Once More, My Darling (1949) is one of the funniest comedies of the
era, and one of the most charming ever made.
I’m not sure why it’s not more well known because it deserves to be
lumped with the greats, especially in the madcap heiress genre.
Perhaps because it is so deliciously offbeat,
it requires, just
as Robert Montgomery discovers, you have to accept certain things at face value. Its humor is more
gentle and subtle than broad, a kind of hybrid between the screwball comedies
of the 1930s and a more wry, introspective humor.
The title comes from
the speech star (and director) Robert Montgomery delivers on set as a
struggling movie actor.
It’s a funny scene,
where he has trouble proclaiming his love to thin air, so the director gets
him a body to talk to—a bored and uncomfortable movie grip played by Jack
Overman. Mr. Montgomery looks equally
uncomfortable with this situation, but he plods ahead proclaiming his love to
Mr. Overman, who is deeply affected.
Montgomery is actually a
lawyer, from a noted family of lawyers, but is bored with the work and, now
that the war is over (where he served in the Army in Europe as an investigations officer
in the military police), he wants to pursue a fanciful dream of acting. He is smart, savvy, a bit of a ladies’ man
who doesn’t want to be tied down to anything—not a wife, not his family’s law
practice, and not the Army.
Unfortunately for him, he’s still considered Reserve status, and is
called back to uniform to help in the investigation of a jewel theft that
happened late in the war.
When he is called into
the colonel’s office, he firmly responds, “I will not go in without my mother.”
He immediately attracts
the attention of everyone in the office. His mother, standing with dignity beside him,
is played by theatre great Jane Cowl.
She is an even better lawyer than Montgomery is, and he wants her there
as his attorney to get him out of the army.
She doesn’t do it though, because she really wants him to give up this
silly acting hobby, get married, and join the law firm.
The case to which Mr.
Montgomery is assigned involves
Ann Blyth, who plays the daughter of a wealthy
American industrialist who spends his time between the US and South
America.
The jewel thief, like a lot of
shady characters in the post-war years, left Europe for South America, met Ann
and attempted to woo her with the stolen jewels.
She is innocent about the heist, but she has
publically worn the jewels, notably in a magazine advertisement for perfume she
did as a lark.
The government wants
Robert Montgomery to woo Miss Blyth himself to flush the jealous bad guy out of
hiding so they can nab him.
It’s a simple plot that is carried along with effervescent silliness and
beguiling charm.
Robert Montgomery smoothly
straddles the savvy and in-control aspects of his character—and helplessly
rides the crest of the completely goofy and out-of-control situations in which
he finds himself.
He is not entirely a calculating
straight man, like, say, Gregory Peck in
RomanHoliday (1953), but not entirely a vulnerable and befuddled guy like Cary
Grant in
Bringing Up Baby (1938) who
sometimes seems like a sap Katharine Hepburn culled from the herd for
amusement.
Montgomery is more mature and
adapts to the moment like the kind of good improvisational actor his character
yearns to be.
Here Mr. Montgomery
plays out the split personality of his character—a capable man able to think on
his feet, but also a “romantic dreamer” as Ann Blyth calls him, who prefers
dressing in costumes and acting, to a dull law practice.
Ann Blyth, in the role
of the heiress he pursues, also has a duality about her character. She is sure of herself, bursting with a courageous curiosity about the world, and yet
utterly naïve. I love
how she plays this socially dysfunctional character, how she speaks and how she
moves. She leans into people, someone
who has no concept of “personal space,” and has a slightly nearsighted squint
as she navigates conversations, studying the faces of people to whom she speaks
like someone who cannot read expressions
Unlike Hepburn’s rapid-fire
take-charge prattle in
Bringing Up Baby,
Ann enunciates her words carefully in a manner which illustrates perfectly the
kind of young woman this is: someone who, having spent many years bouncing
between North and South America probably learned English and Spanish together
so that neither is her first language or her second language.
Her speech is formal, sounding as if she’s
gleaned much of it from 19
th century novels, sprinkled with bits of
odd-sounding modern slang she’s probably picked up in off moments from the
radio.
She’s likely spent the bulk of
her lonely life in the charge of tutors.
She is socially
awkward, but lacking shyness, charges into social situations like an excited
child discovering new friends at kindergarten, and is completely oblivious to
what an oddball she seems to others.
This is consistently hysterical, but also I think rather poignant. She has no siblings, no friends, and has been
sheltered in the care of a dismissive father.
He is played by Taylor
Holmes, a veteran movie character actor since the silents of the ‘teens, when
he wasn’t on Broadway. Somewhat of an
eccentric himself, her father has lately taken to dressing like his hero,
Winston Churchill, and has taken up painting to emulate him. When Robert Montgomery approaches Mr. Holmes
for permission to get to know Ann, and accidently knocks over his easel, Holmes
launches into a furious tirade in Spanish.
