The Films of Agnes Moorehead by Nissen Axel;

Author:Nissen, Axel; [Nissen, Axel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Blazing Forest

1952

The Blazing Forest (1952) is considerably more woodsy than this interior shot of William Demarest, Susan Morrow, and Agnes Moorehead reveals. Pine-Thomas Productions/Paramount Pictures. Courtesy of the author.

What in blazes to say about The Blazing Forest? It is far from being Agnes Moorehead’s worst film. Yet one could almost wish that it had been just a little worse—then it would have been camp—or a whole lot better. What was a three-time Academy Award nominee (at the time) doing in a film like this? She was earning her keep—that and getting top billing, which always had a strong appeal for her. One of the two producers, William H. Pine, said in an interview that “she is one of the greatest actresses that we have. We were fortunate to get her.”1

Though the acting is at times wooden and you can’t always see the wood for the trees, The Blazing Forest is undoubtedly a classic of the forest-fire genre. Having produced nearly sixty films with a notable presence of trees and forests, Pine-Thomas Productions yet again lived up to its name by focusing on the arboreal in their next feature. The screenplay by Lewis R. Foster and Winston Miller was “original” in the sense of “created from scratch,” rather than “innovative.” Russian immigrant Edward Ludwig was set to direct. The old-fashioned and ridiculously melodramatic music was by Lucien Cailliet.

Moorehead plays Jessie Crain, a rugged, ornery, widowed Nevada landowner who decides it’s time to sell the timber on her land to allow herself and her dead sister’s daughter Sharon Wilks (Susan Morrow), whom she has raised as her own, to move into town. She hires handsome logger Kelly Hansen (John Payne) to harvest the timber with the aid of old-timer and Jessie’s former beau Syd Jessup (William Demarest). With the appearance on the scene of Kelly’s larcenous brother calling himself Joe Morgan (Richard Arlen), the scene is set for an incendiary drama where the real star is a spectacular forest fire. One tagline used in advertising the film was “AFLAME with THRILLS!” Yeah, sure, if you’re an arsonist.

John Payne was fast approaching forty, had been in the movies since the mid-1930s, and was best known for starring with Maureen O’Hara in Miracle on 34th Street (and three others) and Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney in The Razor’s Edge. He had been married to Anne Shirley and, during production on The Blazing Forest, would divorce his second wife, also an actress, Gloria DeHaven, who had acted with Moorehead in Summer Holiday. Moorehead’s “love interest,” then nearly sixty-year-old William Demarest, had lent his characteristically hangdog features to films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, and The Palm Beach Story. He’d even been in The Jazz Singer, the first full-length feature film with audible dialogue, had been Oscar nominated for his supporting role in The Jolson Story, and would later replace an ailing William Frawley in the TV series My Three Sons.

A former World War I pilot himself, Richard Arlen had become a star for a time after William A.

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