The Impatient Years (1944)

The Impatient Years (1944) is an example of the kind of movie that is hardly ever made anymore, but was a staple of Hollywood’s heyday: current events.  In this case, the consequences of a hasty wartime romance, a quickie marriage and a baby – but when the couple are reunited when the soldier returns Stateside, they discover they are strangers.

(By the way, have a look at the "A" sticker on the car windshield in the picture above - and have a look at this previous post on gas rationing as depicted in the movies of World War II here.)

It’s a comedy, but it’s also a poignant and even rather sad take on what was a common problem as the divorce rate soared in the post-war years.  Even for those couples choosing to stay together, it was often a tough adjustment.  In a real sense, there was no getting back to “normal.”  There was only a mature and resigned acceptance that adapting to a new life was the only course.  Both husband and wife would have become different people in the meantime, due to their wartime experiences.

Jean Arthur is the lady, and she brings her trademark comic chops and intelligent silliness to the role of a young woman, repeatedly described by her father as a “nice girl,” so that we wouldn’t mistake her marrying a soldier almost the moment she met him as indicative of a “V-girl.”  “But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t brought up right…it was wartime and they fell in love.” 

Now, however, waiting with her father at the bus station to welcome home her soldier husband on medical leave, she’s as nervous as a cat and clearly uncomfortable with the idea of being married to somebody she knew only for four days.

Lee Bowman plays her husband, home on temporary medical leave.  He’s just as uncomfortable with Jean as she is with him, more so because he is coming home not only to a wife he barely remembers, but to a father-in-law he’s never met, and must try to make himself at home in a house he’s never been to and is already crowded.

Charles Coburn is Jean’s father, reprising a similar role of curmudgeonly matchmaking as he did in The More the Merrier (1943) of the previous year.  In fact, you’ll notice his “The Torpedo Song” of that movie being reprised as a theme for his character in The Impatient Years every time Coburn enters a scene.  He is the voice of common sense, trying to get his daughter and son-in-law to give each other a chance before they divorce – the movie starts in divorce court and the plot is then revealed in flashback.

There are two more people in the house who are strangers to Lee Bowman, one is his infant son, in whom he is delighted, but nervous as to how to hold him.   He has seen only pictures, and is disappointed to have missed his first words – which include “Mama,” and “Henry.”

Henry, played by Phil Brown, is the other stranger, a boarder in the house.  He is a young man who has been immensely helpful with the baby and who regards Jean and the baby as his surrogate family.  A proper fellow who enjoys the routine around the baby that Jean Arthur has established for the home, Henry, as Charles Coburn remarks to Lee Bowman, “He’s a very fine young man.  You’re going to get very sick of him.”

And we see why, but I feel rather sorry for poor Henry, usurped by the baby’s real father.  Despite his late-hour, petulant confession to Jean Arthur that he is in love with her, he stands no chance.  Yet there he is, in Jean’s room, soothing the baby while she goes to warm up the bottle of milk, with Lee Bowman staggering around, trying to find a place to hang up his uniform.  

When Jean returns and the baby is settled, Bowman asks casually, “You finally got him in bed?” and we know that her uneasy reply of “yes,” just short of a double-take is because at that moment, they are both thinking of Henry.  It is one of a few clever double meanings in this script.

As I remarked in the post on her work in The More the Merrier: “Miss Arthur makes this brittle woman interesting, and lovably obtuse.”  One could say the same for her character here in The Impatient Years, except that here she is slightly more irritable as a means of defense.  Her skittishness, and his own being baffled by the strange surroundings and stranger family, Lee Bowman nonchalantly decides to sleep on the floor, giving the excuse that he is not used to a bed after rugged Army life.  It is a gallant move to put his wife at ease, though we can see that she might also take it as an insult.  He ruefully remarks of the baby in the crib next to her bed, “I think he’d be ashamed of his old man.”  It is both self-deprecating and a shaft of conscience to Jean Arthur.

But they quickly get on each other’s nerves the next day and decide to call their marriage quits.  We are brought back to the courtroom scene where Charles Coburn, in an attempt to force them to get to know each other as a way to avoid divorce, suggests to the judge, played by Edgar Buchanan, that they be required to re-live the four days of their courtship that led to their marriage.  Judge Buchanan remarks, “You boys and girls think it’s very romantic to get married just because it is wartime.  You don’t stop to think for a minute that there’s going to be an after the war time, with a whole long life to be lived together.”  Yes, if they're lucky.

