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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 21:43:23 GMT
Heartbreaking scene.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 17, 2023 21:44:33 GMT
Was that a jukebox in the bar or a giant radio? I thought jukebox, but I didn't pay it attention, so I could easily be wrong.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 21:47:00 GMT
He's wonderful in this motion picture.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 21:49:19 GMT
Publicity photo of the three brothers
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 21:55:17 GMT
The soldier has come home.
The ending is only the beginning.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 17, 2023 21:55:22 GMT
The Tobey storyline/climax is awkward. I know that they are trying to do, but it feels too forced for me.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 21:58:35 GMT
The Tobey storyline/climax is awkward. I know that they are trying to do, but it feels too forced for me. It helps us avoid a depressing scene with the mother, girls and Ulysses getting the news about Marcus' death.
We've already had a scene with the hispanic mother learning her son died. And then there was Grogin's death. I suppose the ending they chose is meant to be more positive and life-affirming.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Dec 17, 2023 21:59:08 GMT
The Tobey storyline/climax is awkward. I know that they are trying to do, but it feels too forced for me. It feels like a bit of a rushed ending. Considering it was supposed to be 4hrs long I guess that must explain it.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Dec 17, 2023 22:00:05 GMT
Great pick, Topbilled! Glad you were here to watch this one with us Galacticgirrrl!
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 22:02:33 GMT
Great pick, Topbilled! Glad you were here to watch this one with us Galacticgirrrl! I was surprised some of you hadn't seen it before. So glad you watched it today!
Thank you for joining and commenting during this live screening of THE HUMAN COMEDY.
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Dec 17, 2023 22:07:08 GMT
Yes great pick. Very glad I got to be here myself.
Can't get over the music selections - very impressive. I think Fay and Van had some very good instruction on their instruments if they didn't play already.
So many beautifully nuanced performances.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 22:10:23 GMT
Yes great pick. Very glad I got to be here myself. Can't get over the music selections - very impressive. I think Fay and Van had some very good instruction on their instruments if they didn't play already. So many beautifully nuanced performances. Good point. We don't typically think of them as musicians or musical performers, at least I don't.
I liked the way the backstory of how the family bought the harp was explained in the dialogue; but it was not mentioned until later into the story, after we had seen Mother play several times.
I bet the harp kept Butch Jenkins calm during filming, since he was said to be a very spirited child in real life.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 17, 2023 22:23:52 GMT
My review of the book from 2020.
The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, first published in 1943
"'The world's gone Mad,' he says. 'In Russia alone, so near our own country, our own beautiful little nation, millions of people, millions of children, every day go hungry. They are cold, pathetic, barefooted - they walk around - no place to sleep - they pray for a piece of dry bread - somewhere to lie down and rest - one night of peaceful sleep. And what about us? What do we do? Here we are in Ithaca, California, in this great country, America. What do we do? We wear good clothes. We put on good shoes every morning when we get up from sleep. We walk around with no one in the streets to come with guns or to burn our houses or to murder our children or brothers or fathers. We take rides out into the country in automobiles. We eat the best food. Every night when we go to bed we sleep - and then what are we? We are discontented. We are still discontented. The grocer shouted this amazing truth at his little son with terrible love for the boy.'"
- First generation American grocer to his son, but really, to no one in particular
The Human Comedy is a slice of life from America's home front during WWII. Ithaca, California represents America in this tale imbued with spirituality and religion tempered by skeptical pragmatism. Much less a story than a series of related vignettes, we see life in this town, mainly through the preternaturally observant and pensive fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley who just started working as a messenger for one of the two telegraph companies in town.
And the telegraph office offers Homer a shortcut to all of life's ups and downs as celebratory birthday-wishes telegrams come in as frequently as do U.S. Military ones notifying a family of a son's, husband's or father's death. The telegraph's dispassionate beeps become words on paper which become messages of the human comedy, that, upon delivery, Homer quickly learns results in a welter of emotions.
Homer grows up fast in this job. But he also grows up just observing and participating in life like when his slightly older sister begins to show interest in boys as a few soldiers on leave spontaneously take her and a girlfriend to the movies. And he grows up just a bit more when a high school coach plays obvious favorites in a track event dispelling the notion that all adults are honest, virtuous and promote fair play.
