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Post by topbilled on Jun 1, 2024 13:17:41 GMT
This neglected film is from 1938.
Singing-dancing orphan girl
A child whose parents are dead. That’s the definition for the word orphan. But at 20th Century Fox in the 1930s, the definition was: sympathetic role for Shirley Temple. In fact, there was no other role suited for her, as a girl with indelible moppet charm that the audience could root for, because goodness, she just needed some parents and a home of her own. The prospective parents were usually not an established couple. They were often two young single adults (never middle aged) who fell in love during the story, to facilitate a romantic subplot.
The film starts with Shirley predictably in an orphanage, singing with other girls about the virtue of remaining optimistic. Yes, they can’t be too downtrodden, since a film with a sad vibe would not go over well with movie viewers. We are told up front that she’s not staying here; she’s going to live with an old friend of her deceased parents who’s agreed to look after her.
She’s happy, until she realizes the other girls are not being adopted. As if those emotions were not overpowering, we have the girls leaning out windows singing Auld Lang Syne as Shirley leaves the orphanage. Nothing is subtle!
In the next part Shirley settles in at a boarding house with the elderly gent (Edward Ellis) who’s taken her in along with his pretty daughter (Phyllis Brooks).
It’s a place where various theatrical types reside, most of them currently jobless. One of the tenants is a bandleader (Jimmy Durante) who hasn’t had a gig in twelve weeks. But he’s so busy playing poker, he doesn’t seem to care!
Meanwhile there is a crotchety old lady (Edna May Oliver in a role that normally would’ve been assigned to Helen Westley) that lives in the next building. She is upset by all the noise the performers are making. Oliver disagrees with her brother (Donald Meek) that the riffraff in the boarding house need to go; and since she owns that building, too; and Shirley’s new friends owe Oliver back rent, she decides it’s time to evict them all!
Into the mix we have the introduction of Oliver’s handsome young nephew (George Murphy). He befriends Shirley and just so happens to be fond of Brooks, much to his auntie’s dismay. The love story will complicate Oliver’s plans to toss Ellis and the others out on their keisters.
Murphy shares the same opinion with Meek that Oliver shouldn’t throw anyone out on the street. While he devises a plan to thwart his aunt’s actions, we see him bond more with Shirley. There is a cute scene in which they do a few dance steps together. It leads to a number on top of a table. Only in the movies!
Shirley thinks Murphy is quite skilled and asks where he learned to dance. He explains he learned at Harvard as part of the Hasty Pudding Club. Shirley doesn’t realize that’s the name of a theatrical group and says ‘boy, I bet that tasted good!’
One of the reasons these cinematic vehicles worked so well for Shirley Temple is because she’s usually a wide-eyed innocent dealing with adult situations. Part of the fun is her overcoming a specific plight and teaching the adults a lesson or two. Her line deliveries are classic, such as a moment where she learns a butler lied about something and she brands him a fibber who should stand in the corner. Or when she tells Murphy that she would have been an old maid if she hadn’t met him. Not sure if these scenes would work so well with any other young child actress.
Of course we know that Murphy and Brooks will end up together, and they will become Shirley’s proper parents. Also, Oliver will have a change of heart and reverse her thinking about evicting the performers. Oh, and certainly, there will be a big show before all is said and done (in this case, staged inside a courtroom!) to indicate the theatrical types are now back to work. There won’t be any problem that doesn’t get solved with the help of a singing-dancing orphan girl.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 6, 2024 14:33:19 GMT
This neglected film is from 1956.
A day they’ll always remember
Robert Taylor was a longtime contract player at MGM who was loaned to 20th Century Fox for this CinemaScope production in Technicolor. It had been twenty years since his last loan out to Fox, since his home studio usually kept him busy in westerns, romance dramas and the occasional war flick like this one. There are some images on screen that are meant to remind fans of Taylor’s work in WATERLOO BRIDGE and BATAAN.
