Jerome Cowan

Jerome Cowan died in January 1972 at 74 years of age -- right at the beginning of the so-called nostalgia craze of the 1970s.  But this isn't an obituary, it's about what happened after.  One wonders what Cowan, and so many other character actors would have thought about our present-day familiarity with them and their work, and how beloved they are now to old movie fans.

This post is part of the What a Character Blogathon hosted by Aurora at Once Upon a Screen, Kellee at Outspoken and Freckled, and Paula at Paula's Cinema Club. 

Without that 1970s sudden sentimental interest in movies and pop culture of the first half of the 20^th century, principally the 1930s through the 1950s, we might not have so many classic films released on VHS and DVD, nor the experiment of the cable channel American Movie Classics, or the enduring magic that is Turner Classic Movies.  It has preserved our society’s longtime reverence for the great stars, of course, where Clark Gable and Judy Garland, James Cagney and Greta Garbo, et. al., still share a crowded pedestal.

But the real achievement in this fad-turned-big business of classic movie nostalgia is the celebrating of so many wonderful character actors.  So many years after their careers ended -- most of them, like Cowan, worked until they died -- have reached parity with the stars they supported.  We pay them homage they never received by anyone in the heyday of their careers.   What would Jerome Cowan and the others feted in this single blogathon think of that?

Mr. Cowan played a variety of roles, but still had his specialty of stuffy lawyers, like in Miracle on 34^th Street where he—now famous for it—plays John Payne’s courtroom adversary. 

He also played the prosecuting attorney in The Unfaithful (1947), which we covered here.  He could be silly, like the fake psychic he played in Claudia and David (1946), covered here.  Or even smarmy, like the creepy married man who makes a play for Barbara Stanwyck in My Reputation (1946) here.  He was the dead partner Humphrey Bogart avenged in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

But he started in films with a really different role, an angry young man, a fanatic, an outsider, a killer.  In Beloved Enemy (1936), discussed here, set in Ireland during The Troubles, he plays Brian Aherne’s comrade, a man of action and few words.  He is young here, rugged, and somewhat mysterious.  There is pain and mistrust in his eyes.  When Aherne is viewed by their gang as being a turncoat, Jerome Cowan gets the job of assassin, and aims for his friend from a rooftop, and pulls the trigger.

In that mysterious caste system created in Hollywood, he would likely never have gotten to play a lead, yet there is promise in this first performance of something dark and exciting, something more than just the stuffy lawyer or pompous businessman he would play so many times in decades to come.  But there were twists on the man with the pencil-thin mustache and the glint in his eye.  He was smart, or befuddled.  He was a phony, or helplessly sincere.  Only the suit was the same.

Like most character actors, he endured because he had achieved that strange combination of being familiar, and yet able to play many nuances, from sinister, to comic and still be recognizable.  Cowan was not a “man of a thousand faces.”  He was a man in a crowd of a thousand faces.  But we could always pick him out.

He worked almost up until the end of his life, having appeared in a couple TV show guest spots, a western and a sitcom, only months before his death in the previous year of 1971.  Maybe they were fun to do, and maybe they paid the bills.  

But if he were with us today, how amazed he would be at how famous he's become.

Please have a look at more of the great blogs participating in the What A Character Blogathon.

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"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 CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

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My new syndicated column SILVER SCREEN, GOLDEN YEARS, on classic film is up at Go60  or check with your local paper.

Claudia and David - 1946

Claudia and David (1946) takes us four years later into the marriage of Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young, first paired in Claudia (1943) discussed here on Monday. It’s an unusually successful sequel, partly because of the consistent excellence of McGuire and Young in the roles, and partly because the story, with a host of new characters, stands on its own.

Just as with my post on Claudia, I’m going to throw out spoilers here and there like the Easter bunny scattering eggs. Proceed with caution.

Elsa Janssen and Frank Twedell are back as their live-in servants, but Walter Lang is the new director at the helm. His style is less pensive and intimate than Edmund Goulding’s was on Claudia, but the film does not suffer for it. It has a broader scope, takes us outside into the community, long drives on rural Connecticut highways, and the homes of their friends. No longer is the ramshackle farmhouse an island unto itself.

