Teresa Wright on TV

Teresa Wright is decency personified for many fans.  Her portrayals of young women at a crossroads—as Bette Davis’ independent daughter in The Little Foxes (1941); the intelligent young bride in Mrs.Miniver (1942); the spirited protector of her family against a maniacal, and former favorite, uncle in Shadow of a Doubt (1942); the gallant wife of Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees (1943); and most especially, the young woman who came of age during World War II and who now faces its aftermath in the form of a hopeless love for a distraught, and married, veteran in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)—are all characters that carry her particular stamp of forthrightness and humble courage. 

This post is part of the 2015 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon hosted this year by Kristen at Journeys in Classic Film.  Have a look at her blog for other terrific entries.  Today TCM’s Summer Under the Stars is dedicated to the films of Teresa Wright, and most of those mentioned above will be featured in today’s programming.  But, as you can see by the links on those movies (as well as California Conquest and Casanova Brown), we’ve discussed them before, so today I’d like to turn our attention to Miss Wright’s television work, which was filled with opportunities to perform exciting roles at a point in her career when Hollywood was no longer granting her that option. 

Most of her later film roles in the 1950s treaded into the hysterical female area, which, being fairly one-dimensional, are unfulfilling for the fan and, I would guess, the actress.  An artist of subtle depth and delicate underplaying, Wright had earned Academy Award nominations in two different categories for her first three roles, and won Best Supporting for Mrs. Miniver, the same year she was up for Best Actress for Shadow of a Doubt. She is the only actress to have been nominated for Oscars® for her first three films in a row. It was a prodigious beginning for an actress who took her work seriously and cared very little for stardom (we’ve also referred in this post toher famous contract clause excusing her from any publicity nonsense).

None of those early roles are typical ingénues, certainly not damsels in distress waiting to be rescued; at least, she does not play them as such. There is something of iron in her will, despite the softness of her voice and the sweetness of her expression.  There is a knowing sadness that creeps into her young women that tells us that though she is genteel, she is not fragile, and is capable of standing up to the obstacles, or threats, against her.  Charley is shocked by the evil uncle, but she recognizes evil when she sees it and won’t back down.  Peggy Stephenson is deeply touched by the deeply troubled ex-Army Air Corps officer, but she has been exposed to damaged warriors through her wartime hospital work and she knows something of what he is suffering.  She’s a nice girl, but not sheltered.

In this vein, the two TV roles I’d like to discuss today are her work in “No. 5 Checked Out” from Screen Directors Playhouse from 1956, and “Lonely Place” from The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1964.  These are two women in peril, but she plays these women as possessing a frank capability far beyond the template laid down by the script. 

Some of her work on TV was pioneering, most especially that she originated the role of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker when it debuted on Playhouse 90 in 1957, long before the film or Broadway play.  I enjoyed watching this some years ago at the Paley Center for Media in New York City.  Unfortunately, it is not available on DVD.

She also played the intrepid Life photographer Margaret Bourke-White on Sunday Showcase in 1960, Mary Todd Lincoln on General Electric Theater in 1955, among many other TV roles.  In her TV career, she was nominated for three Emmys®. However, most of her work from the 1950s onward took place in theatre, where she began her career and which provided intelligent and challenging roles.

The roles in Screen Directors Playhouse and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour are both women in danger and the stories are offbeat and quirky.  Both feature surprise endings, but the plot is secondary to characterization.  We go on a psychological journey with these women. It is this journey that defines them, not the danger.  Both, incidentally, are also three-person plays creating tension within that triangle.

“No. 5 Checked Out” on Screen Directors Playhouse was directed by Ida Lupino, and co-stars Peter Lorre and William Talman.  Teresa Wright is a deaf woman, who is capable of reading lips and speaking without impediment.  We are told that an operation may help her, but the story is not about curing her; it’s about her acceptance of herself.  She is a teacher in a school for the deaf, but is currently helping her father run a tourist cottage camp.  He must leave to care for a sick relative, and she is left alone to prepare the cottages for the opening of the season. 

