Sullivan's Travels - 1941 - The Butler's Admonition

Sullivan’s Travels (1941) is a madcap romp and not-so-incidental grim social commentary—a most striking combination.  Writer/director Preston Sturges deftly constructs a screwball comedy around the framework of a sensitive and serious examination of poverty—while lambasting Joel McCrea’s naïve character for even seeking a social message.  As he begins his exploration of what it is to be poverty stricken so that he may produce a deep and profound message film instead of his usual comedies, Joel McCrea’s first and perhaps best admonition against such a quest comes from his butler.

“I have never been sympathetic of caricature of the poor and needy, sir.”

This is our entry in the Butlers and Maids Blogathon hosted by Rich at Wide Screen World and Paddy at Caftan Woman.  For more on butlers and maids, please see these posts by some terrific bloggers.

Robert Greig plays film director Joel McCrea’s butler in this movie, and Eric Blore his valet.  So intentionally anonymous are they that they are not given names, only referred to in credits as Sullivan’s Butler and Valet.  Both men spent much of their film careers playing butlers.  Mr. Greig, born in Australia in the 1870s, and Blore born in London in the 1880s, were perhaps destined for a life of genteel servitude on film in the caste system of Hollywood character actors.  Their accents, their ages, their physical types certainly recommended them for the job, and that indefatigable knack of being silly and supremely dignified at the same time, their very dignity being the springboard of their comedy. They died a year apart from each other in the late 1950s, an era when the British butler was becoming scarcer in Hollywood.

The movie begins ridiculously enough with Joel McCrea, a director fed up with producing comedies and seeking a serious subject worthy of a work of art, announces to the aghast studio heads played by Robert Warwick and Porter Hall his intention not to direct any more comedies.  Mr. McCrea is starving for satisfaction in his work, takes himself and his art very seriously, and having been raised with all the financial and social advantages of the monied class, is completely innocent about the harsh world of poverty.

Quite unexpectedly, the silliness is deflated like a balloon pricked with a pin early on in the movie when the fast-talking McCrea is brought short by the sonorous tones of his suddenly serious butler, Robert Greig.  Greig, unlike most Hollywood butlers, gets the honor of a closeup and a thoughtful soliloquy.

“If you’ll permit me to say so, sir, the subject is not an interesting one. The poor know all about poverty, and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.”

Mr. McCrea defends his intentions, “But I’m doing it for the poor….”

To which Mr. Greig adamantly responds, “I don’t think they would appreciate it, sir. They rather resent the invasion of their privacy—I believe quite properly, sir. Also, such an excursion can be extremely dangerous, sir.”

This is not the “walk this way” nose-in-air schtick of the Hollywood butler.

“You see, sir, rich people and theorists, who are usually rich people, think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches as disease might be called a lack of health, but it isn’t.  Poverty is not the lack of anything but is a positive plague, virulent in and of itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice, despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned.”

Baffled and rebuffed, McCrea responds, “Well, you seem to have made quite a study of it.”

Mr. Greig answers, “Quite unwillingly, sir.  Will that be all, sir?”

Eric Blore, his valet, cleverly conceals identification in the soles of McCrea’s shoes like a mother protecting her boy at camp with nametags in his clothes, and in a phone call pretending to be a gentleman rather than a gentleman’s gentleman, he manages to trick a railroad clerk to tell him how and where a hobo might hop a freight.  He knows he cannot dissuade McCrea from his mission, but he does his best to pave the way for him.

We might like to know more about the butler’s past that would make him so articulate on the subject of poverty, but the story is McCrea’s, a well-meaning but essentially innocent and perhaps even pompous man who discovers the grim world of Depression-era poverty in a very personal way and learns to find his way back to the safety and blessed relief of comedy.