And it has electricity now.

The baby McGuire was expecting at the end of Claudia is now a three-year-old boy, played by the adorable Anthony Sydes. Just as she clung too much to her mother in Claudia, here McGuire clings too much and too possessively to her son.

That, and their friendships with the opposite sex are the new challenges to their marriage.

We learn more about Young’s work as an architect. He plans to travel to a professional convention. McGuire doesn’t want him to go alone, and doesn’t want to go with him, either, and leave their son. She frets over every act of her husband’s independence. She mourns her lack of sophistication as they dress for a dinner party.

Young’s high society sister, played by the glamorous Gail Patrick, has invited a group of neighbors to her home, none of whom know each other very well.  Miss Patrick, always a pleasure to find in the cast of any movie, was nearing the end of her film career with only a few more after Claudia and David.  Unfortunately , she doesn't have much to do except lend the cachet of her own splendid elegance.

John Sutton is Miss McGuire’s dinner companion, who sneaks his oysters to her as they make fast friends. Rose Hobart, who we last saw here in Conflict (1946) as the severe wife of Humphrey Bogart is here the severe wife of John Sutton. Their marriage is a bit rocky as they are growing apart after the loss of their son. Miss Hobart obsesses over her child’s death, and tries to find consolation attempting to contact him through psychics.

Jerome Cowan, who I love to pick out in so many supporting roles, plays a phony psychic at the dinner party.

The wonderfully pompous Florence Bates, another favorite in the stable of character actors, is his champion who swears by him. He warns McGuire of a dire accident to come.

Mary Astor plays a newcomer to the neighborhood, a widow with a young daughter, who wants Robert Young to design a new house and barn on her property. They hit it on very well from the start, which will cause Miss McGuire a great deal of jealousy.

The movie, in a gentle and smooth way, debunks the traditional Hollywood idea of a “happily-ever-after” in marriage. Here, all the married couples must work at their marriages if they want to keep them.

The dinner party scene is especially intriguing, because we have all the principle characters together, and the camera can pause on different groupings and individuals as we drift in and out of conversations. The characters we don’t know well are all neatly established for us in a few minutes.

Mary Astor had already started playing mothers of grown, more glamorous, children, and the dowager parts were coming soon.  Just as with Gail Patrick, Claudia and David lets us see Miss Astor one more time as elegant and provactive. In her excellent memoir on her film career, Mary Astor - A Life on Film (NY: Delacorte Press, 1971, pp. 190-191), Mary Astor recounts her work in this film, with special emphasis on the consequences of the dinner party scene.

I enjoyed (Claudia and David)—I loved it—I wasn’t anybody’s mother and I looked lovely in beautiful clothes…

There was a big formal dinner…quite a long episode with a lot of dialogue. I think it was two or three days’ work. Table scenes are difficult, technically. People can’t be moved around, there are cross cuts, you are attached to the table. It’s a lighting and camera problem mainly, and takes time.

The first course—and only course…was oysters. Lovely fresh bluepoints on the half shell served on an iced plate with the usual accompaniments…The first day we were all delighted with the excellence of the oysters that the studio had provided us…The first two shot you spear an oyster, dip it into the sauce and swallow it quickly in time for whatever it is you have to say. While the other person is speaking, you have time to eat another, or to wipe your lips with a napkin. But, careful! It has to match: You ate an oyster at that point in the establishing shot!

No lunch that day. Just, “I think I’ll like down during lunch hour.”

After three days of eating nothing but oysters and crackers, the body rebels…Dorothy and I had the longest scenes, the most close-ups—and in spite of frequent visits to the ladies’ room, we both looked rather pale and wan in the sequence that followed…

Just as in the first movie, Claudia’s challenge is become more emotionally mature. She deals, awkwardly if earnestly, with her jealousy over Mr. Young’s attentions to Mary Astor, and in turn, she must comfort Rose Hobart, who is jealous over McGuire’s relationship with John Sutton. Sutton, in a friendly though perhaps unwise gesture, sends Dorothy McGuire a dozen white roses.