It is an admonishment to the young lovers in the audience, and it is a daffy screwball comedy turn in the great tradition of that era, and so we have our second half of the movie as the now bickering couple find themselves in the scenes of their hasty courtship in San Francisco, revisiting the same restaurants, tourist sights, hotel, and marriage license office, leaving confused desk clerks in their wake.  As Miss Arthur grumbles about a marriage license clerk who does not understand that they need to fill out a marriage license to get a divorce, “For heaven’s sake, if he’s going to be so stupid, let’s go.”

Ironically, it is their very spatting like an old married couple that brings them closer together, along with reliving the scenes of their romance and being away from Pop, the baby, the crowded house, her regimentation with household chores, and Henry. 

Because they need to follow through on the judge’s orders, they kiss, but only to avoid committing perjury.  But aha, there’s a glimmer of falling in love again.

Grant Mitchell plays a befuddled hotel desk clerk very concerned about Jean Arthur’s welfare when he thinks Lee Bowman is not only a wolf, but mentally unstable; and Charley Grapewin is the world’s oldest bellboy.  

He loyally sits outside Jean’s door all night to protect her, and humors Lee Bowman when Lee says “I love you,” meaning this is the message he was trying to tap in their old code on the wall of Jean’s adjoining room.  Charley thinks Lee loves him.

When sailor Frank “The Old Magoo” Jenks cuts in at a hotel dance, we see Lee Bowman getting jealous, to Jean’s delight.  But she saves Bowman from the MPs by vouching he is her husband and takes him firmly by the arm, “C’mon, darling.”

Finally, they trek to the house of the minister who married them.  He is Harry Davenport, and his sweet wife is Jane Darwell.  She remembers the couple, and the old folks are thrilled that a couple married in their livingroom, for once, came back to visit them.  It is not a screwball moment, but a very sober example of what a long and dedicated marriage is, and Mr. Bowman and Miss Arthur feel somewhat shamefaced at their fecklessness.

Afterward, they end up at the place where they had their wedding dinner—a Chinese restaurant where the vocalist is Bob Haymes, actor and singer Dick Haymes’ younger brother.  I’m not sure the point of this interlude of him singing at their table, except to give the up-and-coming fellow a bit of screen time. He has a nice voice.  But the dinner is where they really relive their wedding night—Jean becomes ill on fried shrimp, just as she did the first time.

The hotel clerk and his erstwhile bellboy are on the alert when Bowman must carry her up the stairs and she blithely announces her husband has poisoned her.  Charles Coburn and poor Henry arrive at the 11^th hour with a telegram ordering Bowman to the military hospital for his end-of-furlough checkup. 

It now appears that since their trial courtship is over and Bowman is ordered back to active duty, there’s nothing to keep them together anymore. 

In a sweet ending, however, Jean returns to her father’s house to reunite with her baby and discovers Bowman there, playing with him on the floor.  Miracle of miracles—the little boy takes his first steps to Daddy, and Jean is overcome with emotion.  She wants the toddler to walk to her next, and Bowman asks, “Can I come too?”

We have our happy ending, except for Henry, of course.  He's out of luck.

The movie, while not packing a punch like The More the Merrier, has some good moments, and it is particularly noteworthy that the screenwriter and associate producer for the film was Virginia Van Upp (1902-1970) – a child actress in silent films, later a script writer, producer, film editor, casting director, agent – pretty much a Hollywood jack-of-all-trades, unusual for a woman at that time.  (And is this a swell photo or what?) She had been brought over from Paramount to Columbia for Cover Girl rewrites that same year by studio boss Harry Cohn.  Lee Bowman also appeared in that film.

Speaking of the studio boss, The Impatient Years was Jean Arthur’s last film for Columbia under her much-hated contract with much-hated Harry Cohn.  She was free at last, and the wonderful A Foreign Affair (1948) here, and Shane (1953), discussed here, were ahead of her.

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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.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

Buy this or any of my books online here at Bookshop.org.

If You Could Only Cook - 1935

 

If You Could Only Cook (1935) is another Depression-era screwball comedy that uses the Great Depression as a springboard to humor. It also serves as a backdrop to contrast the silliness with the bleak realities of everyday life that presented challenges and provided plots.

