AS SEEN ON TV: THE WIDOW FORTUNE

MARY FORTUNE

aka

WIDOW FORTUNE

AS SEEN IN:
"The Dark Secret Of Harvest Home"

AS PLAYED BY:
Bette Davis

CREATED BY:
Thomas Tryon

TV DIMENSION:
Earth Prime-Time

From Wikipedia:
"Harvest Home" is the name of a 1973 novel by Thomas Tryon, which he wrote in the wake of his 1971 critically acclaimed "The Other". Harvest Home was a New York Times bestseller. The book became an NBC mini-series called "The Dark Secret of Harvest Home" starring Bette Davis (as Mary Fortune) and David Ackroyd (as Ned) in 1978. The mini-series was generally faithful to the plot of the book.

Told in first person, "Harvest Home" (also known as "The Dark Secret of Harvest Home") tells the story of artist Ned Constantine (the narrator), his wife Beth, and their daughter Kate. Fed up with life in New York City, the family decides to relocate to the country, where Ned, a former advertising agency executive, can pursue his artistic career. After months of half-hearted looking, and while driving back to New York from the funeral of Beth's father, the family chances across a geographically isolated, insular village in Connecticut, named Cornwall Coombe. The village seems an idyllic farming community that offers all that Ned and Beth have been seeking. They express interest in an abandoned three hundred year old house, and they are contacted some weeks later by the Dodds, who live next door to the house and who tell them that it is for sale. The Constantines buy and renovate the house and move to Cornwall Coombe.

From Answers.com:
This television miniseries is based on Thomas Tryon's complex and suspenseful occult thriller "Harvest Home", delving into the forbidden rituals of the small New England township Cornwall Combe, whose residents offer annual human sacrifices to pagan gods in return for a bountiful corn harvest. The production is notable mainly for the participation of Bette Davis, who plays the powerful Widow Fortune, the town's leading practitioner of the black arts. A very young Rosanna Arquette co-stars as one of the new kids in town. Beware the severely cut home video version, which omits almost 200 minutes of footage and thus loses a great deal of clarity. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

This is probably better suited for Halloween, but I wanted to end this week of the ladies of literature with a strong entry. And who better fits the description of a strong woman than Bette Davis?

BCnU!