William Talman and Peter Lorre are bad guys on the lam.  Mr. Lorre is the badder of the bad guys, with his creepy leer and sociopathic enjoyment of making others squirm.  He makes Talman squirm.  Talman was the getaway driver in a bank heist that went wrong, and he feels betrayed because a man died and there was supposed to be no violence.  Lorre likes violence, and he has Talman under this thumb.

Mr. Talman has a nice role here and he plays it beautifully, a sadder-but-wiser schmuck who can easily be seen as a romantic hero paired with Teresa Wright.  He is not aware at first that she is deaf, as she is able to hide it well, and chooses to hide it to after being jilted by a boyfriend who found her deafness inconvenient.  Eventually, Talman discovers it, and encourages Wright to believe in her chances for a full and happy life, including romance.  

He sadly acknowledges to himself and her that she could do better than him, gallantly not attempting to be more than her friend. 

Lorre, who does not know she is deaf, thinks she has been eavesdropping on their plans for escape and intends to kill her.  Talman tries to stand up to him to protect Wright.  The ending is as cynical and fatalistic as any noir. 

In “Lonely Place” for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Teresa Wright is the careworn farmer’s wife of  Pat Buttram.  Bruce Dern is their new hired hand.  It is a tale of deception, betrayal, and terror. 

First, one is struck by Wright’s beauty in this episode.  In middle age, she has passed beyond the delicate prettiness of her youth and has developed—with fine lines around her eyes, her jaw set in determination, and a wide, clean smile—into a beauty that is natural and mature.  Her face registers many moods in this piece as she takes us on a journey that is as introspective as it is distressing.

For those used to seeing Pat Buttram in slow-witted, clownish sidekick roles, this performance is a revelation.  He is splendid as Wright’s penny-pinching husband, too engrossed in making a buck that he walks a doomed path from taking her for granted, to neglecting her, to putting her in danger, to saving himself at her expense.  He is so meek a man that we fail to see until it is too late, as does Wright, that his self-centered personality is as deadly a threat to his wife as Bruce Dern.

Dern has the flashy role of a knife-wielding maniac, who shows up looking for work, and will work so cheap that Pat Buttram won’t send him away, even when Dern begins behaving rudely to his wife.

The performances are top-notch, and are complemented by intriguing camera work.  They are framed carefully in the context of the moment.  The trio at dinner, with Dern in the center of the shot literally between them as he is coming between them in their marriage.  A shot of Dern’s razor-sharp hunting knife in the foreground in his grip as he talks to Wright.

At the beginning, Teresa Wright is shown feeding a favorite pet squirrel, laughing over his antics. Later, Bruce Dern will kick sand in the little squirrel’s face, and then kill it.  When she suspects his is attacking her pet, Wright runs out of the farmhouse and we switch seamlessly to a hand-held camera.  

When she finds the animal dead, she screams in horror, a wail of heartbroken despair that breaks into a silent, breath-catching sob.  It’s a stunning scene.

Her journey of discovery is played out in her sensitive face: her expression of hatred for Dern, her expression of disbelief at her husband’s seeming unconcern for this event, at his apparent ignorance of Dern’s manipulation as the episode progresses, her expression of disgust when her husband belittles her and allows Dern to tease her.  Dern frightens her, but it is her new perspective on her husband that causes her the most discomfort.  When he playfully suggests he was jealous of her attention for the squirrel anyway, and complains that she fed the animal too well, she asks him if that is why they never had any children.  It is implied that he did not want additional mouths to feed, or to have her attention centered on anyone but him.  Her throwing a handful of corn to a wild, but friendly, squirrel who has grown to trust her, giving him water in an old baking pan, was too much time spent away from the kitchen, in her husband’s eyes.  Buttram is not bullying, but employs as passive-aggressive tactic to make her feel guilty for not being more sensitive to his feelings.

