by Linda Kay

Starring: Carole

Directed by: George Seaton

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: A promising premise loses direction in this comedy about self-involved theater couple Lydia and Jeff Bolton (Joan Bennett and Robert Cummings) who are too busy to have children, not realizing a precocious waif spirit (Gigi Perreau) has decided they are to be her parents, despite being dissuaded from her actions by angels Charles (Clifton Webb) and Arthur (Edmund Gwenn).

Kitty Cameos: The Boltons own a pair of longhair silver Persian cats named Lynn and Alfred (named after noted stage stars Fontanne and Lunt). One of the cats is first seen on the couch when Jeff sits down to take a phone call, unaware of the angels hovering nearby.

The cat continues to sit with Jeff after he moves to a chair to read a script.

Usually the two cats can just barely be spotted in the background of various scenes.

They finally get one front and center shot when they are introduced to the angel Charles, now incarnate as a wealthy man from Montana named Slim.

The couple invite “Slim” to their farm and they take the cats along with them, although we only get a brief glimpse of what is supposed to be the kitties in a house-shaped carrier as Jeff tells their butler to bring more cat food. The cats are never seen at the farm.

The only other time we ever spot the cats is in the background of another shot later in the movie.

Behind the Scenes

While the cats’ characters are named Alfred and Lynn, we do know that one of the two feline actors was reportedly a temperamental female Persian named Carole owned by trainer Frank Weatherwax (most notably known as Lassie’s trainer.)

A press release made its way into numerous newspapers around the time of the film’s release, extoling Carole’s on set attitude as the cause of delays in filming, such as reported in Harold Hefferman’s Hollywood Diary column from the Evening Star, published July 5, 1950:

    A sleek Persian personality cat by the name of Carole — a feline with long, white, silky hair — was putting Clifton Webb and a few other stars in their places on the set of “For Heaven’s Sake.”
    Carole demanded quiet on the stage. She demanded even more quiet than Greta Garbo in her heyday. She — the cat, not Garbo — stalked off the set in a huff once when Webb coughed and another time when Joan Bennett clicked her heels on the floor.
    Carole was signed at $50 a day after one of the biggest cat hunts ever conducted in Hollywood. Frank Weatherwax, discoverer of many meowers and barkers, was sent by 20th Century-Fox on a week’s trip to find the right kind of Persian for the picture. Weatherwax bought her from a family 40 miles from Los Angeles.
    Weatherwax trained Carole for a month. He used dummy cameras and lights to accustom her to movie technique. He bought her a stand-in. And she took to acting like Tallulah Bankhead does.
    No one suspected her of temperament until she started to play her first scene. When the boom man blew his whistle for silence, Carole was halfway up to the ceiling. Webb, Miss Bennett, Robert Cummings and Edmund Gwenn say around for 10 minutes waiting for her arched back to subside. The director, George Seaton, then forbade all whistle blowing.
    Cummings knocked a telephone off a table in the next “take” — and Carol told him off in language unprintable.
    “She’s a sensitive actress,” said Weatherwax. “We’ve got to have quiet.”
    Director Seaton asked, please, for a little more cooperation.
    From them on, Webb and the others almost tiptoed. No one whispered. It was as quiet as the time Ethel Barrymore died in “Pinky.” Nobody even bothered to look at the human actors as they went through their scenes. It was Carole this and Carole that. They petted her and fed her liver and called on her stand-in frequently to give her rest spells, and she lapped up the attention like milk.
    As the lovely Carole left the set, she casually looked over the human stars — with that kind of look Bostonians give New Yorkers. She knew she had stolen the scene.

Hedda Hopper also got into the act, including a blurb about carol in her column as posted in The Akron Beacon on July 19, 1950:

    Clifton Webb is up to his ears in advisers on how to play a cowboy angel in “For Heaven’s Sake.” Jack Perry’s coaching him in boxing; Lois Craft’s teaching him to handle a harp; Johnny Bray’s helping with his Texas accent; Bob Adler’s advising him on roping and riding, and Frank Weatherwax is teaching him how to get on with cats.

What seems strange is the fact that these stories only mention Carole and a stand-in and never mention there are actually two cats in the movie. Also the amount of talent searching and cat training supposedly utilized by Weatherwax seems a bit excessive for two cats who are basically just laying around on the set (and appear to be completely relaxed doing so!) Perhaps the filmmakers realized that having Carole’s stand-in sharing scenes with her kept her calmer? Or perhaps Carole’s “difficulties” could be chalked up to the imagination of the Hollywood press department.

The photo caption offered on the back of a publicity photo released by the Central Press Association at least acknowledges the two cats, although as with the press release above a bit of Hollywood press fluff is also added:

Final Mewsings: We don’t know if Carole made any more film appearances but she probably didn’t appreciate this negative press.

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