Taylor’s leading lady, not quite the same caliber as Vivien Leigh in WATERLOO BRIDGE, is British actress Dana Wynter. Her part had been intended for Jean Simmons, who probably would have brought considerably more anguish and neurosis to the role. Wynter wisely keeps the emotions dialed down and offers us a charming British gal who helps the American Red Cross in the period just before the invasion at Normandy.
There is a romantic triangle that plays out, since Wynter is engaged to the military friend (Richard Todd) of her father (John Williams), but then becomes smitten with American officer Taylor who is stationed in London. Taylor will eventually be part of the D-Day invasion under Todd’s command. The scenarists keep Taylor and Todd from meeting up until the last half hour of the movie, which builds some suspense and keeps Wynter boomeranging between the two men, not fully knowing which one she loves most.
Since Taylor is top-billed, we do expect her to ultimately end up with him. But there’s a fly in the proverbial ointment: Taylor has an American wife stateside, so whatever relationship he develops with Wynter is adulterous. We are meant to feel for them as a couple, but per the production code, Taylor will have to return to the U.S. to reunite with his faithful wife, if he survives the fighting, which he does.
Meanwhile Wynter is engaged to Todd, and though there is much less screen time for them as a couple, we know she has a strong attachment to him. She never breaks off the engagement, even after her father dies. But to some extent, she is dishonest with Todd, since she would probably dump him and marry Taylor if she could. As a result, we cannot actually sympathize with her, particularly since she willingly persists in seeing Taylor while knowing he is a married man and is unobtainable. One scene has her checking into an inn with Taylor for an overnight getaway.
A lot of the picture’s story is a series of detailed flashbacks chronicling the love lives of the three main characters. There is also a subplot with a commanding officer (played with flair by Edmond O’Brien, in Orson Welles mode) who is supposed to lead the men to the beaches of Normandy but cracks up and has to be replaced. Still, despite some of the more dramatic elements, the film does remain simply focused on the battle sequence and what happens to the three main characters afterward.
Interestingly, Wynter does not end up with either Taylor or Todd. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s certainly a thoughtful one. Perhaps the message is that life is full of unexpected surprises. But you have to make the most of the important moments when you have them.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 11, 2024 14:03:28 GMT
This film is from 1944.
Unlimited danger in a limited setting
Though critically lauded now, this film did not do so well upon its original release. Executives at 20th Century Fox lost faith in the production and gave the picture a limited release. The top star, Tallulah Bankhead, usually did better on Broadway; in Hollywood, her work tended to be a mixed bag. It had been over eleven years since she made the precode FAITHLESS at MGM. If she was going to resurrect her screen career, she needed a big hit. But LIFEBOAT would not be it.
A year later Fox put her in a romantic comedy called A ROYAL SCANDAL which was directed by Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitch. It, too, did not do so well at the box office. So Bankhead’s attempts at a motion picture comeback in the mid-1940s were stymied. If LIFEBOAT had been a hit, things may have turned out differently for her. At least she could say she worked with Alfred Hitchcock and alongside an interesting array of costars in the supporting roles.
I’m a fan of John Hodiak, and I do think he has the right masculine quality for the leading man role. But I don’t think he meshes properly with Bankhead. Let’s face it, Bankhead is so narcissistic in her performance that all she needs is herself and a mirror, not a man. I would much rather have had Hodiak paired with someone like Katharine Hepburn in this story.
Then perhaps we would have had the requisite classy female and the subsequent culture clash between her and a he-man; but Hepburn would have brought more humanity to it than Bankhead does.
The film ran into trouble with critics who derided the story for having a sympathetic German military character in it, played by Walter Slezak. Of course, Slezak does a brilliant job depicting the vulnerability and the absolute ruthlessness of a man who is above all else still a Nazi. But the critics thought all the characters on the lifeboat should have been suspicious of him right away, that they should have all been united in their opposition of him.
Hitchcock does seem to want to humanize Slezak’s character and add some sympathetic touches. This dramatic choice in 1944 at the height of a world war against Hitler, is certainly odd to say the least. It’s not surprising that critics and the public turned against the film. It didn’t stand a chance.
