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Post by topbilled on Jul 7, 2023 12:45:41 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Adventure in their lives
Perhaps one of the reasons the stars disliked this picture is because they didn’t really get to play glamorous characters. For much of the first half of the story, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Bette Davis are seen as down-and-out types who live in abject poverty. Fairbanks has just been discharged from the Marines where he flew planes and parachuted from them with a buddy (Frank McHugh) in Nicaragua. Now they are back in New York City, finding it tough to land a job in the throes of the Depression.
One fateful day Fairbanks meets Miss Davis on a park bench. She is also unemployed, but her situation is even more dire. She is homeless, so Fairbanks coaxes her to follow him back to the apartment he shares with McHugh, where they are considerably behind on the rent. We see them starving, facing eviction and struggling. Some of this is interesting from a historical standpoint, and despite some of the contrived aspects of Hollywood moviemaking, this is a respectable attempt at social realism.
Eventually Fairbanks lands a job as a chauffeur for a wealthy woman (Claire Dodd). While he drives her around at night to swanky cultural affairs, it is increasingly evident she’d like him to rev another engine with her up inside her penthouse. Fairbanks is not yet fully committed to Davis. Therefore, he is not above flirting and kissing Dodd…but things don’t get too hot and heavy with her, since her racketeer boyfriend (Leo Carrillo) intervenes.
At first Carrillo wants to kill Fairbanks for putting the moves on his woman, but then he learns Fairbanks is good with a gun. So he decides to hire Fairbanks as his own personal bodyguard. The story then switches to what happens when Fairbanks works for Carrillo and witnesses first hand the way that Carrillo disposes of enemies and smuggles contraband into the country from Canada.
Initially, it seems as if the smuggled goods are booze, since this is the era of Prohibition. But during one trip to Canada with McHugh, Fairbanks is pursued in the air by border patrol agents. It turns out they’ve been transporting narcotics for Carrillo. Soon the feds close in on Carrillo back in N.Y.C., and there is a big double cross. Somehow, Fairbanks and McHugh manage to survive all this unscathed, and Fairbanks is able to settle down and marry Davis now who works as a stenographer.
Part of what I like about this rather enjoyable precode is the way the theme about parachuting is sporadically woven into the storyline, without it actually dominating the whole narrative. Fairbanks is more than a flyer and a parachutist. He is a young man trying to make his way in the world and overcome the many financial hardships and social disadvantages his character experiences. In the end, we know he will attain happiness with Davis…but there will always be adventure in their lives.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 7, 2023 13:35:35 GMT
Parachute Jumper from 1933 with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis and Frank McHugh
Parachute Jumper is a very Warner Brothers pre-code B-movie where the studio packs a ton of story and stuff into its seventy-two-minute runtime.
The Depression is front and center in this story of love and struggle, as our three leads are unemployed, hungry, bedraggled (in a glamorous movie-star way) and nearly homeless.
Former US Marine flyboys, played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Frank McHugh, ask an unemployed secretary, played by Bette Davis, to move into their tenement apartment to help her out, to share the expenses and because Fairbanks is kinda sweet on her.
No hanky-panky happens initially as these three need jobs. Fairbanks then gets hired by a gangster's girlfriend as her chauffeur and, quite clearly, her boy toy (he'd have an open and shut case of sexual harassment against her today).
From here (things happen quickly in this picture), Fairbanks is hired away by the gangster himself to be his bodyguard. He then becomes the gangster's pilot for bootleg liquor flights and, unbeknownst to Fairbanks, narcotics.
In good action scenes for the day, Fairbanks and McHugh (also hired as a pilot by the gangster), carrying bootlegged alcohol, engage in a mid-air pistols-and-machine-guns battle with border patrol planes. Warner Bros. made sure there was never a dull moment in this one.
Davis, meanwhile and coincidentally, gets hired by the same gangster to be his secretary. This causes Fairbanks and Davis to separate because he thinks there's something going on between Davis and her new boss.
That's secondary for the moment, though, as the Feds are closing in on the gangster and Fairbanks and McHugh could go down in the bust.
(Spoiler alert) Fairbanks and McHugh turn the tables on the gangster who had planned for those two to take the fall, but once they are out of that jam, they are unemployed again.
