NEW BOOK -- Children's Wartime Adventure Novels

I’m happy to announce the forthcoming publication of my next book, which is non-fiction, an exploration of children’s middle-grade and teen adventure stories published during World War II about that war.  It’s called (cue trumpet):

 

Children’s Wartime Adventure Novels 

The Silent Generation’s Vicarious Experience

 of World War II

 

The book revisits some kids’ books you may even remember from your own childhoods—from the Cherry Ames series to the Dave Dawson series, Ann Barlett, Meet the Malones, and a host of other stories that brought the war home to the kids too young to fight it but who nevertheless were acutely aware of its tragedies, triumphs, anxieties, and grim realities.  The books were published not merely to entertain—indeed, some of the violence is astounding—but to educate the kids on what the war was ideologically about and to indoctrinate them to the kind of patriotic and self-sacrificing citizens they should try to be.  Moreover, there was a burst of feminist inspiration as women not only desired to help the war effort but were actually needed to win the war.

The stories are a real-time view of not only the battle zones but also what was happening on the home front.

Most of these books are no longer in print—but some old copies are quite valuable to collectors.  Some of them remained in print to entertain the Boomers—Cherry Ames is notable for inspiring more than one generation to enter the field of nursing.

In the weeks ahead I’ll be unveiling the cover.  

This book will be available in eBook, paperback print, and also in hardcover.  I expect publication to be in late August.

If any blogger, or reviewer would like an ARC (advance reader copy) in PDF, either drop a comment below with your email, name of your blog, website, or where you plan to post the review, or email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com.  Thank you!

 *******************

Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or FREE here for a limited time at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

 

 

 

Strike Up the Band - 1940

Strike Up the Band (1940) is a rollicking pastiche of M-G-M Americana, which is probably a genre, but at the very least, a profitable theme for the studio.  Two of its prize properties, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, are back for their fourth paring, and once again, prove they can do no wrong.  The question is whether the studio wanted to make a teens in the Depression coming-of-age movie, a barn musical, a patriotic endorsement of our nation in that stick your fingers in your ears and go la-la-la period between the start of World War II in September 1939 and our eventual entry in December 1941—or just a nostalgic, warm, family comedy?  With nothing to lose, the studio decided to make it all of the above.

As for the family in family comedy, the few parents we see include Mickey’s widowed mother, whom he insists he will make “a queen” and June Preisser’s rich parents, who will bankroll Mickey’s ultimate success, which is very convenient.  Most of Mickey and Judy’s high school gang talk of parental rules but seem to run their own lives pretty well, to the point that the most important adults in their sphere are the school principal, played by Francis Pierlot, a longtime vaudevillian and stage actor whose film career in his senior years must have surprised and gratified him; and the real-life big band leader Paul Whiteman.

Mr. Whiteman’s orchestra played an important role in the 1920s when the well-mannered and sophisticated jazz of the era evolved into swing music in the early 1930s (Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee were among those who had their start with him). By the time this movie was made, one could say that, though he had a noted place in the history of early twentieth-century American music, his best years were behind him.  American kids going to the grand party for rich June Pressier’s 18^th birthday (How could they afford those rented tuxedos?) would have been thrilled to be listening and dancing to the famous Paul Whiteman’s orchestra; however, they probably had more Dorsey, Miller, and Kyser records at home and were probably wondering when the “boogie-woogie” would start.

Mickey and his pals play in the school band, which is dull and uninspiring to them, but the scene gives us an oh-so-brief comic glance at the disapproving, spinsterish music teacher played by Virginia Sale, who had a long career playing much older character parts.  She was the sister of vaudevillian comic Chic Sale.  She also wrote and played in a one-woman show called American Sketches, with which she toured from the 1930s through the 1950s, including a stint over in Europe to perform for the troops during World War II. 

Mikey Rooney, born in a trunk and growing up on a soundstage, was by now a veteran movie star, not just a movie actor, and could do this role in his sleep.  It does, however, give him a chance to exhibit yet another talent for us—he was a very good drummer, and his solo pieces in this movie are terrific.

