Another Part of the Forest is a 1948 American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Michael Gordon

Michael Gordon (film director)

Michael Gordon was an American stage actor and stage and film director.-Life and career:Gordon was born in Baltimore and raised in a middle class Jewish community. He was a member of the Group Theatre , and was blacklisted as a Communist in the days of McCarthyism...

. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 by Vladimir Pozner is based on the 1946 play of the same name

Another Part of the Forest

Another Part of the Forest is a 1946 play by Lillian Hellman, a prequel to her 1939 drama The Little Foxes.-Plot synopsis:Set in the fictional town of Bowden, Alabama in June 1880, the plot focuses on the wealthy, ruthless, and innately evil Hubbard family and their rise to prominence...

 by Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Lillian Florence "Lily" Hellman was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes...

, which was a prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 to her 1939 drama The Little Foxes

The Little Foxes

The Little Foxes is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15 in the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Set in a small town in Alabama in...

.

Plot

Set in the fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

al town of Bowden, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

 in June 1880, the plot focuses on the wealthy, ruthless, and innately evil Hubbard family and their rise to prominence. Patriarch

Patriarch

Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...

 Marcus Hubbard was born into poverty and toiled at menial labor while teaching himself Greek philosophy

Greek philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...

 and the basics of business

Business

A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

 acumen. He ultimately made his fortune by exploiting his fellow Southerners

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

 during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

. Shrewd, amoral elder son Benjamin is plotting to usurp his father's power and steal his money by revealing a dark secret from his days as a war profiteer

War profiteering

A war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term has strong negative connotations. General profiteering may also occur in peace time.-International arms dealers:...

. Younger son Oscar, a Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

 supporter, lusts for whore

Prostitution

Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 Laurette Sincee rather than penniless neighbor Birdie Bagtry, who desperately is looking for a loan on her family's valuable land, a situation Benjamin hopes to exploit. Regina is the sexually active daughter who wants to live in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 with Birdie's brother, former Confederate

Confederate States Army

The Confederate States Army was the army of the Confederate States of America while the Confederacy existed during the American Civil War. On February 8, 1861, delegates from the seven Deep South states which had already declared their secession from the United States of America adopted the...

 officer John Bagtry, a move discouraged by her father, who has a disturbingly unnatural closeness to the girl. When all his offspring turn on Marcus in one way or another, their mother Lavinia - the only one in the household with any sense of morality - tells her vicious children she hopes never to see them again.

Cast

• Fredric March
  Fredric March
  Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...
  
   ..... Marcus Hubbard
• Florence Eldridge
  Florence Eldridge
  Florence Eldridge was an American actress.-Personal life:...
  
   ..... Lavinia Hubbard
• Dan Duryea
  Dan Duryea
  Dan Duryea was an American actor, known for roles in film, stage and television.-Early life:Born and raised in White Plains, New York, Duryea graduated from White Plains Senior High School in 1924 and Cornell University in 1928. While at Cornell, Duryea was elected into the Sphinx Head Society...
  
   ..... Oscar Hubbard
• Edmond O'Brien
  Edmond O'Brien
  Edmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...
  
   ..... Benjamin 'Ben' Hubbard
• Ann Blyth
  Ann Blyth
  Ann Marie Blyth is an American actress and singer, often cast in Hollywood musicals, but also successful in dramatic roles. Her performance as Veda Pierce in the 1945 film Mildred Pierce was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.-Life and career:Blyth was born in Mount Kisco,...
  
   ..... Regina Hubbard
• John Dall
  John Dall
  John Dall was an American actor.Primarily a stage actor, he is best remembered today for two film roles; the cool-minded intellectual killer in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, and the trigger-happy lead in the 1950 noir Gun Crazy.He first came to fame as the young prodigy who comes alive under the...
  
   ..... John Bagtry
• Betsy Blair
  Betsy Blair
  Betsy Blair was an American actress of film and stage, long based in London.Blair pursued a career in entertainment from the age of eight, and as a child worked as an amateur dancer, performed on radio, and worked as a model, before joining the chorus of Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in 1940...
  
   ..... Birdie Bagtry
• Dona Drake
  Dona Drake
  Dona Drake was an American singer, dancer and film actress in the 1930s and 1940s. She was born Eunice Westmoreland in Miami, Florida, in 1914. Entering show business in the 1930s, she used the names Una Velon, Rita Rio and Rita Shaw. She settled on the stage name Dona Drake in the early 1940s...
  
   ..... Laurette Sincee
• Fritz Leiber
  Fritz Leiber
  Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...
  
   ..... Colonel Isham
• Whit Bissell
  Whit Bissell
  Whitner Nutting Bissell , better known as Whit Bissell, was an American actor.-Early life:Born in New York City, Bissell was the son of prominent surgeon Dr. J. Dougal Bissell. He trained with the Carolina Playmakers, a theatrical organization associated with the University of North Carolina at...
  
   ..... Jugger
• Don Beddoe
  Don Beddoe
  -Career:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Beddoe made his Broadway acting debut in 1929, receiving top billing in Nigger Rich....
  
   ..... Penniman
• Wilton Graff ..... Sam Taylor
• Virginia Farmer ..... Clara Bagtry
• Libby Taylor ..... Coralee

Critical reception

Thomas M. Pryor of the New York Times called the film "a compelling entertainment" and added, "Vladimir Pozner has preserved the spirit of the play in his screen treatment and Michael Gordon's direction gives a fluency to scenes which might easily have become static due to the profuseness of the dialogue."

Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

said, "Under Michael Gordon's direction it is a nearly perfect example of how to film a play. There is hardly a shot which does not set up visual tension against the lashing, steel-spring dialogue; there is not a single performance which is short of adequate; the work of Miss Eldridge, Mr. O'Brien and Betsey Blair, as a shaky-minded neighbor, is much more."

TV Guide

TV Guide

TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

stated, "This utterly depressing film is salvaged through intense performances that rivet the viewer, along with the literate, acerbic script."

Awards and nominations

Screenwriter Vladimir Pozner was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards, for Best Written American Drama and the Robert Meltzer Award for the Screenplay Dealing Most Ably with Problems of the American Scene.