Jamaica Inn *** (1939, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Marie Ney, Leslie Banks, Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams) – Classic Movie Review 390

Even if you think of the 1939 pirate malarkey adventure Jamaica Inn as a period whodunit, director Alfred Hitchcock is way off his usual territory with such melodramatic costume drama hokum based Daphne du Maurier’s period novel. Moderate and creaky though the film is, certainly by Hitchcock’s standards, it is still nevertheless quite endearing and entertaining. It helps a lot that there are good actors aboard and that their sense of jolly fun is infectious.

Maureen O’Hara stars as the heroine, a young Irish orphan girl called Mary Yellan, around the year 1800. She goes to Cornwall to live with her aunt Patience (Marie Ney) and uncle Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks), the landlords of the Jamaica Inn. But she soon discovers that she is unwittingly mixed up with the smugglers she is living around, as the inn is the base of a gang of ship-wreckers who lure ships to their doom on the rocky coast.

Mary then makes two bad errors. She comes to think that her innkeeper uncle Joss is the boss of the pirate outfit, and then makes the mistake of asking local big-wig Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton) for help.

The glorious looking O’Hara gives an impressive, fiery performance, full of youthful vigour. But the film inevitably belongs to Charles Laughton, who is great rollicking fun, though, in an energetic, lip-smacking performance as the high-bred Cornish squire and magistrate Sir Humphrey Pengallan. It is not subtle but it is amusing, and Laughton is a shameless scene-stealer.

Unfortunately, though, it turns out that Sir Humphrey is also the pirate chief and the film’s head villain, whose evil gang of cut-throat criminals arranges shipwrecks for their treasure.

Laughton is also the film’s co-producer. He had been impressed by a screen test he had seen of O’Hara and especially her hauntingly beautiful eyes, and he and his business partner, Erich Pommer, signed the 19-year-old Maureen Fitzsimons under contract. Before casting her in Jamaica Inn, Laughton changed her name to O’Hara. Her next film with Laughton was the sensational hit The Hunchback of Notre Dame, filmed in America.

Also quite a lot of fun, if to a lesser extent, are the other fine British actors (Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams, Wylie Watson, Morland Graham, Mervyn Johns and Basil Radford). Among that rather splendid cast, there are useful portraits in villainy from Williams as Harry the Pedlar, part of Sir Humphrey’s Gang, and (rather surprisingly) in goodness from Newton, as Jem Trehearne, also a gang member.

Also in the cast are Edwin Greenwood, Stephen Haggard, Horace Hodges, Hay Petrie, Frederick Piper, Herbert Lomas, Clare Greet, William Devlin, Jeanne de Casalis, A Bromley Davenport, Mabel Terry Lewis and George Curzon.

There is an awful lot of ripe ham being sliced in front of some rather tatty-looking sets, so that it all looks and sounds a bit like a Christmas pantomime show, and that is mighty unfortunate for any credibility.

‘It was an absurd thing to undertake,’ said a humble-sounding Hitchcock much later. ‘I made the picture and, although it became a box-office hit, I’m still unhappy over it.’ But his persistence with the work of Du Maurier eventually paid off with two of his biggest successes – Rebecca and The Birds.

Jamaica Inn is directed by Alfred Hitchcock, runs 108 minutes, is made by Mayflower Pictures Corporation, is released by Associated British, is written by Sidney Gilliat (screenplay and dialogue), Joan Harrison (screenplay), J B Priestley (additional dialogue), Alma Reville (continuity) and Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited), Clemence Dane, is shot in black and white by Harry Stradling Sr and Bernard Knowles ((photography collaboration), is produced by Erich Pommer and Charles Laughton, is scored by Eric Fenby and designed by Thomas N Morahan, with special effects by Harry Watt and Film Editing by Robert Hamer.

Hitchcock on the Jamaica Inn set.

There is a real Jamaica Inn at Bolventor, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, where Du Maurier wrote the source novel. The film was shot in Cornwall, and at Jamaica Inn, Cornwall, and at Associated British Elstree Studios, Shenley Road, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.

It marks Joan Harrison’s debut as one of the screenwriters, becoming one of Hitchcock’s trusted associates, co-writing several screenplays and producing both of his TV series.

The copyright holder failed to renew the copyright and the film came into public domain, so anyone could duplicate and sell a DVD copy and many of the versions circulating are badly edited and of poor quality. The full running time is 108 minutes, but 100 minutes and 90 minutes versions circulate. Full version DVDs: R0 Image Entertainment/Kino Video (US 1999) and R2 Carlton Visual Entertainment (UK, 2003).

Jamaica Inn is remade for TV in 1985 with Jane Seymour, Patrick McGoohan and Trevor Eve, and again in 2014 as a mini-series with Jessica Brown Findlay, Matthew McNulty, Joanne Whalley and Sean Harris.

For Hitchcock, Wylie Watson also appears in The 39 Steps and Basil Radford in The Lady Vanishes.

Maureen O’Hara’s career kick-started with two films as the protégé of her mentor Charles Laughton – Jamaica Inn and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was given an ‘introducing’ opening credit in Jamaica Inn, though she made Little Miss Molly (1938) but it was not released until 1940.

She celebrated her 94th birthday on 17 August 2014 and was finally awarded an honorary Oscar at 94 on November 8 2014. The lovely, fiery great star died on October 24 2015, aged 95.

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 390

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