In a way the drama that unfolds is predictable. Only the least important characters will die. And it has to tick all the right demographic boxes in terms of presenting a group of people that are socially correct, having survived the sinking of a passenger ship and a German boat. So besides the token Nazi (Slezak), we have an early feminist (Bankhead) as well as: a hunky hero (Hodiak); a rich man (Henry Hull); a despondent mother (Heather Angel); an African American (Canada Lee); and a crippled man (William Bendix); plus a strange romantic subplot with a somewhat unattractive couple (Mary Anderson & Hume Cronyn).
If this story had been made now for the first time as a film, there would undoubtedly have to be an LGBTQ individual on the lifeboat, an Asian person; and an African American female to pair off with the African American man. There would probably also be a teen character, to appeal to the youth segment of the movie audience. Maybe even a kid and a dog if Disney were co-financing the project.
About fifteen years ago I screened LIFEBOAT along with a five or six other classics from the 1940s as part of a public library summer movie series. I don’t think the group was as enthralled with it as they were the week we watched THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but I think they still found it engrossing. There was that Gilligan’s Island aspect of the story they could all tap into…a melodrama about people from different walks of life stranded at sea, needing to work together to survive, etc.
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Post by kims on Jun 11, 2024 21:17:43 GMT
I'll reveal why I'm not an expert at film review: I thought the acceptance of the Slezak character reflected the Allies' allowing Hitler to take Czechoslovakia and Austria without major repercussions, not declaring war until Poland.
I also think Bankhead's character of a narcissist/"men are to be taken advantage of" attitude is more interesting than a classy Hepburn character to portray a culture clash.. I see Hodiak as Bankhead's next victim, though at the end of the film she is sincere. I don't think she can completely overhaul her personality in the long run.
I like LIFEBOAT and in the minority here. I like the way Hitchcock's cameo is made, and whatever message is in the script doesn't try to hit me between the eyes, Hume Cronin doesn't play his most frequent unlikable characters-he gets the girl!!
Tyrone Power's ABANDON SHIP is a better survival by lifeboat film.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 11, 2024 21:20:54 GMT
I'll reveal why I'm not an expert at film review: I thought the acceptance of the Slezak character reflected the Allies' allowing Hitler to take Czechoslovakia and Austria without major repercussions, not declaring war until Poland. I also think Bankhead's character of a narcissist/"men are to be taken advantage of" attitude is more interesting than a classy Hepburn character to portray a culture clash.. I see Hodiak as Bankhead's next victim, though at the end of the film she is sincere. I don't think she can completely overhaul her personality in the long run. I like LIFEBOAT and in the minority here. I like the way Hitchcock's cameo is made, and whatever message is in the script doesn't try to hit me between the eyes, Hume Cronin doesn't play his most frequent unlikable characters-he gets the girl!! Tyrone Power's ABANDON SHIP is a better survival by lifeboat film. |
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Post by topbilled on Jul 3, 2024 12:42:00 GMT
This neglected film is from 1957.
Haunted by his nightmarish drug addiction
The plot is almost razor-thin (a couple is haunted by his nightmarish drug addiction) and focuses more on the relationships that involve the main characters and those in their orbit. But Michael Gazzo’s story is very engagingly done, because although it feels slow in the first thirty minutes, you become gradually absorbed into their problems (which cover more than just addiction).
What impressed me most was the casting of Lloyd Nolan as the father. The casting works very nicely, because Nolan uses more of an ‘old-school’ style of Hollywood film acting. This, juxtaposed against the hardline method turn by Don Murray and Anthony Franciosa who play his embittered sons, makes the contrast and generational gap between them all the more noticeable.
Eva Marie Saint appears as the only female in this mêlée of simmering emotions, taking over from Shelley Winters who did the stage version (Winters was married to Franciosa). As much as I like Saint and can see how Fox would have considered her more glamorous movie star material, I think it might have been edgier with Winters who probably nailed the character’s working class origins. Saint comes across a bit too refined.