Mikey’s dilemma in the movie is that he wants to be a big band leader but his sainted mother wants him to be a doctor.  Money is tight (or as Mikey says, “When’s bank night?”), so we don’t know how she thinks this is going to happen, but Mikey dreads disappointing her.  Still, on the sly, and with a polite, clean-scrubbed rebellious streak, he organizes his buddies on the all-male school band into a dance orchestra.  They want to perform at parties and dances and raise money to go to Chicago to audition for Paul Whiteman and get rich and famous.

Every big band needs a girl singer, and this is where Judy Garland comes in.  Judy is, as always, wonderful, multi-talented, tears your heart out with a look and a lyric, and seems to grow in her powers with each movie she makes at this period.

We are treated to Gershwin tunes and different settings, from the imaginative but weird fantasy where a bowl of fruit becomes an orchestra via stop-motion animation, to a spirited conga number in the high school gym, to a very long and overly produced finale that gives us—either as an afterthought or perhaps a cherry on top—the image of martial bands, Mikey in a white naval uniform, and a salute to the flag.  Clearly, the studio wanted to make sure, even in the last moments of the film, that all bases were covered.

Mikey’s solution to his problem dovetails with Judy’s problem—which is the effervescent June Preisser, the (as we mentioned in this previous post) “eye-rolling junior vamp” with the rolling acrobatic moves that always astound but that never seem to fit in with a musical number.  June’s making eyes at Mikey makes Judy miserable.  Judy pines after Mikey, but the fool never seems to notice.

Pining after Judy is the really funny and quite endearing Larry Nunn as Willie, a boy who is a freshman to their senior grade.  Larry Nunn had a brief movie career—this film was probably his best work—and died tragically at only 49.  Young Willie provides the dramatic crisis in the film when he is injured and requires an operation.  The gang turns over their earnings to him and, as we see in the melodrama play they perform as a fundraiser, virtue is its own reward.

A word about the melodrama, a Gay Nineties spoof called “Nell of New Rochelle.”  I think this is my favorite part of the whole movie, partly because of the silliness, and partly as a tribute to a long-ago form of entertainment.  It’s part of our American theatrical heritage.  When this movie was made, the Gay Nineties was only fifty years ago.  I say “only” because I have now reached the senior citizen stage of my life and to me, the 1990s was last Thursday, and the 1970s was the week before that. 

The spoof also gives William Tracy, one of Mickey’s pals, a spotlight role as the villain of the piece.  His overly made-up and sneering, sinister overtures to virginal Judy is a stark contrast to his somewhat goofy teen personality, always worried about whether or not he is on the outs with his girlfriend, Annie, played by Margaret Early.  Young Mr. Tracy’s most prominent role was likely the jokester junior shop clerk in The Shop Around the Corner, made the same year of 1940 (see this previous post.)

 

The silliness of this “mellerdramer” also served as an inspiration to me when, a couple decades ago, I directed a similar kind of show for my local community theater called “The Face on the Bar-Room Floor,” and we incorporated many of the gags in this spoof:  the counting of the chimes of the town clock always being wrong, using many of the same songs:  “She Is More to be Pitied Than Censured,” “After the Ball, “ “Father, Dear Father,” etc., and when the unfortunate child, like Willie in the movie, died and suddenly bore a white gown and cardboard angel wings, instead of “flying” him on a wire, we brought out two gum-chewing, bored-looking stagehands to hoist him on their shoulders and parade him off to “heaven.”  The audience loved it.  That community theatre show remains a warm and wonderful memory that returns to me when I see this spoof in Strike Up the Band.

A few other favorite moments: 

When June Pressier, new student, confidently slinks into the classroom, causing Margaret Early to whisper to Judy Garland, “She’s touched it up,” referring to June’s being a dyed blonde—Judy, half admiring and half dreading a competitor murmurs simply, “Yeah.”  It’s a quiet moment, and in moments like these and when she is singing the comic but plaintive, “I ain’t got nobody and nobody’s got me,” in the library is when Judy is at her most powerful, commanding the screen far more than in the frenetic moments when—one suspects at the insistence of Busby Berkeley—her forceful eye-popping enthusiasm is nothing more than a theatrical ploy.  It does not draw us in like the real acting does.

