--- title: "The Little Foxes" year: 1941 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-little-foxes" fi1m_score: 85 critics_score: 84 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T00:31:54.664264+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T00:32:11.065017+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Little Foxes (1941) Directed by William Wyler · 1h 57m · Drama **Fi1m score: 85** · Critics 84 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Everyone in this house is doing arithmetic, and only Bette Davis is any good at it > William Wyler’s film of Lillian Hellman’s play is a cold, exact account of a Southern family dividing up what is left of their town, photographed by Gregg Toland so that nobody can leave the frame. Bette Davis is formidable. The young romance bolted onto the side is not. ## Synopsis A small town in the American South, 1900. The Hubbard brothers, Ben (Charles Dingle) and his brother (Carl Benton Reid), have a visitor from Chicago, William Marshall (Russell Hicks), who will build a cotton mill with them if they can raise their share of the money. Their sister Regina Giddens (Bette Davis) wants in, but the money is her husband’s, and Horace (Herbert Marshall) is in a hospital in Baltimore with a bad heart and has stopped answering her letters. Regina sends their daughter Zan (Teresa Wright) to bring him home. Meanwhile Birdie Hubbard (Patricia Collinge), wife to the second brother, drinks a little and talks too much, her son Leo (Dan Duryea) clerks at Horace’s bank, and the servants Addie (Jessica Grayson) and Cal (John Marriott) watch the family circle the dinner table. ## Review The Hubbards of Lillian Hellman’s play are the new money of a small Southern town, and in 1900 they want to become bigger money. Ben and his brother have a man from Chicago, William Marshall, ready to build a cotton mill with them. Their sister Regina wants a third of the deal, but the cash is her husband’s, and Horace is away in Baltimore being treated for his heart and has not written back. Hellman adapted her own play, and William Wyler films it as a house you cannot get out of: a hall, a staircase, a dining room, and a family that never stops calculating. Bette Davis plays Regina with her face powdered nearly white and her body held still. Wyler had directed her twice before, in [*Jezebel*](https://film.one/film/jezebel) and [*The Letter*](https://film.one/film/the-letter), and both times he let her move. Here he barely does. She sits, she watches, and she speaks in a low, even voice that sounds like someone reading terms. Orry-Kelly puts her in dark, high-necked gowns that look built rather than sewn. It is a chilly performance, deliberately, and some viewers will find it too much of a design. We did not. Regina is a woman who has worked out exactly what she is worth to every person in the house, and Davis lets us see the sums. Gregg Toland photographed [*Citizen Kane*](https://film.one/film/citizen-kane) the same year, and the same deep focus is at work here, to a different end. Whole rooms stay sharp from the foreground to the back wall, so while Regina talks to Marshall at the table we can also see Ben and his brother conferring by the door behind her. Nobody is ever alone in a shot for long, and nobody is ever out of earshot. Daniel Mandell cuts sparingly and lets scenes run in long takes, which suits a play built on people waiting for one another to slip. Meredith Willson’s score comes in rarely and mostly at the edges of scenes, and the film is better for the silence. Several of the supporting cast came from the Broadway production, and it shows in how settled they are. Charles Dingle’s Ben is the frightening one, because he is cheerful about everything. Carl Benton Reid, as the other brother, is the stupid one, and the scene in which he hits his wife on the porch is over so fast that the ugliness lands after the blow does. Dan Duryea’s Leo is a weak young man who knows he is weak and hopes nobody else has noticed. And Patricia Collinge, as Birdie, gave us the one scene that got past our guard. She sits with Zan and Addie late in the evening and tells them, gently and without self-pity, what her marriage has been and why she takes a drink. Collinge plays it almost smiling. We were not ready to be moved by this film and we were. Herbert Marshall arrives as Horace about a third of the way in, grey and breathless, and the temperature of the house changes. He is the only person in it who has stopped wanting anything, and Marshall plays that as a kind of tired kindness. There is a scene between him and Regina near the end, shot in a single held frame, that we will not describe. It is among the cruellest things we have seen in a film of this period, and Toland’s camera does it without a cut. The flaws are the play’s and one is the film’s. Hellman writes speeches, and every so often someone stands up and delivers the theme, with Addie and Cal, the black servants, handed the job of saying what the audience already knows. That device has aged badly. The film’s own addition is David Hewitt, a newspaperman played by Richard Carlson who is not in Hellman’s play and courts Zan between scenes. Carlson and Teresa Wright are perfectly pleasant, and every minute they spend together is a minute away from the people we came to watch. At 117 minutes it is a shade long and never dull. Watch it with someone you are related to, and see who looks away first. *Fi1m score 85, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (90/100, inferred): The film translates Lillian Hellman’s grim melodrama to the screen with its original viciousness intact, emerging as the most bitingly sinister picture of the year and one of the most cruelly realistic character studies on screen. Wyler’s direction and the tensile acting of Bette Davis impart extra virulence, creating a taut, cumulative story that exposes a family of evil people poisoning everything they touch. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1941/08/22/archives/the-little-foxes-full-of-evil-reaches-the-screen-of-the-music-hall.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): The acting from Bette Davis down to the smallest roles is well-nigh flawless, with several performers from the original Broadway cast standing out sharply in this searing play about rapacious people. Wyler handles every detail with an acutely dramatic touch and maintains a smooth pace in the story of a mercenary Southern family. [Read](https://variety.com/1940/film/reviews/the-little-foxes-2-1200413463/) - **Time Out**, TM (80/100, inferred): The critic notes that the play creaks with age but calls this the best screen version, praising its deep-focus cinematography, Wyler's direction, and Goldwyn's production values. Bette Davis's icy, venomous performance as Regina is singled out as the regal centre, though the supporting cast nearly upstages her. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-little-foxes) - **Empire**, David Parkinson (75/100, inferred): Wyler and Toland craft a claustrophobic domestic melodrama with strong ensemble work that offsets Bette Davis's intense performance as Regina; the deep-focus camerawork and confined sets heighten the tensions effectively. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/little-foxes-review/) ## Details - **Director:** William Wyler - **Director:** William Wyler - **Screenplay:** Lillian Hellman - **Cinematography:** Gregg Toland - **Editor:** Daniel Mandell - **Music:** Meredith Willson - **Costume design:** Orry-Kelly - **Producer:** Samuel Goldwyn, Herman Shumlin - **Cast:** Bette Davis as Regina Hubbard Giddens; Herbert Marshall as Horace Giddens; Teresa Wright as Alexandra "Zan" Giddens; Richard Carlson as David Hewitt; Dan Duryea as Leo Hubbard; Patricia Collinge as Birdie Hubbard; Charles Dingle as Ben Hubbard; Carl Benton Reid as Oscar Hubbard - **Runtime:** 1h 57m - **Release (the US):** 29 August 1941 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: streaming - Tubi: free, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: CA, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1942: Best Actress (nominated); Best Art Direction, Black and White (nominated); Best Director (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Original Dramatic Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *The Heiress* (1949), Fi1m 90: Wyler again, another daughter, another house, another man who does the sums first — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-heiress.md) - *The Magnificent Ambersons* (1942), Fi1m 89: A family and a town ruined together, in the same deep shadows and long rooms — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-magnificent-ambersons.md) - *Written on the Wind* (1956): The Southern money family in colour, louder, drunker and no happier - *Festen* (1998), Fi1m 85: A Danish birthday dinner where the toast goes badly wrong for everyone — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-celebration.md) - *Succession* (2018), Fi1m 88: Siblings, a patriarch and a deal, stretched over four seasons of exquisite bad faith — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/succession.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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