Miss Hobart, in a moving scene, recalls that her husband gave her white roses only three times in her life: when they were married, when their son was born…and as consolation just after he died.

Seeing Hobart’s faults in herself, McGuire is determined not to be jealous and  tells Young, “Don’t let’s ever fight again.”

He replies, with his usual sense, “Well, that’s a tall order, but I’d rather have you fight back than be one of those noble women.” Regarding his friendship with Miss Astor, “Do you think marriage means the beginning and end of all human contact?”

McGuire’s mother, who died in Claudia is mentioned here on a few different occasions in a nice bit of continuity, and serves as a reminder to McGuire to not cling too tightly to those she loves.

Just as in the first movie, this one has two very grave episodes that add surprising depth. The first is when their little boy comes down with measles. John Sutton brings Dorothy McGuire home from the house party and they find the child unconscious with a fever-induced seizure. Sutton, with the help of the servants, takes over and helps undress the boy and put him in a tub of water.

The doctor is another favorite character actor, Harry Davenport.

When Robert Young returns home late to the commotion, he graciously thanks Sutton for taking his place, then angrily confronts his wife for not calling him and becomes jealous himself.

The second potential tragedy happens during preparations for their own dinner party. As McGuire gets ready to dress, they get word that Young has been involved in an auto accident.

Elsa Janssen holds the fort while her husband, Frank Twedell, drives McGuire to Doc Davenport’s office, where the unconscious Young has been moved. In a striking scene, really brutal despite its simplicity, we see the viewpoint out the car window as they come upon the highway accident scene.

A cop directs traffic. Rubberneckers begin to swarm. Two cars are wrecked. One is Robert Young’s. It’s completely upside down.

We pass it slowly. The camera is mesmerized by it, and so are we. McGuire and Twedell exchange no conversation; we can almost sense her heart in her mouth.

Later, after Robert Young has been transported to the hospital and they await a call, McGuire must endure the horror of a house full of guests. They are the same Hobart and Sutton, Gail Patrick and her husband, and Mary Astor, but now they are no longer strangers and wait out the long night together. They have all been through a trial by fire, in their own marriages and in their friendships with each other. Astor, aware she has inspired jealousy in McGuire, delicately helps her to dress.  When Dorothy McGuire leaves the party to visit Young in the hospital, Rose Hobart, no longer jealous, magnanimously suggests to her husband that he drive her.

Claudia and David could have led to further adventures, but by this time Dorothy McGuire was eager to move beyond the scatterbrained wife roles. Finding challenging material to equal her prodigious talent would be a problem for the remainder of her career, more than just the common complaint of actors of being typecast. Hedda Hopper, syndicated in the Toledo Blade, August 7, 1946 wryly noted, “Dorothy McGuire got caught in her own web of excellence.”

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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.

My Reputation - 1946

This week we have A Barbara Stanwyck Christmas with “My Reputation” (1946) and “Remember the Night” (1940). When you count in “Christmas in Connecticut” (1945), which we previously covered here, it seems Miss Stanwyck became one of the leaders in the Christmas movie genre.

A young relative of mine, 10 years old to be exact, in between mouthfuls of chocolate cake, informed me quite solemnly that new Christmas movies were not as good as “classic movies”. She was so firm in her opinion I could not help but agree (she doesn’t know anything about this blog), pleased with the flourish in her use of the word “classic.” She is as familiar with “It’s a Wonderful Life” as any old movie buff.

She could not, however, precisely tell me why old Christmas movies are better, though in time she will likely come up with several reasons. She’s a rather analytical type of person. Don’t know where she gets it.

For my part, I think one of the chief reasons “classic” Christmas movies are so powerful is that, ironically, they are not all about Christmas. Christmas is only the backdrop to a collage of story lines, subplots, and images, sometimes only a scene or two in a movie that otherwise deals with non-holiday drama.

