The Macomber Affair *** (1947, Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett, Robert Preston, Reginald Denny, Jean Gillie) – Classic Movie Review 12,560

The 1947 fatal love triangle drama film The Macomber Affair is based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1936 short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, and stars Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett, Robert Preston, Reginald Denny and Jean Gillie.

Director Zoltan Korda’s 1947 American drama film The Macomber Affair is based on Ernest Hemingway’s 1936 short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, and stars Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett, Robert Preston, Reginald Denny, Jean Gillie, and Carl Harbord.

Ernest Hemingway’s big-game story is transferred to the screen by director Korda and stars Peck as the professional hunter who takes married couple Bennett and Preston on safari. frustrated wife (Bennett) ignores her weak husband (Preston ) and falls for the hunter (Peck) and marital conflicts take centre stage in a fatal love triangle set in British East Africa.

The Macomber Affair is an impressive attempt to film one of Hemingway’s notoriously difficult to film yarns, in this case The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, helped enormously by excellent acting from Peck, and his co-stars.

The screenplay is written by Casey Robinson and Seymour Bennett, and adapted by Bennett and Frank Arnold, based on The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway, published in the September 1936 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine concurrently with The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

It is made by Benedict Bogeaus Productions and distributed by United Artists.

The cast are Gregory Peck as Robert Wilson, Joan Bennett as Margot Macomber, Robert Preston as Francis Macomber, Reginald Denny as Police Inspector, Jean Gillie as Aimee, Carl Harbord as Coroner, Vernon Downing as Reporter Logan, and Frederick Worlock as Clerk.

The music score is by Miklós Rózsa.

Release date: April 20, 1947 (New York City).

Running time: 89 minutes.

Box office $1.6 million.

Jean Gillie was born Jean Mabel Coomber on 14 October 1915 in London, England. She met American film director Jack Bernhard while he was on military service and stationed in Britain in the Second World War. They married on 5 May 1944 and after the end of the war went to live in the US. They made the 1946 film noir Decoy together. But her marriage to Bernhard quickly became troubled and they divorced in 1947.

Tragically, Jean Gillie (1915 -1949) died of pneumonia back in London at only 33, having made 22 movies, 20 British and just two American films. Also in 1947, she appeared with Gregory Peck in The Macomber Affair, her final film.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,560

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