The wrap up (more spoilers), like everything in the movie, is fast. Fairbanks hunts down Davis and, in a fun and charming scene, borrows two-bucks from her to get a marriage license so that he can ask her to marry him.
That one-minute scene has more real romance in it than ninety percent of the treacly nonsense Hollywood usually puts out.
Going all in on its precodeness, though, there's an amazing-for-its-time scene near the end of Parachute Jumper where Fairbanks, trying to find Davis, walks into a series of offices.
In the first office is a divorce lawyer denigrating marriage; in the second one is a stereotypical gay man and woman that Fairbanks openly mocks and in the third is "The Society for the Enforcement of Prohibition" where the man at the desk is sneaking a drink.
It's as if Warner Brothers had a list of taboos and hypocrisies it wanted to get into the movie, so it forced them in at the end. Also, prohibition, throughout, is openly derided by almost everyone in this movie.
Add in an earlier scene where McHugh, hitchhiking, gives the bird to a passing car, plus all the casual sex, sexual harassment (of a man by a woman) and the narcotics dealing and Parachute Jumper is ready to call it a precode day - phew.
N.B. Bette Davis is one the greatest actresses of all time, but even she can't hold onto her southern accent in this movie for more than half a scene. However, even this early in her career, Davis' acting talents shine. |
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Post by topbilled on Jul 7, 2023 15:13:22 GMT
Another thing about PARACHUTE JUMPER in terms of it being precode...is how Fairbanks' character shoots down a border patrol agent and faces no consequences for it. I guess since the agent didn't die, and Fairbanks later cooperated with the law against Carrillo and Carrillo's gang, that canceled it out in a moral way.
There is a line during the film where Fairbanks first goes to work for Carrillo and they openly mock the law. Fairbanks says something that suggests he is flagrantly defiant of cops, which maybe at that point in the story, we were supposed to see he had a bad streak in him which explains why he was so willing to work for a racketeer.
Despite the mocking of an effeminate gay man at the end, there is a lot of pro-homo-erotic content in the film. Fairbanks suggestively puts his hand on McHugh's derriere in a scene; McHugh is presented as the woman in the relationship, sewing clothes and cooking before Davis comes along and takes over those duties; we also have Fairbanks sleeping with McHugh after he's unable to have sex with Davis on the couch; and there's some dialogue later where Fairbanks says he is going to kiss one of the men in Carrillo's group goodbye.
A lot of this is playful, hardly objectionable...but the film has a lot of gray areas. It is definitely more than just a story about a guy who knows how to use a parachute out of a plane! I think perhaps the so-called "immorality" of the picture is something the two stars took into consideration when years later, they both derided the film and practically disowned it.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 7, 2023 15:32:58 GMT
Another thing about PARACHUTE JUMPER in terms of it being precode...is how Fairbanks' character shoots down a border patrol agent and faces no consequences for it. I guess since the agent didn't die, and Fairbanks later cooperated with the law against Carrillo and Carrillo's gang, that canceled it out in a moral way.
There is a line during the film where Fairbanks first goes to work for Carrillo and they openly mock the law. Fairbanks says something that suggests he is flagrantly defiant of cops, which maybe at that point in the story, we were supposed to see he had a bad streak in him which explains why he was so willing to work for a racketeer.
Despite the mocking of an effeminate gay man at the end, there is a lot of pro-homo-erotic content in the film. Fairbanks suggestively puts his hand on McHugh's derriere in a scene; McHugh is presented as the woman in the relationship, sewing clothes and cooking before Davis comes along and takes over those duties; we also have Fairbanks sleeping with McHugh after he's unable to have sex with Davis on the couch; and there's some dialogue later where Fairbanks says he is going to kiss one of the men in Carrillo's group goodbye.
A lot of this is playful, hardly objectionable...but the film has a lot of gray areas. It is definitely more than just a story about a guy who knows how to use a parachute out of a plane! I think perhaps the so-called "immorality" of the picture is something the two stars took into consideration when years later, they both derided the film and practically disowned it.
Also, those are good points about the favorable or "snuck in" homosexuality stuff. Now that you say it, I wonder if that near final scene were he mocks homosexuals was done in part to buff-up Fairbanks' bonafides as a heterosexual man. |
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Post by topbilled on Jul 7, 2023 15:56:42 GMT
Another thing about PARACHUTE JUMPER in terms of it being precode...is how Fairbanks' character shoots down a border patrol agent and faces no consequences for it. I guess since the agent didn't die, and Fairbanks later cooperated with the law against Carrillo and Carrillo's gang, that canceled it out in a moral way.
