The Whales of August
Producer Mike Kaplan optioned the play as a production for Lillian Gish, who he had known since the late 1960s and considered a friend, and Bette Davis, who he saw in the role of the blind sister from the beginning. Gish, who made her film debut in 1912 and starred in some of the greatest and most influential films of the silent era including The Birth of a Nation (1915), was in her late 80s when he first approached her and turned 93 when it was shot in the autumn of 1986. Davis, a superstar of the golden age of Hollywood with two Academy Awards and nine nominations to her credit, initially passed on the project. While Kaplan went looking for another actress (both Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn turned him down), he signed his old friend Lindsay Anderson to direct (he was eager to work with Gish) and John Gielgud in the role of Mr. Maranov, the courtly but penniless Russian émigré who survives as a professional houseguest and must find new arrangements when his summer hostess passes away.
"I thought the success of On Golden Pond would have made it easier to raise the money for The Whales of August, '' explained Kaplan in a New York Times profile, but it took five years to find the funding. By that time the 78-year-old Davis, who had survived cancer surgery and come back from a stroke, had changed her mind. While she signed on to the film, Gielgud dropped out due to a conflict and Anderson cast the 75-year-old Vincent Price in his place. While it seemed like an odd choice to many, it gave the versatile veteran of stage and screen an opportunity to display talents he had little chance to showcase since being typecast as a horror actor in the late 1950s. In Anderson's words, "In England, we're not so completely blinkered by Vincent's horror reputation." Filling out the central roles are Ann Sothern (age 77) as Tisha, Sarah's old friend and general island busybody, and Harry Carey Jr. (age 65) in the role of Joshua, the island handyman. The youngest of the five leading actors, Carey was a veteran of John Ford's stock company and the son of silent star Harry Carey, who starred with Lillian Gish in one of her first films, D.W. Griffith's two-reel gangster drama The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), more than 75 years before. Given the combined ages of the cast, Price's wife Coral Browne quipped that the production company behind the film, Alive Films, should change its name to Barely Alive.
It was shot on location on Cliff Island, off the coast of Maine, in the autumn of 1986, a beautiful but rustic location that proved colder than its summer setting would suggest. It took 45 minutes by boat from the mainland and the winds got to be so strong that, according to Gish biographer Charles Affron, both she and Davis had to be supported just off camera while shooting the film's final image of the sister looking out over the ocean. "Bette kept calling it The Whale of November, because is kept getting colder and colder," remembered Price. "We were really very uncomfortable." It was one more challenge for a cast dealing with the realities of old age and infirmity. Gish was going deaf and couldn't always hear her co-stars (she picked up her cues by reading lips), Davis had overcome a stroke that paralyzed her left side and left her speech slurred, and Sothern had difficulty walking due to a stage injured that fractured her spinal column years before. The steep trails, rocky landscape, and cold winds did not make things easier for them.
Whether by design or not, the roles reflected the personalities of the two legendary actresses. Gish was pleasant and diplomatic and Davis made good on her reputation for being difficult. She was demanding, argumentative, and competitive on and off set. Price had co-starred with Davis almost 50 years earlier in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and confessed that ''Bette likes me. That doesn't make us bosom buddies, but it keeps us from being enemies." That wasn't the case with Gish, with whom Davis was prickly and unfriendly, or with director Anderson. "Lillian's first instinct is to try to give the director what he asks for," described Anderson. "Her professional attitude comes from those days with D. W. Griffith. Bette tries to dismiss the director.'' She challenged him constantly but Harry Carey observed that those battles "ended in a draw because Lindsay [Anderson] doesn't back down." If Davis was difficult, however (she was "a holy terror, crabby and irascible," as described by Sothern), she was also passionate and engaged. She attended the screening of the dailies every evening (the only one of the main actors to do so) and delivered a delicate performance. And for all her complaining about the cold and the accommodations, she was the last actor to leave the island.
Vincent Canby wrote that the film was "a cinematic event, though small in scale and commonplace in detail. It's as moving for all the history it recalls as for anything that happens on the screen. Yet what happens on the screen is not to be underrated..." There was Oscar buzz for Gish, Davis, and Price but ultimately the sole nomination went to Ann Sothern in the category of Supporting Actress.
It was the last film that Lillian Gish made before her death in 1993 at the age of 99. Davis appeared in one more film, the black comedy Wicked Stepmother (1989), but walked off the set before completing her role. The Whales of August serves as a more appropriate memorial for the actress, who passed away three years after completing production at the age of 81.
Sources:
Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her Life, Charles Affron. Scriber, 2001.
Mainly About Lindsay Anderson, Gavin Lambert. Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography, Victoria Price. St. Martin's Press, 1999.
The Complete Films of Bette Davis, Gene Ringold and Lawrence J. Quirk. Citadel Press, 1990.
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis, Ed Sikov. Henry Holt and Company, 2007.
"Placating the Stars of 'Whales'," Aljean Harmetz. New York Times, October 22, 1987.
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By Sean Axmaker