She does feel badly, but Dern is too scary.  Finally, she can take no more and attempts to sneak out of the house at night—and Dern catches her.  There is the ultimate terror of being physically attacked, prolonged by Dern’s enjoyment of terrorizing her.  He tries to make her scream again, as she did over the squirrel, because he wants her husband to come out to save her so he can kill him.  She knows this, and she will not scream.  She will save her husband if she cannot save herself.

As a thunderstorm moves in, they scuffle and she gets his knife.  She has the upper hand now, and he runs away. 

The ultimate shock when she returns to the house is discovering, slowly in their conversation, that her husband, whom she thought was asleep during her alteration with Dern, was actually awake.  He heard everything.  He refused to help her because he was afraid of Dern.  Also, he hoped that Dern would just settle down and continue working for him the next day, because he worked dirt cheap.

The ending is a great surprise, but the finely crafted scenes building up to it are really the driving engine of the story.  The image of Teresa Wright, with all her decency, her intelligence, and her gentle humanity being a caged woman in her own simple home, at the mercy not only of crazed Bruce Dern, but of her greedy, stupid pig of a husband are what is most shocking about the episode and this is what stays with us long after.

Perhaps the image is indelible because it is not just a helpless woman being threatened, it is that decency and humanity of the young bride from Mrs. Miniver, the loyal daughter of Shadow of a Doubt, the noble wife of Pride of the Yankees, and the beloved Peggy Stephenson who gently comforted Dana Andrews during his nightmare in The Best Years of Our Lives.  Teresa Wright not only owned those early roles, she took them with her all the rest of her life.

Have a look at the other great posts in the TCM Summer Under the Stars blogathon this month at Journeys in Classic Film.

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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 on classic film is up at http://www.go60.us/govoice/advice-and-more/item/2025-ccc-movie-fan, or check with your local paper.

Answers to Road Trip

Old Hollywood seems to have had a love affair with the automobile. Today when we see a car in the movies, it’s probably going to be destroyed in an elaborate crash sequence. Back in the day, the confines of the auto interior was the secret world where characters fought, hatched evil plans, whispered confidences, fell in love, took hostages, pursued their dreams, or escaped from a bad reality.


We’ve got some pretty good guesses to Monday’s screen cap trivia on motorists and their passengers. Here’s who they are:

A. The only right-control car in our collection tells us this is not in the U.S. Alexis Smith is behind the wheel in “The Sleeping Tiger” (1954) with Dirk Bogarde riding shotgun.

B. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray snooze in “Remember the Night” (1940).

C. Celeste Holm, Bette Davis, and Hugh Marlowe run out of gas in “All About Eve” (1950).

D. In “Split Second” (1953), Robert Paige rides shotgun, and in the back seat are Frank DeKova, Paul Kelly, and Stephen McNally as the ultimate backseat driver. Alexis Smith takes the wheel again.

E. Patricia Owens and Jeffrey Hunter, with their moving van following behind them, drive to their new suburban home in “No Down Payment” (1957).

F. “Conflict” (1945) has Humphrey Bogart at the wheel, Rose Hobart his front seat passenger, and behind we have the eerie shot of Alexis Smith’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

G. June Allyson and William Holden take a ride in “Executive Suite” (1954).

H. Errol Flynn is in the back seat in “Footsteps in the Dark” (1941), chauffeured by Allen Jenkins.

I. Jane Russell and Victor Mature cruise the strip in “Las Vegas Story” (1952).

J. That’s perennial sidekick Ruth Donnelly with Jean Arthur at the wheel in “More Than a Secretary” (1936).

K. Kim Novak and Fredric March get cozy in “Middle of the Night” (1959).

L. Jean Peters and Max Showalter, also known as Casey Adams, drive to “Niagara” (1953).

M. Judy Garland and Eddie Bracken in “Summer Stock” (1950).

N. Walter Brennan and Teresa Wright in “Pride of the Yankees” (1942). I find this shot endearing, as in real life Teresa Wright was nearsighted and wore her glasses off set. Her acting is perhaps unconsciously realistic in this scene as she squints to be able to see the “road” ahead of her. Apparently nobody told Miss Wright that was all just rear screen projection passing by and they weren’t really moving.