There is a line during the film where Fairbanks first goes to work for Carrillo and they openly mock the law. Fairbanks says something that suggests he is flagrantly defiant of cops, which maybe at that point in the story, we were supposed to see he had a bad streak in him which explains why he was so willing to work for a racketeer.
Despite the mocking of an effeminate gay man at the end, there is a lot of pro-homo-erotic content in the film. Fairbanks suggestively puts his hand on McHugh's derriere in a scene; McHugh is presented as the woman in the relationship, sewing clothes and cooking before Davis comes along and takes over those duties; we also have Fairbanks sleeping with McHugh after he's unable to have sex with Davis on the couch; and there's some dialogue later where Fairbanks says he is going to kiss one of the men in Carrillo's group goodbye.
A lot of this is playful, hardly objectionable...but the film has a lot of gray areas. It is definitely more than just a story about a guy who knows how to use a parachute out of a plane! I think perhaps the so-called "immorality" of the picture is something the two stars took into consideration when years later, they both derided the film and practically disowned it.
Also, those are good points about the favorable or "snuck in" homosexuality stuff. Now that you say it, I wonder if that near final scene were he mocks homosexuals was done in part to buff-up Fairbanks' bonafides as a heterosexual man.
Re: the sexuality angle(s)...I think the film is progressive for its time in that it allows Fairbanks to be mildly bisexual but in the end we know he's going to enter a long-term marriage with a female and identify as heterosexual. As I said in my previous post, a lot of the sexual naughtiness of the character is done in jest, with a sense of playfulness. But these people seem free to be or do whatever they want whenever they want, while also poking fun at the societal conventions and lawfulness that fences them in and keeps them ahem respectable.
It's like the filmmakers are taking swipes at easy targets but then they are also having some cake on the side and eating it too. It's a progressive film and a subversive film. It manages to entertain, yet still uphold certain values at the end and come off as relatively inoffensive. |
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Post by topbilled on Jul 20, 2023 13:45:02 GMT
This neglected film is from 1950.
Shocking crimes
This overlooked Warner Brothers gangster flick feels like it was made from a script that was probably written with James Cagney in mind– intended as a follow-up to WHITE HEAT. But he chose to do KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE instead. As a result, the ruthless leader of the gang is played by Steve Cochran. Cochran has undeniable charisma but he is not a great actor, at least not at this stage of his career. (He would turn in a decent performance several years later in Republic’s rural drama COME NEXT SPRING.)
Cochran leads a bunch of suave goons in the film, and the studio has assembled an excellent cast of supporting players. Most notable is Robert Webber in his motion picture debut as a buddy who gets snuffed out a third of the way into the story. Plus Richard Egan near the beginning of his screen career.
The molls are played by accomplished ladies. There is loose lips Aline Towne, bumped off early on, because she won’t keep her trap shut and Cochran can’t have that. And we have sassy Virginia Grey, probably in a role intended for Virginia Mayo. Then there is naive French import Gaby Andre who plays a Canadian gal that gets mixed up with this group, because she has started dating Webber unaware of his actual profession.
Much of the action is told pretty straightforward, in the classic semidocumentary style with considerable voiceover narration. The film begins with introductory remarks by then-governors of three states in which the real-life Tristate gang operated– Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
One of the governors says these men were criminal terrorists who committed their acts out in the open without masks, killing anyone that got in the way. One of the other governors reminds the audience these lawbreakers learned the hard way that crime does not pay and it never will.
HIGHWAY 301 is not quite as good as WHITE HEAT or KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE…but there are some must-see moments. The deaths are spectacular. Cochran’s character meets his maker when his getaway car hits a pole and then flips upside down with him trying to crawl out but dying as police catch up to him.
My favorite scene involves our French heroine. She has realized she knows too much and that the gang will surely kill her after her boyfriend Webber has died and is no longer around to protect her. Cochran makes a play for her and she rejects him so she is now disposable.