To be sure, Christmas comes with its own drama, which is why many people are stressed out this time of year. It is a checklist of tasks we must accomplish. It is a recurring nightmare of family feuds. Annually, we seem to fail to measure up to a goal of spiritual, and temporal completeness.

I think modern Christmas movies, TV-movies, etc. are less powerful and satisfying than classic films because they tend to put this holiday frenzy as the crux of the story, instead of allowing it to be the backdrop. As every classic film fan can tell you, we notice the backdrops. We study them. They are important just where they are. Bedford Falls is the backdrop; James Stewart and his stupendous meltdown and the reasons for it are the story. But through the telling, we know all about Bedford Falls, and it becomes a character in the movie. The Christmas climax is fitting because Christmas is not the nightmare; it’s just the time the nightmare occurs.

Another way to look at it: let’s say Christmas is the painted backdrop of a stage set. The actors perform in front of it. However, if you make Christmas the focus of the story, i.e., it’s like moving the backdrop downstage closer to the audience.  The actors are now performing behind it and we never see them.

By keeping Christmas in the background, the classic Christmas movie becomes so much more meaningful than the trite “finding the true meaning of Christmas” or having “the best Christmas ever” stories we have today. The classic Christmas film is about life and death, prison and sickness, lies and deceit, and never getting what you really want. Then the Christmas scene -- like the thunderous ringing of church bells or the clash of symbols that accompany it, makes us feel triumphant in a colossal way, because we have discovered again we are human and survived being human, and have forgiven others for being human.

Christmas movies made during the early 1940s have a special tension to them. World War II was, shall we say, a rather bigger impediment to holiday serenity than standing in a long checkout line. We know, just as the characters know, this may be their last Christmas together. Ever. Or, maybe not. Depending on the role of the dice. There is no way for us to replicate that dramatic tension today.

I guess it’s about time I got to the movie.

“My Reputation” deals with a woman’s adjustment to widowhood and then opening herself up to a new romantic relationship. Christmas slides in at the end of the movie like a runner rounding third base and stealing home.

Barbara Stanwyck plays a new widow with two sons, ages 12 and 14, played by Scotty Beckett with his customary easy charm, and Billy Cooper. Cooper made only a handful of films, but his portrayal of the sensitive older son is quite nice. The boys have little idea of the horrors of their father’s longtime illness or their mother’s devoted care giving. They will be equally ignorant of how lonely she is, and how lost she is now that her social position seems to have changed with her husband’s passing.

Her mother hammers this home to her. Played with her usual frank, thoroughness of character, Lucile Watson is the dragon lady, Miss Stanwyck’s upper crust mother to whom duty and honor are substitutes for joy and happiness. She has been a professional widow for 25 years, and has worn black every day like a uniform. She expects Barbara to do the same now.

Note the hanky Miss Watson sniffles into. Even that is edged in black.

Miss Watson gets a wry, comic scene where she describes a friend’s fight with the local ration board about getting a larger gasoline allotment because her luxury car only gets 9 miles to the gallon. Her indignant friend, another woman from “good society” complains, “They’re just doing everything they can to break our spirits. It’s pure class prejudice.”

Ah, the rich resenting calls for equity put on them by a democratic society in wartime, calling it class prejudice. Sound familiar?

“Stick to your rights,” Lucille Watson tells her, “This is still America.” Yes, but whose?

Another footnote to the war is the scene where Stanwyck shops at the local market with her ration book. In this post last year about “Love Letters” (1945), we noted that not a lot of wartime movies showed the omnipresent ration books, but here we get to see Stanwyck flipping through hers. $1.38 for a pound of bologna, plus 24 points. You could have all the money in the world, but if you didn’t have 24 points, either in the form of stamps or little round fiber-celluloid tokens (like game pieces, red for meat and fats, blue for processed foods), you went home empty.  (Note, this movie was made during the war, but not released until 1946.)

