Table Of ContentGene Tierney
Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series
A complete listing of the books in this series can
be found online at wsupress. wayne .edu.
General Editor
Barry Keith Grant
Brock University
Gene
Tierney
STAR OF
Holly wood’s Home Front
Will Scheibel
WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
DETROIT
Copyright © 2022 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal
permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939253
ISBN (paperback): 978-0 - 8143- 4821- 5
ISBN (hardcover): 978-0 - 8143-4 820- 8
ISBN (e- book): 978- 0- 8143- 4822-2
On cover: Early 1940s publicity photograph of actress Gene Tierney. Courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons.
Cover design by Vi- An Nguyen
An early version of chapter 1 was published in Camera Obscura 22, no. 2 (98) (2018)
and is reprinted here by permission of Duke University Press. An early version of
chapter 4 was published in Resetting the Scene: Classical Holly wood Revisited, edited
by Philippa Gates and Katherine Spring (2021), and is reprinted here by permission
of Wayne State University Press.
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They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
— Ernest Dowson, “Vitae summa brevis
spem nos vetat incohare longam”
Contents
Introduction: “The Girl in the Portrait” 1
Interpreting Star Images and Subjectivities 6
Holly wood and the U.S. Home Front in the 1940s 11
Gene Tierney’s Star Buildup and Her “First Modern Role” 15
1. Working It: Beautification and War Effort 27
Gene Tierney Goes to War: Thunder Birds and China Girl 29
Office Politics: The Making of Laura and
Tierney’s Image Makeover 44
Laura as War(drobe) Film: Bonnie Cashin’s Costumes 57
Coda: A Bell for Adano 73
2. Women on the Edge: Demobilization and Domesticity 79
The Dark Side of the Moon: Leave Her to Heaven 81
Gene & Ty: The Razor’s Edge and That Wonderful Urge 101
3. The Front Lines of Life and Death:
Motherhood and Mortality 123
Boom Years: The U.S. Maternal Ideal and
Gene Tierney as Star Mother 124
The Redemptive Maternal: Heaven Can Wait 130
Maternal Plentitude: Dragonwyck 139
The Resisting Maternal: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 148
viii Contents
4. Into the Whirlpool: Psychological Disorder
and Rehabilitation 159
Gene Tierney Reframed: Publicity and Press Commentary 161
Playacting and Sleepwalking: Whirlpool 175
Conclusion: The Reproducible Gene Tierney 197
Acknowledgments 207
Notes 211
Gene Tierney’s Credits 249
Film 249
Television 250
Selected Bibliography 251
Index 261
Introduction
“The Girl in the Portrait”
Johnny Mercer’s lyrics to the theme melody for the film Laura (Otto
Preminger, 1944) referred to the eponymous character as “the face in
the misty light,” echoing the Ernest Dowson poem that Waldo Lydecker
(Clifton Webb) quotes on his radio broadcast at the end of the film.1
“That was Laura,” the song goes, “but she’s only a dream.”2 Was Laura
“only a dream”? Kristin Thompson has proposed that the film’s ending
leaves open two possibilities for the viewer. First, Laura Hunt (Gene Tier-
ney), the presumed murder victim, was actually alive and Det. Lt. Mark
McPherson (Dana Andrews) has successfully rescued her from another
attempted murder. Second, when Mark investigates Laura’s apartment
halfway through the film and falls asleep under her painted portrait,
believing her to be murdered (fig. 1), he remains asleep and the subse-
quent events of the story comprise his wish- fulfillment dream, which
suggests that the film achieves a unique sense of closure for Classical
Holly wood narrative (i.e., within a dream).3 In this respect, theater and
film historian Foster Hirsch is absolutely correct when he notes that
the leads “look and sound like sleepwalkers.”4
Several months after Twentieth Century– Fox released the film, the
studio commissioned Mercer to write lyrics for David Raksin’s haunting
theme, and Woody Herman’s 1945 jazz vocal recording sold over one mil-
lion copies, perhaps encouraging the second reading.5 Although Mercer’s
lyrics are not heard in the film, the song was indelibly linked to the screen
visage of Laura, and she with the star who played her, Gene Tierney.6 As
she stated in her 1978 autobiography Self- Portrait, “The role most often
identified with my career was that of the title character in Laura. The
part was unusual in that Laura dominated the story as a presence, felt but
unseen, for half the movie.” Tierney continued, “I am not being modest
when I say that people remember me less for my acting job than as the
girl in the portrait, which is the movie’s key prop.”7 The film, of course,
