Reception
After being disappointed, according to biographer Ian Hamilton, when "rumblings from Hollywood" over his 1943 short story "The Varioni Brothers" came to nothing, J. D. Salinger did not hesitate when independent producer Samuel Goldwyn offered to buy the film rights to "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." His agent Dorothy Olding later explained this uncharacteristic relinquishing of control with the simple statement that “we thought they would make a good movie."
Indeed, "a good movie" would seem to have been implied by the production’s pedigree, which included Oscar-winning actress Teresa Wright and Casablanca screenwriters Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. (Some years earlier, Salinger had actually referenced Casablanca in his 1944 short story "Both Parties Concerned"; one of its characters, upon learning his wife has left him, re-enacts the "Play it, Sam" scene from the film with an imaginary pianist.) However, the eventual film, renamed My Foolish Heart and with Susan Hayward replacing Wright at the last minute, was critically lambasted upon its release.
The New Yorker wrote that it was "full of soap-opera clichés," and, while allowing for "some well-written patches of wryly amusing dialogue," Time rejected it as a "damp fable....the screenplay turns on all the emotional faucets of a Woman's Home Companion serial." Goldwyn biographer A. Scott Berg explained that “in the Epsteins’ version, more than had ever been suggested was shown, resulting in a ‘four handkerchief’ movie with a farfetched plot." Berg even called the film a “bastardization.” Because of what Salinger's agent later called "'a terrible movie' made in the 1950s " of one of his stories, the author never again relinquished control of his work to Hollywood filmmakers, despite persistent interest in adapting his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, for the screen.
Despite a critical drubbing, the film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Susan Hayward) and Best Music, Song (Victor Young and Ned Washington for the title song, sung by Martha Mears), which has become a jazz standard. Although in recent years the film's standing has not improved (Christopher Durang called it "a soggy love story" in 1996), the film critic Andrew Sarris has notably defended the film. Sarris admitted that it was his deceased brother's favorite film and much of the movie's appeal for him is nostalgic.
Read more about this topic: My Foolish Heart (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)