Reading the Basis for a Favorite Film

by Paula Gail Benson

When I was growing up, a television station featured classic films on Saturday afternoons and that is how I became familiar with some of Bette Davis’ earlier work, including The Corn Is Green, Dark Victory, and Now, Voyager (all the screenplays for which were written by Casey Robinson).

Henriette Desportes Deluzy

Duc de Choiseul-Praslin

Perhaps my favorite Bette Davis movie was All This and Heaven Too (the screenplay also written by Casey Robinson, based on the novel by Rachel Fields, a fictionalized account of a true story). In it, Bette Davis played a governess (probably why I liked it so much--it reminded me of Jane Eyre) who, in the years just preceding the Civil War in the United States, became involved in a notorious scandal in Paris. [Spoiler Alert: if you want to watch the movie first, don’t read further yet!]

Henriette Desportes, also known as Henriette Deluzy, became the governess for the children of Charles Laure Hugues Theobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (Charles Boyer in the film), despite the objections of his wife, the Duchess de Choiseul-Praslin (born Fanny Sebastiani and played by Barbara O’Neil, known as Scarlett O’Hara’s mother in Gone with the Wind, and Oscar-nominated for her role as the Duchess). What caused the rift in the family? Was it the Duchess’ obsession with her distant husband and her jealousy of the love her family showed the new governess? Or, did Henriette’s remaining in a toxic and untenable position lead to the terrible consequences?

Barbara O'Neil, Bette Davis, and Charles Boyer

As portrayed in the film, Henriette provided a stabilizing influence in a house filled with tension, primarily from the Duchess’ unpredictable nature and her being convinced that Henriette was stealing away the affections of her husband and children. Finally, Henriette was forced to leave her position without a reference from the Duchess, which, particularly in light of the newspaper accounts of Henriette’s involvement with the Duc, meant that she would be unable to find employment. The Duc sought to intervene and in a confrontation with his wife, the Duchess was killed. The authorities jailed Henriette, accusing her of encouraging the Duc to commit the crime. The Duc, who could only be found guilty by his peers, took poison, declaring his innocence on his death bed and leaving the authorities with no evidence of Henriette’s guilt.

The movie was based on the best-selling novel by Rachel Fields and told the true story of Rachel’s own great-aunt, whose time in the Praslin household created such an outcry against the ruling class that the incident contributed to the abolition of the monarchy in a French February 1848 revolution. I found the movie fascinating for several reasons: (1) it was about a country and historical period I knew little about, (2) it featured a young June Lockhart as one of the Praslin children, and (3) its love story was irresistible.

June Lockhart is the tall girl in green.

As February approached this year, I decided to read Rachel Field’s book. I discovered it was close to 500 pages and continued Henriette’s story with her life in the United States as a minister’s wife following the Praslin scandal (I’m still working on completing it). A great deal of the book was ingeniously and inventively incorporated into Casey Robinson’s screenplay. Robinson was wise to use the framework of Henriette facing her gossipy American students and asking them to judge her story for themselves (an actual chapter later in the book). The following quote from Rachel Fields was included in the movie’s trailer (accessible at this link): “It is not only the book as I wrote it, but a projection of the characters themselves -- My grateful thanks to all who made this picture possible.” When today, many authors are disappointed with how their books are depicted in film, this endorsement was extraordinary, particularly since this story was based on fact, or at least the version as handed down in the Fields family.

Author Rachel Field

Although she clearly championed Henriette, in the novel, Rachel Fields created a very real person with faults as well as virtues. Rachel studied the historical accounts and the Duc and Duchess’ letters and personal papers, which may have raised some doubt as to Henriette’s proclamation of innocence. Rachel developed a character both admirable and tortured by her own flaws. Henriette was drawn into a situation like a moth caught in a spider’s web. She was intelligent, analytical, painfully straight-forward and honest, and cautioned of the dangers in taking the position, yet she was arrogant enough to reject the warnings and rely upon her own judgment and inclinations, which contributed as much to her downfall as they helped her to recover.

Very much a novel of its time (1930s), the early chapters of All This and Heaven Too are amazingly fast paced and made me not want to put the novel down. Later, it slowed, in some respects bogged down by too much attention to detail, but even so it remained a powerful portrait of the period and the individuals.

Charles Boyer and Bette Davis

What makes the entire tale so fascinating, as much as the love story, is the mystery of who to believe: the newspaper accounts, the personal papers and letters, or Rachel Fields’ tribute to a great-aunt she never met. Have you read the book or seen the movie? What do you think?