Regular life in the community also goes by. Boys swim in the nearby lake, play pickup games of baseball, tease a bit, but also protect (what today we'd call) a mentally challenged boy - children can be alternately cruel and kind. Games of horseshoes get played, apricots get "stolen" from a neighbor's tree (the tree's owner loves that the boys do this), while Cokes get drunk and lemon pies get eaten.
Homer's four year old brother - who is given free rein in the town (his good and loving mother for the times would be in jail today on child-abuse charges) - takes joy in waving to the men on passing trains (hurt when they don't wave back, ebullient when they do) or watching his brother work at the telegraph office or his mother hanging clothes out to dry.
With Homer's older brother, whom he worships, away at war, Homer connects the tragedy of the telegrams he delivers to the fear his mother feels and he begins to feel. But the family carries on enjoying dinners, playing piano and singing together or just walking into town to run errands.
Homer's boss is a wealthy young man who manages the telegraph office out of a passion for the business not a need to work He introduces Homer to the economics of business, the nuances of relationships - will he marries his pushing-for-a-proposal girlfriend - and respect for the elderly as Homer and his boss take care of the old telegraph operator, a functioning alcoholic who's been kinda broken by life.
Homer has a crush on the pretty girl at school, irrationally acts out at another boy she shows interest in, stirs the pot in class and then genuinely apologizes to the teacher. He inconsistently practices for the community's annual big running competition, races around town like mad on his bicycle and ignores injuries, rightfully confident in his adolescent body's ability to heal itself. Basically, Homer is a fourteen-year-old boy.
Meanwhile, back at his job, Homer sort of discovers the town brothel when he delivers a telegram to one of "the girls." Separately, he also intuitively and kindly plays surrogate son for an hour to a mother who just learned, from a telegram Homer delivered, that her own son was killed in the war.
Harvests come, prisoners from the local jail take exercise in the town square, the hardware store gets in a newly invented trap for catching animals that proceeds to trap only Homer's four-year-old brother, the telegraph office gets held up, the wonderfully name Mary Arena, Homer's away-at-war brother's girlfriend, becomes a de facto part of Homer's family and on it goes.
There's no plot other than real life moving forward for the year or so The Human Comedy covers. But you feel the 1940s, the home front, Ithaca, California, people, life, goodness, decency, some mendacity, a little corruption and people's hope, dreams and fears - you feel America during World War II. You also feel, as the quote above avers, a materially fortunate America, with many of its men fighting overseas, a bit discontent, but soldiering on. Taking it all in, you feel in Saroyan's book - just gotta say it - the human comedy that is life.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 22:28:09 GMT
Butch Jenkins filmography: (all were made at MGM)
THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943) AN AMERICAN ROMANCE (1944) NATIONAL VELVET (1944) with Mickey Rooney OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES (1945) with James Craig ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN HOLLYWOOD (1945) LITTLE MISTER JIM (1946) with James Craig BOYS' RANCH (1946) with James Craig & Darryl Hickman MY BROTHER TALKS TO HORSES (1947)...he has top billing BIG CITY (1948) THE BRIDE GOES WILD (1948) with Van Johnson SUMMER HOLIDAY (1948) with Mickey Rooney & Frank Morgan
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Post by topbilled on Dec 17, 2023 22:48:09 GMT
My review of the book from 2020.
The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, first published in 1943
"'The world's gone Mad,' he says. 'In Russia alone, so near our own country, our own beautiful little nation, millions of people, millions of children, every day go hungry. They are cold, pathetic, barefooted - they walk around - no place to sleep - they pray for a piece of dry bread - somewhere to lie down and rest - one night of peaceful sleep. And what about us? What do we do? Here we are in Ithaca, California, in this great country, America. What do we do? We wear good clothes. We put on good shoes every morning when we get up from sleep. We walk around with no one in the streets to come with guns or to burn our houses or to murder our children or brothers or fathers. We take rides out into the country in automobiles. We eat the best food. Every night when we go to bed we sleep - and then what are we? We are discontented. We are still discontented. The grocer shouted this amazing truth at his little son with terrible love for the boy.'"
- First generation American grocer to his son, but really, to no one in particular
The Human Comedy is a slice of life from America's home front during WWII. Ithaca, California represents America in this tale imbued with spirituality and religion tempered by skeptical pragmatism. Much less a story than a series of related vignettes, we see life in this town, mainly through the preternaturally observant and pensive fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley who just started working as a messenger for one of the two telegraph companies in town.