Mystery Beach Couple Solved!

Today we have the answer to last Thursday’s screen caption quiz…most of you had a tough time of it, which I enjoyed in my own evil way. Yvette did nail the identity of the lady, if even she wasn’t sure. Congratulations go to Kassy, who got it right. Drum roll, please….

The Mystery Beach Couple is:

Teresa Wright, and Gary Cooper in “Pride of the Yankees” (1942).

We become completely different people at the beach. Most of us in our everyday lives do not walk around outside half naked studying the body types of complete strangers in similar half-dress and allowing ourselves to be studied at the same time. All in very close proximity. We don’t lie half asleep on the ground for hours in the middle of work day, ignore the presence of sand in our hair, content also to ignore the blob of ice cream that fell off the soft serve cone and landed on the thigh. Immerse ourselves in frigid water (at least in New England) though we fiddle endlessly with the faucet in the shower at home because the water temp has to be just right.

After all this, drive home tired from being lazy, sticky, and satisfied that we have spent the day well, though on any normal day we would berate ourselves for not accomplishing our list of things to do. We are different beings at the beach.

So, it’s no wonder they were difficult to recognize.

For previous "at the beach" posts, have a look here and over here.

Pride of the Yankees (1942)

We have a triple-play of baseball-related themes on my blogs this week, from amateur play in the 18th and 19th centuries on my New England Travels blog, to one of theatre’s biggest baseball fans, Ethel Barrymore, on Tragedy and Comedy in New England. Today, we begin with the king of baseball movies.

“Pride of the Yankees” (1942) is lauded for its inspiring tone about one of baseball’s greatest legends, Lou Gehrig. Ironically, there is actually very little baseball action in the movie; most of it is comprised of vignettes aimed at illustrating the self-effacing personality of the quiet man.

Since humility, according to this film, was as great a virtue as his athleticism, one wonders if that seemed as difficult a thing to capture to the makers of this movie as it would be today. Today it might be even more difficult, as quite often when a reporter interviews an athlete right after the event, the first words out of the athlete’s mouth are usually something like, “Well, I’m really proud of myself.”

This was especially apparent, to a nauseating degree, during the last Olympic Winter Games, when I lost count over how many athletes were proud of themselves. To be sure, competition is as much mental as it is physical, and modern athletes are trained to be goal-oriented and focused on objectives. Still, if expressions of humility do not make a better athlete, they do make a better human being. Perhaps we have taught the importance of self esteem sometimes at the risk of encouraging overbearing conceit.

But, here we have a movie whose sole purpose is to laud humility and to show it as a courageous act.

By now, probably most people who’ve ever read anything about “Pride of the Yankees” know that its star, Gary Cooper, was not an athlete and knew very little about baseball. Moreover, he was not able to even fake batting left-handed to imitate Lou Gehrig. A distinction can be made between what is sometimes pointed out as the phoniness of old movies, and what is movie technical trickery. The former we may roll our eyes at; the latter earns our admiration.

Movie trickery in this instance is how they managed to get Gary Cooper to bat like Gehrig. They sewed the number 4, Gehrig’s Yankee’s number, backwards on the back of Cooper’s baseball uniform. When he swung right-handed and “hit” the ball, Cooper ran down the third base line, rather than the first base line. Then the mad geniuses in the production department just reversed the image for the final print of the film so it looks like he’s batting left and running down to first base.

The phoniness comes in the typical movie bio vignettes, including events which did not happen, and ignoring some stuff that did. We start with the pushcarts and ice wagons that take us back to Gehrig’s turn-of-the-century childhood in the poor New York neighborhood. He plays sandlot ball and breaks a window. His parents are hard-working immigrants. Papa, a mild man who assiduously avoids irritating his strong-willed wife, is played by Ludwig Stössel, who we saw in “Casablanca” (in this previous blog post) as the émigré who asked his wife “What watch?”

