Is it a Gothic fairy tale, a fantastic romance, or a backhanded comment about wounded war veterans?  Mutilated flier Robert Young and the ‘unacceptably plain’ (?) Dorothy McGuire find each other in a seaside love nest out of a Harlequin Novel, overcome their self-loathing, and experience a miracle. Why not?  The only witnesses are a blind composer (Herbert Marshall) and a maybe-witch (Mildred Natwick). Poor Hillary Brooke is the fianceé shown the door before you can say ‘Julie Andrews!’  It hasn’t dated well, but it’s still an exceptionally popular romantic fantasy.

The Enchanted Cottage
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. / Street Date June 24, 2025 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.99
Starring: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Herbert Marshall, Mildred Natwick, Spring Byington, Hillary Brooke, Richard Gaines, Alec Englander, Robert Clarke, Eden Nicholas, Josephine Wittell, Mary Worth.
Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff
Art Directors: Albert S. Dagostino, Carroll Clark
Costumes: Edward Stevenson
Film Editor: José M. Noriega
Makeup: Maurice Seiderman
Visual & Optical Effects: Vernon L. Walker, Linwood G. Dunn, Fitch Fulton, Albert Simpson
Music Composer: Roy Webb
Written by DeWitt Bodeen, Herman J. Mankiewicz from the play by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
Executive Producer: Jack J. Gross
Produced by Harriet Parsons
Directed by John Cromwell

An annotation at the IMDB says that actress Dorothy McGuire rewatched her older film The Enchanted Cottage in 1973 and remarked that, “the film belongs to another period.”  That’s a polite way of acknowledging that its basic premise no longer functioned. Seeing that Arthur Wing Pinero’s source play was written in 1922, the movie really ‘belonged to another period’ when it was new, as well.

Ms. McGuire’s 1945 romantic fantasy retains a positive reputation. It wants to be a magical romantic statement about the power of love, like Joe Mankiewicz’s transcendent  The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. William Dieterle’s delirious romance  Portrait of Jennie still soars on the strength of its visual and musical graces, despite some terrible choices by its producer David O. Selznick.

Playwright Pinero’s heyday as a playwright was in the Victorian 1880s. His play was said to have been a reaction to the horror of WW2 and also perhaps to the loss of a stepson by suicide. The germ of an idea that motivates The Enchanted Cottage is the old saw that love conquers all, awkwardly confected into the idea that people in love imagine themselves to be physically beautiful.

The beauty of glamorous movie stars is of course the entire appeal of movie love fantasies. Tale after tale claimed that the real human beauty was interior, yet we’re still lining up to admire and identify with ‘beautiful people.’ Pinero’s basic idea is that people in love become more beautiful to each other. But as updated for this handsome RKO production, very little in the show seems to work. We instead admire the committed performances.

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Oliver Bradford and his fianceé Beatrice (Robert Young & Hillary Brooke) prepare to rent an atmospheric ocean-front cottage for their honeymoon. Local lore links the cottage to generations of successful couples, all of whom etched their names in a decorative window. But the wedding is put off when Oliver is called to Air Corps duty. More than a year later, he checks into the cottage alone. ‘Shot down over Java,’ he has suffered facial mutilations and an injury to his right arm. Oliver seeks to avoid his family and Beatrice. He also prepares to kill himself.

Taking care of the cottage are two lonely women. Middle-aged Mrs. Abigail Minnett (Mildred Natwick) is a widow whose husband fell in World War One. Even though her perfect romance was cut short, Minnett feels a personal connection to the cottage’s romantic legend. Young Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire) is a miserable wallflower type, doomed to be described as ‘plain’ and unattractive. Her one attempt to mingle with the soldiers at a USO club ended in complete failure and humiliation. Both Laura and Oliver consider themselves hopeless outcasts. She overcomes his fatalistic pessimism with the help of Major John Hillgrove (Herbert Marshall), a friendly neighbor who was blinded in World War One. Because the Major can’t see, Oliver doesn’t mind his company. The low-pressure talks with the philosophical veteran turn Oliver’s mind away from self-destructive thoughts.

