Shadow of a Doubt was incredible last night. I hadn't seen it in - easily - OVER two decades, but everyone in it has such indelible images that it's as though I've seen every actor many times over in other films or TV since then ... and it just ain't so. I was up late researching several of the more minor characters - not that anyone is truly minor in a masterpiece like this.
The younger sister, played by Edna May Wonacott, looks for all the world like an up and coming Patricia Hitchcock, who was a few years older but Pat's first appearance in a Hitchcock film wasn't until Stage Fright in 1950. Edna May only had a few uncredited bit parts after that, and that was it for her.
The girlfriend of Teresa Wright - not the one who has a more significant presence when she turns up working in a seedy night spot, but the quieter one with the underbite - was played by Estelle Jewell. This was Estelle Jewell's only film. She died in 1992.
It's sad that almost nothing of 1943 Santa Rosa remains. The tracks and train station, yes, and the family's house. But I'm always struck by how lively even small-town downtowns were depicted in those years. I want to step back into that world where it seems half the town is out walking and shopping and eating and doing things and using the library till it closes at 9 pm. And it's not just fiction. I remember that from the late 1950s and early 1960s in places we lived. But I digress...
