A Gallery of Mansion Movie Scenes
Drinks and Dining Scenes
Mansion Movies often feature hospitality scenes in which the insiders offer drinks and food to the outsider protagonists both as welcome gestures and to show off their status and style of entertaining guests. Drinks are more informal than full dinner service replete with fancy linens, elaborate centerpieces, candlesticks, crystal, specialty foods and choreographed service by uniformed servants. Such social rituals also are devices to provide the insiders and the movie audience with background information about the visiting outsiders as well reveal the motivations and insecurities of both sides. In dinner scenes there is always more than food on the menu. Rather that polite conversation, the exchange of words at the table tends to turn into an inquisition or debate.
My Man Godfrey
The Bullock Family at dinner in their New York City mansion being served by Godfrey the butler (William Powell). Around the table sit the stereotypical albeit exaggerated version of the mansion movie depiction of a wealthy family: the dithering mother, Mrs. Angelica Bullock (Alice Brady), the childlike, scatterbrained sister Irene (Carole Lombard), the snotty and spoiled sister Cornelia (Gail Patrick), the blustering business-‐obsessed father, Mr. Alexander Bullock (Eugene Palette) and Mrs. Bullock’s freeloader “protégé pianist Carlo (Mischa Auer).
Holiday
The Seaton family gathers to discuss the possibility of Julia’s engagement to outsider Johnny Case (Cary Grant). Brother Ned (Lew Ayres) and sister Linda (Katharine Hepburn) are embarrassed at their father’s and Julia’s negating Johnny’s ideas for their future.
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Led by Ned Seaton (Lew Ayers), the staff brings drinks to Linda Seaton’s personal guests in the intimate mansion playroom on the top floor of the Seaton mansion while downstairs hundreds of invited guests are arriving for the formal New Year’s Engagement Party for her sister Julia and Johnny Case.
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The Philadelphia Story
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Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn), her lecherous uncle Willie (Roland Young), her social-‐climbing fiancé George (John Howard), overwhelmed mother (Mary Nash) and sister assemble for drinks on the mansion patio before lunch. We get a glimpse into the society family’s personalities and family dynamics.
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Uncle Willie gets ready to pour champagne to reporter Macauley Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) after confessing he has been pretending to be Seth Lord, the skirt-‐chasing father of bride Tracy Lord as the real Seth (John Halliday) and his wife, Tracy’s mother Margaret and sister Dinah (Virginia Weidler) look on.
The Magnificent Ambersons
Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton). seated in the center, is a guest at a formal dinner hosted by Ambersons. Isabel Amberson Minafer (Delores Costello), Uncle Jack (Ray Collins), their father Major Amberson (Richard Bennett), with Aunt Fanny Minafer (Agnes Moorehead) and Isabel’s husband Wilber Minafer (Ronald Dillaway) and son George Minafer (Tim Holt). The family is appalled at the behavior of the insolent and rude George when he asks pointed questions and later rebukes Morgan on the negative impact of the proliferation of the automobile (including “The Morgan,” the early car model which Eugene designed and was manufacturing and selling) will have on the quality of life in their community and on society.
The Heiress
Dr. Sloper (Ralph Richardson), finding young Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) aggressively courting his plain daughter Catherine (Olivia de Haviland), invites the over-‐ confident suitor to have some sherry in an attempt to find out more about his intentions.
Dr. Sloper invites Morris to dinner at the family’s Washington Square mansion to dinner with Catherine and his matchmaking sister Lavinia (Miriam Hopkins). After interrogating Morris in detail about his past and his plans for the future, Sloper is convinced the young man is seeking his future through a prosperous marriage to his daughter instead of earning a fortune on his own. Morris, realizing Sloper’s attitude, decides that he and Catherine should elope.
Sunset Boulevard
Silent screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) is enjoying the company of her accidental guest writer, Joe Gillis (William Holden), who agrees to edit her “come-‐back “screenplay. Their conversation as usual always revolves about the hostess, her wants, her needs, and her ambition to be a star again.
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Norma Desmond hosts a card party attended by three of her former colleagues from the silent film era as Joe Gillis, the outsider, left out of the game and her inner circle sits behind her and watches.
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Sabrina
Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart), concerned that his younger bother David will jeopardize their business plans by his infatuation with Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn), confronts the newly sophisticated chauffeur’s daughter. She rightly suggests that he has been sent by the family to buy her off, but she is not going along with his offer.
Linus, not giving up, moves on to plan number two; i.e., wooing the charming Sabrina by gaining her sympathy for him as a lonely middle-‐aged man who has loved and lost. He succeeds in winning her affection.
The Haunting
Theo (Claire Bloom) and Eleanor (Julie Harris) have been invited to the Hill House mansion by Professor Markway (Richard Johnson) for his experiment in studying psychic phenomena at the reputedly haunted mansion. Theo has been noted as exhibiting special psychic powers and Eleanor has been reported to have had an extreme supernatural experience in her past. Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) is a member of the family that owns the house. The formal dinner served in the mansion’s elegant dining room is an opportunity for the group to find out about each other on their first night at Hill House.
They meet again the next morning for breakfast. Eleanor and Dr. Markway arrive before the others and there is a further interchange of personal information between them. Theo joins them. Luke comes into the room and asks the others about strange writings on the hallway walls outside the dining room. They all go out to look at it together. Large cursive words written in something like chalk spell out a message:
