The Ram's sign

TCM is running a bunch of movies tonight with people with disabilities. The Sign of the Ram is one of them, overnight at 3:00 AM. I recorded it when it was on Noir Alley a few months back, and since it's on again now, I decided to watch it to do a post here.

Phyllis Thaxter plays Sherida Binyon, a secretary about to work on trial with Leah St. Aubyn (Susan Peters), who lives with her family and works as a writer at one of those old Gothic houses that dot the coast of Devonshire and Cornwall in those old movies. Phyllis is picked up at the train station by Logan St. Aubyn (Ross Ford), who is the stepson of Leah and in love with an artist Catherine who's about to come back into his life.

At the house, Sherida meets Leah's husband Mallory (Alexander Knox), and his other two children, Jane (Allene Roberts) and the youngest Christine (Peggy Ann Garner). Although all of the children are only Leah's stepchildren, their mom having died some years back, the all love Leah. It seems like one big happy family, but how many comedies are set at manor houses like this?

That evening, while meeting Leah for the first time, Sherida makes a comment about going for walks along the cliffs, only to discover that Leah is wheelchair bound, thanks to a swimming accidnet along the rocky coast down below, which you just know is foreshadowing for later in the movie. But Leah wasn't offended by Sherida's comments.

What does offend Leah is an offhand action by Mallory and Sherida. Mallory spends a lot of time gardening, and has come up with a new breed of gardenia that he's going to name after Leah. That's a nice compliment to Leah, but then some time later she sees that Sherida has what is supposed to be Leah's gardenia. At this point Leah becomes insanely jealous, although she's able to keep up a good front, instead channeling her her jealousy into a low-key manipulation that would make Ann Blyth's Veda Pierce blush.

Leah works first on Jane, who has been pursued by the local doctor, Dr. Crowdy (Ron Randell), getting Jane to break off an invitation to a dance where the good doctor was planning to ask Jane to marry him. Then she tells Logan's girlfriend Catherin that the reason she (Catherine) was an orphan is that, well, she wasn't really an orphan, but her father was insane and it's probably going to be hereditary if Catherine marries Logan and has children. The way Leah so obviously telegraphs that she has something terrible to tell but doesn't want to immediately set off vibes that her story was complete nonsense, but apparently both Logan and Catherine believe it at first.

Worst, however, is Christine. She idolizes her stepmother, and when she gets the idea that Dad might be having an affair with Sherida, she decides to take matters into her own hands, which leads everyboy to realize just what Leah has become....

The Sign of the Ram was designed as a vehicle for Susan Peters, who had a tragic life. She was an Oscar-nominated ingenue until New Year's Day 1945. She and her then husband, future director Richard Quine, went on a hunting trip on which Susan was accidentally shot by her own gun. The bullet lodged in her spine and left her paralyzed from the waist down. The Sign of the Ram was designed to be a comeback for Peters, and while she does extremely well with the material and earned excellent reviews, future movie projects fell through and she died at the age of 31 not having made another movie after this one.

While Peters gives an excellent performance, I have to admit that the story itself is not always the best. I was reminded a bit of Leave Her to Heaven except that Leah wants to keep everybody around her, and not just her husband. Leah also doesn't have the character motivation to get as manipulative as she does, and the thought of Christine doing her bidding didn't really ring true to me.

Still, even the minor plot holes, The Sign of the Ram is definitely worth watching. I don't know that it's ever gotten a DVD release, so you're going to have to catch the rare TCM showing.