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Post by topbilled on Feb 25, 2024 22:16:42 GMT
The synopsis for the remake, ONE MORE TOMORROW, so you can see how it was updated for a wartime audience:
Among the guests at a surprise birthday party for wealthy bachelor Thomas Rufus Collier, III in 1939, are his lawyer Owen Arthur and beautiful social climber Cecelia Henry, who has set her cap for Tom. The party is in full swing when photographer Christie Sage and her assistant, Franc Connors, arrive at Tom's Connecticut home to snap some photographs for the society pages.
Despite Cecelia's efforts to captivate Tom, he leaves the party and hitches a ride back to New York with Christie and Franc. When they are not free-lancing for society magazines, Christie and Franc, together with Jim Fisk, the son of an English baronet, publish The Bantam, a liberal magazine.
Tom learns that the magazine is on the verge of bankruptcy and decides to purchase it. Although Tom's father Rufus is displeased that his son has invested in a liberal publication instead of joining the family firm, he believes that Tom will eventually lose interest in the magazine.
Tom falls in love with Christie, but when he proposes, she turns him down, saying that as a poor woman with liberal politics she would not fit into his life, and adding that she does not love him. Christie resigns from the magazine and travels to Mexico with Franc and, on the rebound, Tom begins to date Cecelia.
Despite the misgivings of Tom's friend and butler, the disheveled Pat Regan, Tom soon marries Cecelia. Rufus offers the newlyweds a substantial check as a wedding gift, but when he suggests that Tom give up The Bantam in exchange, Tom returns the check. Without Tom's knowledge, Cecelia convinces Rufus to give the check to her and, in return, she will try to bring Tom around to his point of view.
Some time later, Christie returns from Mexico, and not knowing that Tom has married, telegraphs him to meet her at the airport. There, before he can say anything, Christie concedes that she has always loved him, but this time, it is Tom who must destroy her hopes.
Determined to install Tom in his father's good graces in order to have access to his fortune, Cecelia maneuvers Tom into missing the opening of Christie's photography exhibition and convinces him to fire Pat.
Later, Jim buys a story about the selling of defective wiring to the Army by a company called Albany Copper and warns Tom that the exposé may send many of his friends to jail. Despite this, Tom agrees to publish the story, but when Cecelia discloses that Rufus secretly owns most of the company, Tom drops the article.
One day, while Tom is away, Christie visits Cecelia and reveals that, having written the article on Albany Copper, she knows Rufus is not liable for selling the defective wiring and demands that Cecelia tell Tom the truth. Cecelia refuses, but later that evening, Pat, who overheard Cecelia plotting with Rufus, discloses Cecelia's duplicity to Tom.
Tom confronts Cecelia with the information, and when she admits that she does not want children, Tom leaves her. Later, after Cecelia departs for Reno to obtain a divorce, Tom and Christie face a happy future together.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 25, 2024 22:24:13 GMT
It looks like the main changes with the remake are as follows:
The story starts in 1939, just before WWII.
Daisy/Christie is now a photographer not a painter. And she is directly involved with the publishing company.
Tom is not the initial owner of the Bantam publishing company. And the company does not publish books, it publishes a magazine.
Cecelia is not immediately engaged to Tom, she needs time to work that angle.
Rufus offers the check earlier in the story. Tom doesn't take it, but Cecelia does.
An Army subplot has been added.
Cecelia and Rufus are co-conspirators in manipulating Tom...and Red/Pat thwarts their unholy alliance.
Cecilia doesn't want kids, which per the code suggests she is an unfit wife and therefore Tom is morally correct to insist she divorce him.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Feb 25, 2024 23:09:08 GMT
It looks like the main changes with the remake are as follows:
The story starts in 1939, just before WWII.
Daisy/Christie is now a photographer not a painter. And she is directly involved with the publishing company.
Tom is not the initial owner of the Bantam publishing company. And the company does not publish books, it publishes a magazine.
Cecelia is not immediately engaged to Tom, she needs time to work that angle.
Rufus offers the check earlier in the story. Tom doesn't take it, but Cecelia does.