And the telegraph office offers Homer a shortcut to all of life's ups and downs as celebratory birthday-wishes telegrams come in as frequently as do U.S. Military ones notifying a family of a son's, husband's or father's death. The telegraph's dispassionate beeps become words on paper which become messages of the human comedy, that, upon delivery, Homer quickly learns results in a welter of emotions.
Homer grows up fast in this job. But he also grows up just observing and participating in life like when his slightly older sister begins to show interest in boys as a few soldiers on leave spontaneously take her and a girlfriend to the movies. And he grows up just a bit more when a high school coach plays obvious favorites in a track event dispelling the notion that all adults are honest, virtuous and promote fair play.
Regular life in the community also goes by. Boys swim in the nearby lake, play pickup games of baseball, tease a bit, but also protect (what today we'd call) a mentally challenged boy - children can be alternately cruel and kind. Games of horseshoes get played, apricots get "stolen" from a neighbor's tree (the tree's owner loves that the boys do this), while Cokes get drunk and lemon pies get eaten.
Homer's four year old brother - who is given free rein in the town (his good and loving mother for the times would be in jail today on child-abuse charges) - takes joy in waving to the men on passing trains (hurt when they don't wave back, ebullient when they do) or watching his brother work at the telegraph office or his mother hanging clothes out to dry.
With Homer's older brother, whom he worships, away at war, Homer connects the tragedy of the telegrams he delivers to the fear his mother feels and he begins to feel. But the family carries on enjoying dinners, playing piano and singing together or just walking into town to run errands.
Homer's boss is a wealthy young man who manages the telegraph office out of a passion for the business not a need to work He introduces Homer to the economics of business, the nuances of relationships - will he marries his pushing-for-a-proposal girlfriend - and respect for the elderly as Homer and his boss take care of the old telegraph operator, a functioning alcoholic who's been kinda broken by life.
Homer has a crush on the pretty girl at school, irrationally acts out at another boy she shows interest in, stirs the pot in class and then genuinely apologizes to the teacher. He inconsistently practices for the community's annual big running competition, races around town like mad on his bicycle and ignores injuries, rightfully confident in his adolescent body's ability to heal itself. Basically, Homer is a fourteen-year-old boy.
Meanwhile, back at his job, Homer sort of discovers the town brothel when he delivers a telegram to one of "the girls." Separately, he also intuitively and kindly plays surrogate son for an hour to a mother who just learned, from a telegram Homer delivered, that her own son was killed in the war.
Harvests come, prisoners from the local jail take exercise in the town square, the hardware store gets in a newly invented trap for catching animals that proceeds to trap only Homer's four-year-old brother, the telegraph office gets held up, the wonderfully name Mary Arena, Homer's away-at-war brother's girlfriend, becomes a de facto part of Homer's family and on it goes.
There's no plot other than real life moving forward for the year or so The Human Comedy covers. But you feel the 1940s, the home front, Ithaca, California, people, life, goodness, decency, some mendacity, a little corruption and people's hope, dreams and fears - you feel America during World War II. You also feel, as the quote above avers, a materially fortunate America, with many of its men fighting overseas, a bit discontent, but soldiering on. Taking it all in, you feel in Saroyan's book - just gotta say it - the human comedy that is life. Thank you for sharing this. I suppose an individual reading the book develops a greater appreciation for the characters, since Saroyan goes more in-depth.
One criticism I saw online was that Frank Morgan's character is a bit ambiguous and that only Frank Morgan knew what was motivating old Willie Grogan. LOL But maybe the book explains him more...? Like why he is broken. Is Homer the only one who cares and grieves when Willie dies?
In the film I did not get the sense Donna Reed's character Bess was just showing an interest in boys for the first time. She seemed more mature.
I do like how Marcus' girlfriend becomes an unofficial member of the Macauley family. Before I was born, one of my dad's brothers died in a car accident at the age of 16...and my grandmother remained close with my deceased uncle's girlfriend long afterward, since the girl had sort of become part of our family and would undoubtedly have married my uncle if not for his untimely death.
Back to your review...so can we infer that there were other incidents left out of the movie, besides the hold up and the animal trap? Now I am wanting to read the book!
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