Woman in suit and tie at Isobel's
Who is the actress that appears to be an assistant to Isobel at the dinner party, pours wine, and flatters Isobel's ability to sniff out a murderer?
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Hi,
Its Nondas Metcalf who played Phyllis Swinghurst.
MovieChat Forums > Suspicion (1941) Discussion > Woman in suit and tie at Isobel's
A lesbian character, then?
shareI was wondering about that too! I can't remember ever having seen such a female character in a forties film before. It's odd that she would be wearing a suit and tie, unless she was in a riding costume; a woman wouldn't wear something like that to a dinner with guests in those days. It must have been a portrayal of a lesbian woman; Hitch was ahead of his time in many ways.
shareThe documentary on the DVD touches on this. Hitchcock scholar Bill Krohn says that the censors were worried about the scene even before it was filmed, as the character's dress and behaviour are specified in the script. Isobel calls the character, Phyllis, "Phil," and the possibility exists that the two might be lovers.
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Well, Isobel says to Phyllis "Do the wine, will you?"
During the 1939-45 war British women naval officers (WRENs) wore a uniform very similar to the clothes worn by Isobel. Perhaps Hitch just copied it.
shareWomen working in the 40s again took on task that might have fallen traditionally to men, so wearing trousers, whilst considered shocking in the 1930s, were de rigeur for a number of occupations and possible social occasions.
A suit and tie might be stretching it a bit too far though, and given the sexual imagery that exists in his films (the tunnel scene in North-by-Northwest) it wouldn't surprise me if this was a nod to lesbianism.
There's a similar pairing in an Agatha Christie novel from the 1920s. Two women live together, one is named Mergatroid, they're always going to the village Women's Centre to put on plays, etc.
shareNot impossible. "Rope" is filled with homosexual references, so it's not impossible that Hitchcock made similar ones in earlier films.
shareI think she's definately a cross dresser and I wondered if she was Isabel's lover. Isabel is a very bohemian character, who doesn't do things by the norm. It's a British film and I think it would have been more daring than an American film of that time. I read Oscar Wilde's novel and homosexuals weren't as underground as you'd think in Britian in the 1940's. There were some really interesting characters in this. The ending was a disappointment though.
shareDid anyone think Beaky could have been homosexual? For he never spoke of a wife. Nor, did he seem to plan on a family by staying with Johnny and Lina and always hanging out at their place. Ah, also he and Johnny might have had a "thing"! We never see Beaky away on business and the whole thing could have been a set-up. For the record when I watched the film I didn't think of this but reading aobut the innuendo of the female, I thought about this. Knowing this film and it's many interpertations, anything is possible with using an imagination.
"I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you."- Peter O'Toole
I think he was just being typically English. :-)
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Cross-dressing is much more a part of British culture, high and popular, than it ever has been in the US. It's common in Shakespeare and Hitchcock was brought up at a time when the Music Hall was still popular and artists like Vesta Tilley had always impersonated men. In pantomime, women often played the leading boys and men played the Dame. The cross dressing in Monty Python might have seemed novel to US audiences but it was part of a very long tradition to UK audiences.
Like most people in the arts in the UK, Hitchcock would have known and worked with gay men and lesbians whose sexuality was an open secret. Even though homosexuality was illegal until the 1960s, fairly obvious - or screamingly obvious - gay men and lesbians appeared in popular culture. Not only were they not much of an issue, they were often popular.
In this context, I doubt that Hitchcock was concerned about including a lesbian character although I am sure that he would have been aware that the Hollywood studios he worked for would have other ideas.
My favorite homosexual character in early cinema (pre-1950) was Countess Anna Geschwitz in the silent film Pandora's Box. The character at Isobel's vaguely reminded me of her. It's neat seeing those subtle (or not so subtle) references to homosexuality in old films. One of the most blatant, of course, is Cary Grant's "gay" ad lib in Bringing Up Baby when he's wearing the robe, quickly followed by a reference to 42nd Street, which was a hub of gay nightlife in those days.
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