Stanwyck shrinks from the horror of her bossy mother’s code of behavior. With her sons about to leave for boarding school, she suffers from the anxiety of being nobody’s wife, nobody’s mother, with her only role left of being her mother’s dutiful, and dutifully spiritless, daughter.

Barbara Stanwyck plays, or rather underplays, this woman with impressive sensitivity. Her long career showcased the enormous range of her talent, but strong women became her forte. When she had to, she could chew scenery with the best of them. This role required a different tone, and she demonstrates her intelligent reading of a character, her tasteful delineation of what is appropriate.

She gently plays a gentle woman, and hits all the right notes. A scene early in the film where she reads a letter written to her by her deceased husband is particularly moving. She exhibits a lot of control in her shaky voice, as well as through the movie when she has moments of nearly breaking down. It is never forced, it is always genuine.

Luckily for her, Eve Arden is her pal. She tries to buck her up and encourages her to stand up to her mother, but it’s a long, slow learning curve for the emotionally brittle Stanwyck. Miss Arden provides her customary sensible support, but there’s not a lot of wisecracking for her in the film.

Jerome Cowan, however, who we saw in “Beloved Enemy” here, leaps off the screen in a small role as the husband of a friend who makes passes at Stanwyck. He’s the smarmy fellow who can’t keep his hands off her when his wife isn’t looking, and when he offers to drive her home, we can foresee better than Stanwyck does that he means her no good. A brief tussle in the front seat, she gets away from him, but there’s no comeuppance for this creep. Cowan plays him with the right sort of grinning lust and self confidence.

Thoroughly shaken, Miss Stanwyck is more upset by the prospect of being alone than being assaulted by a friend because she is now “a woman on the loose.” Soon, she will have a new worry: how to be open to a new love when he shows up.

This turns out to be George Brent, who meets her on the ski slope. Eve Arden and her husband have taken Stanwyck to Lake Tahoe. The foursome get along swell, but the twosome is harder to evolve. Stanwyck is reticent to take up so soon with another man, despite her loneliness, and Brent is too much of a free-spirited bachelor to want to be tied to anyone, especially a woman who requires such deft wooing. Wooing is not Mr. Brent’s forte. He comes from the grab-them-and-plant-a-forceful-kiss school of romance. And if she is so insulting as to struggle, ridicule her for her childishness.

Some have criticized Brent for being wooden, not just in this role but period. I can’t really fault him for this performance, though, because we don’t get too much of his side of the story of this relationship. The movie isn’t really about them, it’s about her. At the end of the film, when Brent decides he wants to make a commitment, he’s not really believable. It seems too sudden a transformation. I don’t think Brent can be entirely blamed for a script that doesn’t let us see his struggle.

One scene between them doesn’t work at all. They have known each other for a while, and she comes to visit him in the apartment he is using while a friend is away. They sit on the couch and he attempts to seduce her with an unwanted martini and Jerome Cowan’s patented pawing technique. This does nothing for Brent’s role as the designated hero in this film.

Contrast it with the famous and astounding erotic scene between Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur in “The More the Merrier”, discussed here. He has his hands all over her, but she is not unwilling as Stanwyck is in this scene; rather she is only awkward. She is a reserved and prudish woman awakening to the wonderful world of sexual arousal, and McCrea’s perseverance is softened by the comedy accompanying the wooing. In the scene between Brent and Stanwyck, we have none of that, and it’s a shame, because Stanwyck had a similar quality to Miss Arthur’s ability to play both drama and comedy at the very same time.

A funny note about Eve Arden’s relationship with her husband, however -- I think this is the only time I can remember seeing a man and woman lying prone in bed together in a film of this era. Granted, she’s bundled up because of the freezing cold of their mountain cabin, and he is reading and giving her only minimal attention. Also, he calls her “my pet”, which is about as romantic a term of endearment as calling her “you pinhead”, in my book. Still, there are four legs in that bed, not one of them on the floor. Chalk that up to some kind of record.

