Interview with Anne Heywood & Raymond Stross | Interviews
And so, eventually, Anne Heywood starred in "The Fox," which was produced by her husband, Raymond Stross, and it turned out they were right. They have, as the saying goes, no worries about where the next buck, comes from.
"For me," Stross said, "that's a comfort. I've been rich and poor so often, made money and lost it, gone right to the edge of disaster and pulled out at the last moment..."
Miss Heywood and Stross were visiting Chicago for the world premiere of their latest partnership; a gold-robbery adventure titled "Midas Run." Stross was frank about it: "It's not a profound message picture. But it's fun, it's a little offbeat, it's not the average robbery film of the sort that's so common right now."
He said a few more things about "Midas Run" - how much trouble they'd had shooting in the rain in Venice, how good it was to work with Fred Astaire - but his thoughts were on "The Fox." It was perfectly obvious that these two people were delighted with this film they'd made, against all advice, that had turned into an artistic and commercial success.
"A lot of people have asked me if I didn't have qualms about playing the lesbian scene," Miss Heywood said. "The answer is, of course not. At least not in that particular story. Ellen isn't a lesbian at all, in fact. She's more of a modern, independent woman - a very dynamic woman.
"That's clear in the original story, which Lawrence wrote nearly 50 years ago. And I hope it's true in the film. The funny thing was, D. H. Lawrence gave me a lot of help in understanding the character Ellen. Our director didn't know, and our writer didn't know, whether the two women were definitely lesbians or not. Well, you couldn't make the picture without knowing that. How would you create the role?
"I found the answer by going back to Lawrence's original story. In the last paragraph, when Ellen marries the man and goes away, Lawrence writes that she would remain her own woman. She would still know her own mind, she would still make her own decisions. "That's Ellen! She was concerned with the autonomy of the human being. She was a wife, but also a woman and an individual. She demanded the respect which women have fought for and are eventually beginning to win. "So the answer is - no, I didn't have qualms about the lesbian scene, although I'd never go farther in a movie than I went in 'The Fox.' I felt the controversial scenes were done with delicacy and taste. It means nothing to simply be sensational. Life has to be molded into art."