We might also note in the library scene a brief Charles Smith sighting as the boy who’s looking for a book on the fall of the Roman Empire.   We also see Charles in the above-mentioned The Shop on the Corner.

I also like Willie’s pathetic and funny marriage proposal to Judy just before his mother calls to tell him it’s his bedtime, and the long-suffering Willie’s remark to Judy, when he sees that Mikey has snubbed her again, “Just give me the word, Mary, and I’ll slug him,” and “Some birds just got to be shot twice before they stop flying.”

At some point between the high school dance and the big gig in Chicago, the kids have graduated from high school, but we never see the ceremony and it seems of secondary importance to their quest for fame and fortune.  It’s a world of homespun advice from Mom, played by Ann Shoemaker who offers in her society lady diction, “The top of the ladder is very appealing, and for my sake, be careful how you climb that ladder, because that’s very important, too.” 

Paul Whiteman offers his own advice, or something about dying and drumming, “When we get to the last eight bars of the big tune—the last thing to stop is our rhythm.”

It’s a world of neckties and sweater vests, and it’s a nice place to visit, and I wouldn’t mind living there, too.

 *******************

Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or FREE here for a limited time at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Independence Day!

 

Happy 4th of July!  

May our democracy never die.

Requiescat in pace - Janis Paige

Recently, we bid farewell to Janis Paige, after an extraordinary 101-year run.  Her career may have spanned only 60 of those years (“only” 60, she says), but a life of many experiences and accomplishments, as we know, is not left on the soundstage or the stage door.  One suspects she made the centenarian club because she finally did everything she wanted to do and wasn't leaving the party before she was finished.

A native of the state of Washington, she moved to Los Angeles after high school, did some modeling, and was discovered as a singer at the famed Hollywood Canteen during World War II.  Warner Bros., snapped her up (she had a brief role as a studio guide in the movie, Hollywood Canteen—see this previous post), and she appeared in a number of musicals with Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson, but left in 1951, dissatisfied with Hollywood, to work in theatre.  She came back for a bit in the 1950s, but enjoyed a long and varied career on stage, and television, where she had her own sitcom for one season, and appeared as a guest in many shows over many decades.

Here below is one of my favorite clips.  I never tire of it.  Janis holds her old with Fred Astaire and despite the workout she’s getting, seems to get a kick out of it.

Here's Janis and Fred Astaire from Silk Stockings (1957) "Stereophonic Sound."

 *******************

Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or FREE here for a limited time at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

80th Anniversary of D-Day

Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when the gallant gave all to defeat fascism, and in the bloody hours, gave hope and inspiration to the world with their bravery.  We can repay them only by honoring their sacrifice by defending democracy whenever and wherever it is threatened.  Every single time it is threatened.

Here is the speech and prayer offered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the radio that day, June 6, 1944.

Richard LaGrand - Mr. Peavey and a film debut

Richard LaGrand made his film debut in 1943 when Gildersleeve’s Bad Day (1943) was released a couple of months before his 61^st birthday.  This age is not usually the time of life most of us are allowed to embark on a new career, or even a new facet of our careers, but Hollywood, despite its penchant for youth and glamor, did provide opportunities for elders, even newcomers who were elders, that other fields did not.

 

This is my contribution to the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “Screen Debuts and Last Hurrah’s Blogathon.”  Have a look here at some swell participating blogs.

 

Mr. LaGrand may have been a newbie to film, but he started his acting career in 1901.  The trope event occurred that, as a stagehand, he was called upon to perform when an actor didn’t show – and LaGrand apparently never looked back.  He trod the boards in theater, tent shows, and vaudeville for decades, playing character parts and learning many dialects, which would help him later on when he entered radio.

 

He was introduced to radio in 1928 or 1929, depending on the source, playing Professor Knicklebine in a program called School Days at the age of 47.  Radio was fertile ground in the 1930s and 1940s for actors, stars as well as character players, but especially welcome to those players who, as the snarky saying went at the time, “had a face for radio.”   It was a highly creative form of media, and in calling upon the imaginations of its listeners, allowed for writing and scenarios where the sky was the limit even on a limited budget.  The storytelling on radio was often glorious, a boon not only to actors but to writers.

 

In 1942, Mr. LeGrand landed a radio role for which he would be known and beloved, pharmacist Mr. Peavey on The Great Gildersleeve.

