Beyond Tomorrow (1940)

Beyond Tomorrow (1940) is Christmas ghost story, a fantasy of second chances.  George Bailey and his angel Clarence meet the Ghost of Christmas Present, or at least a slant on the theme of otherworldly visitors helping out dense, stubborn mortals.

The ghosts in this movie actually start out being mortals, sometimes dense and stubborn, but other times are decent and even lovable chaps.  They are Charles Winninger, C. Aubrey Smith, and Harry Carey as three old bachelors who own an engineering firm.  They live together in a New York City brownstone—so many of these Christmas movies in this series have taken us to New York City—and prepare for a quiet Christmas Eve dinner with company after working late in their apartment.

The secretaries are sent away and the gentlemen don evening dress for dinner, but the invited couple has made late regrets and can’t come, and the three men are let down that they have nothing else special to do for the holiday, having no families.  C. Aubrey Smith, we will find out later, is actually a widower whose soldier son has, like his wife, predeceased him.  Smith is English, naturally, a former officer in the Royal Army before setting himself up in business as an engineer.  He is kindly, avuncular, and cheerful.’

Charles Winninger is Irish, the most chipper of the group, who pushes Christmas on the other two workaholics and forces good cheer on everyone around him.

Harry Carey is a glum, even bitter, Midwesterner.  We do not know much about his story, except he gripes at everything, though we catch enough glimpses of his brief, secret smiles to know the guy isn’t a meanie. However, it is intimated that he once committed a crime for which he faced a jury and the scandal still hangs over him.  He is down on a world which he feels has not treated him fairly.

They are attended in their home by Maria Ouspenskaya as their housekeeper, official hostess, and head of staff.  She is a former countess who lost her home and social position, and wealth, during the Russian Revolution.  Alex Melesh, the butler, is a similar emigree who came along with Madame Ouspenskaya, and devotedly calls her “Excellency.”  She confesses to him that when she was rich in Russia, she was not happy, but in the lean years afterward learned that helping others made her happy, and that to be needed was what gave her life meaning and fulfillment.  Maria doesn’t need to be visited by any Christmas ghosts; she’s already learned her lessons.

Charles Winninger, intending to save Christmas, playfully suggests a sporting contest, that the men each put $10 and their calling cards in three different wallets and throw them out the window into the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk.  They are fishing for guests for dinner.  People who come in to honestly return the wallets will be invited to stay.

The first wallet is scooped up by a flippant, greedy woman, who laughingly keeps it.  The other two are returned by two different souls wandering the streets this wintry Christmas Eve: Richard Carlson, and Jean Peters.  He is a cowboy stranded in New York after the rodeo he performed with at Madison Square Garden left town, and she is a New Hampshire schoolteacher now working in a children’s clinic in the city.  They are both alone, and will soon fall in love.

They all pass a pleasant evening singing and we find that Richard Carlson has a beautiful singing voice.  It will later bring him fame, fortune, and tragedy.

The young couple are completely taken with the three gentlemen, who have become their godfathers, who bestow gifts on them, offer advice, and visit Jean’s children’s hospital on Christmas Day to bring presents and play with the kids.  Just as we saw with the gang of squatters in the mansion in It Happened on 5^th Avenue (1947) here, this hastily assembled crew has quickly become a family, and Christmas is for families, so much so that sometimes they need to be created in a pinch.

All Christmas week, the young couple is accompanied by the three men and Madame Ouspenskaya on group outings: to parties, a hockey match, and bowling.  It is a hoot to see the montage with the image of proper and dignified C. Aubrey Smith and the Russian countess at the bowling alley with hot dogs and Coke bottles in hand.

Then the family comes apart, but not with the natural going separate ways after the holiday.  The family is fractured instantly, tragically.

We have only a brief premonition of trouble; actually, it is Madame Ouspenskaya’s premonition.  The three fellows—neither stooges nor Magi—are off on a business trip to another state and their little family sees them off at the airport.  Maria is worried and wishes they would take the train instead. 

Headlines of a lost plane, of a crash, of bodies found.

We next see the dark, cold interior of the New York brownstone and the ghosts of the three men entering, bewildered, at first not aware they are ghosts.  Madame Ouspenskaya, in mourning, enters, and immediately senses their presence.  “I know you are here.  I cannot see you or touch you, but I know you are here.”