An Army subplot has been added.
Cecelia and Rufus are co-conspirators in manipulating Tom...and Red/Pat thwarts their unholy alliance.
Cecilia doesn't want kids, which per the code suggests she is an unfit wife and therefore Tom is morally correct to insist she divorce him. That's even grounds for annulment in the Catholic church.
I'm guessing the reason The Animal Kingdom flopped was just that people then were conditioned to root for the wife against the "other woman." That is unless the wife was a real piece of work like Cecelia, in which case she usually obliged the plot with a convenient death.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 26, 2024 13:50:11 GMT
I re-watched ONE MORE TOMORROW last night. It does say in the opening credits that it is based on a play by Phillip Barry, which like what Fading Fast suggested, suggests it is a reinterpretation, not a direct remake.
Despite liking the cast (which includes Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Alexis Smith, Jane Wyman & Reginald Gardner) and despite the fact it is somewhat entertaining, I do have to say upon reflection that it is perfectly dreadful in spots. At least compared to the original.
The main thing that is missing from the Warner Brothers version is the deep sense of each person's real motivation. Gone are all the thoughtful speeches that Ann Harding made in THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. And without those speeches, we don't have any real idea why these people behave as they do, they are just random people in a certain segment of society, and the emphasis is on plot not characterization, moving them from A to B to C.
One very curious thing about the 1946 version is that it was actually filmed in 1943, when the war was still on. Per the AFI database, it was shot from April to June '43, then again in October and November '43, which suggests there were retakes in the fall.
I do wonder if this is correct. Personally, I think they might have done even more retakes in late '45 or early '46 after the war. Why do I say this? Well, it was not released until June 1946 and there is considerable dialogue in the finished film where the father Rufus complains about liberals being reds or Communists. This seems like postwar, cold war stuff. At the height of WWII, back in 1943, Russia was an ally of the western world in defeating the Nazis.
Would the film really have openly criticized communism if the original intention was to release it in 1943? I wonder if because the release was delayed till after the war, they had to go in and rework some of the dialogue, so that even if the action was occurring from 1939 to 1943, they had to knowingly play to the postwar audience mindset that Russia and the communists were no longer our ally.
On another note...there are several instances in the 1946 version where it is played up that a woman should want to make a home and raise children. Not only are these sentiments reflected in scenes with the wife (Alexis Smith), but also with the ex-girlfriend (Ann Sheridan) who despite being a career woman is handed specific dialogue where she says she wants to eventually get married and when she does she will give up her career as an ace photographer.
So not only are there references against communism and liberalism, there are explicit references to traditional conservative family values. Due to these "right" political values, the story veers away from what Philip Barry and the 1932 filmmakers had intended with the original story that was being told about individual autonomy.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Feb 26, 2024 16:01:14 GMT
I re-watched ONE MORE TOMORROW last night. It does say in the opening credits that it is based on a play by Phillip Barry, which like what Fading Fast suggested, suggests it is reinterpretation, not a direct remake.
Despite liking the cast (which includes Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Alexis Smith, Jane Wyman & Reginald Gardner) and despite the fact it is somewhat entertaining, I do have to say upon reflection that it is perfectly dreadful in spots. At least compared to the original.
The main thing that is missing from the Warner Brothers version is the deep sense of each person's real motivation. Gone are all the thoughtful speeches that Ann Harding made in THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. And without those speeches, we don't have any real idea why these people behave as they do, they are just random people in a certain segment of society, and the emphasis is on plot, not characterization, just moving them from A to B to C.
One very curious thing about the 1946 version is that it was actually filmed in 1943, when the war was still on. Per the AFI database, it was shot from April to June '43, then again in October and November '43, which suggests there were retakes in the fall.
I do wonder if this is correct. Personally, I think they might have done even more retakes in late '45 or early '46 after the war. Why do I say this? Well, it was not released until June 1946 and there is considerable dialogue in the finished film where the father Rufus complains about liberals being reds or Communists. This seems like postwar, cold war stuff. At the height of WWII, back in 1943, Russia was an ally of the western world in defeating the Nazis.
