Hatter's Castle (1942) DVD-R

Starring Robert Newton, Deborah Kerr, James Mason, Emlyn Williams,
Henry Oscar
Directed by Lance Comfort

Print: black/white
Runtime: 96 min.
Genre: drama
Print Quality: B-

Paramount Pictures' British division was responsible for this adaptation
of A.J. Cronin's novel Hatter's Castle. Robert Newton is appropriately
mean-spirited as an 1890s hatter, James Brodie, who is anxious to claw
his way up from poverty. Desperate to make himself socially acceptable
as his income increases, Brodie proceeds to make life miserable for
those closest to him: his wife (Beatrice Varley) and daughter (Deborah
Kerr). For all his blinkered social climbing, Brodie can never truly escape
his true station in life — a moral better suited to the class-conscious
British audiences than the equal-opportunity Americans. Hatter's Castle
was well distributed in the U.S. through Paramount's intimidatingly
efficient studio-owned theater circuit.