The Gay Sisters

1942 "Another great novel... another Warner Bros. hit!"
6.6| 1h50m| NR| en
Details

The eldest of three sisters protects their Fifth Avenue mansion from a developer she once married.

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Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant
ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
utgard14 The three Gaylord sisters (Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Nancy Coleman), lose their parents at an early age and fight to keep their family mansion. George Brent plays the guy after the mansion and when you find out why your eyes will roll so hard they'll fall out of your head. Stanwyck is feisty to the point of obnoxiousness and Brent is a prick. He's also a rapist, if I interpreted one crucial scene correctly. Very disappointing melodrama with a plot that's much ado about nothing. Inappropriate moments of humor don't help. Protracted opening with Donald Woods as the father who goes on and on about the family legacy and what it means to be a Gaylord has next to nothing to do with the rest of the movie. One little bit of interesting trivia: actor (and future murderer) Gig Young took his stage name from the character he plays in this movie. Before this he went by his real name of Byron Barr.
bcrumpacker WARNING: SPOILER ALERT! Other reviews cover the basics. Some complain that the story withholds information in order to create suspense, but that is standard practice. And the dialogue about the effects of losing parents and of divorce upon children is sound. Very good supporting cast, cinematography, and score.As usual, Barbara Stanwyck is a flaming bitch, oops, "strong woman", but at least here she has some reasons to squawk. As usual, George Brent underplays, and acts the decent fellow. His gentlemanly approach explains his popularity, and is misunderstood by other reviewers.On the other hand, he does accept cash for a quickie divorce; commits marital rape during his brief marriage to Barbara; tries to throw the sisters out of their home; and again seduces Barbara at the end of the movie, telling her by way of explanation that she hates anything that would make her happy. So according to the script, Barbara only needed a "real man" to steer her towards her biological imperative, and to show her who is boss. Apparently this was acceptable to 1942 audiences, or at least to the studio. It just doesn't sit well with viewers now. Bottom line: George tamed this shrew.P.S. Agreed, it's a bit surreal to see Gig Young play Gig Young.
blanche-2 It's a little disconcerting to have a character named Gig Young in a movie...played by Gig Young. But this film is where Gig got his name and also a nice career boost after playing small parts under another name.I'm going to go against the majority of the other comments and state that I really enjoyed this film, mainly because of the vibrant performance of Barbara Stanwyck as Fiona. She was funny, angry, vulnerable, caring, and feisty as the oldest of three daughters whose mother died on the Lusitania, and whose father was later killed during Woar War I. As the "man" of the house, Fiona has stood steadfast for years against settling her father's will which would therefore allow a Donald Trump type named Charles Barclay to get the family home. But Fiona's keeping a secret as to why she hates Barclay so much. Geraldine Fitzgerald is the middle, flirty sister, who is married to an Englishman but craves her youngest sister's boyfriend (Gig Young).If you're a Stanwyck fan, this is a no miss.
zetes Three girls, the youngest descendents of the Gaylord family, one of America's most royal families, are orphaned at a young age. Right before he goes off to France to fight in WWI, their father tells the oldest, Fiona, never to sell the land. By the time the sisters have become adults, they have had to squander most of their money to pay for lawyers to defend their property. Through certain loopholes in the father's will, a man named Charles Barclay stands to gain possession of the Gaylord land, on which he wants to build a complex called Barclay Circle. Barclay is actually based on John D. Rockefeller, who was buying up land and buildings from affluent families in New York so he could build Rockefeller Center.This film deals mostly with the melodramatic concerns of the three sisters. Fiona, well played by Barbara Stanwyck, although it's certainly not to be counted as one of her best roles, seems like a cold, domineering woman, and it becomes clear that she has some skeletons in her closet. Susanna, played by Nancy Coleman, is a little ditsy and completely in love with a young modern artist named Gig Young. Coleman's was my favorite performance in the film. Evelyn, played by Geraldine Fitzgerald, is a rather pretentious seductress with a monocle who married into noble blood in England, but that doesn't stop her from trying to steal Gig from her sister. The three sisters are developed quite well but, as is the major trend in The Gay Sisters, never well enough. Charles Barclay is played by George Brent. He isn't very good. Well, he would be satisfactory if the story had played out the way it should have, but he always seems like a scumbag in the film. When we're asked to sympathize with him late in the film, it's impossible. Gig Young is played by, huh?, Gig Young. No, he's not playing himself. What happened is that the actor, who had acted in several movies previously under his real name, Byron Barr, was pressured by Warner Brothers to change his name to something more catchy. I'm not sure who made the final choice, but he eventually changed his screen name to Gig Young, after the character whom he plays in The Gay Sisters. Weird, eh? Young is quite good through most of the film, but the script does some unfortunate things with his character late in the film which ultimately harm the audience's sympathy for him. In two other supporting roles, Helen Thimig and Gene Lockhart are quite good.The Gay Sisters had great potential to turn out to be one of the great cinematic family sagas. The characters are all interesting, as are their situations. Unfortunately, the script never strives for anything more than the simplest melodrama. If it had made the interrelationships of all the major characters more complex, fleshed out, for example, the rivalry between Evelyn and Susanna or made the flashback more intricate, the film could have been fantastic. It also could have fleshed out the prologue more, let us know more about the Gaylord family. We need to care more about the characters and we need to sympathize with them more. And the ending needed some major fixing. It basically just gives up at the end. Fiona's problems are solved so poorly that it hurts. Whatever sympathy her character had gained as the film progressed falls apart. It's also far too happy. This story seems moving towards tragedy, or maybe just a sense of historical significance or loss. And we still hate Barclay. And the conflict between the two sisters and Gig is never solved. As bad as Fiona's story ends, Susanna's, Gig's, and Evelyn's is even worse.I still liked the film. It's thoroughly watchable, even if it doesn't involve us like other great films of the era. 7/10, mostly for its potential. It should have been remade, or the novel should have been re-adapted, at some point during the studio era. It is too dated to be remade now. The 1950s would have been the best time, during the time of films like Giant.