Catherine Earnshaw is a wild child, only daughter of the Earnshaw clan of Wuthering Heights. In Emily Brontë’s novel, Cathy is introduced as a ghost and thus begins the flashbacks that tell the whole story. Her father brings home a foundling boy, Heathcliff, and the two children become close. They roam the rural heath and form a bond somewhere between siblings and lovers. When they’re spying on the neighboring Thrushcross Grange, Cathy is attacked by a dog and stays at the house, where she meets the more refined Linton family. This drives her and Heathcliff apart as she’s drawn towards Edgar Linton and his genteel life. Heathcliff leaves, she marries Edgar and gets pregnant, Heathcliff returns, only in time for Cathy to die in childbirth. Her story is over, and her daughter, also named Cathy, carries on the drama.
A few screen versions of the novel just end the story with Catherine’s death. While not accurate, that does underscore her importance in the plot. Heathcliff’s passion for her drives his revenge through the second half of the story. So she does need to be a forceful character, not just a wispy girl with free-flowing hair. Plus, she should have at least two distinct looks, as first the rough girl about the moors, and then the wanna-be proper lady (bonus points if she’s also a ghost, but nobody goes there except Kate Bush and me!). Let’s see how these portrayals measure up…
Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights (1939)
Yvonne Mitchell in Wuthering Heights (1953)
Rosemary Harris in Wuthering Heights (1958)
Claire Bloom in Wuthering Heights (1962)
Angela Scoular in Wuthering Heights (1967)
Carol Cleveland in “The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights,” season 2, episode 2, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1970)
Watch the sketch here:
Anna Calder-Marshall in Wuthering Heights (1970)
Kay Adshead in Wuthering Heights (1978)
Juliette Binoche in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992)
Orla Brady in Wuthering Heights (1998)
Charlotte Riley in Wuthering Heights (2009)
Kaya Scodelario in Wuthering Heights (2011)
Sha’ori Morris in Wuthering Heights (2018)
Jet Jandreau in Wuthering Heights (2022)
While I already savaged the so-called costumes in this production, when looking up the flick on IMDB.com for the actor’s name, I saw this featured review. This person needs to write for us!
Who’s your favorite onscreen Cathy from Wuthering Heights? And did you write that last review?
Visually Orla Brady is IT for me. My main irritation with Wuthering Height, which btw I would call an almost unfilmable book, is that it never matches. Like if they do the costumes ok, then the actors are bad, if the actors are okay the production or the look of the thing is too drap or they drop important elements, or if they get a great Heathcliff, then Cathy looks wrong and vice versa. It’s just never ALL good.
PS! LOVE that you included a mention of Kate Bush whos song and music video made me read the book in the first place.
Agree, it’s one of those books that’s just too much, too conceptual, too difficult to film. The story gets reduced to a “love story,” but that’s not really what Emily Bronte wrote. And, of course, SO many versions chop up the basic storyline with being told by Lockwood via Nelly & the multiple generations! It’s my constant rant :D
Exactly, and considering what an incredibly unreliable and biased narrator Nelly is, this change really chaps my hide. I would almost (because why not at this point) like to se it as a miniseries with a rashomon effect; multiple p.o.v. an contratictory interpretation of events.
Neat! I’d watch that. Pity that the Beeb isn’t really into its staple format anymore – or, in cooperation with other… financiers – moderns things up to unwatchability.
Ms. Orla Brady is a beauty and a delight, indeed! (-;
Exactly, and considering what an incredibly unreliable and biased narrator Nelly is, I would really (because why not, they’ve tried every other chop up) like to se it like a tre episode miniseries with a rashomon effect; multiple p.o.v. and contradictory interpretations.
That’s Rosemary Harris with Richard Burton according to Wikipedia; from a 1958 TV production on Dupont Show of the Month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Harris
Yes, I know & that’s the top picture I labeled. It’s the second one that Wikipedia & IMDB have labeled that seem incorrect — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Burton_Yvonne_Furneaux_Wuthering_Heights_1958.jpg
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0217159/mediaviewer/rm2949549313/?ref_=tt_md_1
That’s definitely Yvonne Furneaux in that photo– she has a very distinctive face– and apparently, that IS a photo of her as Cathy from that DUPONT SHOW OF THE MONTH production.
According to a 2019 NEW YORKER article linked to Wikipedia, Rosemary Harris was originally approached to do the role, but had to turn it down due to conflicting commitments. She suggested to producer David Susskind that he offer the role to Yvonne Furneaux, who’d been wonderful as Cathy to Harris’ Isabella in a production when they were at RADA together.
(Despite the stage name and having been born in 1926 in France, Yvonne Furneaux was born Elizabeth “Tessa” Yvonne Scatcherd to two British parents who returned to England just before WWII. She graduated from Oxford and RADA before starting a career in England and the U.S., though she’s perhaps best remembered for her roles in “Continental” films like LA DOLCE VITA. )
However, only four days before the show was about to broadcast live, a distraught Susskind called Harris and asked her to step in for Furneaux, who’d just been fired. Harris stepped in and did the actual broadcast, wearing wigs and costumes that were intended for Furneaux. (Harris claimed she was so ill-prepared that she had script pages hidden under her pillow to “cheat” the lines for her death scene.)
While I’m not 100% sure– IMDb and Wiki are loaded with incorrect photo attributions– that’s very likely a production photo of Furneaux in the role made before she was fired. (Unless it’s a photo from the RADA production or some other period play.)
Here’s a link to the NEW YORKER article:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/found-a-lost-tv-version-of-wuthering-heights&verso=true#
And now that I’ve scanned through the surviving kinescope of this production on YouTube, I’m sure that photo of Yvonne Furneaux is NOT from this production. It doesn’t correspond to anything in the broadcast.
BTW, Patty Duke has a substantial amount of screen time as Young Cathy– and Burton really plays it to the topmost balcony (in close-up, alas) as he holds Cathy’s lifeless body and curses her to never know rest as long as he lives.
If you’re curious, it can be found here:
Ah new vid! Pretty sure 2nd photo is Richard Burton but everywhere keeps labeling it as also Yvonne Furneaux in the 1958 Wuthering Heights, which isn’t correct — & TV promo pix of the era were generally more staged, so dunno if that would have been a promo from before Furneaux was fired. It’s a mystery.
I just found a second photo of Yvonne Furneaux posed solo in that costume/hairstyle, listed on Worthpoint as “1958 PRESS PHOTO YVONNE FURNEAUX AS CATHY IN “WUTHERING HEIGHTS”–RSH54897″
There’s info on the back that (if authentic) appears to indicate it was intended to be released Sunday, May 4, 1958 through the Associated Press in advance of the scheduled live broadcast on CBS on Friday, May 9:
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1958-press-photo-yvonne-furneaux-4600235216
And if that’s Richard Burton with her in the other photo, he looked very different in the actual broadcast, where his hair was curlier, apparently darker, and with a receding hairline clearly visible at times.
I’m just struck at how beautiful Rosemary Harris was! Most of us probably recognize that name because she was Aunt May in the first volley of the Spiderman reboots!!
AAAAAAAAAAANNNNDDDDDD – I just learned that she’s the mother Frock Flicks All Star Jennifer Ehle!!
Still waiting for ” Julius Caesar on an Aldis Lamp”. :)
Cliff Richard did a musical of Wuthering Heights in the late nineties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathcliff_(musical) I bought it on video tape for my Mum. We started to watch it but don’t think we got very far into it.
I always hated Wuthering Heights, starting with the novel, which is probably why the Semaphore version is the only one I can tolerate.