I have not seen the stage version or read the play, but I think anyone viewing the film for the first time can guess where director Fred Zinnemann has taken a few cinematic liberties with the story. There are some brief moments where we cut away to Don Murray’s character wandering the street, struggling with the thought of robbing a kind old woman so he can afford a quick fix from drug dealers. The way these exterior scenes are filmed at night provide a sense of foreboding and increase the film’s overall moodiness.
The best scenes occur at the end when Murray, playing a vet of the Korean War, comes out of the closet about his addiction to morphine. There is a memorable dinner scene where he admits he’s a junkie to the father, and for the first time, dear old pop realizes that the brother (Franciosa) has been in on the secret the whole time.
I don’t think the wife’s reactions are exactly right– she was supposed to have been in the dark about the root of her crumbling marriage, thinking there was another woman. But Saint plays it almost too reassuringly, as if it’s no big deal and here would you like some more stew.
The ending, where they do a group intervention is truly riveting drama. I can only imagine what it was like on stage, where the intimacy of the theatre brings the audience and performers that much closer together.
It’s harrowing to say the least. But there is a sense of satisfaction (and relief) that Nolan’s deadbeat dad has finally taken some responsibility about the mess he has created. The film does not end with any easy answer, just the idea that the problem is now being addressed. Only then does Murray’s character have a chance of being free from the nightmare.
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Post by NoShear on Jul 4, 2024 16:53:09 GMT
This film is from 1944.
Unlimited danger in a limited setting
Though critically lauded now, this film did not do so well upon its original release. Executives at 20th Century Fox lost faith in the production and gave the picture a limited release. The top star, Tallulah Bankhead, usually did better on Broadway; in Hollywood, her work tended to be a mixed bag. It had been over eleven years since she made the precode FAITHLESS at MGM. If she was going to resurrect her screen career, she needed a big hit. But LIFEBOAT would not be it.
A year later Fox put her in a romantic comedy called A ROYAL SCANDAL which was directed by Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitch. It, too, did not do so well at the box office. So Bankhead’s attempts at a motion picture comeback in the mid-1940s were stymied. If LIFEBOAT had been a hit, things may have turned out differently for her. At least she could say she worked with Alfred Hitchcock and alongside an interesting array of costars in the supporting roles.
I’m a fan of John Hodiak, and I do think he has the right masculine quality for the leading man role. But I don’t think he meshes properly with Bankhead. Let’s face it, Bankhead is so narcissistic in her performance that all she needs is herself and a mirror, not a man. I would much rather have had Hodiak paired with someone like Katharine Hepburn in this story.
Then perhaps we would have had the requisite classy female and the subsequent culture clash between her and a he-man; but Hepburn would have brought more humanity to it than Bankhead does.
The film ran into trouble with critics who derided the story for having a sympathetic German military character in it, played by Walter Slezak. Of course, Slezak does a brilliant job depicting the vulnerability and the absolute ruthlessness of a man who is above all else still a Nazi. But the critics thought all the characters on the lifeboat should have been suspicious of him right away, that they should have all been united in their opposition of him.
Hitchcock does seem to want to humanize Slezak’s character and add some sympathetic touches. This dramatic choice in 1944 at the height of a world war against Hitler, is certainly odd to say the least. It’s not surprising that critics and the public turned against the film. It didn’t stand a chance.
In a way the drama that unfolds is predictable. Only the least important characters will die. And it has to tick all the right demographic boxes in terms of presenting a group of people that are socially correct, having survived the sinking of a passenger ship and a German boat. So besides the token Nazi (Slezak), we have an early feminist (Bankhead) as well as: a hunky hero (Hodiak); a rich man (Henry Hull); a despondent mother (Heather Angel); an African American (Canada Lee); and a crippled man (William Bendix); plus a strange romantic subplot with a somewhat unattractive couple (Mary Anderson & Hume Cronyn).
If this story had been made now for the first time as a film, there would undoubtedly have to be an LGBTQ individual on the lifeboat, an Asian person; and an African American female to pair off with the African American man. There would probably also be a teen character, to appeal to the youth segment of the movie audience. Maybe even a kid and a dog if Disney were co-financing the project.
