The Killing Of Sister George (film)
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''The Killing of Sister George'' is a 1968 American film directed by
Robert Aldrich Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His notable credits include '' Vera Cruz'' (1954), '' Kiss Me Deadly'' (1955), '' The Big Knife'' (1955), '' Autumn ...
and filmed at his Aldrich Studios in Los Angeles. It is based on the 1964 play by British playwright
Frank Marcus Frank Ulrich Marcus (30 June 1928 – 5 August 1996) was a British playwright, best known for '' The Killing of Sister George''. Life and career Marcus was born 30 June 1928 into a Jewish family in Breslau (then in Germany). They came to En ...
. In the film, an ageing lesbian television actress, June "George" Buckridge (
Beryl Reid Beryl Elizabeth Reid, (17 June 1919 – 13 October 1996), was a British actress of stage and screen. She won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for ''The Killing of Sister George'', the 1980 Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performan ...
, reprising her role from the stage play), simultaneously faces the loss of her popular television role and the breakdown of her long-term relationship with a younger woman ( Susannah York). Although Marcus's play was a
black comedy Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to disc ...
, the film version was marketed as a "shocking drama"; it added explicit lesbian content that was not in the original play, and was presented as a serious treatment of lesbianism. Along with the more campy films '' What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'' and '' Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte'', ''The Killing of Sister George'' cemented Robert Aldrich's status as a cult-favorite director with queer audiences.


Plot

Middle-aged actress June Buckridge (
Beryl Reid Beryl Elizabeth Reid, (17 June 1919 – 13 October 1996), was a British actress of stage and screen. She won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for ''The Killing of Sister George'', the 1980 Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performan ...
) plays "Sister George", a lovable motor scooter-riding district nurse and local sage, in a fictional long-running BBC television soap opera, ''Applehurst''. She has been with the show for four years and is so identified with her character that she is nicknamed "George". Off-screen, June is outspoken, ribald, cigar-smoking and frequently inebriated, unlike her kindly on-screen persona. Although June has been popular with viewers in the past, several ''Applehurst'' characters have recently been killed off causing June to worry that Sister George may be next. Her worry affects her already volatile relationship with her live-in lover, a younger, beautiful woman named Alice ( Susannah York), whom June calls "Childie". Childlike Alice plays with dolls, writes poetry, and has a minor fashion industry job, but relies on June for most of her financial and emotional support. Domineering June is alternately affectionate toward Alice and abusive to her, and reacts jealously when Alice spends time with other women or men. Alice rebels by talking back to June and refusing to play along with a "contrition" game in which June makes her kneel and eat a cigar butt. After an ''Applehurst'' colleague jokes about Sister George possibly dying on the show, June walks out on a script reading, gets drunk, and forces herself into a taxi alongside two young Catholic
nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...
s, whom she sexually assaults, resulting in the taxi having an accident in a busy intersection. The nuns' Mother Superior and the Archbishop complain to the BBC, causing powerful network producer Mrs Croft (
Coral Browne Coral Edith Browne (23 July 1913 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian-American stage and screen actress. Her extensive theatre credits included Broadway productions of ''Macbeth'' (1956), '' The Rehearsal'' (1963) and '' The Right Honourable Gent ...
) to visit June at home and lecture her about her behaviour and her attitude at work. When June balks at apologising for the incident, Mrs Croft makes clear that her future at the network depends on her apologising and changing her ways. Mrs Croft further infuriates June by taking an interest in Alice, complimenting her cooking and encouraging her poetic aspirations. At the next script reading, June finds that Sister George has been temporarily written out of the show with an illness, seemingly as punishment for June, and raising the possibility that her character will not recover. June's spirits improve when she receives the next script, showing that Sister George has recovered and returned to riding her scooter. June and Alice go to a party at Gateways lesbian nightclub, to which she jokingly invites Mrs Croft. Halfway through the party, when June is already annoyed by Alice dancing with another woman, Mrs Croft arrives to tell June in person that Sister George will die by being hit by a ten-ton truck. After June storms off, Mrs Croft invites Alice to meet with her to further discuss Alice's poetry. On June's last day of filming for ''Applehurst'', Alice untruthfully says she cannot meet June for lunch because she is busy at work. June, upset, tries to sabotage her fellow actors' performances and to drag out the filming as long as possible; afterward, she finds out that Alice lied to her in order to meet with Mrs Croft. At her farewell cast party, June makes a scene, insulting the senior network executive, pouring drinks over a fellow cast member, and finally exploding in front of the guests when Mrs Croft offers her a new role as the voice of a talking cow on a children's puppet show. She confronts Mrs Croft and Alice, who leave the party together and return to June and Alice's flat. Mrs Croft persuades Alice to leave and stay with her for one night in order to avoid June's wrath, and offers to help Alice further her writing ambitions. Alice and Mrs Croft end up having sex in Alice's bedroom, and June catches them in the act; this leads to a final confrontation in which June reveals that Alice is thirty-two years old and the mother of a teenage daughter, whom she abandoned. Alice leaves with Mrs Croft, dropping her key in the letter box to show she will not return. Left alone, June wanders onto the deserted ''Applehurst'' set, destroying equipment and props and uttering "moo" like a cow.


