Our Very Own (1950) is like opening up a time capsule and seeing
the world as it was in a year that began a new decade, that oddly seems at once
to look ahead bearing unconscious predictions—and, also, to take a brief glance
over the shoulder at a world that was about to be relegated to memory and
snapshots. This film is about a teenager
who discovers that she was adopted, but it is not about adoption. It is about belonging, about losing one’s
identity and finding one’s place in the new thing called the nuclear family,
which would play such an important part of our national identity in the 1950s
and ‘60s.
This is part of the Fabulous
Films of the '50s Blogathon sponsored by the Classic Movie Blog
Association.
Have a look here for list
of other great blogs participating in this event.
This is also a continuation of
our year-long series on the career of
Ann Blyth. I’m going to talk about pretty much the
entire movie. So get comfortable. If you have any objection to spoilers you
should leave the room. It’s also going to be a really long post, probably
one of my longest ever, so you’ll have to stay overnight. I’ve changed the sheets on the bed in the
spare room and cleared some space for you in the top drawer of the
dresser. Supper’s at six.
The film is produced by Samuel
Goldwyn, and I have read references made about it being a tale of an idyllic
family in suburbia somehow related to the Andy Hardy films over on the MGM
lot. But I disagree. This movie is really more closely related to
Goldwyn’s other films like
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) covered here, where returning servicemen come home to a
world that is both familiar and yet strange, and it is also a cousin to
I Want You (1951), covered here, which
also features two actors from
Our Very
Own: Farley Granger and Martin Milner.
That is a film about a family and community dealing with their men on
the precipice of the Korean War.
Our Very Own falls on the timeline in between those two movies and
between those two wars, and being a linchpin for those films and the past and
the future is what makes this film so very interesting.
Ann Blyth, top billing here, stars as the teen who
discovers she was adopted, and that her adoption has been treated like a family
secret. Unlike some of the other
troubled young women she had played up to this time in such films as
Mildred Pierce (1945),
Swell Guy (1946), and
A Woman’s Vengeance (1948), she’s a good
girl here, a model daughter, poised, mature, far less mercurial than those
other girls, and her strong sense of self is almost a metaphor for her
confident and comfortable post-war world—that will be shaken to the core by
something so small as a birth certificate.
Miss Blyth, 21 when she made this
movie, wasn’t done playing teens—we’ve already covered
Once More, My Darling (1949) and
Sally and Saint Anne (1952), and in none of these films is she ever
playing the same person. We recognize
Ann Blyth from film to film only in her beautiful face; everything else is different: her acting
style, her reactions, her body movement, and, as we’ve noted repeatedly, her
voice. Did her beauty make some overlook the subtle power of her acting? Compare this to a megastar
like Bette Davis, whose larger than life characterizations were punctuated
with bold makeup and wigs, but whose strong personality, familiar gestures, and that
just-a-girl-from-Lowell, Mass. stage voice never changed.
Ann Blyth worked from the inside
out, especially in this role.
We begin tantalizingly with the
arrival of a television delivery truck to the family home, our first symbol of
the 1950s. It is being delivered by
Farley Granger, and the youngest daughter of the house, played by Natalie Wood
starts us off by telling us bits of important information: first, that deliveryman
Farley is the boyfriend of the eldest girl, played by Ann Blyth. Natalie teasingly infers that Ann has
competition for Farley’s affections from the middle girl, played by Joan Evans. This will lead to conflict and be a major
theme of the movie.
Ann is turning eighteen years old
this spring and is about to graduate from high school. Joan is sixteen years old and she is chafing
under the dominance and the importance of an older sister to whom all sorts of
wonderful things seem to be happening.
Joan is suffering with the middle child syndrome. Natalie Wood is about nine years old, being
seven years younger than Joan Evans. That
age difference is only briefly brought up in the movie, but more importance
should play into it because Joan had been the baby of the family for a long,
long time. Finally usurped by Natalie
Wood, making her suddenly a middle child, should be a big part of her
resentment.
Though Ann’s trauma at
discovering she was adopted is the focus of the movie, this is really an
ensemble piece, and we find that the event affects everybody in the house.
Mother Jane Wyatt, with her
Eastern finishing school accent that tells us right off she is a lady, is kind
and gentle and sensible, and has a strong position in the family. She decides, for instance, where the TV is
going. The most important decision of
the day. She is the one who manages the
girls. She is the one who organizes the
birthday party for Ann. We see that her
relationship with her husband is a good one.
They are partners and equally supportive (unlike we’ll see later in Ann
Dvorak’s character). This is important
because, unlike many teen angst movies that would surface in the 1950s, the
children’s problems here are not more important than the parents’. The parents are not background props. The family is all in this together.