The climax of the movie comes at Christmastime, when our everyday lives become suddenly more intense due to the enormity of tradition, and the ties that bind.

Stanwyck invites Brent to her home to meet her boys and share in the festivities, which features Eve Arden and her husband, the sassy housekeeper played by Esther Dale, the family friend and attorney played by Warner Anderson -- who is barracking to be the new man in Stanwyck’s life, and her disapproving mother.

When they gather around the piano to sing carols, George Brent is the odd man out, watching them and not even trying to fit in. More could be done with this scene, but we get the point.

Stanwyck gets serious that whirlwind week between Christmas and New Year’s, but when the boys, home from school, hear gossip about their mother at a party, we see that Lucille Watson’s warnings about her reputation have come back to haunt her.  She has a nice scene where she confronts her so-called friends.

Janis Wilson and Ann Todd play friends of the boys. Young Miss Wilson only made a handful of films, but she was terrific in her debut film “Now Voyager”. Young Miss Todd had a longer career, and we saw her in “Roughly Speaking” here. The inevitable Bess Flowers also plays one of the society friends at the party, but then she always shows up everywhere. I think we’ve mentioned before she has the biggest “walk-on” career of just about anybody.

I think I ran into her at the grocery store the other day.

At their own New Year’s Eve party, Stanwyck and Brent get the paper streamer treatment, the conga line, and the champagne, and when he drops the bad news that’s he’s being sent overseas, she wants to follow him to his point of embarkation, New York City, to spend all the time she can with him. Her mother, in a sensible and reconciling gesture, takes responsibility for her sons when they run away because their mother is a floozy, and Stanwyck comes down to earth, content to wave to Brent on the train platform and not go with him.

A nice touch to the end is when the train pulls out and a group of sailors hanging out the train windows whistle at her. It may do more for her morale about getting back in circulation than anything Brent has done the entire movie. She gives them a shy salute. Her sense of humor, and her sense of control, are back now.

Have a look here at Laura’s recent take on this movie at Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings. Come back Thursday for Barbara Stanwyck’s turn as a crook about to be reformed by Fred MacMurray one Christmas week in “Remember the Night.”

Beloved Enemy - 1936

“Beloved Enemy” (1936) attempts to dramatize the events that led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in the early 1920s, and at the same time, spin a “Romeo and Juliet” fairy tale of two star-crossed lovers who bring together two nations.

It’s easy to point out where this film fails. “The Troubles” as those times are called of Irish civil unrest against the British Empire, and then civil war amongst its own people, is captured in too simplistic a manner. Hollywood shunned complications, particularly in a 90-minute script.

Both the British characters and the Irish characters are represented in varying degrees of stereotype.

Most obviously, the lead character played Brian Aherne is meant to be a take-off on Michael Collins, the Irish leader who engaged in diplomacy with the British and won self-rule under dominion status for Ireland, except for the six counties in Ulster which opted for membership in the United Kingdom. Many of his countrymen felt Collins had betrayed them, and Collins was murdered by an Irish assassin.

In the movie, not only is Mr. Aherne successful at bringing peace and independence to Ireland, under so vague a set of terms we are not allowed to know them, but he survives an assassin’s bullet and he and Merle Oberon live happily ever after.

Oh, and Omar Kiam’s costumes for Merle Oberon are a bit off, too 1936 and not enough 1920.

All right, that’s off our chest. What is more telling about this film is what they somehow got right.

The movie, directed by H.C. Potter (thanks Caftan Woman), begins with one of those scrolling narratives in some script font that sets us up for what we’re about to see. In historical movies, it often seems like these narratives are really just disclaimers. That’s what this one sounds like. Part way into it, we are informed that the events we are about to see reflect “A time of horror and heroism, with men on both sides dying bravely for what they believed was right.”

It is a cleaned-up judgment that tells us nothing of the filthy side of The Troubles, with men on both sides committing soulless acts of revenge, of cruelty, of dirty political self-interest.