Oliver and Laura are working their way through their respective self-image issues when Oliver’s mother Violet and stepfather Freddy visit (Spring Byington & Richard Gaines). They are annoying meddlers, insensitive to anything but social expectations; Violet’s semi-addled state may be related to the death of her husband in the Great War. Oliver refuses to see them (and Beatrice as well). But they control his finances, and unilaterally decide that Oliver must live with them ‘for his own good.’ Oliver’s solution is to ask Laura to marry him, although he admits it is a wholly selfish move. Laura consents, with reservations. Their marriage begins as a disastrous mistake, but then a seeming miracle occurs: the cottage makes them both beautiful, completely restoring Oliver’s damaged face.

Mrs. Minnett and Major Hillgrove are the only witnesses to the ‘transformation.’ They are deeply concerned with the couple, spiritually and philosophically.

The Enchanted Cottage works hard to overcome a premise that can’t support its own outdated notions about love, relationships, marital commitment and physical beauty. Poor Laura carries her ‘plainness’ around as if it were a demonic curse, never believing that she has any hope of being attractive to men. Soldiers at the USO approach Laura and then rush away, as if she had the face of a gargoyle. We have to take the ‘plainness’ of the good-looking Dorothy McGuire on faith. All she need do is wash her hair, do something with her eyebrows and get her teeth worked on a little bit. Cameraman Ted Tetzlaff makes sure that McGuire’s face is illuminated with harsh light, often from below.

Are we being stubborn in rejecting the film’s basic premise?  We don’t think that Laura is plain or ugly, but that she suffers from low self-esteem, plain and simple.

RKO had the old Enchanted Cottage property and thought it might work first for Helen Twelvetrees, and much later Ginger Rogers, before producer Harriet Parsons took on the project. Her writers certainly had stature: DeWitt Bodeen ( Cat People) and Herman J. Mankiewicz ( Citizen Kane). The director was John Cromwell, considered a top name for romantic stories. Ms. Parsons tried to get actress Teresa Wright to play Laura. Did none of those stars want to be cast as a ‘plain’ woman, under exaggerated makeup?

Dorothy McGuire’s other early movie roles were equally unusual. In Claudia she had to portray a sexually immature young wife (also opposite Robert Young), in a story that seemed strained because the Production Code stripped out much of the adult context from the source play. McGuire may have hired on for The Enchanted Cottage on the advice of David O. Selznick, who also represented director John Cromwell.  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn became McGuire’s breakthrough, but she played an emotionally stunted, not-always sympathetic working-class mother. It was director Elia Kazan’s first film, so his presence was no guarantee of success.

Handsome Robert Young had been in movies for almost twenty years without rising to top star status. The show is a change of pace, as he’s given a sophisticated makeup by Maurice Seiderman, of  Citizen Kane and  The Magnificent Ambersons. Oliver has suffered some serious facial damage, and makeup artist Seiderman appears to have studied real injuries. His realistic makeup design is unusual for movie work … it’s neither a  classic horror head nor a  weird abstraction.

With his lip puffed up and that scar across his eye, Oliver’s face is badly marred. But the plastic surgery has left him looking reasonably presentable, actually. The real issue is again self-image. If Oliver’s positive character is dependent on having a charmed, cozy existence, he has some adjusting to do. That’s Major Hillgrove’s main message.

Other aspects of the story should have felt outdated in 1945, or even in 1922. The ‘magic’ of the Enchanted Cottage insists you can’t have Love without Beauty, or least the willful illusion of Beauty. At the fade-out, do Oliver and Laura live in a kind of delirious denial … or has she discovered that scars are sexy, while he admires her improved self-hygiene?

The Enchanted Cottage has all the ingredients of a crazy film blanc, but they don’t really fit together. Most everyone we meet has been affected by war-related death or disability: Mrs. Minnett and Violet Price both lost husbands, while Beatrice was rejected by her disfigured fianceé. We don’t know if Major John Hillgrove was in a relationship when he lost his sight in battle. The pain of war is an inescapable reality, and the movie links it to a fuzzy statement about romantic love.

With so many characters affected by war-related deaths and maimings, the original play may have had more to say about healing romantic war wounds. It sounds as if it would fit in with the late David J. Skal’s thesis that 20th century screen horror stemmed in part from the massive influx of World War I combat veterans suffering disfiguring wounds. Arthur King Pinero’s take seems to be that, gee, it might interfere with a bloke’s love life.