The opening scene is quite funny,
and Natalie Wood is a hoot as the talkative, pesky little sister. While Farley Granger climbs up on the roof to
put on the antenna (remember the forest of antennas when we were growing up?), his
assistant, played by Gus Schilling is inside trying to assemble the cathode ray
tube into the cabinet. TVs did not come
in a box from Best Buy. They were
brought home like a new baby, revered as an altar, and we see how the TV instantly
takes over this home. Gus is hounded by
Natalie Wood. She is genuinely
hysterical, always underfoot, always questioning him. At one point she discovers among his tools a razor
on the end of a handle and innocently thrusts it under his neck, asking, “Is
this a razor blade?”
He gulps, his carotid artery
nearly a thing of the past, and sarcastically replies, “Yeah, why don’t you go
out and play with it.”
Author Suzanne Finstad in her biography
on Natalie Wood,
Natasha: The Biography
of Natalie Wood, notes,
“Jane Wyatt and Ann Blyth felt there was something
very touching about Natalie, an ‘endearing quality the camera captured. As Blyth, who had been a child actress
remarked, ‘You can’t teach that to someone.
That is something that owns you, and she had that ability.’”
Natalie, herself a megastar by
the end of the decade, warns the rest of the family who arrive one by one, to
stay away from Gus because people watching him make him nervous, and then
she stays to watch him and hound him with more questions. She is his new buddy, and he wants to kill
her.
I love when that old familiar
test pattern comes up on the TV once poor Gus finally cranks it up and gets it
going. Later on, when color TV came out,
test pattern changed and it wasn’t half so interesting looking. The first program that comes on,
naturally—the fights.
(I remember the days of sitting
in front of the TV early Saturday mornings with my twin brother with our bowls
of cereal waiting for the broadcast day to begin. We were early risers, and inevitably, the
first thing that came on was the test pattern with that high piercing
tone. We sat there stoically watching
it. The sad thing was we were actually
entertained by it.)
Farley Granger is referred to by
Gus as “boss.” We are not told that he
owns the TV store and repair shop, but he is in a position of
responsibility. He puts Gus to work, and
in another scene he uses the van to take Ann to the beach, so he evidently has
permission to use it. He is not a high
school boy. He is in his early to
mid-twenties. He has a job and he is
serious about Ann Blyth, and we see that her mother is serious about him.
Farley brings her home before
curfew because he wants them to see how steady he is. Though he’s always grinning and teasing Ann,
easy-going and affable, he is a mature guy who displays concern for her welfare
at various points in the film, so we know that these two are probably going to
be married, even if they’re not talking about it yet.
The role is decidedly different
from the brittle, edgy, angst-ridden roles he played so beautifully in other
films, and we can imagine this part was not much of a challenge for him. However, Farley Granger’s confidence, especially
his stunning virility, cast a strong presence in this film that really helps us
to see he is not merely an appendage of Ann’s teen social life; he is probably
her future. His being mature makes her
more mature also.
Jane Wyatt remarks that she likes
him, and considers him “suitable,” noting to her husband that she herself was
seventeen when they married. It is one
of many clues to coming-of-age in society at that time. Though Jane Wyatt is not brokering her
daughter in marriage, many young women did marry early, even well through the
1960s. It’s one of the reasons why we
had the Baby Boom. Moreover, we are not
told that Ann has any intentions for college and we are not told that she
currently has a job, or is looking for one.
She, like many girls at the time, may be considering marriage as a
career.
In any case, this was an age
where young people looked forward to
being adults, of leaving their childhoods behind, which in and of itself might
be a mind-blowing concept for people today in their twenties and thirties,
forties, and even fifties. Today it is
more common for people to want to stay young, perpetually, perennially young
and to this end some people feel that behaving immaturely is a step toward that
goal and seemingly try their best to be as immature as possible. It was not always so.
Farley works all day and he gets
sweaty, and when his workday is over, he puts on a suit and tie and takes his
girlfriend to a party. He does not change
into sweatpants and a T-shirt (play clothes) and spend the evening playing
computer games. We are less mature, and we need toys.
This may be a criticism, but is
not meant to be an indictment of our present-day society. I wouldn’t want to regress to the 1950s for
many reasons. It’s important when we
look at old movies, as we’ve mentioned before on this blog, to take them as
they are, in their setting. Some people
will look at an older movie, including Our
Very Own, and call it dated. To call
something dated is to dismiss it, but the very fact that this movie is dated
makes it valuable. To be sure,
directors, writers, actors, producers did not make a film with the intention of
having it be timeless. Having no
premonition of what DVDs or VCR cassette tapes would be, they did not make
their movies for the future. They made
them for the present; even TV residuals were unknown in the late 1940s.
Our Very Own is irresistibly, and importantly, dated, and so it
gives us a wealth of material to study.
