Hollywood’s long love affair with Connecticut, including one ‘definitely haunted’ location

While only a handful of motion pictures contain ‘Connecticut’ in their titles – 1945’s “Christmas in Connecticut” comes to mind – more than 200 films have ties to the state. In her new book, “Connecticut in the Movies” due for release on Oct. 3, actress Illeana Douglas deep dives into Hollywood’s long love affair with the Constitution State.

“The book features movies from the silent era to modern films that were either shot in Connecticut or featured the state in some way in the storyline or production,” Douglas told me when we met at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook recently. “Whether you’re a native or just a movie lover, you’ll learn there’s a lot more to Connecticut than the film ‘Mystic Pizza’.”

The 1988 comedy-drama shot in several Connecticut towns is just one of a hundred films the author selected for the book, published by Lyons Press based in Essex (www.lyonspress.com).

Douglas is promoting the book on a tour around the country beginning in October with several Connecticut stops including Hartford, Old Saybrook, and Madison.

“On the one hand, you’ve got country-living comedies like ‘Christmas in Connecticut’ and ‘Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House’ (1948),” explained Douglas. In the latter, a New York businessman (Cary Grant) builds his dream home in rural Connecticut, but the remodeling goes horribly wrong in a costly yet hilarious way.

The book’s subtitle, “From Dream House to Dark Suburbia,” alludes to the other more edgy Hollywood themes and darker storylines in the collection.

“Films like ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ (1947) and ‘The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit’ (1956) have dark suburbia at their core,” said Douglas, referring to movies that deal with antisemitism and disillusionment in the postwar generation, respectively, both partially set in Connecticut.

To understand the author’s inspiration for the book, look no further than the cover featuring Burt Lancaster admiring Diana Van der Vlis’s legs from “The Swimmer” (1968). In the 1980s, Douglas worked for a publicist who shared an office with the film’s director, Frank Perry. When she expressed interest in filmmaking, Perry presented her with copies of his films, including “The Swimmer.” Subsequently, she penned an essay delving into the somewhat disturbing film in which Lancaster’s character swims across a Connecticut county via swimming pools in affluent homes, slowly revealing his crumbling life with each stop.

“Connecticut cinema began to percolate in my head and when COVID hit, I had time to sit down and focus on more Connecticut films,” she said. “I simply fell in love with my subject.”

So much so, Douglas uprooted herself from Los Angeles and moved to Connecticut, allowing her to travel the state while researching and photographing its Hollywood links. One of the earliest connections is Hartford native and silent film and stage star William Gillette who built the Gillette Castle in East Haddam in 1919 at a cost of over $1 million at the time. A book chapter also features horror films, such as the 1971 cult classic “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death,” which was partly filmed at a now-abandoned Old Saybrook mansion.

“I went there to take pictures and was shaking – that place was definitely haunted!” said Douglas. “Its history is very strange.”

An actress in her own right appearing in such big-screen hits as “Goodfellas” and “Cape Fear,” Douglas is also a producer, director, and writer (including her 2015 best-seller, “I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories from a Life Lived in and Out of the Movies”) and has appeared as a movie host and interviewer on the Turner Classic Movies network (see www.illeanadouglas.com). However, her personal ties to Connecticut uniquely qualify her as the ideal author to discuss the Hollywood-Connecticut link.

Just 3 when her family moved from Massachusetts to Connecticut, Douglas grew up in Old Saybrook. Returning during COVID, she even purchased a 19th-century house near her childhood home, where she completed the book. But complications of ironic proportions soon arose, linked to one of her favorite classic Connecticut films featured prominently in the book: “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.”

Like Grant’s character in the movie, who relocates from the bustling city to rural Connecticut and purchases an old home that becomes a money pit, Douglas discovered her new home was desperately in need of major repairs – far more than she anticipated. Plumbers, electricians, and builders became her constant companions for the past 2 years.

“Termites had demolished the joists under the kitchen and a swimming pool formed in my basement from water leaks,” laughed Douglas, appreciating not only the similarities to the film but the swimming theme depicted on the book cover. But the coincidences didn’t stop there. “Mr. Blandings” co-stars two-time Oscar-winner Melvyn Douglas, Illeana’s grandfather, who starred in 1936’s “Theodora Goes Wild,” another Connecticut country-living comedy featured in the book.

“My grandfather was a pivotal part of my life just in terms of me wanting to go into the theater and become an actor,” she recalled. “Actually, he hoped I would become a writer and I have. So I think he would be very pleased.”

A thoroughly researched book with over 300 photos, Douglas also hopes her work will send a message to the legislature about the state’s film industry.

“I’ve demonstrated the diversity of films that have been made in Connecticut, so we need tax incentives to bring more filmmakers here,” she says. “There needs to be more ownership of our cinematic history and I hope the book is a blueprint of a renaissance of filmmakers returning to Connecticut.”

Douglas’s book tour includes stops at R. J. Julia in Madison (Oct 24), The Kate in Old Saybrook where she’ll be interviewed by Connecticut Public Radio’s Colin McEnroe (Nov 15), and at the Mark Twain House in Hartford (Nov 30).

Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama and spent this past summer traveling throughout Connecticut and Maine. He writes features, columns, and interviews for newspapers and magazines around the country. See www.getnickt.org.