 

The character of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve began on the popular Fibber McGee and Molly show, and was given his own show in a new scenario in a new town with niece Marjorie and nephew Leroy (played by the incomparable Walter Tetley – see this previous post), and wonderful Lillian Randolph as their cook and housekeeper Birdie Lee Coggins (see this previous post).  Though Gildersleeve, played at this time by Harold Peary (later on by Willard Waterman) was a larger-than-life character, in no way did he outshine the supporting players, which also included several people in town, Mr. Peavey foremost among them. It seemed as if just about every day Gildersleeve or his family had to stop in the drug store for something, engaging the mild-mannered pharmacist in conversation.  Openings were always left for Peavey’s trademark vacillating response, “Well now, I wouldn’t say that.”

 

Radio programs were such popular entertainment that, invariably, Hollywood plucked certain personalities for the screen, and sometimes, would lift the program itself out of the airwaves to the big screen in an attempt to lure its fans into the theaters.  This happened, film buffs and old time radio buffs may agree, with varying degrees of success.  Radio, after all, was not just a story without pictures.  There were plenty of pictures; they were just in one’s mind.  The unique media did not always transfer well to the big screen. 

 

Gildersleeve’s Bad Day (1943), in which Richard LaGrand had his screen debut, (actually, we have a two-for here:  Barbara Hale—future Della Street to Perry Mason also made her screen debut as one of Marge’s friends) was actually the second in a series of four Gildersleeve B-movies, each lasting a little over an hour long and featuring many of the radio show’s characters, but not always the same actors who played them on radio.  The most obvious to come to mind would be Walter Tetley, who could not repeat his lively little Leroy on film because Tetley was not a child; he was a grown man, despite the quality of his voice.  Niece Marjorie and Judge Horace Hooker are played by different actors as well.  There is a loss of chemistry between these characters as a result, they really don’t seem to be the same characters we know from radio.  Also, the setting of Gildersleeve’s home might not appear the same way on screen as one imagines it.  It doesn’t for me.  

I think the only really familiar setting, to me, in this movie is Peavey’s drug store, and that may be because a lot of drug stores of the era looked pretty similar, so there was no going wrong with a lunch counter and fairly small shop with a back wall with shelves of products and nostrums. Most especially familiar is Mr. Peavey standing behind the counter, slightly hunched, speaking in his careful, nasal-toned speech, always willing to make observations but with a gentlemanly hesitancy to offer a definite opinion, lest he offend.  He sometimes muttered wry amusing comments in which he cracked himself up.

 

In the radio show, he is Richard Peavey (married to “Mrs. Peavey,” whom he always refers to as “Mrs. Peavey”) but the movie calls him J. W. Peavey, for no apparent reason.  The plot is contrived and slapstick, and enjoyable for its ridiculousness and quick pace.  Gildersleeve, Mr. Peavey, and several other men in town are subpoenaed to sit on a jury in a case involving a local gangster.  While the other men in town regret being plucked from their daily lives to sit on a jury, Gildersleeve relishes in it.  With his childlike pomposity, he thinks he has been chosen in deference to his superior intellect, and he quickly tries to take center stage, as he usually does on any occasion, even arguing from the jury box as if he is a defense attorney.  He is the lone vote holding out when it is time for the jury to deliberate, and with limited facilities to keep the jury sequestered in town, all the men are brought to Gildersleeve’s home to sleep overnight, watched by the bailiff.

 

Gildy gets into some trouble with the gangsters, and the law as well when it looks like he has stolen money from Judge Hooker’s safe, but all comes right, and Peavey gets the last word.  As Gildy is recovering in a hospital bed, he implores his friends to believe his side of the story, and turns to his old buddy.  “You believe me, don’t you, Peavey?”

 

To which Mr. Peavey, of course, replies, “Well now, I wouldn’t say that.”

 

The popularity of Mr. Peavey can be attested to his taking a more prominent role in the next movie in the series, Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943), in which Peavey takes Gildersleeve to New York to help him convince a wealthy drug company owner (Big Pharma being represented in this case by dotty Billie Burke) to renew a contract with the druggists at their druggists’ convention.  Gildy also wants to spy on Marjorie’s boyfriend, thinking he might be a playboy.  Taking the characters out of their hometown of Summerfield actually helps the movie, since we have no familiar settings to compare to the ones already in our imagination.