Middle girl Joan arrives home
riding in a jalopy with a bunch of friends from high school. One of them is our old favorite, Martin
Milner, a strapping young lad so sweet, but so indignant that Joan appears to
have a crush on Farley Granger. In that
next film we see them together,
I Want You,
both Farley and Martin are drafted into the army. Farley draws the lucky card and ends up being
sent to Europe, but Martin goes to Korea, where he is killed. The Korean War is the fate that lies ahead in
some way for these characters in
Our Very
Own too. Martin Milner is only
sixteen in this movie. When it’s time
for him to graduate, the Korean War will be in full flush and he will be of
draft age. Of course, they didn’t know
that when they made this movie. It was
made and released before Korea. It’s
only because we can look back with hindsight that tells us even more about this
movie that they knew when they made it.
In
I Want You, Farley regrettably leaves behind his beloved jalopy
when he joins the army. And we see the
teens in this movie have their jalopies, souped-up, made over cars from the
1930s. It’s funny that when we see
movies or TV shows that are made today that are set in the 1950s, the teens are
driving cars like a 1955 Chevy or 1956 Ford, but those would have been
brand-new cars back then. Most teens
would not have been able to afford them.
Most teens would be driving late 1940s cars, if they could afford them,
but a lot of them, drove cars from the late 1930s. There were no cars made in the early 1940s
during the war because all car manufacturing was suspended. So we see Joan Evans and Martin Milner and
the gang drive up in a souped-up pre-war car.
Ann Blyth’s best friend, played by Phyllis Kirk (in her first movie), however, stands out because
she drives a brand-new Cadillac convertible, paid for by her wealthy dad.
I get a kick out of the scene at the end of
the party when the all the kids jump into their cars parked all up and down the
street, rev up their engines, honk their horns, and peal out. The neighbors must have loved that.
When Joan gets home, after a
perfunctory greeting to the newest member of the family, the TV, she climbs the
ladder up to where Farley is working on the antenna and flirts with him a bit, in
full notice of Ann Blyth. She’s not
sneaking around with Farley behind Ann’s back.
She seems to want needle Ann. Though Ann tenses up, she does not accuse
her sister outright of being out of line because the scene is really quite ambiguous,
and because Joan Evans has a clever passive-aggressive tactic that makes her
the winner in these exchanges. She
soothes big sister’s feelings just enough to keep Ann off balance, and that
will make her full-out attack on Ann later so unexpectedly cruel.
Ann, the oldest girl, is poised,
kindly, and self-confident. She’s the
leader of her two younger sisters, a benign and benevolent leader and is sure
of her place in the family this spring when she is turning eighteen and
graduating, both of which make her the most important person in her family right
now. And she’s got a gorgeous
boyfriend. Any of this, let alone all
three, would be enough to drive a kid sister nuts.
Farley arrives to take her out
for the evening to her friend’s house party.
Troublemaking Natalie Wood, who doesn’t have a vengeful agenda like Joan
Evans, she’s just mischievous, insists the couple take Joan with them (she’s
hoping to create a scene) and Joan is ready to hop up and go. Jane Wyatt, sensible mom that she is, puts a
leash on Joan and sends Farley and Ann out to be alone together. In this step, she reigns in her younger two
girls and further bolsters Ann’s importance in front of everybody.
We see immediately that Farley’s
a good guy, because even though he doesn’t want Joan along, he generously offers take her. He's a good sport about Joan’s flirting, which he does not take
seriously, because he is mature and too manly to have his head turned by a
sophomore.
With the younger girls sent to
bed, it’s telling that the first program that the grown-ups want to watch
appears to have dance music. In those
early days, most people thought of TV as radio with pictures. I like the way Jane Wyatt strokes and scratches Donald Cook's upper arm as they talk.
When Ann and Farley come back
from the party, Joan spies on them kissing on the porch. (Love Farley’s rattled
surprise at being discovered.) Joan, in Ann’s absence, has put on one of Ann’s
more grown-up dresses to model before a mirror.
She wears it out onto the porch to purposely interrupt the couple, and
flirts pretty shamelessly with Farley.
Ann, not happy about this, confronts her and Joan backs down
good-naturedly, reassuring Ann that Farley’s not interested in a kid sister. Once again, this passive, smiling retreat
from Joan mollifies Ann, whose generosity is spurred again and she gives Joan
the dress.
But Joan’s retreat is temporary,
and something unexpected happens that gives her needling of Ann a little more
teeth. Joan wants to get a summer job,
and needs her birth certificate in order to prove that she’s sixteen years old,
and legally able to work. I get a kick
out of her use of the expression “pin money,” a phrase used probably since Jane
Austen’s time. It seems an anachronistic
term for the 1950s, but then, these girls don’t have to work. “Pin money” indicates their small wages would
be blown on Cokes and movie magazines. They have a comfortable home, built
before the 1950s suburban tract home explosion.
Their parents employ a live-in housekeeper who’s been with the family
since they were first married. The
family is able, we assume, to get by well on their father’s single income. Their mother probably does not work outside
the home, except perhaps engaged in civic or charitable causes that have her
coming and going. Notably, they are a
two-car family.