Like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1935), a movie of the same year that we discussed recently here, this movie also features star Jean Arthur and brings along favorite gravely-voiced tough guy Lionel Stander in a supporting role.  He is one of the few clear-eyed and sensible people in this movie who wears his cynicism like a shield.  Everybody puts up defenses in the Great Depression, and some have more survival skills than others.

On the other end of the spectrum of cynicism is Frieda Inescort in a brief role as the bluenose fiancée of Herbert Marshall, who slyly seems to drive him to the altar in the manner of closing a business deal.  She has social standing in a respected old family that has, through generations, lost its fortune.  Marshall is new money, an automotive engineer who owns his own car manufacturing company.  She and her former debutante friends see it as the perfect match.

The movie opens on their wedding rehearsal in the family mansion, their friends and attendants, like Miss Inescort, just going through the motions of what a real, meaningful wedding celebration should be.  When Herbert Marshall leaves after the rehearsal to return back to work and a board meeting at his company, we see that he is not exactly happy.  Though he looks forward to his wedding, a sadness, a sense of dissatisfaction nags at him.  Frieda Inescort neither requires nor wants wooing.  Herbert is a romantic, and would like to have the experience of sentimental romance with a partner who could share life as an adventure. 

He faces disappointment at work, too.  His executive board does not approve of his new, futuristic, and somewhat cartoony designs for a line of autos.   He is told, “This company is in no condition to spend money on wild ideas” for his car designs, because the public has no money to spend on the cars.

Herbert’s response is a bit of fiscal cheerleading: “This country’s on its feet again, and soon it’ll be spending as it never did before.”

By 1935, the year of this film’s release, the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt did reduce unemployment since he took office in 1933 (and would continue to drift downward as the decade ended) but we were a long way from spending as we never did before.  When it comes to survival tactics, Mr. Marshall's character survives the gloom by being naively optimistic.

But fed up with his frustrations at his company, as well as in his personal life, he goes to a park as a brief respite, an afternoon’s escape to brood.  It turns into the kind of adventure he would have liked to have with his fiancée, Frieda Inescort.  Instead, he is a far luckier man; he discovers Jean Arthur.

She is on the bench he has chosen to sit upon and brood, reading the want ads in a newspaper, her suitcase by her side.  She’s down to her last nickel and has lost her digs.  But her survival skill is grit, determination, and belief in herself.  By his presence in the park in the middle of the day and perhaps by his dejected demeanor, she assumes he is also out of a job.

“Jobs are hard to find, aren’t they?” she remarks sympathetically and offers him the “help wanted-male” section.  “It’s tough these days.  About 200 people for every position.”  Not unlike today.

We are given to understand she is used to office work, but she comments, perusing the servant positions, that “the only good ones are for couples,” a cook and butler, fetching $175 per month.  “That’s real money.”

Mr. Marshall, amused, responds, echoing the title, “Now if you could only cook.”

She admits to being a good cook, having kept house for her widowed father since she was a girl.  Then a light dawns and she suggests they apply for the job together as a cook and butler.

Here we have a switch in the usual screwball scenario: she is the practical schemer, and he is the “madcap heiress,” persuaded to go along on a ridiculous romp.  It’s a fun premise, and since one never takes fairy tales or screwball comedies seriously, we do not wonder why, since he’s rich, he just doesn’t find her a job in his corporation.  He clearly takes an interest in her and wants to help her, but with very human self-interest, he sees this as a final escapade before resigning himself to the seemingly inevitable world of a dull marriage and an unfulfilling career.

Their prospective new employer is a gangster and former bootlegger played by Leo Carrillo, who fancies himself a gourmand and is especially pleased with Jean Arthur’s demonstration of merely holding a clove of garlic over a pan of sauce to infuse its flavor (I want to think she was putting him on, but again, one should never look for sense in a screwball comedy). 

Lionel Stander is Carrillo’s right-hand man, who vets all employees and anyone ever trying to get close to his boss.  He is shrewd and will soon suspect the new butler and cook are not what they seem.  Carrillo, for all his dangerous authority, is as grandiose as a character in an opera, flighty, passionate, and with the kind of zest for life we sense Herbert Marshall would like to have.

The “couple” is shown to their new digs—a room over the garage.  It has one double bed.