Would the film really have openly criticized communism if the original intention was to release it in 1943? I wonder if because the release was delayed till after the war, they had to go in and rework some of the dialogue, so that even if the action was occurring from 1939 to 1943, they had to knowingly play to the postwar audience mindset that Russia and the communists were no longer our ally.
On another note...there are several instances in the 1946 version where it is played up that a woman should want to make a home and raise children. Not only are these sentiments reflected in scenes with the wife (Alexis Smith), but also with the ex-girlfriend (Ann Sheridan) who despite being a career woman is handed specific dialogue where she says she wants to eventually get married and when she does she will give up her career as an ace photographer.
So not only are there references against communism and liberalism, there are explicit references to traditional conservative family values. Due to these "right" political values, the story veers away from what Philip Barry and the 1932 filmmakers had intended with the original story that was being told about individual autonomy. Thanks for this, TopBilled. Sounds like it wasn't even the same story. This always interests me. I find myself wondering at what point something becomes no longer "based on" and simply becomes another story with mostly the same people.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 26, 2024 16:54:46 GMT
In some regards, ONE MORE TOMORROW seems like a "reboot" of THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.
By the way, thanks to Fading Fast for our recent month of precode melodramas.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 26, 2024 22:37:10 GMT
The Animal Kingdom from 1932 with Leslie Howard, Ann Harding, Myrna Loy, Henry Stephenson and William Gargan
There is a conceit amongst playwrights and screenwriters, at least in the twentieth century, that "art" is "superior" to commerce in some metaphysical sense, making artists superior to businessmen and women and, in general, people focused on money.
It sets up a false dichotomy that, not surprisingly, puts the artist at the top of some philosophical pyramid of integrity and human awareness. In The Animal Kingdom, playwright, nay "artists," Philip Barry lets his inner superiority complex rip.
Leslie Howard, plays the son of a wealthy and socially prominent banker. Howard, though, is not interested in “crass things” like money or “position.” He, instead, owns a modest publishing house that puts out books of "artistic value."
One, though, can guess where he got the money to start his business. It is probably the same source that funds his upper-class lifestyle. It's easy to denounce money when you have a rich dad to tap when you need some of that "filthy lucre" to buy, say, a new tuxedo.
Howard also, effectively, has been living with his "bohemian" girlfriend, played by Ann Harding. She is a successful commercial illustrator who quits to become a painter - "a real artist with something to say."
At the open, we see Howard's father, played by Henry Stephenson, and Howard's new girlfriend - his relationship with Harding is "completely free and open -" played by Myrna Loy plotting to bring Howard into their monied social milieu.
It takes a little familiarity with 1930s movie-language obfuscation to understand it, but it seems the sexual passion has run out of the Howard-Harding relationship, leaving Howard straining at the bit to bed Loy.
Foreshadowing the 1970s "free-love" fiasco, Harding learns an "open relationship" isn't so great when one's partner exercises his option. "Free love" is just another bohemian conceit that, every few generations or so, the cognoscenti has to learn anew doesn't work.
Thinking with the wrong part of his anatomy, Howard marries Loy. From here, the movie is Loy and Stephenson plotting to pull Howard away from his "bohemian" world and into theirs, while Howard struggles to reconcile his marriage with his artistic inclinations.
Proving Howard's sensitivity to the common man, Howard treats his butler, a roughly mannered ex-prizefighter played by William Gargan, as a friend, while Loy and Stephenson are annoyed that he is not a good "servant."
It's forced in a way, but it echoes the play's main theme and Gargan plays the role so well, it works. Plus, he and Howard have outstanding on-screen chemistry. Gargan looks like he got along with the entire cast.
Over the course of the movie, Harding becomes more self righteous as she even denounces money while living in tony Sutton Place (dear Lord). Meanwhile, Loy becomes more obviously conniving as she attempts to turn Howard into a copy of his father.