Jane Wyatt and the family housekeeper,
played by Jessica Grayson (in her last film, unfortunately, Miss Grayson would
die in 1953) are getting ready for Ann’s eighteenth birthday party. They are setting up folding card tables and
getting out dishes and plates, and they are very busy. Joan pesters her mother for the birth
certificate and Jane Wyatt tells her that it’s in a box in her desk. Joan goes up to her parents’ bedroom and finds
her birth certificate, but sees another envelope that is clearly labeled as
Ann’s adoption papers.
Now, if I wanted to hide adoption
papers, I wouldn’t label the envelope “adoption papers.” I’d write “Last Month’s Gas Bill,” or “Uncle
Charlie’s Gold Fillings,” or “My Secret Plans for World Domination.”
Neither Ann, nor her younger
sisters know that she was adopted. Joan
is shocked, and flustered at now being a keeper of this very secret
information. She can’t un-know it. It’s there in her mind, festering and it’s
going come out sooner or later.
I love the moment when Jane Wyatt,
downstairs, still fussing over the party preparations, suddenly realizes that
Joan might see the adoption papers upstairs.
She lifts her face towards the ceiling, a quick jerking movement, a look
of horror, an ominous chord of music, and we know she knows that she just did a
really dumb thing, a potential for tragedy.
Jane runs upstairs. Run, Jane, run. Daughter Joan, though a flurry of nerves
inside, plays it cool and doesn’t let on.
Jane discusses it with her husband when he comes home and we get the
plot exposition that they always meant to tell Ann she was adopted, but decided
not to, then the years just passed by.
Mother Jane says an interesting and poignant thing, that whenever her
daughters squabble amongst themselves, “I think about it.” There is a fear stabbing her that
acknowledging her daughter is adopted will tear her from the family.
Joan Evans plays her role
well. She’s not really a mean kid, but she’s
got growing pains and there is only two years difference between herself and
her older sister. Two years can mean a
lot when those years are sixteen and eighteen.
When school lets out the next
day, the day of the party, Ann and Farley Granger head to the beach for a quick
dip and the idyllic summertime spot for romance. He takes her in his TV repair van, and she
changes into her bathing suit in the back of the van. These are the footloose and fancy-free days of
finding a secluded spot on the beach without 1,500 other people
around.
And this very stunning and distinctive
bathing suit was such an eye catcher, apparently the government of Chuvashia, a republic of the Russian Federation, decided to put it on a postage stamp.
The beach scene is sensual (Ann
is gorgeous and Farley’s a knockout) and very romantic. Here we see their grown-up attraction for
each other and guess that they will be together forever. This is not malt shop stuff. They are both sexy. They are grown-ups. They look like grown-ups. They talk like grown-ups. The music they listen to on the portable
radio is not rock ‘n roll. More on that
in a little bit.
She rests on his back, rubs her
chin on his bare shoulder blade, while he strokes her arm and kisses it, and
they talk about the future. She writes
words on his back in sand. When they
come out of the surf after swimming, there is that lovely moment where their
wet bodies embrace, they kiss each other, the ocean rolling a magic carpet up
to their toes. A moment to rival the
passionate beach scene in
From Here toEternity, the waves come in and roll around them on all sides. I wonder how long it took to set up, because
it’s a great looking shot.
At the time, a syndicated column
by Gene Handsaker noted that Ann Blyth had “cut her knees, soles, and ankles on
the rocks in the surf when on location…”
Ah, ugly reality.
When Ann gets home, happy and glowing
from being kissed by sun, and sea-spray and Farley, we see Joan looking at her
intensely. “What?” Ann asks, amused.
“I was just wondering how it would
feel.” Ann thinks she means what it’s
like to turn eighteen. But we see that
the information Joan has uncovered about Ann’s adoption has been working at her,
playing in her mind. What had shocked
her only a few hours before and seemed something forbidden and unthinkable, now
is all she can think about. It’s
fascinating to her, but she’s not at the point of wanting to use the
information as a weapon. It’s just that
she’s the first one in the family to start considering what it means to belong
and what everyone’s place is.
That is really what the movie is
about, not whether a child is tainted by adoption, or whether adopted children
should be told much sooner that they are adopted. Certainly, if Ann had been told as a young
child, she would not be having this crisis now—but then we wouldn’t have a
movie.
And despite whatever superior
attitudes we may have about our more open society, people still keep secrets
from their children about parentage under many circumstances, and discoveries
inevitably lead to crisis.
At the party that evening, all
her school friends are wearing dresses and jackets and ties. Listen to the music they’re playing on the
78rpm records. We are in the last days
of big band dance music. When younger
people think of the 1950s today, they may have an image of
Happy Days in their heads and rock ‘n roll, but that didn’t start
happening until 1955. What is now called
the American Songbook of pop music still made number one on the hit parade
charts until the end of the decade.
Hit Parade. The TV show killed by rock ‘n roll was still
playing American Songbook music. Rock ‘n
roll came very late in the game, and that was something for kids, not young
people who didn’t want to be thought of as kids. Natalie Wood, by the time she became a
teenager, would be turned on to rock ‘n roll.
