Errol Flynn as a drunk Rochester

Many newspapers today mourn the loss of the A&P heir, Huntington Hartford II. Among those who give the most information on what interests us is the Miami Herald:

He also funded Broadway productions, including his own short-lived 1958 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with Eric Portman as Rochester and Jan Brooks in the title role. (Adam Bernstein)

Too bad it seems to have been a flop, but the intention was there.

EDIT 21/5/2008: The Telegraph gives more details (including the shocking revelation that Errol Flynn played Rochester!):

Encouraged by his new wife to make a name as a patron of the arts, Hartford set up an artists' foundation and, in 1954, converted an old cinema into a theatre where he staged his own adaptation of Jane Eyre with Jan Brooks as Jane and a hopelessly drunk Errol Flynn as Mr Rochester.
The script was panned by critics and Flynn dropped out but, undaunted, Hartford took the show to New York, where it played to empty houses for six weeks.

EDIT 22/5/2008: And The Times adds:

In 1958 he brought to the New York stage his own adaptation of Jane Eyre, starring Errol Flynn. It was savaged by critics, and Flynn walked out saying: “Hartford thinks the lines are immortal and unchangeable. But they’re unspeakable. The play’s a fiasco.”

The Fiver in The Guardian makes a joke about being a 'literature bluff':

It might not be obvious to you, but the Fiver's a bit of a Russian literature buff. Its favourite bit of War and Peace comes just after the bit where Anna Karenina's husband pushes that old woman in front of the train to get the Kazmarov sisters' money and the only way of saving Moscow from the armies of jumped up French pipsqueak Michel Platini is for Leo Tolstoy to write a rousing 553-page treatise on Russian peasant farming methods. It's even better than the bit in Wuthering Heights when Mr Darcy finds out his real dad is Darth Vader. (Tom Lutz and Paul Doyle)

It's fun when it's a joke, but not so much when you have seen people saying similar stuff in all seriousness.

Normblog has writer Anita Burgh talk about Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier:

The book owes much to Jane Eyre - the dowdy socially inept heroine: Jane and the irl. We have an older, enigmatic man: Mr Rochester and Max de Winter. Madness: rs Rochester - Rebecca, Mrs Danvers. A great house: Thornfield and Manderley. There are out-of-bounds areas of the houses: the attics for Jane, the west wing for the girl. Both houses are consumed by fire.

Jane Eyre is the only Brontë-related thing on the rest of the blogosphere today as well. The Moonstone and A Garden of Spice have just read it and review it while Faith and Gender: A Necessary Conversation and Green Hill look at it from more scholarly viewpoints. Historical Fiction reviews a book you may have noticed on our sidebar: Jane Eyre's Daughter by Elizabeth Newark. The book, however, won't hit the bookshops at large until September.

Categories: Books, , Brontëites, In the News, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre