Three Coins in the Fountain: Lookin' for Love

Louis Jourdan and Maggie McNamara.

Time has not been kind to Three Coins in the Fountain, a 1954 blockbuster that earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination. What may have once seemed fresh, colorful, and romantic now comes across as lightweight, sluggish, and a little condescending to its three female protagonists. Of course, the Rome scenery is still spectacular and the title song, as crooned by Frank Sinatra, has become something of a standard. Incidentally, the cinematography and the song each won Oscars.

Stars Maggie McNamara (The Moon Is Blue), Jean Peters, and Dorothy McGuire play secretaries who room together in the city of love. Maria (McNamara) has just arrived and quickly become enamored with a handsome, playboy prince (Louis Jourdan). Anita (Peters), who has fallen into a rut and decided to return to the States, suddenly realizes she and a good-looking interpreter (Rossano Brazzi) have romantic feelings toward each other. Finally, there's Frances (McGuire), who has been working for a reclusive author (Clifton Webb) for 15 years--hiding her love for him behind a strictly professional veneer.

Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara--framed for Cinemascope.

Each woman must overcome significant obstacles en route to finding true love. This is where Three Coins in the Fountain becomes borderline condescending, implying that love is necessary for a single woman to find happiness. It would have been more effective--and certainly more realistic--if one of the three experienced an unhappy ending. Flash forward just six years later to Where the Boys Are, in which four female college students spend spring break in Fort Lauderdale, and you'll find a more potent ending.

Three Coins in the Fountain must also overcome an oddly-structured screenplay in which each woman's love story is presented as almost a stand-alone tale. For example, Anita's subplot takes place near the start of the film and then is virtually forgotten when the narrative shifts to Maria and then Frances. The separate stories link up hastily at the end, but, by then, you may be trying to remember the subplot with Anita.

The Rome locations are striking, though they were used more effectively in the previous year's Roman Holiday. Also, for a film that won an Oscar for cinematography, it's jarring to see several scenes utilizing grainy rear-screen projections.

The Loni Anderson remake.

Still, there is no denying that Three Coins struck a chord with post-war audiences looking for love fantasies. The premise has also proven to be a reliable one. Three Coins director Jean Negulesco helmed a 1964 remake, The Pleasure Seekers, which was set in Madrid and starred Ann-Margret, Carol Lynley, Pamela Tiffin, and Gene Tierney. Yvonne Craig starred in an unsold 1970 pilot for a Three Coins in the Fountain TV series. And Loni Anderson starred in 1990 made-for-TV version called Coins in the Fountain.

Coop's a Quaker and Hayley Buries Dead Animals

Gary Cooper and Dorothy Maguire.

Friendly Persuasion (1956). This pleasant, heartfelt tale of Quaker life in southern Indiana during the Civil War lacks the drama that went into bringing the film to the screen. Jessamyn West's 1945 novel was comprised of short stories published in various magazines beginning in 1940. William Wyler acquired the rights in 1948, but the project languished for several years. It didn't help that the House Committee on Un-American Activities proclaimed screenwriter Michael Wilson to be an "unfriendly witness." Despite winning an Oscar for co-writing A Place in the Sun in 1952, Wilson was blacklisted in Hollywood. When Wyler finally produced Wilson's adaptation of Friendly Persuasion, the credits did not list a screenwriter (in 1996, the opening credits were updated to include Wilson). As for Wyler, he intended to shoot the film on location in Indiana, but the budget spiraled out of control, forcing him to finish it in California (some outdoor scenes were clearly filmed in a studio).

Anthony Perkins.

Gary Cooper stars as the patriarch of the Birdwell family, although the film focuses on his oldest son Josh (Anthony Perkins) and daughter Mattie (Phyllis Love). Mattie has fallen in love with a Union officer and Josh can't decide whether to fight alongside his friends in the war or whether to remain faithful to his Quaker beliefs. It's a leisurely, episodic movie that doesn't build to a strong climax, but there are effective scenes along the way (e.g., when Mrs. Birdwell, played by Dorothy Maguire, deals with the Confederate soldiers). Cooper, then in his mid-50s, had doubts about playing a father--and a pacifist one at that. Just five years earlier, he starred as a strong-willed sheriff with a 23-year-old Grace Kelly as his bride in High Noon. Still, Cooper anchors Friendly Persuasion and provides the film with some much-needed humor, some of it centered around the elder Birdwell's desire to beat a neighbor in a weekly "unofficial" buggy race.

The surprisingly plush Birdwell home.

Friendly Persuasion won an Oscar for Best Sound and earned other nominations for Best Picture, director, supporting actor (Perkins), song, and--incredibly--screenplay (though the nomination was for the script and not the writer because Wilson was blacklisted). Pat Boone crooned the title song, written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster, which went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.


Sky West and Crooked (aka Gypsy Girl) (1965).  At the age of 19, Hayley Mills had pretty much wrapped up her highly-successful career as Walt Disney's biggest child star. She could still play teenagers, but adult roles were just around the corner. During this period in the mid-60s, she made several "transition" films such asThe Chalk Garden and The Truth About Spring--both personal favorites. She also starred in the unusual Sky West and Crooked, a Mills family project directed by Hayley's father, acclaimed actor John Mills, and co-written by her mother, Mary Hayley Bell.