But that wasn’t for her big sisters Ann and Joan.
I get a kick out of them singing
“Happy Birthday to You” for two reasons.
One, because they appear to be doing it live, and it’s a nice sound with
everyone singing together, and many of the voices are not that great. It sounds very natural, not stagy and we hear
Natalie Wood’s, enthusiastic child’s voice above the crowd.
The second thing is “Happy Birthday,”
is, I believe, still actually a copyrighted song, so most of the time that’s
why we see in movies and TV people singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” to
avoid paying royalties.
So much
attention paid to Ann is driving Joan to her worst impulses. She is rude to her sister, flirts with
Farley, commands his attention, and when his cufflink gets snagged on her dress
while dancing, she drags him out on the porch to be alone with him. Mama Jane Wyatt is on patrol, pulls her aside
and gives her what for.
Ann is furious, but she is
controlled because she is the older sister.
Those who are privileged must set examples, but when the party’s over,
Ann has a showdown with Joan. The middle child angrily
blurts out the secret that Ann is adopted.
Here the movie suddenly changes
tempo, it becomes a somber, darker piece.
A warm family comedy has flipped into something sinister.
Her parents, at first, step in
and handle the explanation very delicately and not in a melodramatic way at
all. They reassure her, saying all the
right things, that she was chosen by them, that she is special to them and that
they love her. She takes it all quietly,
and absorbs her parents’ words unquestioningly.
It’s a lovely scene, Mom and Dad sitting on each side of her, each
holding one of her hands, murmuring calm and comforting words.
But when she leaves to go to bed
and thanks them for throwing her the party, there is a formality in her
politeness that brings Jane Wyatt to tears because it’s happened, she’s just
lost her daughter.
Ann walks into her bedroom like a
zombie and looks around, but everything is somehow changed. It’s like she’s entering her room for the
first time, looking at the walls, the birthday presents left on her bed, her
student desk where she does homework.
She’s wondering who she is. She
takes the locket off that her parents gave her for her birthday, because there
seems something artificial about it now.
Her trauma is not simply suddenly discovering she is not related by
blood to her family, but that the news of it came to her as a hateful taunt,
and that it was kept a secret from her, which in her mind validates that
something unnatural and sinister has occurred, that she has somehow been betrayed.
A poignant moment when Natalie
Wood, who evidently has overheard or been told the turmoil, knocks on Ann’s
door and wants to come in to talk, but big sister Ann is off the clock to
younger siblings now. She gently
replies, “Not now, baby. Go to sleep.”
The family dog, however, gains
entrance, because apparently the secret password is “woof.” Besides, Ann needs to hug somebody,
preferably somebody who won’t talk and ask questions.
The dog was called Melinda in the
movie, but the actor’s real name was Rags, and he proved to be a Method actor
whose need for motivation held up shooting. According to a syndicated article, Rags was
supposed to lick Ann’s face in this scene.
Unlike a lot of other actors who’d performed kissing scenes with her,
Rags seemed to dislike the taste of her screen makeup. His trainer “solved the problem by rubbing
her cheek with a chunk of beef, and Rags’ performance was enthusiastic.”
Rags’ big love scene must have
ended up on the cutting room floor, though.
And it never led to Max Factor or Maybelline putting out a line of beef-flavored
foundation or concealer.
The next morning, Natalie Wood
wants to be reassured by her parents that she herself was not adopted. Joan, in the doghouse, feels terrible for what
she did, but her parents have forgiven her and they keep reiterating that
everything is normal, that nothing has changed their love for their children. But something has changed the equilibrium, in their
sense of who they are in the nuclear family.
Jane Wyatt became an expert on
how we perceive the nuclear family, and was quoted about TV’s
Father Knows Best: "Each script
always solved a little problem that was universal. It appealed to everyone. I think the world is hankering for a family. People may want to be free, but they still
want a nuclear family."
Jane Wyatt, not so coincidentally,
was chosen for role as the mother in
Father Knows Best, because of this movie. She
would win three consecutive Emmys for that show. The producer of the show met her on set
during filming of
Our Very Own and
remembered her when it was time to make that television show.
At the time she did Our Very Own the role of the mother was not exactly something that
Jane Wyatt really wanted to play because once an actress started playing mother
to grown children, that was all she got.
However, doing this movie proved to be lucky as it would bring her a series,
giving her a regular gig for six years.
Also, working in movies around 1950 got a bit dicey, particularly for
politically liberal leaning actors. Jane
Wyatt was put on Hollywood’s infamous black list. She had publicly denounced McCarthyism, and
was one of the Hollywood group who traveled to Washington, D.C. to protest the
congressional hearings. The 1950s was
not as placid an era as the Silent Generation would have us believe. There was a lot going on under the surface, a
lot of cracks in the foundation, but Miss Wyatt rose above it in the nuclear
family.
Mother Jane goes up to Ann’s room
to have a quiet talk with her about the situation. Ann is brooding over her typewriter, stuck on
a speech about citizenship she has to make at the graduation ceremony as the
vice president of her class. Ann asks
about the circumstances of her adoption, and we learn that her birth mother lives
about an hour away. The term “birth
mother” was not used commonly at this time; we hear the phrase “real mother”
and though it may seem somewhat insulting and incorrect to us, I think it lends
a wry irony and a punch to the story.
Ann is somewhat wooden with her mother, still having a hard time
swallowing the news, and unthinkingly insults Jane by inferring that Jane is
not her real mother, and wants to
meet her real mother.
Jane forgives her, but also fires
back a verbal slap with, “You’re only feeling what I’d want any daughter of
mine to feel about her mother.”
Ann’s birth mother is played by
Ann Dvorak. Not married at the time of
Ann’s birth, and Ann’s father killed in an accident around that time, so the
baby was put up for adoption. Ann Dvorak
is now married—happily or unhappily, or just resigned—to a different man named
Lynch (there’s that name again) who knows nothing about his wife’s having had a
child before he knew her. She does not
want him to know.
We get a whole lot thrown at us
to mull over in the Ann Dvorak scenes.
Her husband wears the pants in the family and has her under his
thumb. We don’t see that she’s crazy in
love with the guy, just that she’s got a roof over her head and she feels lucky
to have it. Miss Dvorak does the Stella
Dallas bit, the bad blonde dye job, the frumpy body padding, ill-fitting
clothing a bit too loud, and speech that smacks of a lack of education. She lives in a run-down bungalow on the other
side of the tracks. We hear the huff of
a freight train, the track in the foreground, see a rundown 1930s car chugging
down the road, the air pierced by the wailing of a baby.
When Jane Wyatt goes to visit
this forlorn neighborhood, in her tailored white suit, white gloves, the tails
of the scarf tied in a band around her hat draped down her neck, she looks
immaculate, like a memsahib making a
charity call at the hut of the rubber plantation workers.
The film is fortunate to have Ann
Dvorak in this role, as the part walks a fine line between genuine pathos and
cliché. We are meant to understand, as
Ann Blyth will come to understand, that her being raised in a “nice” home is better
than being raised here, that she was lucky to be adopted by “nice” people. But Miss Dvorak’s work is so strong that we
take her character as more than a type, she becomes someone truly tragic. It’s a powerful, heartbreaking performance as
a brittle, sad, overwhelmed woman, who chain smokes her way through a couple
scenes that show us first, that she’s curious about meeting her daughter, and
second, that her daughter must be kept a secret from her husband.
As much as she gets a kick out of
looking at the photograph Jane Wyatt shows her, as impressed as she is to know
a daughter of hers is graduating from high school—she does not want this girl
in her life. There’s no place for
her. That ship has sailed. “It was just one of those things,” she says
of her pregnancy. But she agrees to let
Ann Blyth come to visit her if she comes on a night when her husband is out
bowling.
One of the things I really like
about this movie is how atmospheric it is.
We are in a warm late spring. The
director, David Miller, sets up shots that give us such a strong sense of place. The glow of faces under a porch light
emerging in and out of shadow. A glimpse
into the house through the screen door.
Two sisters standing in the upstairs hallway late at night.
The sultry evening when the
family eats their supper out on the patio, seated at a round table, and the
camera slowly pans around the family circle, morosely quiet, stealing glances
at Ann, all on pins and needles because after supper, Ann is going to visit her
real mother. You could cut the tension
with a knife. Ann is irritable, snapping
at her parents because she is so nervous.
She looks like she’s about to be sick.
Her best pal, Phyllis Kirk drives
her to Long Beach to visit Ann Dvorak (with some really nice rear screen projection).
As she’s leaving, Farley shows up, and Ann pushes him away, too, with
her edginess. He spends the evening with
her folks, playing cards with Dad and getting the lowdown on what’s been
happening. He’s comfortable with her
folks, and they are comfortable with him, brought together by their mutual
concern over Ann. Again here, we see he’s
a grownup, not a kid.
The phone rings. It’s Miss Dvorak. She doesn’t want Ann Blyth to come tonight
because her husband’s home. Panic forces
her anger, “Look, ya simply gotta stop her!”
Now Ann’s on a collision course,
and we know it, but she doesn’t. It’s a
great device for ratcheting up the tension.
There’s no way that Farley and her folks, keeping vigil around the card
table with the TV off (!), can reach Ann.
She’s on her own.
Miss Dvorak’s husband, played by
Ray Teal, so memorable as the obnoxious guy who got into a fight with Harold
Russell in
The Best Years of Our Lives
and got slugged by Dana Andrews, here plays another bigmouth. He’s brought home a bunch of buddies and a
few wives and girlfriends to play cards.
The boys are playing poker. The
girls are off by themselves, probably gossiping over canasta. Ann Dvorak, wanting desperately to head Ann
Blyth off, nervously paces the porch, while husband Ray bellows for more beer.
“Get it, will ya? What’s the matter, you paralyzed or something?”
Miss Blyth arrives, stunned by
the rabbit hutch of a home near the railroad tracks, the collection of strange people,
the air heavy with cigarette and cigar smoke, by Ray’s playful leering at her, “I
like ‘em young and cute like this,” and by her real mother pretending not to
know her. Ann moves about like a zombie,
while Miss Dvorak keeps up a steady stream of manic chatter, telling her
husband and guests that this girl is the daughter of someone she used to know.
Having pulled back from her adopted
family, Ann Blyth now discovers there is no connection, either, with her real mother. There is no place for her here. She belongs nowhere.
It’s a pitiable situation for
both real mother and real daughter, and when the girls pull away in the expensive
Cadillac convertible, disappearing in the dark, sultry night, Ann Dvorak stands
on the porch watching them leave, dragging on her cigarette, tears in her
eyes. She’s been through an emotional
obstacle course.
Though we get the message that
Ann is lucky to have been adopted by the “nice” people on the tree-lined street
with a housekeeper, the story really isn’t so much about class. Farley Granger is working class, and he is a
knight in shining armor. Mom and Dad
have no problem with blue collar Farley.
Actually, Dad is more unhappy about Ann’s friendship with Phyllis Kirk,
who lives in a mansion with a butler, whose wealthy father buys her expensive
presents.
Phyllis takes Ann back to her
house to talk. Her father, a
much-married playboy type, is not home, again.
They sit at the bar in the living room, and Phyllis offers to freshen up
Ann’s drink. No more is said about that,
so we don’t really know if they have broken into dad’s liquor cabinet. Farley shows up to try to get Ann to go home,
and they fight.
Farley is given “The Speech” in
this movie: “All your life you’ve taken
your folks and your home for granted, like any other kid. It’s very natural and nobody blames you,
least of all your mother and father. But
maybe now you won’t take it all for granted. If it makes that difference, I’d say it’s all
to the good.”
This is the conclusion Ann will
come to herself, eventually, but not yet.
Farley leaves alone, unable to persuade her to go with him, and Ann
finally gets her tail home around 3:00 in the morning, where Donald Cook has
been waiting up for her. She mouths off
to him, and he fires off a molar-loosening slap. Ten times more powerful than Joan Crawford’s
slap in
Mildred Pierce (1945), and Joan had a good arm. Miss Blyth is probably
somewhere still rubbing her face right now.
Donald Cook had appeared with Ann
earlier in one of the Universal teen musicals, Bowery to Broadway (1944), which we’ll discuss down the road. Our
Very Own was his last film in a long career of mostly B-movies stretching
back to the early 1930s, some theatre including Broadway, and TV claimed him
for guest roles for the remainder of the 1950s, before he died in 1961.
The pacing of this movie is
great. We slide from one encounter to
another, one conflict on top of another, interspersed with quiet moments. Like the next morning, when Mom and Dad are
seated alone at the dining room table, the heat of the night before dispersed
and the eye of the hurricane settling on the house. It is cool and quiet. The kids are gone. They wonder how to bring Ann back into the
fold.
Jane Wyatt offers, “It’s eighteen
years of, well, this…love and care against a few anguished moments…” and as she
speaks, the camera slowly pulls back (rather than moving in for the typical
close-up), showing them in their setting, their home, their haven. There is much restraint in the
cinematography, and some of the shots seem almost lyric in their meaning.
There are a couple very good
mirror shots: one when Ann, speaking on the phone to her friend Phyllis, and in the mirror’s reflection we see
Jessica Grayson and Jane Wyatt proudly fussing over the gown they’ve both made
and gotten ready for their girl.
Another good mirror shot is when
Phyllis Kirk sits before Ann’s vanity table and wistfully wishes that she might
marry right away and have “scads of kids.” She
doesn’t like being an only child. She's come over so she and Ann can dress together for the graduation. Her
father will not attend the graduation ceremony because he’s going to a
party. This, too, gives Ann something to
think about.
By the way, check out Ann’s pedal
pushers, and the way she and Phyllis Kirk wear their hair pulled back from
their faces and tied in the back, the forerunner of the 1950s iconic ponytail.
The biggest scene in the film is
the splendid graduation scene, and the director wisely does not waste the
occasion. He does not dismiss the
importance of graduation by summarizing the event. He truly exploits this thunderous, rather
Wagnerian display as one of our society’s greatest tribal rituals.
“Pomp and Circumstance,” so loud
we can feel it in the belly, is performed by the high school orchestra. The school auditorium is filled to
capacity. Ann’s family are there, having
all arrived separately from their day at work, at school, at the
hairdresser. Jessica Grayson is here, part
of the family. Farley’s there, too,
though seated alone in another section of the auditorium. We can imagine him rushing home after another
sweaty day on somebody’s rooftop, grabbing a quick shower and putting on a
jacket and tie to go to his girlfriend’s high school graduation.