About fifteen years ago I screened LIFEBOAT along with a five or six other classics from the 1940s as part of a public library summer movie series. I don’t think the group was as enthralled with it as they were the week we watched THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, but I think they still found it engrossing. There was that Gilligan’s Island aspect of the story they could all tap into…a melodrama about people from different walks of life stranded at sea, needing to work together to survive, etc.
As always, TopBilled, impressed with both your expansive scope of film knowledge and ability to articulate it... However despicable, Walter Slezak's Willie enviably is self-contained confidence and charismatic in his serenading the others to their expected doom. |
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Post by topbilled on Jul 9, 2024 14:49:59 GMT
This neglected film is from 1953.
But I didn’t do it I tell you, I DIDN’T DO IT!
VICKI is Fox’s reworking of I WAKE UP SCREAMING. It is one remake that does not come close to the original. It’s a shame, too, because a good cast is assembled– including Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters as the two sisters.
The greatest problem: they all overact, even Crain who usually is much more restrained in her other pictures. She can’t even pick up the phone and say ‘yes’ or ‘I’ll be right down’ without heavily breathing every word, and over enunciating every syllable.
And we have countless interrogation scenes with the characters screaming, sometimes screeching, just because they’re told they did something they obviously did not do. We get hysterical rants from more than one person on the hot seat shouting ‘THAT’S NOT TRUE! I DID NOT DO IT!’ I can only imagine how many words in the script were typed in all capital letters, followed with goodness knows how many exclamation marks. At one point, a newspaper headline in CAPS has two exclamation points!!
We’re supposed to feel something when Peters’ character is murdered. Though, strangely, the death scene where Crain discovers her body is underplayed. That is when you would expect a girl to get hysterical upon learning her sister has been murdered in cold blood. Instead, she quickly turns away and the scene that plays out is about the other guy in the room trying to convince her of his innocence. Forget the lifeless body on the floor, that part of the plot is over.
The biggest stretch in this story is the way the detective (Richard Boone) oversteps his authority. In one scene he is watching the innocent suspect sleep in bed. Never mind the fact that he is breaking and entering, or is there without a warrant. He wants to listen to whether or not the dude will mumble a confession in his sleep. Plus there are other scenes where the detective ruthlessly hounds Crain and anyone else he feels like bothering.
There is a scene late in the picture with a switchboard operator (Aaron Spelling in his acting days). He admits he was in the room when Peters was killed. Not too astonishingly, he was in the closet. And he gets all worked up when he thinks Peters is still alive. His eyes bug out to the point they are like golf balls glued on to his face. He then sobs pathetically before they haul him out. Of course, as anyone who has seen the original film knows, the switchboard operator is not the true culprit.
We cut to a concluding sequence in Boone’s apartment where our trusty detective has built a shrine to the late ingenue. Once again, we would expect dramatic fireworks, but instead we get a very underplayed bit of business with him mourning softly while holding flowers and admitting his heinous deeds.
What’s truly heinous is that Fox attempted to remake a film that was perfectly fine in the first place and needed no updating. The fact this remake was produced at all and turned out as it did is the real crime.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 9, 2024 15:31:12 GMT
This neglected film is from 1953.
But I didn’t do it I tell you, I DIDN’T DO IT!
VICKI is Fox’s reworking of I WAKE UP SCREAMING. It is one remake that does not come close to the original. It’s a shame, too, because a good cast is assembled– including Jeanne Crain and Jean Peters as the two sisters.
The greatest problem: they all overact, even Crain who usually is much more restrained in her other pictures. She can’t even pick up the phone and say ‘yes’ or ‘I’ll be right down’ without heavily breathing every word, and over enunciating every syllable.
And we have countless interrogation scenes with the characters screaming, sometimes screeching, just because they’re told they did something they obviously did not do. We get hysterical rants from more than one person on the hot seat shouting ‘THAT’S NOT TRUE! I DID NOT DO IT!’ I can only imagine how many words in the script were typed in all capital letters, followed with goodness knows how many exclamation marks. At one point, a newspaper headline in CAPS has two exclamation points!!