Ann and her father speak Spanish back and forth, she trying to appease
him, flinching at his rage. When Mr.
Montgomery requests a translation, Ann replies, “My father wants to beat you
up.”
Catch the reference to
the pollsters’ recent infamous mistake on the Truman-Dewey election.
Their chauffer, played
by my favorite gravely-voiced guy, Charles McGraw, is an ex-boxer, also very
protective of Ann, whom he calls by her nickname: “Killer.” She is an excellent tennis player, and
proudly wears a short-sleeved sweatshirt with the name Killer on the front some
vanquished opponents gave her because she has a killer forehand.
In her tennis duds is
where she first meets Robert Montgomery, and with her hair tucked under her
cap, sunglasses, and Killer across her chest, and he at first doesn’t realize
this is his quarry. She doesn’t look at all like the glamorous
debutante photo in the perfume advertisement he was given back in the Colonel’s
office, in which she wore an evening gown, with
a jeweled pendant—one of the stolen jewels—glinting on her cleavage, and on which
Montgomery blissfully concentrates when he is shown the ad.
She was given gallons
of the perfume for doing the ad, which she uses liberally ("I practically swim in the stuff") and there is a running gag about the strong
scent.
So Montgomery does not
recognize her when he first meets her in this tennis getup, but she is drawn to
him immediately. When she remarks, “I’m
sorry there isn’t a puddle so I could take something off and spread it for you
to walk on,” we might first think she is being sarcastic, as he does. Very soon, however, it becomes apparent that
this is the love-talk of somebody who doesn’t know how strange she sounds.
Some favorite moments in
the film: When Robert Montgomery,
unwillingly, brings Ann home to meet his mother on the night his mother is
hosting a party at home for some influential friends.
Ann is clearly the
oddball in this scene, and sweetly, and painfully, doesn’t know it. She eagerly pounces on Jane Cowl, expressing
her love for Mother Cowl’s boy Robert. She announces that she intends to do "the right thing" by Robert and marry him, pleading that Jane be a mother to her,
too, since she never had a mother. Jane Cowl looks at her like she's got two heads.
I love when Ann, kneeling on the
ottoman before Jane Cowl, sits back on her heels a moment and considers the company in the
room, momentarily breathless, with a slight, self-satisfied wiggle, like kids
do when they’re pleased.
The well-heeled society
ladies and gents are astounded and don’t know what to make of her, but are
clearly entertained, and all react comically to her strong perfume. I love when the wallflower daughter of one
them, a brainiac, played by Dee J. Thompson, Mother Cowl has been trying to set
Robert up with, stands upon being introduced to Ann, and she towers over her,
booming a basso profundo “How do you?”
Ann, the daughter of a
wealthy and influential industrialist, is socially equal to everybody in the
room, and probably wealthier than all of them put together, but her ignorance on how to fit in puts her at a disadvantage.
The only one she
connects with is Mamie, the maid, wonderfully played by Lillian Randolph. Miss Randolph has a stronger role in this
film than most domestics, and not stereotyped.
She has a personality of her own, and is clearly amused and delighted
with Ann. She seems to be the only one
who is not repelled by her perfume.
It’s another telling
aspect of Ann’s character that, rather than dismiss a servant without a second
look as would most young ladies of her class, she befriends Mamie instantly
upon meeting her, telling her a long, involved story about how she came to wear
pajamas this evening in order to sneak out of the house. Ann is a girl whose closest friend is her father’s chauffeur
and doesn’t know the difference between the status of the maid and the lady of
the house.
I love Montgomery’s
discomfort through the party scene and his rising sense of panic:
“I may start laughing and crying at the same time.” As much as I admire Robert Montgomery’s dramatic
roles, especially in
Night Must Fall (1937) which we discussed here, he really was terrific at comedy, especially in
a situation like this where he is a kind of victim.
Another marvelous aspect
to the party scene is Ann Blyth’s skillful command of it, how she is the engine
that drives the scene, and how strong she is against the veteran actors.
Another favorite moment
is her proposal of marriage to Montgomery in the restaurant. At this point, we see clearly that she is wooing
him, not subtly with coy, inviting feminine wiles, but boldly, probably much in
the same manner she has read of the speech and actions of ardent lovers in
books, of heroes wooing maidens, of the way the few men who have had access to
her, like the jewel thief, have attempted to woo her, grandly and with
flourish. Her lovemaking is necessarily bluntly
masculine because she hasn’t the sophistication to lure him any other way.
In this manner does she
woo Robert Montgomery, regretting that she cannot give him a scene of orange
blossoms like he deserves. It’s
spectacularly silly, and yet somehow touching that she apologizes that the force of her
passion and her impatience to marry immediately that denies him, “a big church
wedding with your mother and all your friends there.”