Mr. Marshall will take a daybed couch out on the porch, assuring her with good humor that she does not need to worry about being unable to lock the door.  When Jean retires that night to the double bed, he climbs down the trellis and heads back to his apartment to get clothes and to get a few lessons in how to be a butler from his own butler, played by Romaine Callendar.  Callendar, from an old English acting family, did a lot of stage work, and this was his first film since a couple of silents in 1918.  He frequently played butlers.

Bess Flowers, our favorite uncredited extra, can be spotted at the wedding rehearsal.

Romaine Callendar teaches Herbert Marshall to greet people at the door.  The wedding is a week away.  Herbert has one week of fun left.

Soon, the lark turns complicated, as both begin to experience possessive feelings for one another, if not love.  She is annoyed and complaining when she discovers he has been out all night, and dismisses his excuse of returning for his clothes, as if he is a wayward husband caught carousing.  When Leo Carrillo, who begins to fancy Jean, puts his amorous moves on her, Herbert gets angry, warning Carrillo off, defending his “wife.”

And bloodhound Lionel Stander, discovering their separate sleeping arrangements, does not believe they are married.  But they fight as if they are married.

The experience has woken Herbert Marshall up—he wants more from life than this playful situation, and decides to return to his company at night, take his experimental designs for cars, and start over.  He shows the designs to Jean, and she likes them, taking far more interest in his work than Frieda does.  They are lounging on the double bed with the designs, and he kisses her.  It’s okay, though, both of them still have their feet on the floor.

But Lionel has followed him, and he thinks Marshall has broken into the company to steal the designs.

It’s their day off and they plan to meet for lunch, but Jean says first she has an errand.  She takes his designs to sell to another company, hoping to give Marshall the confidence he needs in his work.  But the company notifies the board of Marshall’s company that Jean has stolen these designs that belong to them.  Poor Jean is nabbed by the cops, but Lionel Stander, who follows pretty much everybody, tells the boss that Jean is being interrogated, whereupon Leo Carrillo sends his boys to get her out.

Neither Lionel nor Jean thinks, at this point, that the designs are really Herbert’s, because he has used a fake name, and they think he has stolen the designs.

Leo Carrillo criticizes Jean for being so naïve.  “How did you happen to fall for it?”

She replies helplessly, “The Depression.”

Stander adds, incredulously, “I’ve heard of a lot of things blamed on the Depression.”  The Depression, like Bess Flowers, always gets a bit part in 1930s screwball comedies.

When they discover that Herbert is the famous car manufacturer, Jean is angry and humiliated, thinking he was just “slumming” at her expense, and Leo Carrillo helpfully says he has arranged a hit on him.

Jean is aghast and asks him to call it off, because…ready?  She loves him.

Herbert, without much enthusiasm, has shown up in a morning suit (or should that be "mourning"?) for his nuptials, and Leo, who has become protective of Jean, sends his boys into the middle of the ceremony to kidnap Herbert.  He’s not unwilling to go, but holding the wedding party and guests at gunpoint is pretty funny.

The mob brings Herbert back to Jean, who is still mad at him, but the gangsters trick Jean into revealing her true feelings by pretending to shoot Herbert. 

“Darling!” she sobs in his arms.

If it’s an odd way to find romance, well, blame it on the Depression.

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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.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) is a thoughtful commentary on the Great Depression masquerading as a screwball comedy.  There are screwballs aplenty, to be sure, but director Frank Capra, as is his wont, manages to show humanity’s noble fight against cynicism in a world full of bad guys lining up to crush us.

Gary Cooper is Mr. Deeds, a flaky, tuba-playing writer of greeting card poems who could be called a misfit except that he fits in very well in the small Vermont community where everybody else is also marching to the beat of their own drum.  It is only when he goes to town – New York City, that he stands out as an oddball.  Mr. Deeds is idealistic, but suspicious of the motives of people who turn out to actually have ulterior motives—making him strangely canny for someone so naïve on the surface.  He is gentle, except for when he belts people in the mouth for pushing his buttons.  He is liberally generous to some, and yet expects to get value from his charity from others and admires those who have enough pride to not ask for his help.

Gary Cooper plays the role that fits him like a glove with such ease and believability that his co-star, Jean Arthur, no less capable in her trademark role as the sassy foil, makes it difficult for us to decide who is the more fascinating.  It is a case, perhaps, of two actors who employ the same method of effortlessly charming us by apparently just amusing themselves. 