Howard, in a role he was born to play, is the unsure-of-it-all man in the middle. He thinks everything through slowly as he weighs everyone's opinion. But in truth, Loy's real hold on Howard is sex; once he figures that out, his choice is pretty clear.
Loy is outstanding as she slowly lets herself be revealed. Her acting is so subtle, you see her manipulating Howard almost as an echo of her behavior, at least until they've been married a bit when she becomes more flagrant.
Harding, too, is excellent. Little about her refined beauty says true bohemian, but as she did often, playing a rich dilettante "bohemian" is in her acting sweet spot. She is the perfect "artsy/intellectual" girlfriend/wife for trust-fund-kid "bohemian" Howard.
The movie feels like the play it is based on was tweaked only a bit and then filmed. The dialogue is smart, but in a theater-stylized way. One doubts the production company ever left the RKO studio soundstage.
As much as you can see the artifice, the human emotions Barry limns are very real and moving. His characters might all be a bit too full of themselves, but they are complex humans who hurt and hurt each other in, often, poignant ways.
There is, at least, a PhD thesis waiting to be written on why Depression era audiences - struggling for food and shelter - loved movies about the very rich having silly relationship problems as they bounced from mansion to mansion in chauffeur-driven cars.
The easy answer is escapism; maybe that's all it is. There's also a "highbrow" gloss to these plays turned into movies that lets the audience (and influential reviewers) feel as if they're seeing something of artistic and intellectual value even if it's just dressed-up melodrama.
Artists don't exist on a plane removed from life's baser needs. Howard and Harding live quiet comfortable lives - earned directly or indirectly from the capitalist economy they denounce. And many businessmen and women enjoy and embrace art and culture.
It is only in the minds of playwrights like Barry that the world is divided into the good and kind artist and the crass and cruel business person. It is, though, a cliche still embraced, not surprisingly, by artists and filmmakers to this day.
The Animal Kingdom wasn't a hit, but many movies like it were proving there was an appetite for these playwright-indulgent efforts.
It makes sense, too, as it is fun, even to this day, to watch wealthy, young and attractive people passionately discuss their silly and pretentious ideals, while the timeless pulls of sex, money, ego and love really drive most of their decisions.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 27, 2024 2:15:15 GMT
A few comments after reading Fading Fast's review...
First, I don't see it as the wife and father trying to pull Tom into their world. I think Cecelia the wife is an outsider, and she is not trying to pull Tom into her world...she is trying to use Tom to gain access into his world. Whether he is denouncing this environment or not, he is still part of it and Cecelia sees he will always have a place in it. She wants to be alongside him and associated with all the trappings he is shunning.
As for Daisy, I think that if she becomes Tom's wife, she will also realize Tom's place in that world and she will be in it with him. But together they will maintain a detached almost cool and reluctant participation in that social environment. Daisy certainly won't be measuring herself in that world the way Cecelia does.
Re: the film's box office receipts...THE ANIMAL KINGDOM was produced by David Selznick. He wasn't aiming to get the lower classes or even the middle classes into the theater. He was the Merchant-Ivory of his day, catering to a very highbrow cinema clientele. He was making art films and there would have been a limit, like the Merchant-Ivory films had a limit, as to what these films could earn. Mostly, I think Selznick's films played well in urban areas. So something like THE ANIMAL KINGDOM was not going to do as well as one of John Wayne's B westerns in the rural areas.
I am sure Selznick was more disappointed in the film not snagging any Oscar nominations. That would have increased the film's prestige, not another ten thousand at the box office.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 27, 2024 11:16:49 GMT
⇧ I think that is a good point about Loy's character as, once you noted it, I realized I didn't know her background. Still, I think she and his dad had a plan - they were open about it - to get Howard's character to proactively participate in the business and social world of his father; whereas, Harding's character represents the "other" world. To your point, Loy might have been using Howard for access, but her interests perfectly aligned with his father's.
When/if he marries Harding's character, Howard's character would be making a clear statement that I'm not actively participating in my father's business and social circle. Sure, he will always be a part of it in the "to the manor born" way of thinking, but the point of the movie is whether he'll choose to proactively be in that world (with Loy) or reject an active participation in it (with Harding).