We are then told that what we are about to see is “not taken from the pages of history” because we are supposed to be reminded of Michael Collins, but not get close enough to the real story to either alienate the British film market or the quite large number of Irish American filmgoers -- but that the film is “legend inspired by fact.”

Nice and vague.

Fortunately, the sharp black and white cinematography of Gregg Tolland gives us some focus, a glimpse into a world without complete right and wrong. What this movie lacks in script is made up for in atmosphere. Set in Dublin, but filmed entirely on the back lot, we have the dark, wet streets, the soft flat caps of brooding men in trench coats, and the widows and orphans.

Brian Aherne is the ringleader of a political group whose paramilitary function is discussed, but we never see the violence. One scene shows his band about to stage a guerrilla attack on a British convoy, and he steps between the truck and the machine gun to save the Brits, to save his plan for diplomacy. It’s a nice scene, a bold move, but too tidy to really tell the truth. The truth, after all, is complicated, for where does freedom fighter end and terrorist begin? It’s a question that gets asked repeatedly in just about every culture.

That Hollywood even attempts to show this subject and this foreign culture is laudable. Here is one of the few films of that time I can think of about a foreign war or political strife where no American character is the center focus, nor American connection involved. All the characters, and most of the actors and actresses, are all either Irish or British. There is no intended American slant here. Except of course, for being made in Hollywood and carrying with that the usual Hollywood inability, or unwillingness, to authentically capture another culture. Whatever American slant here is organic, but not purposefully skewed to tell the story through an American viewpoint.

Brian Aherne is the rebel, Merle Oberon is the English Lady, daughter to the English Lord who is appointed to travel to Dublin, sort out the troublesome Irish and tidy up the Empire. Aherne and Oberon are beautiful people, and the camera loves them. They love each other, eventually. At first it is snarling and verbal swipes until they make the astonishing discovery that (Irish, English -- fill in the blank) people are people, too.

The film tries to keep us on an even, serious keel with the political strife at hand. We open with a British raid on the secret offices of the Irish resistance, and men are killed. We meet the widow and young son of one of them. The son, played by Ronald Sinclair, and his buddies paint “Up the Rebels” on the back of Miss Oberon’s official government car. He hurts himself running away and she takes care of him and brings him home.

It’s a scene meant to bring the enemies together through empathy, and it’s a tale that’s been told ever since Aesop wrote about Androcles and the Lion.

There’s a bit more here, though. The scene with the boys painting their graffiti to the consternation of the bumbling British soldier assigned to be Oberon’s driver is comic. They are like the Little Rascals, briefly. But we realize after a moment that these boys’ street games are really training for the young men they will one day be when vandalism turns to violence.

Aherne, friend of the boy’s widowed mother, played by Cathleen O’Brien, has been earlier chastised by her when he tries to comfort her on the death of her husband, “What do you know about love? You never let it come near you. You’re married to a cause.”

But he meets Miss Oberon when she brings the widow’s boy home (which is too nice looking, hardly the simple, and possibly impoverished-looking flat it should be), and his fidelity to the cause becomes compromised over his love for her.

We have the often repeated refrain of the old Irish folk song:

“She had a dark and a roving eye,
And her hair hung down in ringlets,
She was nice girl, a decent girl, but
One of the rakish kind.”

(Anybody remember Guy Mitchell’s recording, “The Roving Kind”, B-side to “My Heart Cries for You”? 1950, I think. Much jazzed up, of course. With Mitch Miller’s orchestra. Ah, well, that’s neither here nor there. Just rambling. Come to think of it, anybody remember Guy Mitchell?)

Here, it’s a slow chant, wafting from jaunting carts and upstairs maids, and greengrocers, like a secret code of unity. A comforting musical buffer against “the strangers.”

When Lady Oberon and her father, played by Henry Stephenson, who are the strangers, cross the Irish sea on a dreadnought, we hear instead the majestic strains of “Rule Britannia.” (I’m pretty sure neither Guy Mitchell nor Mitch Miller ever did an up tempo recording of that one.) Her lament, “One nation and one people divided by a strip of water,” is naïve in that the label of “one people” would be balked at by both sides.