Just as he can be a bit vague and preoccupied when spoken to, she also seems distracted by other thoughts, or maybe just has the ability to keep more than one idea in her mind at the same time.  When he is approached by the lawyers for the estate of his deceased uncle, he listens with only one ear, busy with his tuba, or dashing off to the window to watch a passing fire truck.  When her editor speaks to her, Jean Arthur is playing with a piece of rope or a puzzle toy, seemingly not listening but taking in every word he says.  Cooper’s and Miss Arthur’s characters are more alike than even they realize.

Gary Cooper is brought to New York to accept the inheritance left to him, which includes a large mansion and a great fortune.  We see he’s a babe in the woods in the big city, but the estate attorney, played by Douglass Dumbrille, steers him to social obligations and financial investments.  Mr. Dumbrille’s motives are not fiduciary, however.  He attempts to get Cooper to make him power of attorney so that he can control the money and live high off the hog on it, just as he did when the uncle was alive.

Lionel Stander is great in the role of the savvy, snarky man on board to control the press.  He is a gravely-voiced tough guy, with more of East Side in him than the gloss of Mr. Dumbrille, and is as disdainful as he is incredulous that Cooper is unfazed by the fortune and actually seems to not particularly want it.

We are treated to a glimpse of Franklin Pangborn as one of the harried tailors trying to measure and outfit Mr. Cooper as he animatedly discusses business with Mr. Dumbrille.

Jean Arthur is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist given the assignment of getting a story on the new millionaire in town, Mr. Cooper, and she pretends to be a poor soul trudging about town looking for a job.  When Cooper escapes his bodyguards for a bit of freedom, he encounters her one rainy night on the sidewalk in front of his mansion, fainting from hunger.  

He brings her to a cozy restaurant where she is revived with a meal, and after she tells him her story, assuring him she has just gotten a job and starts tomorrow and does not need further help from him, he is charmed, and calls over a violinist playing sad and sweet music.  

Her face, coyly partially hidden under the cloche hat, beams. She is enchanted and he very quickly falls in love.  

His face, reacting to the pleasure of treating her thus, is a marvel of sweetness and boyish enthusiasm.  One of his goals in life is to meet a woman who is a damsel in distress that he may save, and he thinks he has found her.

The romp begins when he recognizes famous literati at the next table and wants to meet them.  They are invited to join the party, mainly because the literary men know he is the famous newly rich composer of greeting card schlock and they want to make fun of his work.  Jean is wary, she’s not sure if he realizes he is being mocked, but he’s not as naïve as he sounds.  He knows very well they are mocking him and he calls them out for their bad manners.  It ends with him throwing punches, but one drunken poet, played by Walter Catlett, who gets a charge out of seeing his colleagues thrashed, befriends Cooper and wants to do the town with him.  Off they go. 

Cooper, introduced to alcohol, spends the evening on a spree, including such antics as feeding a horse a bag of donuts.  He will end up being brought home by two cops without his clothes.  Jean leaves the two drunken fellows with the staff photographers who are sneaking behind them, and heads home to write her article on Cooper, dubbing him “Cinderella Man.”  (However, we know that he’s not the real Cinderella Man; that’s boxer James J. Braddock, who was dubbed thus by writer Damon Runyon the year before Mr. Deeds was released.  See the movie Cinderella Man – 2005.)

Her editor, played by George Bancroft is pleased and wants to know how she managed getting through the bodyguards, the PR tough guy Lionel Stander, and a crop of flunkies.  She remarks offhandedly, “I was the world’s sweetest ingenue.”  She is to be awarded a month’s pay with salary. 

Cooper, reading the headlines the next day, is obviously furious and wants to know whom he can punch (Jean has used a false name with him), but he consoles himself with another date with his dream girl.

They ride the double-decker buses through the city and he gets to see Grant’s Tomb in a lovely moment of wonder and patriotism.  She is moved by his respect for history and great men, and he unknowingly throws a shaft of conscience at her with the remark, “What puzzles me is why people get so much pleasure out of hurting each other.”

On a park bench, they perform a duet of “Swanee River” and “Humoresque” with humming and pretend tuba playing and drumming with sticks on a trash can.  It’s pretty good. I would have liked to see them rehearse that one.

