, directed by Sam Wood. Both Mrs. Miniver and The Pride of the Yankees were released in 1942 and Wright was showered with critical accolades once again.

During that eventful 1942, Wright found herself nominated for both Best Supporting Actress for Mrs. Miniver and Best Actress for The Pride of the Yankees! She lost the Best Actress award to Greer Garson, but won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role as Garson’s daughter-in-law in Mrs. Miniver.

Hitchcock Comes a Calling
When director Alfred Hitchcock was casting Shadow of a Doubt, he considered  Wright for the lead role of Charlotte (Charlie) Newton. He wanted her for her obvious talent, but Hitchcock also wanted her because she was considered a hot property and her appeal would add to the box office. He was correct on both counts. From the start Hitchcock was impressed not only with Wright’s talent, but her professionalism on the set. Wright’s characterization is a tour-de-force. She begins the film as a naive, innocent girl and ends it as a mature worldly-wise young woman.

Wright is top billed in the Hitchcock classic

During its initial release, Shadow of a Doubt  was a critical and popular success. Today it is considered Hitchcock’s first great American film. Unlike his earlier U.S. movies, Shadow of a Doubt was set in a small American town populated with average people living seemingly average lives. The notion that innocence and evil live side by side would become a popular theme that Hitchcock would continue to explore in later films.

Wright starred alongside some of the biggest male stars of the 1940s.

A Major Star
After working with Hitchcock, Wright became a major star, appearing opposite some of Hollywood’s most famous leading men, including Dana Andrews, Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, and Gary Cooper (after Pride of the Yankees, they starred together again in Casanova Brown). During the late 1940s, Wright lost out on two important film roles that hurt her career.
  

Pursued is considered the first psychological western.

The Roles That Got Away
Wright’s husband, Niven Busch was a screenwriter and popular novelist. He wrote the best-selling novel Duel in the Sun and adapted the screenplay for producer David O. Selznick. Wright was set to star as the half-breed Pearl Chavez. The role was to be a change of pace for the actress. During production, Wright became pregnant and had to drop out. Jennifer Jones, another actress with a girl-next-door image picked up the role and a Best Actress nomination to boot.

The role of Pearl Chavez was written for Wright.

The next role that Teresa Wright lost, again due to pregnancy, was the portrayal of Julia Broughan in The Bishop’s Wife. The role eventually went to Loretta Young, and again, another box office hit slipped through Wright’s fingers.

You're Fired!
In 1948, Wright made a movie for Goldwyn called Enchantment. Goldwyn had high hopes for the film and Wright had one of the key roles. When production wrapped, Wright didn’t particularly like the result. Scheduled to travel to publicize the film, Wright said she was ill and couldn’t participate. Goldwyn didn’t believe Wright and he fired her. Overnight, Wright was a star without a studio. Used to making $5000 a week and $200,000 per picture, Wright was now a freelance artist during a turbulent time in Hollywood. The major studios were losing money because they were forced to give up their theater ownership, which reaped them huge profits.

Wright was Marlon Brando's first leading lady.

In 1950, Wright agreed to star opposite a Hollywood newcomer named Marlon Brando in what would be his very first film, The Men. The film was an independent low-budget production for which Wright accepted a salary of $25,000. Wright said that after she made that film for that low fee, she was rarely given A-list material again. She still had starring roles in movies, but none matched the quality of her early successes.

Wright Finds Work During Television's "Golden Age"
Instead of giving up on acting, Wright started working in TV during its golden age. She was Emmy-nominated for playing Annie Sullivan in a TV production of The Miracle Worker five years before the film version was made. Later she portrayed famed photographer Margaret Bourke-White in a 1960 TV production. In addition to her TV work, Wright went back to Broadway starring in The Country Girl, Bell, Book and Candle, The Heiress, and Death of a Salesman opposite George C. Scott.

During the 1970s, Wright occasionally worked in films and television. During this period she had roles in Roseland and Somewhere in Time. Her last major role was playing Miss Birdie, Matt Damon’s landlady, in John Grisham’s The Rainmaker in 1977.

Teresa Wright died of a heart attack on March 6, 2005. She was 86 years old.

Turner Classic Movies to air four films starring Jennifer Jones in January

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will honor the career of Jennifer Jones by airing four of her films January 7, 2010. They are

Duel in the Sun costarring Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck
Beat the Devil costarring Humphrey Bogart
Madame Bovary costarring James Mason, Van Heflin, and Louis Jordan
Indiscretion of an American Wife costarring Montgomery Clift

Check listings in your area for show times.

Screen legend Jennifer Jones dead at 90

Academy Award winning actress, Jennifer Jones died Thursday December 17. Jones was one of the biggest stars of the 1940s and 1950s; she received a total of five Academy Award nominations, winning the award with her first starring performance in The Song of Bernadette (1943).

A star is born
Jones met her first husband, Robert Walker, while both were studying acting in New York. As a young married couple, they decided to give Hollywood a try and headed west. Jones's career took off faster than Walker's. She caught the eye of producer David O. Selznik, who carefully managed her career. After divorcing Walker, Selznik and Jones were married in 1949. Their marriage lasted until Selznik's death in 1965.

Portrait of an actress
As a movie star, Jones seemed to specialize in complicated melodrama's or over-the-top epics like Duel in the Sun (1946). Although Duel in the Sun was generally panned by critics, the public loved it and it was one of the top grossing films of all time. When given the proper vehicle, Jones proved she was a capable and competent actress with winning performances in Love Letters (1945), Portrait of Jenny (1948), and probably her most underrated, but truly brilliant performance in Cluny Brown (1946), directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch.

Enduring popularity
In the 1950s, Jones's popularity was still solid, with lead roles in films like Carrie (1952), costarring Laurence Olivier, Ruby Gentry (1952), with a young Charlton Heston, and probably her most memorable role from this period, Love is a Many Splendid Thing (1955) opposite William Holden, for which she received her fifth and final Academy Award nomination. Her last major film role was in the disaster epic, The Towering Inferno (1974), which featured an all-star cast that included Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, and Fred Astaire.

A very private life
In contrast to her career as a world-famous movie star, Jones was a very private person who avoided the limelight. Fortunately, she's left us a wonderful body of work that will live on for many years to come.