Veronica Lake is his companion on the trip, and as funny as the slapstick gets on their journey, it is astoundingly interspersed with almost documentary-like scenes without dialogue or narration of breadlines, crowded filthy flophouses, desperate Hoovervilles, and soul-crushing chain gangs. Some scenes are reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath, and of I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

Comedy and tragedy, after dancing around each other for a bit, finally intersect at the end of the film in a sweet, sad, and gentle scene in a crude wooden southern Black church, led by minister Jess Lee Brooks, a figure of dignity and nobleness of spirit.  After services, they are to have the special treat of showing a film and have invited the inmates of the local prison to join them.  The preacher reminds his flock, “Neither by word, action, nor by look to make our guests feel unwelcome, nor draw away from them, nor act high with them, for we’s all equal in the sight of God.”  The prisoners, shackled, file in – McCrea among them, who has been mistakenly arrested for murder—as preacher Brooks sings in his majestic bass voice, “Let My People Go.”

The oil lamps on the wall sconces are turned down, and the projector is started up, and a Mickey Mouse cartoon featuring Pluto, who struggles with flypaper stuck to him, entertains the congregation and their guests. McCrea observes the pleased reaction of everyone around him, how they laugh, and finds himself laughing.  He has discovered the magic of comedy in the war against poverty. Real-life director Sturges is far more successful than fictional director McCrea, for he has managed to combine tragedy and comedy in a way that validates both and trivializes neither.

The butler and valet are not present at Joel McCrea’s moment of epiphany.  We could not imagine them guffawing at Pluto with flypaper on his tail.  Perhaps they might have smirked only slightly with disciplined propriety and uttered to their master in clipped speech, “Very good, sir.”

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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.

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

Fred Astaire reprises his Broadway role in “The Gay Divorcée” (1934) as a rascally hoofer, who in this film wanders among night clubbers in Paris and London with his pal Edward Everett Horton, falls in love with an uninterested Ginger Rogers and spends most of the film trying to get her interested.

Ginger has her own predicament, stuck in a loveless marriage and turning to lawyer Horton to arrange a divorce. Mr. Horton arranges for her to be caught with a hired professional corespondent in order that her husband might be enraged into divorcing her.

Edward Everett Horton, who always seems somewhat like an upper class Gomer Pyle, has some fun scenes as a bumbling second banana, and even gets to sing and caper a bit with a young Betty Grable in the “Let’s Knock Knees” number. Alice Brady is the scatterbrained man-chasing aunt of Ginger who gets some good lines, and Erik Rhodes, who, like Fred Astaire, reprises his Broadway role as Rudolfo Tonetti, a gloriously absurd professional homewrecker and operatic tenor.

It is difficult to listen to the wonderfully precise intonations of Mr. Horton without being reminded of his narration of the “Fractured Fairy Tales” on “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”

Though some smart aleck remarks by just about everybody keep the comic ball rolling, the film is a bit slow moving, particular at the beginning, and we see right off in the “Looking for a Needle in a Haystack” number an early example of Mr. Astaire’s agility and inventiveness in dancing all over furniture. The film is a time capsule of 1934, with platinum blondes with short, bouncy curls, bathing suits with belts, pleated trousers, architecture held together with chrome and black lacquer, and enough Art Deco accoutrements to choke a horse.

They end up at a seaside resort where the meridian lines painted on the shiny floor of an outdoor courtyard/dance floor are intended to give the set some depth. Here Ginger and the pseudo-suave Tonetti are to engage in a pretend tryst. No fear for Ginger, as Tonetti proudly exclaims his motto, “Your wife is safe with Tonetti. He prefers spaghetti.”

But Fred intervenes and there is a case of mistaken identity when Ginger thinks he is the hired corespondent. Ginger changes into a negligee with more doodads on it than a drum majorette’s costume, and Tonetti eventually arrives with his concertina and, all business, slips into a smoking jacket, the standard uniform of roués.

The big production number here is “The Continental,” which won the Academy Award for Best Music and Best Original Song. It is a very long staged number, where after Fred and Ginger get their turn, an army of dancers flows onto the set like locusts in an assortment of black and white evening attire. They form geometric patterns and eventually become increasingly acrobatic, like a Superbowl halftime show.

Eric Blore, in his typical oily, comic, but clever servant’s role, comes inadvertently to the rescue and Fred and Ginger leave us with another waltz over the furniture in her suite. It was their second of ten films together, and by now the pattern was as set as their remarkably precise and impeccably structured dancing.

Here is a bit of Fred and Ginger dancing “The Continental.”