“So, this is it,” the ghosts understand they have passed on, but to where?

Before their flight, the men have left an envelope with bonds in it for the young couple, and Maria asks them to move in with her and the butler for a while.

But a quiet transition to a new family dynamic in the old house with three ghosts in it is not to be.  Richard Carlson gets an audition to sing on the radio, does well, and wins a spot on a regular program.  Next, a fading Broadway star played with sophisticated vampishness by Helen Vinson, takes a shine to the handsome Mr. Carlson.  She is attracted to him and to the possibility he will help to boost her career. 

Carlson’s charming county bumpkin ways become maddening as he does not seem to see the danger to his relationship with Jean Peters or that Miss Vinson in just using him. 

The ghosts, matchmakers in death as they were in life, are not happy about this at all and try repeatedly to warn the mortals.  But time is growing short for them. It seems they are not to be allowed to spend eternity in the living room after all.  With bolts of lightning and terrible thunderclaps, Harry Carey realizes with the customary sense of doom he wore in life that his final reward draws near.  His ghostly pals fear for him, and Charles Winninger urges him to ask forgiveness.  Carey is more than stubborn, he is proud, and he is honest.  He cannot say he is sorry for what he had done, “What I did needed doing.  I have no remorse.”  He accepts his fate and walks morosely into the terrible blackness.

The remaining ghosts now turn their attention to the continuing problem of Richard Carlson getting involved with a wicked lady and leaving poor sweet Jean Parker alone.  Both Carlson and Parker were second-tier players through the thirties and Jean may probably be best remembered as “Beth” to Katharine Hepburn’s “Jo” in the 1933 version of Little Women.

C. Aubrey Smith must give up the attempt to help, for now it is his turn.  Like the soldier he was once long ago, he is being called by a celestial trumpeting of “The Last Post.”  There is no terrible blackness, only a dim sense of light on the horizon, and from it, to his astonishment, walks his solder son.  “I’ve come for you, Dad.”

“What is it like?”

“What do you want it to be like?”

Mr. Smith recalls an old army post in the tropics where he enjoyed the companionship of fellow officers, sport, apparently no shooting at him, and the benefits of being a colonial master of sorts.  He will join his wife there and it will be his paradise.

Charles Winninger is left alone to deal with the problem of Richard Carlson, which grows worse as Helen Vinson’s ex-husband and former stage partner, played by Rod La Rocque in one of his last film roles, jealously follows them to a country inn where they intend to spend a few days.  Winninger has a few comic moments such as when he pulls down Miss Vinson’s skirt which has been provocatively raised, and when he knocks her hat off. But more than this he is helpless to do.  He cannot really turn Carlson away from bad mistakes or the tragedy to come.

Then it’s his turn to meet his final reward and cross over to his own paradise, but he refuses the voice, because he cannot leave Carlson alone.  He feels responsible for him.  The voice tells him if he does not follow, he will doom himself to wander the earth forever. 

“I can’t go now.  I can’t.”  He is sad and helpless, but ever faithful, and he has lost his chance at eternal happiness.

At the country inn, where Carlson and Helen Vinson are having dinner, drunken Rod La Rocque shows up with a gun and shoots them both.  Next, the inevitable operation scene and Winninger paces the corridor like an expectant father.  Instead of good news, the ghost of Richard Carlson comes out into the hall.  He realizes now his foolishness and must suffer remorse for eternity for what he has caused. 

Miracles conveniently happen in movies such as this, and so through the purity of Winninger’s heart, he is given a second chance to pass on to paradise, and Carlson is given a second chance at life.  They part as Winninger responds to the distant call of his mother, and, truly unexpectedly, to the vision of Harry Carey, who also has been granted a second chance at paradise because he has finally let go of the bitterness he carried in life.  There can be no light with bitterness, only darkness.

Beyond Tomorrow is a parable and a fantasy of unlikely events and possibilities, grounded perhaps not by a love story but by the notion that consequences are attached to everything, and that optimism, even in the face sometimes terrible consequences, makes life bearable and is a blessed thing.

You can watch Beyond Tomorrow here on YouTube:

 

  ********************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.