However, her naiveté is also appropriate for her character as a representative of the British upper class, insulated and remote. Such foolish myopia denies the bitterness at the root of problems, and also is often taken for insult by people whose national pride is built up by collecting perceived insults against them. This, too, has happened in culture after culture. Condescending assumptions can ignite trouble as well as weapons do.

David Niven is along for the ride as her father’s military aide, and he represents the kind of nice young chap of her own class that she should marry. He’s not in the running for long, though, and it seems almost a cop-out for him to lose interest in her and find someone else, someone to whom we are never introduced. A romantic triangle would have been more interesting. However, he does have a very funny line that he delivers charmingly when he asks Merle how to handle his new girlfriend, who wants him to join her for breakfast:

“I’m not sure if she means me to drop in for breakfast or…be there for breakfast.” The censors were evidently charmed into leaving it in, or they weren’t listening.

Among Aherne’s gang is the old reliable Donald Crisp, who is distrustful of any diplomatic overtures by the British, and who is distrustful of Aherne now that he has a British girlfriend.

Jerome Cowan, who we last saw in “Cry Wolf” (1947), and who made a career of playing stuffy, uninteresting lawyers and businessmen, often in B-movies, has a good role in this, his first film. He is one of the rebel gang, Aherne’s right-hand man. His accent is credible, and his close-ups show the intensity of a hard, hungry, angry man of action.

In one scene, he and Aherne are escaping from a British raid, and they scurry along the rooftops, tumbling down the sharply pitched slate roofs in the darkness. They manage to hang onto a drain pipe to hide, and then after a very long time, pull themselves up, exhausted, to the rooftop when the British soldiers have left. Cowan, sensing Aherne’s loyalties and his good judgment are wavering, makes him promise to never see Merle Oberon again.

While the film misses the gritty authenticity of “The Informer” (1935), made the year before, it has scenes like these to illustrate the complexity of loyalty. Another attempt at honestly depicting the events of the day is to show many scenes of diplomatic negotiations. Aherne heads an Irish delegation to London under a flag of truce to discuss options for ending the violence. He and Henry Stephenson are seemingly the only ones who push for peace. All around them are their English and Irish colleagues who argue and will not compromise.

Negotiations do not make for exciting scenes, but they do honestly depict the real difficulty of the situation. People venting problems, people trying to solve problems through talk. Realism without the explosions.

We drift back into comfortable Hollywood fantasy, however, when peace is declared and truck after truck of British soldiers leaves Dublin, with Irish crowds cheering them and the end of The Troubles, jolly Tommies waving back. Wish fulfillment is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

However, we smack head-on into grisly realism again, when Merle gets wind of the plot to murder Aherne because he made a deal with the Brits for peace. Jerome Cowan, full of the unreasonable, ugly, and long-familiar rush of revenge, takes on the job of assassin. Loyalty for these rebels is really just a game of musical chairs.

When Merle barges in on the men making their murderous plans, to beg for Aherne’s life, there is a moment when they slowly rise to their feet, and one of them sneers, “I think we’ve heard enough from this alien.”

It is a tense moment when we see in their faces, and especially in Miss Oberon’s suddenly knowing expression, the possibility that they are about to assault her. So quickly do the charming Irishmen who sing silly songs and ride in jaunting carts turn to animals. Fortunately, the young Irish widow she earlier befriended, who brought her to this meeting, gets her out.

We see Aherne in his Irish military uniform, making a victory speech before a cheering crowd, and we see for the first time the Tricolor (yes, it’s a black and white movie). Ahearn ends his speech with a flourish, “Erin Go Bragh!” and Cowan pulls the trigger.

The Irish Free State was born in 1922, but this film is more a product of the pacifism of the 1930s between the two wars. Fairy tale, and historical events, and Hollywood. An uneasy mix at best, but considering the complex subject, “Beloved Enemy” is at least an introduction, not so much primer as a pop-up book, on The Troubles for outsiders like us in the American audience.