![jane eyre movie 1944 elizabeth taylor jane eyre movie 1944 elizabeth taylor](http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/5200000/Liz-in-National-Velvet-elizabeth-taylor-5245706-500-377.jpg)
The film's screenplay was based on a radio adaptation of the novel by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air, which John Houseman collaborated on.Keep an eye out for an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor as the consumptive orphanage friend of young Jane Eyre (played as child by Peggy Ann Gardner).
![jane eyre movie 1944 elizabeth taylor jane eyre movie 1944 elizabeth taylor](https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/284321219020_/1968-Hebrew-ISRAEL-FILM-POSTER-Movie-URI-ZOHAR.jpg)
This in no way detracts from the overall excellence of the film of all adaptations of Jane Eyre (it had previously been filmed in 1913, 19, and has been remade several times since), this 1943 version is one of the best. But Jane Eyre was made at 20th Century-Fox, a studio disinclined to promote the auteur theory like most Fox productions, this is a work by committee rather than the product of one man. To be sure, Welles contributed ideas throughout the filming also, the script was heavily influenced by the Mercury Theater on the Air radio version of Jane Eyre, on which Welles, John Houseman and musical director Bernard Herrmann all collaborated. The presence of Orson Welles in the cast (he receives top billing), coupled with the dark, Germanic style of the direction and photography, has led some impressionable cineasts to conclude that Welles, and not Stevenson, was the director. In the tradition of Victorian romances, this purges Rochester of any previous sins, making him a worthy mate for the loving Jane. Rochester reluctantly sends Jane away, but she returns, only to find that the insane wife has burned down the mansion and rendered Rochester sightless. But they are forbidden connubial happiness when it is revealed that Rochester is still married to a gibbering lunatic whom he is forced to keep locked in his attic. Under Jane's gentle influence, Rochester drops his forbidding veneer, going so far as to propose marriage to Jane. But Jane's employer, the brooding, tormented Edward Rochester ( Orson Welles), terrifies the prim young governess. Her little charge, French-accented Adele ( Margaret O'Brien), is pleasant enough. After several harrowing years in an orphanage, where she was placed by a supercilious relative for exhibiting the forbidden trait of "willfulness," Jane Eyre ( Joan Fontaine) secures work as a governess. PlotDirector Robert Stevenson collaborated with novelist Aldous Huxley and theatrical-producer John Houseman on the screenplay for this 1944 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's gothic romance Jane Eyre. John and Elizabeth Taylor making early, uncredited appearances. The film stars Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O'Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, Sara Allgood, Henry Daniell, Agnes Moorehead, John Sutton, with Betta St. The music score was by Bernard Herrmann and the cinematography by George Barnes. The screenplay was by John Houseman, Aldous Huxley, Henry Koster, and Robert Stevenson, from the novel by Charlotte Brontë. It was directed by Robert Stevenson and produced by William Goetz, Kenneth Macgowan, and Orson Welles (uncredited). Jane Eyre ( 1944) is a classic film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name, made by 20th Century Fox.