Cast


Adaptation and production

Robert Aldrich bought the screen rights to the play in April 1967.
Lukas Heller Lukas Heller (21 July 1930 – 2 November 1988) was a German-born screenwriter. Biography Heller was born to a Jewish family in Kiel. His father was political philosopher Hermann Heller. He was known for writing the screen adaptions for several ...
wrote the screenplay for the 1968 feature film based on the 1964 play of the same name by
Frank Marcus Frank Ulrich Marcus (30 June 1928 – 5 August 1996) was a British playwright, best known for '' The Killing of Sister George''. Life and career Marcus was born 30 June 1928 into a Jewish family in Breslau (then in Germany). They came to En ...
. Although
Bette Davis Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (; April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress with a career spanning more than 50 years and 100 acting credits. She was noted for playing unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her p ...
and
Angela Lansbury Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was an Irish-British and American film, stage, and television actress. Her career spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States, and her work received a great deal ...
were both offered the role of June "George" Buckridge, the filmmakers ultimately cast Beryl Reid, who had played the part in the original cast production. Aldrich says he met with Davis. "We were supposed to be discussing the part but what I was really trying to decide if we could work together again," he said. "The outcome was doubtful."Aldrich: A Finger on Hollywood's Pulse Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times2 July 1967: c10. In the movie, ''Applehurst'' was changed from a radio programme to a television soap opera, and the lesbian themes of the story were made more explicit, most notably by adding the sex scene between Alice and Mrs. Croft that is not in the stage play. In a televised documentary broadcast at Christmas 1990 on UK Channel 4, entitled ''Caviar To the General'', Coral Browne described filming the scene and her apprehension at doing so, but trusted Aldrich who explained she would never be undressed for the scene. Browne revealed that Susannah York was deeply upset about the scene and was eating grapes in between takes to stop herself from being physically sick. In the end, Aldrich decided to film both actors separately "making love to the camera" rather than each other. A number of scenes were filmed on location in London. The opening sequence shows June drinking at The Holly Bush public house, before wandering through the streets and alleyways of
Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the London Borough o ...
west of Heath Street, and emerging at
Hammersmith Bridge Hammersmith Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the River Thames in west London. It links the southern part of Hammersmith in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, on the north side of the river, and Barnes in the London Borough ...
. The nightclub party sequence was filmed at the Gateways Club, a real-life lesbian nightclub then located in
Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
. ''The Killing of Sister George'' was the first film to portray the interior of a lesbian nightclub. The exterior scenes outside June's and her neighbour's flats were filmed in
Knightsbridge Knightsbridge is a residential and retail district in central London, south of Hyde Park. It is identified in the London Plan as one of two international retail centres in London, alongside the West End. Toponymy Knightsbridge is an ancien ...
.


Release

Between the time ''The Killing of Sister George'' started filming and ended production, the United States movie industry instituted the new
MPAA film rating system The Motion Picture Association film rating system is used in the United States and its territories to rate a motion picture's suitability for certain audiences based on its content. The system and the ratings applied to individual motion pictures ...
. Largely on the basis of the graphic sex scene between Alice and Mrs. Croft, ''The Killing of Sister George'' received an
X rating An X rating is a rating used in various countries to classify films that have content deemed suitable only for adults. It is used when the violent or sexual content of a film is considered to be potentially disturbing to general audiences. Aust ...
, which limited its screening in US cinemas and ability to be advertised in mainstream newspapers. Aldrich spent $75,000 battling the rating, but his lawsuit was dismissed, and the film died at the box office. In the UK, the film also had considerable censorship problems, with
BBFC The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of fi ...
chief John Trevelyan demanding some dialogue changes and the complete removal of the sex scene; this led to a standoff between Aldrich and the BBFC. The
Greater London Council The Greater London Council (GLC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council (LCC) which had covered a much smaller area. The GLC was dissolved in 198 ...
and 11 other councils allowed the film to be shown with lesser cuts to the scene, and Trevelyan finally passed a cut version for countrywide release in 1970. All subsequent home releases of the film have been fully uncut. The Committee for the Theatrical Review of the
Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities The Ministry of Culture ( it, Ministero della Cultura - MiC) is the ministry of the Government of Italy in charge of national museums and the '' monuments historiques''. MiC's headquarters are located in the historic Collegio Romano Palace (v ...
also rated the film as VM18, not suitable for children under 18, in addition to mandating the removal of two scenes involving a kiss between women, and one scene where Mrs. Croft caresses Alice's breast. Since its theatrical release, the film has been shown a number of times on British television, although sometimes with the sex scene deleted. Rarely seen on American television, it was broadcast uncut by
Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of ...
as part of a June 2007 salute to gay cinema.