 

Particularly enjoyable in this romp is the cameo by Walter Tetley as a bell hop, who with his Brooklynese speech sounds more like his smart aleck character on the Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show rather than Leroy.  Mr. Peavey comes off as less befuddled in this movie, more decisive, and his efforts to keep Gildy out of trouble include dressing in drag to pretend to be Gildy’s wife in order to discourage Bille Burke from forcing Gildersleeve to marry her.  He’s a hoot.  At one point, the butler at a party Peavey tries to crash in drag mistakes Peavey, who has announced he is Mrs. Gildersleeve, for Gildy’s mother.  Insulted, Peavey mutters, “Why that old stuffed shirt, I make a better looking women than he does a man.”

 

Another scene has them, both in male dress, dancing together as Gildy tries to cut in on Peavey at a party to get him alone to ask his help.  They dance divinely and in all seriousness, carrying on their conversation.  When Gildy returns Peavey to his partner and politely thanks him for the dance, Peavey’s lady friend remarks sarcastically, “You boys dance well together.  Does that happen often where you come from?”

 

Peavey replies, of course, “Well, I wouldn’t say that.”

 

Richard LaGrand’s ultimate success with the character of Richard Peavey may be proven with a special tribute to him at the end of one particular episode of the radio program.  In “Peavey’s Day Off,” broadcast February 7, 1951, star Harold Peary announces a special guest, Mr. George Q. Baird, who, on behalf of the National Association of Retail Druggists, presents LaGrand a scroll signed by 50,000 druggists all over the country congratulating him on 50 years as an actor and conferring upon him the title “America’s Favorite Neighborhood Druggist.”

 

The Great Gildersleeve also enjoyed one season as a television program in 1955-56, but the juggernaut radio show kept going until 1958.  Richard LaGrand passed in 1963 at the age of 80.  His film debut may have been more of a lark than a fruitful opportunity—his total filmography counts four short movies—but for a man who worked more than half a century as an actor, national recognition for playing a character so beloved must have been sweet.

 

Have a look at the other great blogs participating in CMBA’s “Screen Debuts and Last Hurrah’s Blogathon.”

 *******************

Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or FREE here for a limited time at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bugs Bunny at the Symphony

photo by JT Lynch

A recent outing to my local symphony hall brought together two loves…classical music and classic cartoons.  Many of you have attended theatrical releases of classic films—particularly silent movies—with accompaniment by full orchestra, but this was my first experience with cartoons and a full orchestra, a traveling presentation that you may have seen in your area at some point in the last several years—Bugs Bunny at the Symphony.

My cartoon expert twin brother, John, and I head for the Springfield (Mass.) Symphony Hall to catch a matinee performance and really enjoyed it.  The technology of the melding of the full (and always excellent) Springfield Symphony Orchestra and the cartoons was fascinating, and the guest conductor, (and co-creator of the show) George Daugherty, was a delight.  He explained some technical aspects and the history of Hollywood orchestration, particularly the superior full orchestra at Warner Bros. at the time, and he was quite charmingly funny.  At one point on the screen in Baton Bunny (1968) when Bugs, standing at the podium as a conductor lifts his arms in an exaggerated manner in preparation to signal his orchestra, Mr. Daugherty did the same and mimicked him.

The program began with Rossini’s majestic Overture to Il Barbiere Di Siviglia with no cartoon accompaniment.  It was thrilling…and something else I didn’t expect.  It was funny.  Several of us in the audience began to chuckle in a way I’m sure Rossini, despite the opera’s being a comedy, didn’t intend, because those of us who were familiar with the Bugs Bunny cartoon The Rabbit of Seville (1950), were imagining the progress of the cartoon in our minds, especially the part where bugs splashes hair tonic and rubs it into the scalp of the unfortunate Elmer Fudd.  Later on in the program, Daugherty pointed this out and said this audience reaction to the overture was a common occurrence for that reason.  He ran into it many times.  We knew the cartoon from the music, and we knew the music from the cartoon--or at least, many people's introduction to classical music was through cartoons of that period.

