Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life

15. England

171 15 England You are very quiet and very warm. It’s that your eyes are soft and sensitive, and that your character is deep and filled with meaning. —The Stranger to Susan North, Stranger from Venus (1954) Within weeks after arriving in England, Patricia was whisked off by producerdirector Burt Balaban to the English countryside to start work on Stranger from Venus. Produced by Princess Pictures and filmed at Britain’s MGM Studios, Stranger from Venus was shot on a tight schedule and on a cheap budget. The story of Stranger from Venus, by screenwriters Hans Jacoby and Desmond Leslie, is very similar to that of The Day the Earth Stood Still. This was not a good sign for Patricia’s career. A spacecraft is heard flying over the English countryside. When the aircraft lands, its lights blind Susan North (Neal) as she is driving in her car, and she crashes into a tree on a deserted road. As she lies motionless at the wheel, one sees only the legs and feet of a strangely dressed man approach the vehicle. The Stranger (Helmut Dantine) suddenly appears at a pub. Announcing to the owner, his daughter, and inn resident Dr. Meinard (Cyril Luckman) that he is an alien from the planet Venus, the Stranger tells them he was sent to Earth as a preliminary emissary before the arrival of a larger delegation. The police and Susan’s fiancé, scientist Arthur Walker (Derek Bond) discover Susan’s wrecked car. After they arrive at the inn, Susan dramatically appears, her clothes torn. Though she surely was killed in the crash, she somehow is still alive and suffering from amnesia. The Stranger tells the spectators that a large delegation will be coming to land in a highly magnetically charged field in four days with an important message for all the nations on Earth. Facing page: Patricia Neal at Great Missenden, 1957. Photograph by Dave Preston, from the Patricia Neal Collection. Shearer฀book.indb฀฀฀171 3/16/2006฀฀฀12:16:06฀PM 172 Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life After meeting with five British dignitaries, the Stranger explains the reason for the visit of the Venusian delegation. The British officials plan to capture the spacecraft by magnetizing it when it lands. By preventing the spacecraft from landing in the trap, the Stranger seals his doom on Earth. Patricia wore five dresses in the film, all of the same style. None was particularly modish, and her hair was done equally unattractively in a short, side-parted fashion. Her love scenes with Dantine were dull and unconvincing (“You read my mind,” says Susan to the Stranger. “It isn’t fair, especially for a woman.”) No matter how much she tried, Patricia could not bring life to her character. The poster art for Stranger from Venus, with its multiple and menacing flying saucers and exploding airliners, promised a lot more visually than the audiences would ever see. There are virtually no special effects. The writing, cinematography , music, and direction are dreadful. The script generates no suspense. Lines in the film are delivered with great pathos, followed by a “ta-ta-ta-TA” horn effect to emphasize their relevance. By 1954, several big-budget American science fiction pictures, like When Worlds Collide (Paramount, 1951), War of the Worlds (Paramount, 1953), and Invaders from Mars (20th Century-Fox, 1953) had proved worthy successors to The Day the Earth Stood Still. Discerning film audiences had come to expect excellent production values and intelligent scripts. Stranger from Venus was a failure on all levels.1 Shortly after its completion, it was shown first on American television, not in the theater, under the title Immediate Disaster. It proved to be just that, though the music was by Eric Spear, who achieved acclaim years later for Coronation Street. Entitled The Venusian in some markets, it was not extensively seen in theaters in the United States. Stranger from Venus was released in Europe in the fall of 1954 and did poor business. The picture proved to be a huge setback for Patricia’s film career. Roald’s friend Wally Saunders assisted with the remodeling of the farmhouse in Great Missenden, a service for the Dahls he continued for the next twenty-five years. Roald ordered costly eighteenth-century English furniture, of which he was very fond. On the walls he would eventually hang paintings and watercolors by Francis Bacon, Rodchenko, Moholy-Nagy, Klee, Bomberg , Cezanne, Renoir, Soutine, Matthew Smith, and Winston...