Margie (1946) is a sweet paean to the 1920s, and though not a musical, is sprinkled here and there with tinny renditions of popular 1920s hits from gramophones, radios, pianos, and even a little bit from star Jeanne Crain (not tinny at all), who plays the title character.
There was a string of post-World War II movies harkening back to a simpler, more innocent (or so we thought) time, and we add Margie to movies like I Remember Mama (1948), Good News (1947) which we covered here, Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) which also starred Jeanne Crain, and Life with Father (1947), which we covered here.
Margie follows a misfit high school girl and her
friends in a series of episodes on the ups and downs of Margie’s social life,
and the unfortunate repeated collapsing of her bloomers around her ankles when
the waistband gives out. A mortifying
experience for an ungainly girl who is desperate to fit in with the glamorous
kids. Margie longs to be popular,
especially with the school’s most popular boy, but her only claim to fame is
being a champion on the high school debate team. Her theme: “Get the Marines Out of
Nicaragua!”
We Ruth McKenney fans will instantly recognize the rallying cry from her nostalgic short stories. The movie storyline is by author Ruth McKenney and her husband Richard Bransten, based on some of the stories she published in The New Yorker magazine (the script was written by F. Hugh Herbert). These short stories were published in a few book collections, most notably My Sister Eileen, which of course, lent its title and a couple episodes in the book to a successful stage play, then a successful musical; and two movies, one a comedy and one a musical. Also, a short-lived TV show.
The real-life hijinks of Ruth and her sister Eileen as they (tried to) conquer New York City are lively and funny, but my favorites are actually the adventures of Ruth and Eileen as small children going to the movies. Their impressions of silent movies, the horror of Lon Chaney, and the even more vivid horror of a train speeding directly at the camera and therefore, the audience, that sent an entire theater of children at the Saturday matinee running for their lives never fails to crack me up no matter how many times I read it. And I’ve read them a lot.
I’m still waiting for someone to make a movie or TV show from little Ruth and Eileen’s moviegoing experiences. To be sure, there is something warm and familiar, and yet Homeric with humorous exaggeration, in personal memoir; think of Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun of Jean Shepherd’s memoirs in a later generation. The movies from the post-World War II era mentioned above were all based on personal memoirs, except Good News, which at the time the musical played on Broadway in 1927 was not nostalgic, but rather, current events.
Margie falls somewhere in between the grade-school Ruth and Eileen in the Midwest around the First World War and early Twenties, and the adult Ruth and Eileen of New York, and while Margie’s sweet innocence is quite the opposite of young Ruth and Eileen, who may have been stumblebums but told with Ruth’s wry and unsentimental narration, came off more like the Katzenjammer kids than a lovely girl in a coming-of-age story.
Margie is told in flashback. We begin in the present day, with Jeanne Crain as an older, more mature Margie rummaging through items, and memories, in the attic while her teenage daughter gawks at the old gramophone, the old photos in an album, and her mother’s famous faulty bloomers, which Miss Crain looks upon now without an ounce of her old embarrassment, but with wise humor. Since the flashback takes place only about twenty years earlier, we may assume she is only in her late thirties, but she seems middle-aged with her upsweep hairdo and glasses.
Her daughter is played by winsome Ann Todd (aka Ann E. Todd), who appeared in several movies in the late 1940s, always in small, supporting roles. Some of her films we’ve covered here are Cover Up (1949), On the Sunny Side (1942), and My Reputation (1946).
The daughter wants to know about the good old days, and Margie calls forth several incidents from her teens. Barbara Lawrence plays her next-door neighbor and best friend, who is also the most glamorous girl in school and therefore has the best boyfriend, “Johnikins” played by Conrad Janis, who with his porkpie hat, racoon coat, snazzy red jalopy and disdain for everyone but himself, is really kind of a drip.
Alan Young, in his first movie role, is the nice misfit boy who follows Margie around like a puppy dog. Hattie McDaniel is Cynthia, the family housekeeper, but unfortunately, she doesn’t get to shine much in this movie.
Esther Dale has a fine role as Margie’s blunt and outspoken grandmother, with whom she lives. She is a former suffragette, who has the chains she was bound to the White House fence with on her mantle in pride of place. “A woman’s place is wherever she makes it!”
Margie’s father, played by Hobart Cavanaugh, is a widower, and lives in bachelor’s digs in another part of town, leaving his daughter to be raised, as was often the custom of the day, by a female relative. He visits her once a week, and this is a poignant, even sad thread to the story. She loves her father and looks forward to his visits, but he is shy and awkward with her. Making matters more uncomfortable for Margie among friends who have both parents, is that her father is a mortician. He will provide two of the loveliest moments in the film: first, when he escorts her to her high school prom and she beams at having him as her special date. “I’ve waited sixteen years for the privilege,” he remarks gallantly.
When they dance a waltz, she notes that it is the first time they’ve ever danced together, but he says it is the second. The first was “one time in your room when you were about three months old.” I love Papa.
When she delivers her rousing, theatric debating team resolution to “Take the Marines out of Nicaragua!” he is filled with pride at her presence at the podium but is also spellbound by her message. He broods on it through the rest of the movie, and believes his daughter is right. The Marines should be removed from Nicaragua, it is “rank imperialism.” At the end of the movie, in a nice jest, we see a headline that he has just accepted an appointment as ambassador to Nicaragua.
Though Margie is captivated by Johnikins and jealous of his attention to her friend, she nevertheless has also developed quite a crush on the new French teacher in school, Mr. Fontayne. Played by Glenn Langan, he will also prove to be a gallant figure in Margie’s life, helping hide the evidence when she loses her bloomers again at a skating party, and returns them to her later in a most delicate and tactful manner. Through his interactions with Margie through the course of the movie, he will become smitten with her, and it is revealed by another teacher that he is not much older than his students.
At the end of the film, Margie’s husband comes up to the attic to see what has become of his wife and daughter, and yes, it’s Mr. Fontayne.
A good part of the movie appears to be filmed outside on location, with real snow in the neighborhoods.
The ice-skating party scene is particularly fun to watch for the constant movement of the skaters and the camera. The soft Technicolor and the nostalgic themes make it a warm and pleasant movie. A flaw one might pick at is that none of the girls’ hair styles resemble 1920s hairdos, but rather reflect the post-War 1940s – a similar complaint about Good News, actually.
But see for yourself. Here’s a link to Margie on YouTube. Catch it while you can.
For those who celebrate, a very blessed and Happy Easter
this coming weekend!
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