We’re supposed to feel something when Peters’ character is murdered. Though, strangely, the death scene where Crain discovers her body is underplayed. That is when you would expect a girl to get hysterical upon learning her sister has been murdered in cold blood. Instead, she quickly turns away and the scene that plays out is about the other guy in the room trying to convince her of his innocence. Forget the lifeless body on the floor, that part of the plot is over.
The biggest stretch in this story is the way the detective (Richard Boone) oversteps his authority. In one scene he is watching the innocent suspect sleep in bed. Never mind the fact that he is breaking and entering, or is there without a warrant. He wants to listen to whether or not the dude will mumble a confession in his sleep. Plus there are other scenes where the detective ruthlessly hounds Crain and anyone else he feels like bothering.
There is a scene late in the picture with a switchboard operator (Aaron Spelling in his acting days). He admits he was in the room when Peters was killed. Not too astonishingly, he was in the closet. And he gets all worked up when he thinks Peters is still alive. His eyes bug out to the point they are like golf balls glued on to his face. He then sobs pathetically before they haul him out. Of course, as anyone who has seen the original film knows, the switchboard operator is not the true culprit.
We cut to a concluding sequence in Boone’s apartment where our trusty detective has built a shrine to the late ingenue. Once again, we would expect dramatic fireworks, but instead we get a very underplayed bit of business with him mourning softly while holding flowers and admitting his heinous deeds.
What’s truly heinous is that Fox attempted to remake a film that was perfectly fine in the first place and needed no updating. The fact this remake was produced at all and turned out as it did is the real crime.
"Vicki" is just an average B movie that is most interesting today as a comparison piece to "I Wake Up Screaming," the earlier and much-more-noir and much-better-acted version of the same story. It kinda makes you wonder why Vicki was even made.
I'd say we had a similar opinion of the movie.
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Post by topbilled on Jul 9, 2024 15:51:03 GMT
At first I thought, maybe I'm a bit too "harsh" about VICKI. But I just didn't find it very good.
One thing I didn't understand was why Boone's character is trying to get a confession from a sleeping man, when he himself (Boone) is the culprit. Made no sense! It would make more sense if he was framing the guy with circumstantial evidence instead of worrying about a confession.
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Post by topbilled on Aug 4, 2024 15:09:09 GMT
This neglected film is from 1948.
Call now
Northside 777 is a number, that if you call it, you can provide useful information to a hardworking scrubwoman (Kasia Orzazewski) who is eager to spring her son (Richard Conte) from prison. If you call now, you will receive a beautiful sum of five thousand dollars, and you will have the knowledge that you helped do some good in the world. Unless Conte is actually guilty and belongs behind bars.
James Stewart is cast in the lead role as a reporter whose boss (Lee J. Cobb) sees the woman’s ad in the paper and asks him to do a story on it. One cannot really call Stewart a crusading reporter, since he seems rather reluctant to get involved.
When he first meets the scrubwoman and then later her ex-daughter-in-law (Joanne De Bergh) he is not exactly convinced that Conte was framed in the killing of a Chicago police officer back in 1932. But because this is a human interest story, he goes to work on it.
Of course, as he starts digging into the case, he becomes immersed in the facts. And gradually, he does start believing in Conte’s innocence.
While this is constructed as a semi-documentary noir, based on a true story, I felt some of it seemed rather contrived in spots. Why didn’t anyone look into the case sooner? After all, it was said that Conte’s mother had posted an earlier ad offering three grand, which is not exactly chicken feed.
Also, when Stewart starts looking into things, we don’t see him looking over the trial transcripts or talking to the cops or D.A. who put Conte in prison. No, instead, we must have Stewart playing hero detective, tracking down possible witnesses and interviewing the parties directly involved, including Conte himself. Oh, and that brings me to something else: Conte looks like the healthiest most well-fed inmate ever shown on screen. I guess incarceration for over a decade has agreed with him.