The grads start filing in, shuffling
in straight lines down the auditorium aisles, the boys and the girls (I wonder
how many takes this required, how many times they “graduated”), and we spot Ann
Blyth among them.
A nice touch, and rather
poignant, that the director does not single her out as our star. She’s just one of the grads, looking a little
lost as most grads do when they are the center of attention in a coming-of-age
procession in medieval gown and mortarboard.
Her family spots her, but they
can’t get her attention because she doesn't see them, even though she’s sneaking
furtive glances around, looking for them.
I love the universality to this, the common touch. We’ve all been there. We’ve been the grad looking for the familiar
faces in the audience that belong to us, and we’ve been in the audience trying
to make eye contact with our grad, anguished by the distance of several
rows. It might as well be miles.
When it comes time for Ann to
make the speech she’s been struggling with the entire movie, we really don’t
know what she’s going to say. She has
the typed paper in her hand, but it’s folded and she doesn’t refer to it, and
though her delivery is poised—we can see she’s at last recovered her earlier
composure—we don’t really know if she’s reciting what she has memorized, or if
she’s talking off the top of her head.
She blends the topic of her speech about citizenship with belonging to a
family, and calls both a privilege.
It might seem that her acceptance
of her adoption and her adopted family is sudden or wrapped up too quickly
because she has been in such turmoil up to now, but I don’t think so. I think the script and the director play this
one close to the vest, keeping the suspense to the very end. The emotional and psychological resolution
has not been clumsily telegraphed to us beforehand. Ann has had such a rough time, we don’t know
if she’s going to stand up there at the podium and say, “I just found out I was
adopted and life stinks!” She could say
anything, but her speech neatly exemplifies her discoveries made over the last
few days. She has been learning many
lessons, and she’s taken something away from each encounter—from her parents,
from Ann Dvorak, from Farley, from Phyllis Kirk—to help her come to this sense
of peace.
The only area where I think the
film could have picked up a dropped thread was her relationship with Joan
Evans, the instigator of the crisis.
Instead, we have only a sisterly embrace outside in front of the
school—another part of the graduation tribal ritual where the grad re-joins the
family as a new person.
I would have liked there to be
some private confession by Joan of her middle child woes, something to clue Ann
in on what’s going on with her younger sister.
But, in the end, siblings fight and make up and perhaps it doesn’t
really matter why, it’s just family dynamics.
There is, however, a nicely
symbolic reunion with her parents. When
Ann hugs Jane Wyatt, buries her face in her neck and calls her “Mother,” we
know Ann has just chosen Jane to be
her mother, the way Jane chose her years before.
Then Donald Cook tenderly kisses
Ann on the cheek he had slapped.
Most poignant, perhaps, is what
happens next. Joan leaves the group and
goes off with Martin Milner. Ann leaves
the group and goes off with Farley. Dad
looks down at Natalie and tells her not to be in a hurry to grow up.
The family is coming apart after
all, just as Mother feared, but naturally, and though bittersweet, as Ann
Dvorak says, “It’s just one of those things.”
Our Very Own was released on VHS many years ago, and is difficult
to find. However, since this was a
Samuel Goldwyn film, released through RKO—not one of Ann’s Universal
outings—and because of those annoying omnipresent little “TCM” badges in the
top right corner of the screen caps you see, I have hopes this might be an
indication that a DVD release is in the offing.
In the meantime, it has, obviously, been shown on TCM, and somebody
recently put it up on YouTube. I won’t
link to it because I don’t want to jinx it being taken down suddenly, but sneak
over and have a look at this great movie when you’ve got the chance. Don't leave any fingerprints.
Come back next Thursday when we
have a look, or a listen, I should say, at a few of Ann’s guest radio
appearances. A much shorter post. I swear.
******************************
Evening Courier (Prescott, Arizona), October 27, 1949, syndicated
column by Gene Handsaker, p. 2.
Finstad, Suzanne. Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood (Three
River Press, 2002).
Herald-Journal (Spartanburg, SC) November 27, 1949, syndicated
column by Erskine Johnson, p. D4.
The Mount Washington News (New Hampshire) January 20, 1950, p. 38.
Reading (PA) Eagle, June
15, 1989, syndicated article by Jerry Buck, p. 27.
****************************
THANK YOU....to the following
folks whose aid in gathering material for this series has been
invaluable: EBH; Kevin Deany of Kevin's Movie Corner; Gerry
Szymski of Westmont Movie Classics, Westmont, Illinois; and Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
of Thrilling Days of
Yesteryear.
***************************
UPDATE: This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -
"Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings
"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey
"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films
"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings''
"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood
Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.
by Jacqueline T. Lynch
The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.
The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and other online shops. You can also order it from my Etsy shop.
If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.
