Welcome to Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm your host, Glen Holland.

Tonight's film is the 1944 Psychological thriller "Gaslight" directed by George Cukor for MGM.

The screenplay was adapted from the 1938 stage play by British author Patrick Hamilton.

"Gaslight" stars Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, Dan May Witty, and Angela Lansbury in her motion picture debut.

The film begins in the aftermath of a murder.

A world famous opera singer, Alice Alquist has been killed in the course of a robbery at her home on Thornton Square in Victoria in London.

Her niece Paula, who has lived with her aunt since her parents' deaths leaves the house and travels to Italy where she studies to become an opera singer herself.

After several years of training, she falls in love with her singing teacher's new accompanist, Gregory Anton and marries him two weeks later.

At his insistence they returned to London to live in her aunt's long empty house in Thornton Square.

Paula knows no one in London except for an older woman who lives nearby whom she met during a train trip in Italy and a young man who seems to recognize her when she and Gregory visit the Tower of London.

In the house on Thornton Square, Gregory hires a surprisingly impertinent young maid to keep Paula from suffering from unpleasant memories.

Gregory suggests putting her aunt's belongings into an unused room on the house's top floor and barring the door.

When Paula discovers a letter to her aunt from a young man named Sergis Bauer, Gregory reacts violently and snatches it away from her.

Soon strange things begin to happen to Paula.

Gregory accuses her of stealing things she has no memory of taking.

And when Paula is alone at night she notices the gas lights in her room dimming.

The mysterious noise is echoing around the room.

Is she going mad or is something more sinister going on?

Patrick Hamilton's play "Gaslight" premiered in London in December, 1938.

Hamilton, a novelist as well as a playwright had his first stage success with "Rope" in 1929.

"Rope" was based on the real life murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Lobe in Chicago in 1924.

It was made into a film starting James Stewart and directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1948.

But Hamilton's life took a dark turn after this early success.

He was disgusted with many aspects of modern life and drank excessively.

In 1932, he was hit by a drunk driver and dragged through the streets of London.

The accident left him disabled and disfigured.

Two years later, his mother committed suicide.

But in spite of these tragedies Hamilton continued to write both novels and plays and in 1938 had his second major stage success "Gaslight."

The original London production of the play ran for six months but it was later produced in the United States in a modified form under the Title "Five Chelsea Lane" in 1941.

Vincent Price and his wife, actress Edith Barrett saw production in Los Angeles and Price worked to bring the original play to New York.

It opened on Broadway on December 5th, 1941 under the title "Angel Street" with Vincent Price in the lead.

Despite a blow to business with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two days later, "Angel Street" proved popular, both critics and audiences and became one of the longest running non-musical plays in Broadway history closing at the end of 1944 after 1,295 performances.

"Gaslight" first came into cinemas in a British production starring Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard in 1940.

It was given the title "Angel Street" when released in the United States to take advantage of the popularity of the Broadway production.

Fairly closely to the play and was well reviewed.

The popularity of the play and the British film led MGM to purchase the rights for an American produced remake with the stipulation that all prints of the earlier version would be destroyed.

However, some of the prints of the British film survived notably those labeled "Angel Street" rather than "Gaslight."

And so both films are still available for movie audiences today.

In a nice turnabout, the 1944 MGM version of "Gaslight" was retitled "The Murder in Thornton Square" when it was released in the United Kingdom so audiences would know it wasn't a reissue Of the 1940 British version.

"Gaslight" opened on May 4th, 1944 to popular success and critical acclaim.

Bosley crowd the rhythm New York Times wrote with Mr. Boyer doing the driving in his best dead pan hypnotic style while the flames flickers strangely in the gas jets and the mood music bangs with heavy threats.

It is no wonder that Miss Bergman goes to pieces in a most distressing way.

Both of these popular performers play their roles right to the hilt.

Nice little personality vignettes are interestingly contributed to by Joseph Cotten as a stubborn detective Dan May Witty and Angela Lansbury as a maid.

On a two million dollar budget, the movie made $4.6 million in its initial release or just under $75 million today.

Ingrid Bergman was at first reluctant to take on the role of Paula Alquist since Paula's emotional fragility and submissiveness ran counter to her own self image as a strong, independent woman.

Director George Cukor suggested she study the patients at a middle institution to get a sense of how Paula's apparent symptoms might manifest themselves.

Bergman followed his advice and used one particular female patient as her model for her portrayal of Paula.

The role ultimately became one of Bergman's favorites with good reason.

It earned her the first of her three Academy awards for best actress.

Bergman's first day working on the film was the day the train sequence was shot.

The scene where she had to kiss Charles Boyer passionately when he meets her at the station.

The awkwardness of the situation was complicated by the fact that since Bergman and Boyer were the same height, he had to stand on a box to appear taller.

A box Bergman kept kicking as she ran towards him.

Ingrid Bergman later said Charles Boyer was one of the nicest actors she had ever worked with as well as the most intelligent.

She wrote "He was widely read and well educated "and so different."

Among the seven Oscar nominations for "Gaslight" were best actor for Charles Boyer, best picture, best director for George Cukor and best adapted screenplay.

But all four of those Oscars went instead to Leo McCary's "Going My Way."

Starring Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald.

"Gaslight" did manage to claim a second Oscar for best art direction in a black and white movie.

The carefully detailed Victorian sets of the house on Thornton Square were designed by Paul Hutchinsky a German refugee who was well acquainted with the decor common in the homes of the European upper classes.

Hutchinsky filled each of the sets with paintings, furniture and period brick [mumbles] to emphasize Paula's feelings of claustrophobia and vague unease.

Perhaps the most surprising Academy Award nomination for "Gaslight" was for best supporting actress for Angela Lansbury.

"Gaslight" was her first movie and she was only 17 years old when she was cast.

One of the screenwriters, John Ben Bruton had suggested to George Cukor that he should screen test some of the daughters of Irish actress Moyna Macgill.

Angela Lansbury was the first of her daughters to be tested.

Despite her complete lack of film experience Cukor was struck by her poise and ability and called her a natural born actress.

When Lansbury was cast in "Gaslight" she had to leave her job as a sales assistant at Bullock's department store in Los Angeles.

She was making $27 a week and when she told her boss she was leaving, he to match whatever she would be making in her new job.

He decided it would be best to let her go when he learned her new salary would be $500 a week.

The primary cultural legacy of "Gaslight" is its contemporary use as a verb to describe the sort of mental abuse Gregory Anton inflicted on his wife Paula.

Gas lighting became a popular term in amateur psychology in the mid 2010s.

It refers to a dynamic in personal relationships where one party attempts to gain dominance over another through negating that person's experience, perceptions or emotions leading the other person increasingly to doubt themselves and the way they understand their situation.

The intention is to undermine the other person's sense of self, to isolate them from other people and to make them entirely dependent on their abuser.

As the movie "Gaslight" makes clear, the sort of abuse is most common among romantic partners and it is extremely unsettling to watch in action.

Oddly enough, some commentators have suggested that MGM was guilty of a form of gas lighting itself in 1944 when the studio heads tried to destroy all the prints of the 1940 British version of Hamilton's play.

In doing so, they were essentially trying to convince their audiences that the movie version of "Gaslight" they thought they had seen four years earlier never really existed at all.

Please join us again next time for another Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm Glen Holland.

Goodnight.