That night she sneaks out of the apartment and there is a suspenseful cat-and-mouse chase with Cochran going after her. She rushes up to some drunken strangers on a street corner and asks if they will stay with her while she gets a cab, fearing Cochran will suddenly reappear. One of the drunks waves down a cab and they put her inside. As the car pulls away we see Cochran stole a taxi and he is driving her to her death. He shoots her at point blank range inside the moving vehicle. It is a totally shocking moment and one cannot help but think how Cagney would have played the scene. It would have taken him to new heights as a cinematic hoodlum, even more vicious than Cody Jarrett if that’s possible.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 20, 2023 14:34:25 GMT
I really enjoyed this one. I had no idea it was probably built for Cagney, but it certainly would have fit his screen persona.
My comments on it in the "I Just Watched" thread from back in June: "Highway 301"
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Post by topbilled on Jul 20, 2023 14:50:03 GMT
I really enjoyed this one. I had no idea it was probably built for Cagney, but it certainly would have fit his screen persona.
My comments on it in the "I Just Watched" thread from back in June: "Highway 301" |
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Post by topbilled on Aug 3, 2023 14:57:16 GMT
This neglected film is from 1940.
Father is a pain
FATHER IS A PRINCE is like a lot of comedies that were popular on the radio at this time. Some moviegoers might have seen the original version BIG HEARTED HERBERT, released by Warner Brothers six years before. And if they lived in New York City, perhaps they would have gone to the Broadway play that served as the basis for the story. Who knows.
What we do know is that Father is no longer named Herbert, and he is no longer played by Guy Kibbee…but by Grant Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell seldom had the lead in a motion picture, so this is a rare treat. His character definitely does not behave like a prince, and the title is most ironic. Instead, he’s a blustering middle-aged man who runs his business and his family with an iron fist.
It is a character-driven sitcom, with Mitchell pinching pennies, scolding his children, belittling the housekeeper and complaining incessantly to his wife (Nana Bryant) about turning off the lights when nobody’s in the room. He also tells her they can’t have certain modern conveniences, even though they can very well afford them. In a word, he’s a tyrant. He issues ultimatums left and right. When he’s not barking orders around the house, he’s barking them at his office as the owner of a company that manufactures carpet sweepers.
The children consist of two sons as well as a debutante daughter (Jan Clayton) who’s just returned from a holiday resort with her mother’s wealthy sister (Lee Patrick).
While she was away, Clayton met and fell in love with a young attorney (George Reeves). She thinks he is a super man and brings him home to meet her mother. Bryant and Reeves hit it off, but Bryant knows that Mitchell probably won’t approve of the relationship. There will be issues, especially since the young couple is planning to get married. However, Bryant likes Reeves and for Clayton’s sake, offers to speak to her husband on their behalf.
At the same time that this is going on, the youngest son (Billy Dawson) is recovering from a recent tonsillectomy. This prompts a visit from the family doctor (John Litel) who comes by to check on the kid. While at the house, Litel talks with Bryant and notices that she appears more fatigued than usual.
He advises her to slow down and take it easy. But she is busy arranging a dinner party to introduce her husband to Reeves and Reeves’ parents. All of this manages to play out within the picture’s tidy 57 minute running time.
It is an expertly crafted B film with smart performances from the entire cast, as well as some good insights about upper middle class life. We get caught up in the family’s foibles, and we watch father soften…when he realizes that his wife is actually quite ill and will require an operation. It takes an emergency to put everything into perspective.
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Post by Fading Fast on Aug 3, 2023 15:27:03 GMT
...Clayton met and fell in love with a young attorney (George Reeves). She thinks he is a super man...
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Post by topbilled on Aug 13, 2023 13:24:00 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Gravitating towards intelligent solutions
I’ve always admired George Arliss’ ability to make acting look easy. He fully invests in whatever character he’s playing, usually a historical personage. And he inhabits scenes with assuredness, skillfully modulating the performance depending on the type of feeling required. Most often the feeling required is a sense cunning or a sense of outmaneuvering, which is what happens on screen in this Warner Brothers precode.
I find it interesting that Arliss had a tremendous amount of success in these roles at a studio which typically specialized in gangster dramas. Arliss would never have been believed as a violent urban criminal. But cast him as Voltaire, Alexander Hamilton, Disraeli or Rothschild, and you get a perfect match of actor and character. While at Warner Brothers, and even after he went over to Darryl Zanuck’s independent company 20th Century Pictures, he was known for fostering new talent and bringing out the best in established players.