The Lady Eve (1941)

In “The Lady Eve” (1941) we have some of Barbara Stanwyck’s best work, some of Henry Fonda’s best work, and some of director and writer Preston Surges’ best work. From the moment the cartoon credits appear delineating the biblical theme of seduction to sin with the snake and the apple, the film is a garden of sexy and intelligent one-liners. Never before has seduction been so silly.

Fonda as the gullible and naïve reptile expert, who as been up the Amazon on expedition for a year, is putty in the hands of con-woman Stanwyck and her card sharp father, played wonderfully by Charles Coburn. He admonishes her, “Let us be crooked but never common,” and she drops a real apple on Fonda’s head like a bombardier as he ascends a ladder to the ocean liner on which the first part of the film’s action takes place.

Some great scenes include Fonda’s entrance to the plush lounge of the ship where table after table of females hoist a Pike’s Pale Ale (from where his family has amassed their fortune) in the hope he will notice. He does not, and Stanwyck narrates the futile attempts of fawning women to attract him in a clever shot through her compact mirror. “See those nice store teeth, all beaming at you?” she mumbles, and at another woman, “Won’t do you any good, dear. He’s a bookworm, but swing ‘em anyway.”

Even the way she introduces herself to Fonda, after tripping him to get him to notice her, “My name’s Jean. It’s really Eugenia. Come on.” She says it all in one line, with no inflection, no flirtation, all business, as if he needs to know this information. This is the last time she is completely honest with him.

The sweet sensuality of close proximity is illustrated when she is on the divan, Fonda on the floor, and she plays with his hair. When he pulls her skirt down over her naked knee, she demurely replies, “Thank you,” as if he has retrieved her handkerchief from the floor.

Fonda looks like he is going to faint through much of the film, and at one point, after flirting with him, she pulls back and scrutinizes him with real concern, “You’re not going to faint, are you?”

When she bids him goodnight, it is with the question, “Don’t you think we ought to go to bed?” Fonda replies, “You’re certainly a funny girl for somebody to meet who’s been up the Amazon for a year.” But he waits a moment, a beat elapses before he says it, giving us time to think about her remark. Their rehearsals must have been hysterical.

Soon the tables are turned on Stanwyck when she actually falls in love with this easy mark, and she turns the tables on her father, who wants to go ahead as planned and fleece him. Fonda learns of their con game and turns the tables on them, throwing Stanwyck over. Now a woman scorned, she is not ready to let go.

Eric Blore is terrific as fellow con-man Sir Alfred, who brings Stanwyck into Fonda’s wealthy society by introducing her as his niece, the Lady Eve Sidwich. Stanwyck becomes an upper class Brit, haw-hawing over the droll Americans and uttering “Thenk yuh,” in a veddy British way to many men fawning over her at the party in the Pike mansion.

The supporting actors all get to strut their stuff as everybody gets to be funny and steal a scene or two. Eugene Pallette as Mr. Pike is lordly and loveable. William Demarest as Muggsy, admonishes the butler, “Why don’t you shave in your room?!” after the cook has covered the butler with cake icing.

Even the horse gets a laugh when, as Stanwyck and Fonda are cuddling in their riding habits after a ride through the estate, Fonda’s horse nuzzles his hair and won’t stop, despite all the serious romancing going on, all the times he is pushed away. He practically eats Fonda. I’d love to know how they got through that scene.

Stanwyck’s comedic timing is stunning, and her appearance in the Edith Head costumes likewise is stunning, especially in the wedding gown. Her sideways sardonic look at Fonda before the altar is priceless. But the charade does not end here. Though she has tricked him, he is not the prize she wants, or so she tells herself. She wants to humiliate him, so the Lady Eve, whom he thinks he has wed, confesses a hysterical list of past sexual exploits on the train honeymoon trip. He tries to forgive her, “The name of Angus will never cross my lips again.” But, a man can stand only so much, and he dumps her again.

It takes a while for them to be reunited on a ship where it all began, but long before the ending we see that Miss Stanwyck has left the shopworn drudges and embittered fallen women of her 1930s films well behind her. Even the bad women she will play in the future will not be victims as much as they will be villains, taking unrelenting control. It suits her.


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