Later, we see Jean’s digs, which she shares with pal Ruth Donnelly, who unfortunately does not have a large role, but we see she is an artist while Jean types her column on a big old typewriter on the coffee table in the living room.  As she composes another hit piece on Cinderella Man, we see she is feeling guilty and having a change of heart.  “I’m crucifying him,” she says, and the theme of the hero being crucified is another favorite Capra trope.  We see it as well in Cooper’s role in Meet John Doe (1941), which we discussed here, and by James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), also starring Jean Arthur, which we discussed here.

But he does make good copy.  He abruptly ends a soiree in his mansion for the opera set, scattering them with disdain and critiquing their pomp.  He writes a poem to Jean that sounds like the opening salvo to a marriage proposal.

Then the inevitable.  Lionel Stander discovers his dream girl and the writer of the articles is the one and the same, and he shows the proof to Gary Cooper, who is stunned, his very stillness and the way the director just lets the film roll is something wonderful.  There were not a lot of male actors who could use their faces as effectively as Cooper.  He truly had an ability to show the character’s innermost soul with his eyes and a very slight twitch of his expression.  We see he is shocked, but also deeply heartbroken as if he might cry.  After what seems like a long while, he turns his back to Stander and faces a window, lightly touching a curtain in an absent way.  

Stander moves us as well with a quiet, “If I knew you were going to take it so hard, I would have kept my mouth shut.  Sorry.”

Cooper, however, is dragged from the depths of despair by a man who breaks into the mansion with a gun.  He is a desperate farmer out of work and he accuses Cooper of being just another heartless millionaire.  He angrily reminds him of the outrageous antic of feeding donuts to a horse.   “You never give a thought to all the people starving,” and that there were people in the world who could not feed their children or themselves.  He is played in this wonderful scene by stage and movie veteran John Wray.  He did nine movies in this year of 1936, all bit parts and most uncredited.  Stander, by the way, did eight this year.

He collapses in tears and apologizes for brandishing a gun, saying he lost his head.  “Standing in the breadlines.  Killed me to take a handout.”  Cooper gets him food and watches him eat.  The wheels begin to turn and he gets an idea of what to do with the fortune he never wanted anyway.

He will offer 100 acres, a horse, a cow, and a plow to as many destitute farmers as his money will provide for, some 2,000, and he sets up headquarters in the grand foyer of his mansion, with staff to help, including the converted Lionel Stander, and soon his home is filled with applicants. 

Douglass Dumbrille is not happy, nor a pretender to the family fortune who shows up with his gold-digger wife late in the game.  Lawyer Dumbrille now brings a suit against Cooper, charging him with insanity and needing to be put under his guardianship.  H.B. Warner is the head judge, and the public hearing is swamped with deponents, expert witnesses, and a whole lot of “forgotten men.”  Jean is there, too, trying to make up to Gary Cooper and to help his case and keep him from being institutionalized.

He wants nothing more to do with her.  He will not even defend himself.  As part of his charge against Cooper’s philanthropy, Douglass Dumbrille builds his case on the aspect even more egregious than insanity: philanthropy itself. (Capra, a conservative Republican, had been once poor himself and did not mind pointing out the flaws in oligarchs.)  “In these times, with the country incapacitated by economic ailments and in danger with an undercurrent of social unrest, the promulgation of such a weird, fantastic, and impractical plan as contemplated by the defendant is capable of fomenting a disturbance from which the country may not soon recover.  It is our duty to stop it. Our government is fully aware of its difficulties.  It is capable of pulling itself up out of its economic rut without the assistance of Mr. Deeds or any other crackpot.”  One wonders if he includes President Roosevelt in that number.  One wonders if Capra did.

Two of the witnesses are a pair of sisters, played by Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade, from Cooper’s Vermont hometown who insist he is nuts, or “pixilated.”  Afterward, when Cooper addresses them in his cross-examination, we learn they think everyone is pixilated except themselves.

But at first, he will not defend himself and remains stubbornly silent.  It is only when Jean, harassed by Mr. Dumbrille into admitting she loves Cooper, that he relents and gets the gumption to fight for himself.

We have our happy ending when Cooper retains his freedom, his fortune, and is allowed to give it away to help end the Great Depression.  He scoops Jean Arthur up into his arms and inexpertly kisses her. 

We learn that when money is absent, pluck will go a long way to aid in survival.  It might even have been true.

    

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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.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.