It might have worked better if Conte’s character couldn’t remember all the details on the day that the murder took place, if maybe he had been on a drinking binge; or had been knocked out in an alley around the time the crime occurred, leading us to wonder if maybe he really was guilty and if justice had been doled out correctly. In fact, I think it would have given the story a melancholy irony if the mother was wrong in maintaining her son’s so-called innocence, and that the ex-wife was correct in divorcing Conte.
As it is, there is no real ambiguity or suspense; the story is heavily slanted in Conte’s favor. And more than that, it is heavily slanted in favor of Stewart playing hero and bringing about justice when nobody else seemed to care.
The studio’s slick production values and the film’s artistic attempts to present the story in dark tones is ultimately undermined by the production code, that the shining light of justice has to wash out all the darkness in the end. Nobody in this film is ever going to call Southside 666.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Aug 4, 2024 18:10:09 GMT
I thought the acceptance of the Slezak character reflected the Allies' allowing Hitler to take Czechoslovakia and Austria without major repercussions, not declaring war until Poland.
I've also wondered if Hitchcock was attempting to illustrate that there is a difference between a man and men. It seems the initial hope of the film is to make Slezak's character come around and be civilized in the midst of the various other characters around him despite the fact that he is called a Nazi, but then of course it was wartime, and Slezak was ultimately the bad guy and had to lose. |
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Post by topbilled on Aug 16, 2024 15:02:25 GMT
This neglected film is from 1942.
Not the dark side
This was 20th Century Fox’s first attempt to tell the story about the evacuation of British children during WWII. The studio’s next production would be a bigger budgeted undertaking and also feature Roddy McDowall. The second film, called THE PIED PIPER, would be released in August 1942 and star Monty Woolley. This tale was released six months earlier in February; it’s more of a ‘B’ programmer and is the first motion picture in which young McDowall is top billed. He had already proven his worth at Fox in previous work like MAN HUNT and HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY.
In a way McDowall is perfect for this role (and his subsequent role in MY FRIEND FLICKA) since he has an innate likable quality and polished English manners. This makes his acting style most accessible to movie watchers. He is also a bit less Americanized in 1942 than he would be in his later work, so it is easier to believe him as an outsider who comes to Ohio to avoid the London Blitz and must assimilate with other kids his age.
Today’s viewer should understand a few historical facts which provide context about what was happening in 1942 when U.S. involvement in the Second World War was just beginning. Because Britain and France declared war against Germany, it was decided that British children would be safer if they were sent from the larger cities like London to outlying remote areas. They often left their parents and went with teachers to stay in these areas with foster families.
In some situations, these children were sent abroad, to places in North America; places in Australia or New Zealand; or places in South Africa. It is estimated that roughly three and a half million British children were sent away to escape aerial bombing. Some of them were orphaned, having lost their parents in bombing raids that occurred in 1940 and 1941. Evacuees during Operation Pied Piper, as it was called, also included pregnant women who gave birth while living abroad.
The children who were sent to Canada and the United States found lodging with relatives, family friends or other families sympathetic to the cause of sheltering them. About six thousand went to Canada; and five thousand traveled to the U.S. In this film, McDowall’s character is sent to the “sunny side” of the Atlantic to live with a couple played by Katharine Alexander and Don Douglas. He shares living space wit their son (Freddie Mercer).
At first McDowall and Mercer get along, teaching each other different slang from their respective countries— since the English language is not spoken the same in different parts of the world. They also attend school together and deal with a neighborhood bully (Stanley Clements). These episodes are meant to show their fraternal bond, representing international cooperation. However, there are conflicts that occur when Mercer’s character is jealous over how popular McDowall has become among his family and friends. A no-nonsense housekeeper (second billed Jane Darwell, coming off her Oscar win for THE GRAPES OF WRATH) provides wise counsel.
It’s all meant to show us that conflicts and solutions can be found anywhere there are people from different nations attempting to get along. Some of it comes across a bit simplistic, but what we have is nonetheless an effective morale booster, told from the point of view of youth. Contemporary viewers enjoyed the sequence where McDowall’s able to talk to his folks back in Britain on a shortwave radio. Broadcast networks in the U.S., Canada and other host countries collaborated with the BBC for a program called ‘Children Calling Home’ which allowed the evacuated kids to talk to their parents live on the air. It makes things a little less dark, a little more sunny for them.
