Actors - The Little Foxes

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	Actors - The Little Foxes

The Little Foxes is a melodrama by Lillian Hellman, first performed in 1939, with Tallulah Bankhead giving a legendary performance in the lead role of Regina. This hit production ran a year on Broadway.

The 1941 film version was directed by William Wyler and starred Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall and Teresa Wright, plus original Broadway cast members Patricia Collinge (Birdie), Charles Dingle (Ben), Dan Duryea (Leo), John Marriott (Cal) and Carl Benton Reid (Oscar). It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture in 1941.

There have been three Broadway revivals of the play to date, all "limited engagements" with starry casts. In 1967, Mike Nichols directed Anne Bancroft (Regina), George C. Scott (Ben) and Margaret Leighton (Birdie; when the production moved to another venue, Miss Leighton graduated to the role of Regina, with Felicia Montealegre brought in for her previous part). Austin Pendleton, who had played Leo in the Nichols production, directed the 1981 revival with Elizabeth Taylor (Regina) and Maureen Stapleton (Birdie). And 1997 brought the play back to Lincoln Center (where the Nichols production originated), with Jack O'Brien directing Stockard Channing (Regina), Frances Conroy (Birdie) and Brian Murray (Ben).

The play's title comes from the King James Version of the Bible; chapter 2, verse 15 of the Song of Solomon reads: "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." This is a translation that should more properly have translated "little foxes" as "fruitbats". The prologue of the 1941 film labels the Hubbards as the little foxes: “Little Foxes have lived in all times, in all places. This family happened to live in the Deep South in the year 1900.”

Plot

In a post-Civil War southern community there is nothing more important than money and power to Regina Giddens (Davis). In fact, she will stop at nothing to have them. In order to join her equally ruthless brothers, Ben and Oscar Hubbard, in a scheme that is sure to gain her wealth and power she uses her young, naïve daughter (Wright) to fetch her estranged, ailing husband (Marshall) who is living elsewhere. When she cannot convince her husband to give her the money, she sets forward a cunning plan; which escalates to the ultimate price once she realizes her brothers intend to swindle her as well.

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