In VOLTAIRE, the new talent consists of young WB contractee Margaret Lindsay as a noblewoman robbed of her birthright after her father’s been unjustly executed. The veteran stock players include Reginald Owen as a somewhat weak and impressionable king of France; as well as Alan Mowbray, who’s superb as a deceitful traitor in the royal court. He is directly at odds with Voltaire.
There are some clever bits of dialogue, such as the part where Voltaire mocks Shakespeare’s Hamlet and most all of Shakespeare’s writing, as borrowed from other sources. Voltaire who functions as part philosopher, part adviser to the court is also an entertainer who creates poems and theatrical works. He is considered one of his country’s brightest minds. As I said, Arliss plays it all with complete assuredness and believability.
Though my one quibble with him is that he speaks quite softly at times. He is definitely not the type of stage-trained actor who shouts lines or is overly exaggerative or forceful with line deliveries. I suppose it’s because Arliss understood the nature of cinema. He understood how to best work with the camera and his costars in a rather intimate sense.
VOLTAIRE was a big hit with contemporary audiences. Today, these kinds of historical dramas are regarded as curios. Warner Brothers has never released this title on home video. Perhaps WB feels modern viewers may not want to sit through a biographical piece that they assume will be dry and lead to boredom. But there’s nothing tedious about this motion picture.
It’s a highly engaging treatise about the misuse of power and the suffering of the poor. As I watched the film, I thought to myself that what we see on screen here still has an important message. The unjust victims of senseless executions in this story are not that much different from what’s happened in our own country in recent years, when black lives did not matter. Films like this cause us to re-examine societal constructs and gravitate towards intelligent solutions.
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Post by Fading Fast on Aug 13, 2023 14:10:18 GMT
Voltaire from 1933 with George Arliss, Reginald Owen, Doris Kenyon, Alan Mowbray and Margaret Lindsay
You do not look to Golden Era historical films for accuracy, but entertainment. On that measure, Voltaire is a bit bumpy, but overall, comes close to fitting the bill.
Voltaire's tangential touch to history is that he, Voltaire, played here by George Arliss, was "at court" of King Louis XV in the early 1760s and he did argue for posthumous justice for his friend Calas and fair treatment of Calas' daughter, played by Margaret Lindsay.
In the movie version of the story, the King, played by Reginald Owen, is a fat, pompous but kind of pleasant buffoon, when he isn't throwing his power around. He likes Voltaire, but is angered by Voltaire's populous and implicitly anti-monarchy writings.
The King's mistress, played by Doris Kenyon, is a friend and advocate for Voltaire. Converesley, the King's fictional advisor, played by Alan Mowbray, who is looking to enrich himself and undermine the King and France, is an antagonist of Voltaire's.
Director John G. Adolfi frames the movie with Voltaire being an ardent promoter of freedom, liberty and justice for the people of France. Yes, Voltaire is against the vain and stupid King, but Voltaire's real enemy is Mowbray and Mowbray's control of the vapid King.
All this comes to a head over the King's unjust execution of a wealthy merchant, which leads to Voltaire trying to clear the dead merchant's name and protect the merchant's vulnerable daughter, Lindsay.
A good part of this somewhat offbeat movie is Voltaire in his house, often in his bedroom, writing. It's hard to make an old man, sitting at his desk writing, cinematically engaging and it isn't here. But Voltaire also has plenty of palace intrigue, which gives the movie a boost.
When there is no rule of law and just rule of one man, everyone courts favor with that one man, often with behind-the-scenes plotting. Foreshadowing movies like The Other Boleyn Girl, we see Voltaire scheming to expose Mowbray.
Mowbray, for his part, plots to have Voltaire arrested. Kenyon, though, plots to remain in the King's affection, get Mowbray removed and have her friend Voltaire remain in good standing with the King.
The machinations get a bit muddled, especially when Voltaire writes and stages a play for the King that alludes to the King's unfair treatment of the merchant. That leads to the climax (no spoilers coming) where Voltaire falls out of favor with the King, putting his and Lindsay's lives at risk.