That's a neat bit of history equating a David Selznick production to a Merchant-Ivory one. It fits perfectly with the obnoxious condescension shown throughout the movie to books that are "mass market" versus books of "intellectual value." The scene where Harding mockingly reads Howard's latest soon-to-be bestseller is the argument summarized in one small scene.
It's all one point - join dad's world of commercialization with vapid rich people or reject that world for the world of art and "intellectuals" (who say they are) not concerned with money. It is the same divide between Selznick/Merchant-Ivory "art films" and movies made for the mass market.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 27, 2024 13:57:05 GMT
⇧ I think that is a good point about Loy's character as, once you noted it, I realized I didn't know her background. Still, I think she and his dad had a plan - they were open about it - to get Howard's character to proactively participate in the business and social world of his father; whereas, Harding's character represents the "other" world. To your point, Loy might have been using Howard for access, but her interests perfectly aligned with his father's.
When/if he marries Harding's character, Howard's character would be making a clear statement that I'm not actively participating in my father's business and social circle. Sure, he will always be a part of it in the "to the manor born" way of thinking, but the point of the movie is whether he'll choose to proactively be in that world (with Loy) or reject an active participation in it (with Harding).
That's a neat bit of history equating a David Selznick production to a Merchant-Ivory one. It fits perfectly with the obnoxious condescension shown throughout the movie to books that are "mass market" versus books of "intellectual value." The scene where Harding mockingly reads Howard's latest soon-to-be bestseller is the argument summarized in one small scene.
It's all one point - join dad's world of commercialization with vapid rich people or reject that world for the world of art and "intellectuals" (who say they are) not concerned with money. It is the same divide between Selznick/Merchant-Ivory "art films" and movies made for the mass market. I agree that Cecelia and Rufus share common ground, since they both believe they know what is best for Tom. But Cecelia's main drive is to be able to enjoy the trappings. I think that after she gets over being rejected by Tom, she will do just fine after the divorce, living on that fat check which will allow her to remain in those social circles and find her next rich (possibly even richer) husband. We don't have to worry about her!
Incidentally, in ONE MORE TOMORROW, there is a line of dialogue where the wife (now played by Alexis Smith) says she grew up poor and will never go back to that. She becomes a more overt gold digger in the "remake."
I do wonder if Tom and Daisy would even marry, if they are determined to fly in the face of convention. But something tells me they would marry and probably have a child or two. And despite Daisy's initial plan of a temporary marriage just to have a child, I think if she did marry Tom (after this entire Cecelia fiasco), they'd stay together. They have what it takes to go the distance.
Tom will not be able to fully reject the environment into which he was born. That's why I said earlier he and Daisy will eventually be part of that world but with reluctance or cool detachment. I say this, because as the father ages the father will need Tom...and if/when Rufus dies, Tom will certainly have to take stock of everything. And I am sure Rufus would leave everything he owns to Tom. I sincerely doubt he'd disinherit Tom because he (Rufus) doesn't like Daisy. If a grandchild is born before Rufus dies, then Rufus will reconnect with Tom that way. So, Tom will never fully be able to remove himself from life with his father.
Re: the Merchant-Ivory productions of the 1980s and 1990s, it certainly is interesting that those films (most of them high brow literary adaptations) did so well and found a niche, when the real focus in Hollywood was on action films with Arnold Schwarzenegger or teen-coms with Michael J. Fox. But the Merchant-Ivory films typically didn't make more than $20 million. A handful barely broke even at around $10 million. They never even came close to making $100 million like the blockbuster action pictures did. Again, they were prestige art house films, and I really do think that type of limited market is what Selznick was tapping into with THE ANIMAL KINGDOM and his other RKO titles like A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT and ROCKABYE.
Selznick ended up having a blockbuster when he made GONE WITH THE WIND, but a large part of that film's success is because the war scenes appealed to men and the middle class went to see GWTW, not too put off by the more artistic touches. That production had broader appeal than most of Selznick's films did.
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