He also gave credit to the woefully uncredited Arthur Q. Bryan, voice of Elmer Fudd (and so many old-time radio characters), which warmed my heart.  He pointed out several fascinating facts about orchestration and lauded the Warner Bros. music department.  (And some jaw-dropping stats on Wagner's music in What's Opera Doc? - 1957) If this traveling show visits your local symphony, it’s well worth catching a performance.

There were children in the audience, as to be expected, but not as many as I thought there would be.  Some were dressed down, even in pajamas—the publicity wing suggested wearing pajamas and even suppled cereal and milk before the show to emulate the old Saturday morning cartoons experience.

Other kids were dressed in their best, as befitting the symphony, and that was nice to see.  The conductor took a quick hands-up poll and revealed that most people in the audience had never been to the symphony before, and he expressed the hope that this would be a fun introduction for them and that they would return.  I hope so, too.  Especially the kids. 

One of the most wondrous revelations for them, and maybe even some of their parents, was to see that music on a screen, whether in a cartoon or a movie, doesn’t just happen.  A lot of people playing a lot of different instruments, mostly at the same time, is what makes the music, and in cartoons, much of the special sound effects come from the orchestra as well.  Maybe some of those kids might take up music after seeing all those people on stage playing all those instruments right in front of them.  How many eyes, I wonder, drifted down from the big screen to the violinists, to the percussion section (especially after so many failures of Acme products for Wile E. Coyote)?

*******************

Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or FREE here for a limited time at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

 

Night Train to Munich - 1940

Night Train to Munich (1940) is an astonishingly lighthearted escaping-the-Nazis caper with disarming wit and considerable humor, yet it is not parody.  For the British film industry to produce such a flippant combination of suspense over the characters’ dangerous predicament, and yet mockery of the enemy, during the early months of World War II is a tribute to that nation’s superb dry wit as a shield against misfortune.

The movie is based partly on a 1939 short story, but director Carol Reed cobbled together a menagerie of spy thriller aspects and English music hall sensibilities to create a movie that would likely not have been produced in Hollywood.  Not that we didn’t have our share of both thrillers and mockery of the enemy in those days, but American emotions always seem to tend to taking a clear stance and never budging, which we seem to regard as a virtue; whereas the English, or perhaps European, notion is to shrug the shoulders, poke a swift jab, and break off when the dustup becomes boring, no longer serving a purpose, or it’s time for tea.  At that point, the enemy becomes not a threat, but a bore.

Certainly, the movie, being filmed during that “is that all there is?” period of the war known jokingly as the Sitzkrieg, a play on the word Blitzkrieg, which is the horror that was being done to Poland while the U.K. and France and western Europe waited for months for the enemy to strike westward, and so emotions in Great Britain might not have been as riled up as they would be, for instance, when the movie was finally released on July 26, 1940.  The Battle of Britain, when the island was fighting for its life under constant bombing and expecting invasion any minute, began two weeks earlier on July 10^th and would continue through October.  One imagines by that time there must have been less superior chortling and more nail biting in the theater.

The storyline of the film begins much earlier, before the war, just after the Nazis have marched into Czechoslovakia in March 1939.  We begin with what will be a series of wonderful models (I love the use of models for scenery in that era) of the mountain retreat where Hitler slams his fist on a map of the Sudetenland with lots of bellowing.  We see actual newsreel footage of the Anschluss, and then cut to plot exposition.  James Harcourt plays an inventor working on a special formula for armored metal plating, which will be invaluable in what may be the coming war.  He is urged to leave Czechoslovakia at once to avoid capture of himself and his formula by the Nazis.

He waits anxiously at the airport, the plane ready to take off, but his daughter, who was to leave with him, has not arrived.  She is Margaret Lockwood, and she is detained by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp.  Her scientist father escapes to Great Britain.

In the concentration camp, whispering through a barbed-wire fence, she makes an alliance with fellow inmate Paul Henreid, who we first see boldly mouthing off to the authorities and taken away to be beaten for his defiance.  He arranges escape with Miss Lockwood, making contact with one of the guards who was a former student of his.

