The Little Foxes (DVD, 2001)

Superb playwright, Lillian Hellman (1905-84) wrote this screenplay for "The Little Foxes," saying that she "wrote her 'angry comedy' based on her own family's biannual dinner at which people drew lots for a diamond that had been left in her great-grandmother's estate." Hellman's first play for Samuel Goldwyn was "The Children's Hour." This hit script and film was based upon a 19th century case of two girls' school mistresses whose reputations were ruined when their pupils accused them of lesbianism.

After a poor showing of Hellman's "Days to Come" in 1936, about labor struggles in an Ohio town, Hellman said she "was so scared [that she] wrote "Little Foxes, 1939, nine times." This is one script that made her famous. (The other is "The Children's Hour).

"The Little Foxes" is a vivid portrayal of sibling rivalry, Southern plantation slavery, and greed in the Hubbard family of Alabama. The story takes place at the turn of the 19th-20th century, in the deep South of Alabama where the Hubbard siblings are involved in their own brand of a power-hungry civil war. Who better to play the reigning schemer Regina than Bette Davis, the Hubbard sibling who commands ownership of a cotton mill that exploits slaves while yielding millions of dollars on their bent backs? Davis is the Oscar winner alright, leading a near perfect cast through a major screen achievement.

The DVD is almost 2 hours long and in black and white, with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. It is a bone chilling indictment of Alabaman slave plantation white corruption and greed.

No one should ever say that Lillian Hellman wasn't a controversial and political playwright! The film is not rated probably because anyone could watch it. Though I imagine it would bore little children since the play's basic themes are quite complexly adult (but not in a R Rated sense at all).