 

Ian McShane as Roibin, the gypsy.

Set in rural England, Sky West and Crooked casts Hayley as Brydie White, a seventeen-year-old girl who has mentally blocked out a childhood tragedy. Her widowed, alcoholic mother possesses no parenting skills--leaving Brydie to fend for herself. The townsfolk think the girl is a bit daft (I surmised that was the meaning of the film's title). The local vicar and a coffin-maker's family treat her kindly and she has become the unofficial leader of the village children. Indeed, when Brydie buries her two dead hamsters in the church cemetery (she forgot to provide them with water), the other children follow suit. Soon, the children are scouring the countryside for dead animals to bury in the cemetery--much to the dismay of their parents. Brydie's life is further complicated by the arrival of a handsome gypsy lad (Ian McShane).

An animal's grave.

Sky West and Crooked is an obvious attempt to duplicate the success of the superior Whistle Down the Wind, a 1961 classic starring Hayley and based on a novel by her mother. Both films feature rural settings, uninvolved parents, and a group of children led by Hayley. They also explore religious themes: in Whistle Down the Wind, the children believe an escaped convict is Jesus; in Sky West, the coffin-maker's children launch into an unexpected discussion about souls during afternoon tea with their parents.

The entire cast is convincing, with acting honors going to Hayley, Geoffrey Bayldon as the vicar, and Ian McShane as Hayley's love interest. While Sky West and Crooked certainly doesn't rank with Hayley's best films, it's still an interesting--if slowly-paced--tale about the need for love and the challenges of becoming an adult.

The Power of Love in "The Enchanted Cottage"

The cottage, we are told, is the only wing saved from a great estate built by an English nobleman on the New England shores. He loaned it to newlyweds and allowed them to live there for as long as they wished, a tradition maintained for over 150 years—until broken by the current owner. Even though the cottage has become overgrown with moss and ivy, it remains a flower waiting to blossom. But whereas a flower needs water and sunlight, the cottage needs to be filled with the love between two people to bring alive its enchantment.

The cottage’s owner, Mrs. Minnett (Mildred Natwick), a lonely widow, decides to rent it to a couple who will soon be married. She hires Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire), a young woman described as “terrible homely.” The groom-to-be, Oliver Bradford (Robert Young), finds the cottage quaint and charming, even though his fiancée is less than enthused. But before the couple can marry and move into their honeymoon home, Oliver receives his commission as a pilot and must report for duty during World War II.

When he returns a year later, his face disfigured and his right arm paralyzed from an airplane crash, Oliver is a different man—bitter and intent on keeping to himself. He ignores his family and former fiancée and moves into the cottage. He is eventually befriended by composer John Hillgrove (Herbert Marshall), who lost his sight as a pilot during World War I. Oliver also finds a kind and earnest companion in Laura, who has fallen in love with him.

The outcome of The Enchanted Cottage is never in doubt. We know that from the opening scene where John recounts the story as a tone poem at an evening gathering. Therefore, the film relies heavily on its well-drawn characters, strong performances (particularly Marshall), and a sense of “magic” created by John Cromwell’s atmospheric direction, the almost-expressionistic sets which incorporate paintings of the cottage, and Roy Webb’s lyrical music.

Cromwell makes brilliant use of lighting, especially in the shadow-filled scenes when Oliver first returns and when he locks himself in his room when his family visits (his face first revealed to the viewer by the light of a match in the blackness of the room). Cromwell’s direction is equally masterful, as when the camera makes a sweeping circular move, stopping just short of Oliver and Laura’s faces as they explain excitedly to John how they’ve “changed.” Interestingly, Cromwell was also an actor, winning a Tony in 1951 opposite Henry Fonda in Point of No Return.

Composer Roy Webb is sadly one of the least-remembered composers of the 1940s and 1950s, despite writing music for classics such as The Spiral Staircase, Notorious, Out of the Past, I Remember Mama, and several of Val Lewton’s horror films. Webb’s score for The Enchanted Cottage, which includes a lovely piano concerto, earned him the last of his Academy Award nominations (he never won).

Harriet Parsons produced The Enchanted Cottage at a time when there were few women working in film production in Hollywood. She acquired the rights to the original stage play, which was written by Arthur Wing Pinero in 1923 (and also made as a 1924 silent film). Parsons hired screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen to adapt the play (Herman Mankiewicz contributed to the script, too). It’s interesting to note the parallels between The Enchanted Cottage and Bodeen’s screenplay for Lewton’s 1944 Curse of the Cat People. Both films can be viewed as traditional fantasies or as “real events” in which the fantastical elements occur only in the minds of the characters.

While The Enchanted Cottage can’t compete with the great romantic fantasies, like A Matter of Life and Death and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, it holds an enduring appeal. It’s a well-crafted film that leaves its viewers with a timeless message: The beauty of love is in the eye of the beholder.