Sunday, 25 August 2013
RIP Julie Harris, Farewell Eleanor Lance
I was sad to learn that Julie Harris, a veteran star of many films and Broadway shows, has died at the age of 87. For fans of supernatural fiction her greatest role was that of Eleanor Lance in The Haunting (1963), the first and by far the best cinema adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (1957). Eleanor, or Nell, is an interesting example of a traditional Gothic heroine in a modern ghost story. Naive and confused, she falls victim to Hill House but at the same it is implicit that she is - to some extent - helping to trigger or amplify some of the strange phenomena that assail the ghost hunters. The director, Robert Wise, made considerable demands on Julie Harris, and I think she delivered the goods, not least in scenes involving the character's unspoken thoughts. Here is the second spookiest scene from the film:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
GHOSTLY QUARTERS by C.E. Ward (Sarob Press 2025)
Clive Ward is one of the veteran contributors to Ghosts & Scholars who can always be relied upon to produce fiction in the M.R. Jamesia...
-
This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more here . My opinion on the penultimate story in this collection has...
-
Cover by Paul Lowe illustrating 'Screen Burn' Steve Duffy's latest collection offers the discerning reader eight stories, five...
-
Cover illo by Sam Dawson, for Steve Duffy's story 'Forever Chemicals', which offers an interesting take on the London of the e...
No comments:
Post a Comment