The Cult Collection Comparable to the Style of Elinor Norton: Cult ...

The Elinor Norton Phenomenon

Few films from 1934 manage to capture to leave an indelible mark on the history of United States film.

During World War I, Elinor Norton provokes the jealousy of her bridegroom Tony, who is prone to sullen moods, when she gives her friend Bill Carroll, who loves her, a goodbye kiss. Tony starts an argument which spoils their wedding meal, but when he apologizes, she forgives him. Four weeks later, Tony accepts a commission to fight in France, although he does not need to go, as an escape from his unhappy marriage. While Tony is at the front, Elinor works for the war effort at home and meets Brazilian Rene Alba during her work. After they spend a few nights together dancing, Rene tells Elinor that he has fallen in love with her. Although she confesses that that their evenings together have been the happiest she has spent, she refuses to see him the next day. In the trenches, Bill is injured while he helps Tony, who, greatly upset at the shelling, drinks. Before their bunker is blown to bits, though, Tony gallantly carries the unconscious Bill to safety. Elinor continues to see Rene casually, and although she does not let the romance develop, she is unsure what she will do when Tony returns. At the war's end, Tony is worried about coming home. When he returns and witnesses Elinor receive a box of flowers, he immediately suspects that she has been seeing Bill, who had been sent home for recovery earlier. Upset that Tony has not changed, Elinor confesses that someone other than Bill sent the flowers. Tony locks himself in his room and takes out a gun, but when Elinor screams at the door, he opens it and gives her the gun. Although she calls him a coward, he clings to her and pleads for her not to leave him. Elinor surreptitiously visits Tony's doctor, who advises her to take him away for a year or so and to get him interested in something other than himself. She agrees to go West with him and tells Rene goodbye. On their ranch, Tony becomes obsessed with proving himself physically and screams at the ranch hands. When he sees Elinor put some powder which the doctor has recommended to calm him in a glass of milk, he accuses her of trying to poison him. He then goes off on an unbroken horse from which he is thrown and knocked unconscious. Rene, who has come to convince Elinor to leave with him, finds Tony and helps him to the house. After Tony asks Rene to stay on, Rene and Elinor decide to wait to tell Tony the truth about their love until he has recovered. Tony enjoys Rene's company and tries to reconcile with Elinor, who implores Rene to stay when he says that he wants to leave the couple. After Tony offers to put up money so that Rene can become partners with him in a venture to buy an additional 2,000 acres, Rene tries to convince Elinor that they must now tell Tony of their love. Tony overhears them and sees them embrace. He acts as if he heard nothing, but that night he proposes that Elinor take a trip around the world with him. Rene and Elinor then admit that they are in love and have been for over a year. Surmising that Elinor would have gone with him on the trip if Rene had not come to the ranch, Tony asks that they give him and Elinor the chance to repair their marriage and offers not to stand in their way if, after six months, Elinor still wants Rene. Elinor refuses, whereupon Tony goes to his room and, after some pacing, gets a gun. He enters Elinor's bedroom and says that he loves her and would rather kill her and himself than to see her go with Rene. Elinor calls his action contemptible and says that she is not afraid of death. Tony then walks to the top of the stairs and points the gun to his head. Elinor struggles with him, and the gun goes off wounding her in the shoulder. Sometime later, as Elinor and Rene, now married, sail on their honeymoon, they receive a radiogram from Tony, who says that his one wish is happiness for them both and relates that he bought the 2,000 acres and won the state prize for his Texas longhorns.