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Post by topbilled on Aug 20, 2024 16:40:58 GMT
This neglected film is from 1956.
Conformity and prosperity
Personally I think Sloan Wilson’s life is much more interesting than the film inspired by it. Wilson served in WWII and after he was discharged, he had a high-profile job in the corporate world. Like the main character, Tom Rath (played by Gregory Peck), he graduated from Harvard, was married, lived in the suburbs with his wife and had three children. Those experiences shaped the “fiction” of Wilson’s bestselling novel upon which THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT is based.
He had written a previous book, just after the war, that detailed his days in combat. Probably writer-director Nunnally Johnson consulted the earlier material when constructing the flashback scenes. At any rate, Tom Rath was Sloan Wilson’s alter ego; and I read somewhere that he wanted Montgomery Clift to play him, not Gregory Peck. Nunnally Johnson may have preferred Clift as well, since he was said to have problems with Peck’s interpretation of the role. But I think Peck does a decent enough job, and so does Jennifer Jones as well as the rest of the star-studded supporting cast.
The book and the film function as commentary about American conformity. We’re talking conformity in the corporate sector as well as a life of conformity in suburbia with all its trappings and “values.” Conformity and prosperity are supposedly synonymous. The two co-exist and feed off one another. But at what cost?
Tom Rath may be dressed in a sharp looking suit (a symbol of his success), but he is seemingly unhappy with the demands of his job. Plus there are various domestic crises that arise while he’s away at work. Added to this is the fact he’s still suffering from PTSD. We see quite a few haunting flashbacks of his time in battle. Many of these memories occur while he is on the train each day, commuting to and from the office.
The flashbacks were a major criticism of reviewers who first saw the film in 1955, feeling they were a bit excessive. Again I think these extended wartime scenes may have been inspired by Wilson’s earlier book, which explains why this seems like two movies put into one.
Another criticism is the fact that there are numerous subplots and it would appear none of Wilson’s writing was cut. Perhaps Johnson and the folks at 20th Century Fox were just too enamored with the material to whittle it down into anything less than a two-hour running time. While I do believe all the plots support the main theme and are therefore relevant, I am sure some editing would have helped. It doesn’t have to be an overblown opus.
I guess the subplot involving Tom’s illegitimate son in Europe, by an Italian woman (Marisa Pavan), is the strand I find most interesting. The book clearly states that Tom had already been married to wife Betsy before he went overseas and cheated on her. The movie dilutes that sort of adultery and suggests he was not yet married to Betsy when he went abroad and fathered a child without telling her.
Sloan Wilson wrote a sequel in 1984 called The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II. This publication was not a bestseller and hasn’t been adapted. In the mid-80s there was much interest in depicting conflicts about Vietnam in books and on screen. In the sequel, Wilson advances the drama to the year 1963. He has Tom Rath’s twenty year old Italian son come to Connecticut to look him up, before going overseas to serve in Nam, where he is then killed.
The sequel also chronicles the end of Tom and Betsy’s marriage. Tom leaves Betsy and their grown kids, when he takes up with a younger woman in the days following JFK’s assassination. These events mirror the end of Wilson’s own marriage, and his remarriage to a second younger wife. In 1963, Wilson had even published a book about a corporate executive who fell for a 17 year old beauty. As I said, I think Wilson’s own life is much more interesting than anything that is captured on screen.
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Post by Fading Fast on Aug 20, 2024 17:15:08 GMT
⇧ I really enjoyed your review and your insights into Sloan Wilson's life.
I've read the book, but never the sequel, but think I might have to now.
Also, while I've seen the movie four or five times, I was surprised, when I looked, to find that I had never written a review of it or even a set of comments in bullet format.
But we have your review and I doubt I could add much to it.
Edit Add: a copy in "very good" condition for $6.10 is on its way to me now. Used books are the best dollar-for-dollar entertainment you can buy, assuming you like reading, of course.
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