THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE

 "THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE" --- (1945) ---

FUN FACTS & TRIVIA:

• In 1973, it was announced that a remake would be made. According to Robert Young, the setting would be updated, and Dorothy McGuire and he would be playing the parts of the housekeeper and blind pianist originally played by Mildred Natwick and Herbert Marshall. The idea fell through after McGuire watched a screening of the original at Young's invitation at the actor's home. She said that the film belonged to another period and that she did not want to go backward.
• May McAvoy, who appeared in the original The Enchanted Cottage (1924), attended this film's premiere, and admitted that she would have loved to have visited the set, "but I was fearful people would think I was making a bid for publicity."
• The WWII canteens for visiting troops, as shown here, were the forerunner of the modern U.S.O.
• The character of Violet Price in the story has long been widowed and remarried to Freddy, who is portrayed as a somewhat shallow character. Spring Byington (Violet) was 18 years older than Richard Gaines (Freddy) and looks it. Perhaps the age difference in casting was intentional to suggest that Freddy had once been a young man conveniently marrying a well-fixed older widow.
• "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on September 3, 1945, with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire reprising their roles.
• Included among the American Film Institute's 2002 list of 400 movies nominated for the top 100 top 100 America's Greatest Love Stories movies.
• The date on the calendar (April 6, 1917) is the day Mrs. Minnett's husband was killed in the Great War (WWI). As she looks out of the window, she's visualizing the attack on Pearl Harbor, which happened later in the day in the Eastern Time Zone. When Laura and Oliver get married, she changes the date to June 6, 1943.
• Robert Young's arm injury and subsequent weakness would appear in real life for Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, who was wounded in WWII.