Soon they are on a small launch to England and arrive safely, though they must be careful about trying to locate her father because neither of them has a passport or permission to enter the country.  It is not wartime yet, and they would not be considered refugees (though one would think being chucked into a concentration camp would make them qualify for refugee status).  They go for help to an eye doctor friend of Henreid’s already established in England, and when Henreid is alone with him, he asks for an exam and is told to read the eye chart.

Great macular degeneration!  The eye chart is written in code!  Henreid and the doctor give each other the Nazi salute!  Henreid is a bad guy!  The “escape” was planned.

But he’s not the mastermind.  He’s “just following orders” as their saying goes, and he is told to keep close tabs on Margaret Lockwood, expecting she will eventually find her father and lead them to him so they can drag him back to Germany.

Lockwood, after having placed an ad in a newspaper, is contacted and told to look for Gus Bennet in a seaside town.  Gus Bennet turns out to be a cheesy music hall performer pushing sheet music sales by singing cheery prattle, complete with straw boater, the most popular headgear of entertainers and flam-flam artists.

Gus is played by Rex Harrison, singing with gusto and an unrepentant blasé attitude.  He is silly, flighty, but he reunites her with her father, who is now working for the British government.  Gasp!  Rex is a secret agent working for the government!  He doesn’t seem the type, but apparently singing ditties is his unusual cover.  However, he when he takes off the straw boater, there still isn’t a serious bone in his body.  His personality doesn’t change at all, which is an intriguing wrinkle.  He seems slightly bored with everything.

But he’s not the luckiest or perhaps most thorough agent.  The scientist and his daughter, thanks to Henreid’s watchfulness, are captured again and taken to Berlin.  Rex suggests that he be the one to go to Berlin to bring them back, as he had spent some years there and is familiar with the city.  We next see Rex in a German uniform pretending to be an officer staying in the same hotel (now used as Nazi headquarters) as Margaret Lockwood, her father, and their captors.  His personality is still the same, still offering glib comments faintly washed with thin coat of pretended innocence.  Catch the elaborate, “This is a fine country to live in,” sequence.  This is all a lark to him, especially his machinations to get to Margaret.  He tells the Nazi authorities that she is an old lover of his and is still carrying a torch for him.  He offers to romance her for the sake of the Fatherland and her father’s secrets.  Getting an adjoining room, he explains his plan to her.  Up until now, he has thoroughly irritated and disgusted her, but she is willing to play along to save her father.

Rex remarks, “If you could find me unbelievably attractive, so much the better.”

She responds with deadpan seriousness, “All right, I’ll try.”

He arranges that they should be caught together in her room, to give the Nazis assurance his plan is working.  Such a playful, open suggestion of unmarried sex is not usually found in American films, and it’s a hoot.

We finally get to the train part, to Munich, at night, and there he continues his cheeky and irreverent treatment of the Nazi guards as irrelevant, while Margaret plays along, doggedly pretending to be in madly love with him.  The biggest danger appears in the form of two middle-aged British tourists, who blow Rex’s cover by one of them recognizing him as an old school chum.  They are Charters and Caldicott, played respectively by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne.  They move about with the quick prattle but the mental fog of music hall comedians, but in the end, they reason it best to help Rex with his problem of shaking the Nazis off his tail.  King and country and all that, you know.

They’d better hurry.  It’s now September 1939 and war is being declared.

A climax suddenly becomes fierce as Henreid chases them to a mountain lodge where their only escape to Switzerland is by suspended tram over a deep snowy chasm, Henreid shooting at them until the very last moments.

As is usually noted in discussions of this film, the characters of Charters and Caldicot, played by the same actors, first appear in The Lady Vanishes (1938) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, that also has some other similar elements to this film.  The duo would appear as the same characters in a few other films as well, which is quite a novelty for supporting players in minor roles.  I like to think Charters and Caldicot are still out there somewhere, and we might run into them someday.

*******************

Our greatest gift from the Greatest Generation was freedom from fascism. Relive, and celebrate, how evil was faced, discussed, dramatized...and fought. Classic films were Hollywood's weapon.

Get your copy of my book Hollywood Fights Fascism here at Amazon in print or eBook, or FREE here for a limited time at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.