![]() ![]() ![]() Wouldn’t you love to get your hands on that! It’s my understanding that she had begun yet another Jalna book at the time of her death. Maybe she was sick of the whole clan and felt like punishing them a little for the way they took over her life! Well, Mazo was well on in years by that time and had been writing about the Whiteoaks for decades. The last book in the series feels like a fever dream, with Dennis running amok, a mother dying in childbirth, Finch clearly leaving Earth orbit and Adeline actually agreeing to marry her dopey younger cousin. I wondered about this for years until I saw a photo of Mazo and Caroline and there they were: tall, thin, intense Renny (Mazo) and small, lovely, prim Alayne (Caroline).īut you are right: Mazo went way overboard with the father-daughter relationship between Renny and Adeline. I’m thinking of Renny and Alayne here, the only couple that she explores in great depth. What amazes me about the series is how well an introverted only child managed to capture the dynamics of a large family-and how a lesbian could write so knowingly about the dynamics between husband and wife. ![]() While we may never know more about Mazo de la Roche she left behind an entire world in her series of 16 novels (and she did indeed write more than the Jalna series as well). But the mystery largely remains as the very private de la Roche had intended. Her life was largely a mystery with her obituary in the Ottawa Citizen quoting a Toronto writer who had summed up her legacy well in remarking, “the most casual reader in Bucharest knew almost as much about her as her neighbors in Forest Hill.” The Edmonton Journal obit punctuated itself with reference to de la Roche's “reserved and aloof life.”Īn attempt to shed some light on the life of de la Roche came just last year as Maya Gallus of Red Queen Productions brought her story to the screen in the documentary The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche (2012). ![]() Presumably the 1951 BBC Whiteoaks starring Price was a filmed version of the play she had starred in fifteen years earlier. It ran for two years in London beginning in 1936 before coming to America where Ethel Barrymore took over the role on Broadway in 1938. Price had played Gran in a Whiteoaks play adapted by de la Roche herself from her second novel in the series, Whiteoaks of Jalna. Nancy Price is shown as Gran, with Boney on her shoulder, on this 1938 Ogden's brand tobacco card.The only other filmed English language version of Jalna appears to be a 1951 BBC program starring Nancy Price. From what I can tell so far this story is mostly told through the eyes of the youngest Whiteoak, Wakefield, who is really only afforded one such scene in the movie as he excitedly moves from bedroom to bedroom greeting his elders on the morning of Alayne’s arrival. My own Jalna experience is largely limited to the enjoyable 1935 movie and now the first fifty plus pages of the original book in the series, Jalna. Thus Morning at Jalna, the second novel in the series as it unfolds was actually the final book (#16) in de la Roche's series published in 1960. That fictional date is followed by the original publication date in parenthesis along with what number the book was as de la Roche wrote them. While each novel is supposed to be able to stand alone, I've listed them below in chronological order by the date each story begins. There would be eleven more books in the series through 1960 with the eventual time span covered ranging one hundred years, 1853-1953. The previous four books had moved forward with the Whiteoaks saga while Young Renny would be the first to dip back in time to tell a story of Jalna previous to the original novel. When Jalna released in 1935 Mazo de la Roche had just completed her fifth novel in the series, Young Renny. But I won’t spoil that for you.Įden (David Manners) delights in an uncomfortable scene. Despite the character emerging as the Whiteoaks black sheep I found myself, for once, pulling for Manners, hoping his Eden would get his act together and find a happy reward. While I still had an issue with that in Jalna his Eden is so petulant and full of himself that I didn’t mind it nearly as much. Manners is especially frustrating because I believe he had the presence of a star, always heightening my expectations, but with performances that seem to fall short for me.įinally all those negative traits I always seem to find in Manners' characters fit him as Eden Whiteoaks! Beyond being so hard for me to root for in those earlier roles I also find Manners terrible at delivering his lines, often sounding like someone reading them off a page without any idea of the emotion they’re supposed to suggest. Often cast as a romantic leading man Manners often comes off to me as whiny and immature, not at all dashing, but a little boy seeming more inconvenienced than challenged by whatever hardships screenwriters toss his way. ![]()
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