With questionable historical accuracy and an awkwardly told story, what's left in Voltaire is the acting and, here, Arliss is entertaining if you can accept a bit of a showy performance that feels dated today.
Kenyon, though, delivers a smartly nuanced performance as the mistress who realizes the tenuousness of her position and the delicate balance she must strike trying to remain in the King's good graces, while also advocating for her friend Voltaire.
Mowbray is fine playing, once again, "the bad guy," and Owens is good if you enjoy your kings portrayed as bombastic clowns.
Bereft, pretty and diction-perfect Lindsay, unfortunately, doesn't get much to do in this one. Plus, she is, often, so wrapped in heavy clothes and scarves that even her beauty is obscured.
Voltaire is not the movie you use to introduce a young person to "classic cinema" as it's too dated and, simply, odd. For fans of old movies, though, Arliss' and Kenyon's performances are engaging, but even fans will find this mishmash of history only mildly entertaining. |
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Aug 13, 2023 15:14:45 GMT
George Arliss helped Bette Davis' career something I'm very thankful for. This from Wiki for the film The Man Who Played God (1932):
In September 1931, disappointed with the way her Hollywood career had failed to progress, Bette Davis was packing to return to New York City when George Arliss called and invited her to discuss the role of Grace Blair with him. Certain the caller was a prankster, Davis later recalled, "I replied in an imitative English accent" and told him "Of course, Mr. Arliss. How jolly decent of you". The actor finally convinced Davis it really was him on the phone, and she responded that she would meet him immediately. "My excitement and joy were indescribable ... An Arliss film was a prestige film.
Davis was in another Arliss film for WB, The Working Man (1933).
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Post by topbilled on Aug 14, 2023 0:23:47 GMT
George Arliss helped Bette Davis' career something I'm very thankful for. This from Wiki for the film The Man Who Played God (1932): In September 1931, disappointed with the way her Hollywood career had failed to progress, Bette Davis was packing to return to New York City when George Arliss called and invited her to discuss the role of Grace Blair with him. Certain the caller was a prankster, Davis later recalled, "I replied in an imitative English accent" and told him "Of course, Mr. Arliss. How jolly decent of you". The actor finally convinced Davis it really was him on the phone, and she responded that she would meet him immediately. "My excitement and joy were indescribable ... An Arliss film was a prestige film. Davis was in another Arliss film for WB, The Working Man (1933).
After he left WB in 1933, he did several films for 20th Century Pictures, then moved to Britain 1935 where he did four more British films (all lead roles) before finally retiring in 1937. Those British pictures are very good. I don't think he ever made a bad film. But I'm biased! |
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Post by topbilled on Aug 27, 2023 15:50:33 GMT
This neglected film is from 1957.
Ethel Barrymore’s movie swan song
It was Miss Barrymore’s last motion picture appearance, and she’s grand in it. She is taking on a role that was previously played by Mabel Paige in the original version that was produced by Republic Pictures in 1943. That earlier version, called SOMEONE TO REMEMBER (a much better title), featured young Peter Lawford as one of the boys that adopts an elderly woman who lives as a “house mother,” more like a den mother, in the building that his college fraternity uses for lodging.
Some of the set-up is a bit unbelievable but it works, because at its heart, the story is about a generation gap and people coming together in uncertain times. The old gal is joined by a faithful manservant, played by Cecil Kellaway. Film buffs will know that Barrymore and Kellaway previously costarred in PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948).
Since this rendering of the story takes place in the mid-to-late 50s, there is no mention of the second world war, just the Korean war. Primarily, the focus seems to be on what’s important to this younger generation of men that are attending college. And what is important to them is not really their studies, it is predictably, girls.
Stuart Whitman plays the main guy in this fun-loving fraternity and he’s in a relationship with sexy Carolyn Jones. Part of the plot has her find out she’s pregnant, and what they are going to do about it.
The main storyline, however, concerns Barrymore who never got over losing her college-aged son 27 years ago. Whitman’s character shares the same name as her missing son, and she starts to think he may be her grandson, having been named after her own boy. Is it really true, or is it all just a coincidence?
I do like how the mystery about Whitman’s identity propels the story forward. We do want him to be her grandson, and when his father visits campus, for her to be reunited with her errant son. But it turns out to be that this is mostly just her imagination, and when she dies, we have a rather bittersweet ending.
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