Reception


Box office

The movie earned rentals of $3.45 million in North America and $1.875 million in other countries. However, because of its high cost, it recorded an overall loss of $750,000. In France it had admissions of 46,638.French box office results for Robert Aldrich films
at Box Office Story
The week of June 4, 1969, the movie was the #1 box office grosser in the United States, making $628,500. It was the first X-rated movie to place number one at the weekly box office in the United States. (Subsequent X-rated movies to hit #1 at the box office: ''Midnight Cowboy'' during its tenth week of release on August 6, 1969, and ''Beyond the Valley of the Dolls'' on July 22, 1970, in its fifth week on the chart.)


Critical response

Critical response was generally unfavorable. Renata Adler of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' was critical of the film, not just for displaying lesbians, but also for actress performances and the camera work. Later reviews of the film have been much more favorable and on
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
it holds an approval rating of 67% based on 15 reviews." In an online review for Filmfanatic.org, it said that the best aspect of the film was the relationship between George and Alice and that York's performance is "raw and daring". It went on to say that "This controversial movie may not be for all tastes, but I believe it’s must-see viewing for film fanatics." Derek Winnert commented that "Aldrich has been accused of coarsening and commercialising a subtle play. But, nevertheless, it is a spirited, highly entertaining, even sometimes enlightening, possibly even liberating movie, pulling lesbians out of the closet." He praised the performances of the leading actresses, in which he stated "Reid’s marvellous performance is at the heart of Aldrich’s version of Frank Marcus’s theatre hit. George is a great character, a gin-swigging, cigar-chomping, sadistic masculine woman, the opposite of the sweet character she plays on radio. Reid brings her to vivid life, both pathetic and sympathetic." Of York and Browne, he mentioned they were almost equally fine in their roles.


Award nominations

Beryl Reid was nominated for the
Golden Globe Award The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of ...
for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama.


Home Media

''The Killing of Sister George'' was released to Region 1 DVD by
Anchor Bay Entertainment Anchor Bay Entertainment (formerly Video Treasures and Starmaker Entertainment) was an American home entertainment and production company. It was a subsidiary of Starz Inc. Anchor Bay Entertainment marketed and sold feature films, television se ...
on 22 February 2000, while distribution rights were later acquired by
MGM Home Entertainment Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment LLC ( d/b/a MGM Home Entertainment and formerly known as MGM Home Video, MGM/CBS Home Video and MGM/UA Home Video) is the home video division of the American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. History ...
, who released the film on 23 August 2005. The film was made available on Region 2 DVD in the United Kingdom on 8 April 2002 via
Prism Leisure Corporation Prism Leisure Corporation Plc was a distribution and publishing company that primarily focused on reissues and compilations, often at low prices. The company was located in Enfield, Middlesex, United Kingdom, History The company was founded in ...
. A reissued DVD was released from Fremantle Home Entertainment on 1 January 2008. On 27 August 2018, it was announced that
Kino Lorber Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films ...
would be releasing ''The Killing of Sister George'' on Blu-ray in the United States and Canada. The set contains a new 4K remaster, DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and optional English SDH subtitles. Special features include audio commentaries, interviews and theatrical trailer. It was released on 27 November 2018.


See also

*
List of American films of 1968 This is a list of American films released in 1968. '' Oliver!'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Top-grossing films # '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' # '' Funny Girl'' # '' Planet of the Apes'' # '' Rosemary's Baby'' # '' The Odd Couple'' # ...
*
List of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender-related films by storyline This is a list of films with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-related storylines. This list contains theatrically released cinema films that highlight the issues and experiences of the LGBT community through the inclusion of LGBT romance a ...
*
Grace Archer Grace Archer (also Fairbrother) is a fictional character from the BBC's long-running radio soap, ''The Archers''. She was one of the original characters and was played by Monica Gray and then Ysanne Churchman. The episode depicting her death was b ...
* "
The Bowmans "The Bowmans" is an episode of the BBC television situation comedy programme ''Hancock'', the final BBC series featuring Tony Hancock, first broadcast on 2 June 1961. It was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The title is a retronym; the e ...
"


References


External links

*
TCM film history
{{DEFAULTSORT:Killing Of Sister George, The 1968 films 1960s black comedy films American black comedy films American LGBT-related films 1968 LGBT-related films 1960s English-language films Films about actors American films based on plays Films directed by Robert Aldrich Lesbian-related films LGBT-related black comedy films Films scored by Gerald Fried Films set in London Films shot in London Cinerama Releasing Corporation films 1968 comedy films 1968 drama films 1960s American films