He stumbles for an
appropriate response, stalling, “Well, yes, it is the most important day in a
man’s life. He gets to wear a cutaway
and striped trousers, and then there are the presents…”
Montgomery’s reaction
is in keeping with both his mission—to carry on a public romance with her and flush
out the jewel thief—and his nature, to be a good actor. So he goes with the flow on what seems to be
an incredible inprov scene dropped in his lap and plays “blushing bride” to her
ardent groom behavior. "You've won me, Killer."
This culminates on a
long drive to a wedding chapel in Vegas. He drives slowly, trying to drag out the miles, hoping everybody from the jewel thief, to the Army, to his mother, to her father will catch up with them before he has to really marry this fruitcake. She senses his growing
anxiety. Like any thoughtful and
concerned groom, she gently asks him if he is nervous about the wedding night.
He responds, “Well, a little maybe.
No more than the average man, I guess.”
She delicately tries to reassure him, as if he were a virgin in a 19th century English novel about to faint in the clutches of a highwayman, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, dear. I’ll be awfully gentle and tender.”
He shoots her an
incredulous look, this devil-may-care bachelor having lost all control of the
situation.
We are brought to a
kind of Marx Brothers ending in a cheap motel bungalow, and then the final
scene moves us to a posh hotel and gambling casino where, curtain call style,
we encounter all of the characters one more time as Robert Montgomery searches
out Ann Blyth to apologize.
She is angry
and hurt that their “romance” was nothing more than a military mission, but he
succeeds in truly winning her at last with his old standby, his “Once more, my
darling” movie speech. Just like the
grip at the beginning of the film, she is deeply moved, and he is rewarded by
resounding applause by the cast. It’s an
off-beat ending, a romantic comedy that is more comedy than romance, but we
have the feeling that these two, so deep in their own fantasies, are probably
made for each other.
Another aspect to this
film I love is the score by Elizabeth Firestone, a breezy, melodic refrain that
I’m surprised was never developed into a popular song.
According to the IMDb site, this film is the
first to be scored entirely by a woman.
Daughter of the Firestone tire magnate, Elizabeth Firestone, I believe,
worked on the scores of only a couple other movies.
Jane Cowl spent the
bulk of her impressive career in heavily dramatic roles on stage. She died only the year after this movie was
made, and came to Hollywood with trepidation.
It was her first movie role in 32 years since she took a brief stab at
the silents. In a New York Times article of May 1949, Miss Cowl confessed that working
on this movie was “a terrifying experience.”
Arriving at 5:00 a.m. for makeup to arrive on set at 7:15, “she was as
panicky and bewildered as a neophyte."
“'In those opening shots…I found myself almost helplessly clinging to
Mr. Montgomery; to such an extent, in fact, that I actually upstaged him. Luckily he was most kind and
understanding. Those being his scenes,
he would gently take me by the wrist and put me where I belonged. Finally, I told him, ‘If you catch me doing
that again, just slap me down.’
“On the second day, still unable to adjust herself to such
unfamiliar instructions as: Toe that mark; don’t look too much to the left;
don’t look too much to the right—but be perfectly natural, Miss Cowl gave what
she described as a ‘wild bleat’ and desperately announced she was taking the
first train to New York. But the next
morning, however, she had recovered her accustomed poise…”
After
One More, My Darling, Ann would move on
to another comedy,
Free for All,
which we’ll discuss down the road.
That
is a weaker film, and surprisingly, has a much weaker role for Ann as a
straight-man to Bob Cummings, considering what a fine flare for comedy she
exhibits in
Once More, My Darling.
There seemed to be an inconsistency in the
quality of scripts she was getting from Universal.
She was twenty years old when did this film,
already her film career had covered a wide range of roles and genres, even if
it was hit-or-miss, and she would continue to play roles roughly around her
actual age, and, as far as
the script allowed, she was able to display her splendid versatility.
Regina in
Another Part of the Forest (1948), which we covered here, is about the same age as
Killer Connell, but they could not be more different than night and day.
I do not believe
Once More, My Darling is currently
available in DVD, but I hope someone will correct me.
You can find it on YouTube, at least for now.
Two years later, in January 1951, she
reprised the role on radio in the
Lux
Radio Theater, playing opposite Van Heflin. I like him in the role, and he
probably would have been great in the movie, but the radio version is not as silly
a romp as the movie, partly because it is necessarily abbreviated, and partly
because so much of the movie relies on physical comedy.
You can have a listen here at the
Internet Archive website.
Just scroll down to the
episode.
Come back next Thursday
when we jump to 1963, when Ann appeared as a guest in the new TV drama series
about New York City reporters, Saints and
Sinners, in an episode with the teasingly tongue-in-cheek title, “The Year
Joan Crawford Won the Oscar.”
****************
The New York Times, article by J. D. Spiro, May 15, 1949, p. X5.
**************
UPDATE: This series on Ann Blyth is now a book - ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR. -
"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.