The movie recipe for recovering from war trauma, sayeth the screenplay, is finding something creative to engage one’s self. Laura works on intricate woodcuts. The Major’s blindness has increased his sensitivity, and he’s now a noted pianist and composer. We almost expect someone to suggest that Oliver weave a basket or something. Actor Herbert Marshall was noted for having lost a leg in WW1; we wonder what he thought of the story’s war-injury theme. He wears convincing lenses to make his eyes look destroyed. We’re happy that the Major has not also been granted semi-psychic powers, as is often the cliché with blind characters. It’s also a good thing that the Major’s advice from the sidelines is not a Magic Pill that solves Oliver and Laura’s dilemma. Lovers must work things out in private.

The only one we really feel sorry for is Oliver’s discarded fianceé Beatrice. She seems sincere, and she never even gets a chance to confront him. How do we know Beatrice wouldn’t bat her eyes at his face and solve everything by saying, “big deal, stop being a baby and snap out of it.” The truth is that women find themselves shoring up crumbling male egos all the time.  ^*

William Wyler’s 1946  The Best Years of Our Lives made movie history with just such a scene between Cathy O’Donnell and Harold Russell. Best Years addresses the harsh everyday reality of war wounds, while The Enchanted Cottage takes a semi-Gothic approach, what with the ‘charmed’ house and its supernatural trimmings.

We’re informed that in the play, Mrs. Abigail Minnett is actually a good witch, descended from a long line of witches. Mildred Natwick’s Minnett begins as a potential  Mrs. Danvers but soon transforms into a sort-of romantic conscience, the keeper of the flame for the spirit of the cottage. At one point, a bit of music imbues her with a ‘magical’ aura. The most overt hint of the supernatural is when a little whirlwind outside the cottage door blows up a funnel of leaves. Mrs. Minnett stares a moment at the impressive windspout. Could the whirlwind be a manifestation of her lost husband?  We get the idea that Minnett stays on in the cottage because she’s secretly waiting for her man to return.

The Enchanted Cottage strikes us as the kind of story that RKO might have thought appropriate for Val Lewton, were he not confined to the B-picture ghetto. Lewton had his own ideas about human isolation and loneliness, but we’re not convinced that this story’s premise would appeal to him. It certainly appealed to moviegoers of 1945 — it was a success for RKO and is still written about in glowing terms, as director John Cromwell’s ‘tone poem’ about romantic love. Tell that to poor Beatrice!

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of The Enchanted Cottage is a handsome digital remaster of a film that at one time was considered a romantic mini-classic; I’m not sure that it still has that reputation. It certainly looks good. RKO’s optical department creates the New England location by combining California beaches, interior sets and some good matte paintings. John Cromwell’s direction does the work to depict Oliver and Laura ‘seeing’ each other differently than others see them, avoiding overt point-of-view shots.

Roy Webb composed a suitable semi-concert theme to represent Major Hillgrove’s music composition, a theme dedicated to lovers whose story he is about to tell. It earned Webb a Best Music scoring nomination; the winner was Miklós Rózsa for Spellbound. Audiences responded positively to the romantic fantasy, even though top critics like Bosley Crowther thought it contrived and unconvincing.

The Warner Archive comes up with two separate radio adaptations, and an original trailer that looks to be the same tattered remnant viewable on YouTube. The trailer sells straight romance with no images of Oliver and Laura in un-glamorous mode. Some of the movie’s ad campaign was deceptive to an extreme, promising sordid sensations: “Scandal sparked their love!” … “The whole town WHISPERED about these two!”

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Enchanted Cottage
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Two radio adaptations:
Lux Radio Theater 9/3/45 with Dorothy McQuire & Robert Young
General Electric Theater 9/24/53 with Joan Fontaine
Original Theatrical Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: July 13, 2025
(7376cott)

^*  We love Hillary Brooke and think she does quite well with the thankless role of Beatrice; director John Cromwell refuses to present Beatrice as a thoughtless airhead like Freddy or Violet. At one point Beatrice makes a quick nervous reaction with her eyes, and suddenly we think of her role as the victim of Martian brain control in  Invaders from Mars, waxing conspiratorial. Can’t help it.

Visit CineSavant’s Main Column Page
Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: cinesavant@gmail.com

Text © Copyright 2025 Glenn Erickson