Mama, loving but bossy, is played by Elsa Janssen. Lou will adopt his father’s gentle demeanor and spend a lot of the time placating Mama. We see Lou in the old neighborhood as a boy, we see him off to college working as a waiter in the college cafeteria where Mama is a cook. We see him want to play baseball more than anything else. Mostly, we see what a humble man he is, even though he stands head and shoulders above any other of his fast-talking pals like a Greek god in his looks, his demeanor, and his athletic abilities.

Walter Brennan plays a sports writer who discovers Gehrig and becomes his one-man publicity team, a man so impressed that he predicts great things for Gehrig. As time passes, Brennan becomes deeply devoted to Gehrig because of his integrity and his humility, even more than his athletic skill. The character Brennan plays is fictional, but could stand as a composite for many whose lives crossed Gehrig’s and felt the same protective devotion of a parent, a sibling, a fan and hero-worshipper all rolled into one.

It must have been difficult to cobble together a script about Gehrig’s life since he was simply a quiet man who played baseball well and never missed a game. Samuel Goldwyn, producer of the film, was reportedly not interested in doing a baseball movie because there seemed nothing exciting about it.

What sold Goldwyn was newsreel footage of the famous “luckiest man” speech Gehrig made at the end of his life when the New York Yankees paid a public tribute to him at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, when everyone knew that he was dying.

The speech moved Goldwyn, and was enough for him to give the green light to a movie featuring two of Goldwyn’s brightest stars about a man who did nothing more than do his job well and was humble about it.

Teresa Wright, who plays his wife, was probably the best match for Gary Cooper in this film, as her own open-hearted warmth and natural quality to her acting complimented Cooper’s understated style perfectly. They were both able to convey great sensitivity with their faces and movements, and Cooper perhaps saw this himself enough to request her specifically to team up with him later in “Casanova Brown” (see prior post on that movie here).

We see a courtship interrupted by montages of baseball games accompanied by many refrains of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, and a lot of team hijinks on trains. There is an interlude at a nightclub where we get a performance by Veloz and Yolanda, a novelty dance team who are really very good and fascinatingly acrobatic, but otherwise have nothing to do with the plot, with Ray Noble and His Orchestra in the background

Brennan touts Cooper’s virtues against his rival in the press box played by habitual movie wise guy, Dan Duryea, who backs Babe Ruth.

There is the scene, much parodied in the decades since, about “Billy” in the hospital to whom Ruth promises a homer in the World Series Game that afternoon. When the crowd of reporters leaves, Gehrig hangs around and exchanges a few words with Billy that are more heartfelt and less bombastic, and promises him two homers if he will try to walk again. Ruth seems compared unfavorably to Gehrig in this film as someone less sincere and more full of himself, and one wonders if that was okay with the Babe, who plays himself in this film. He’s not portrayed as a villain, just not as nice. The two had a rift and did not speak for some years, which is not brought up in this film.

Bill Dickey, Mark Koenig, and Bob Meusel, other teammates, also play themselves, as does radio sportscaster Bill Stern.

Trophies accumulate, and Teresa Wright pastes a few more clippings in the scrapbook to show the passing parade of years. We see the first sign of Gehrig’s mysterious illness when they playfully wrestle on the floor, and he has muscle pain. Soon it is harder for him to grip things as he loses strength in his hands. The doctor holds up x-rays and intimates to Gary Cooper that it’s the end of the road for him, but we never hear a diagnosis or an explanation of the disease. This is probably only partly due to that vague manner that old movies addressed illnesses, and mainly because the disease was as mysterious to the medical profession as the public.

The disease, we know now, was Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which affects nerve cells in the brain and in the spinal cord that control the muscles. The nerve cells, or motor neurons, die, and the victim loses the ability to control muscle movement. The disease is progressively degenerative, and is fatal.

At some point after his death, the disease came to be commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

There are momentary scenes that speak volumes of the equal anxiety and fear of both Teresa Wright and Gary Cooper, but the illness is not played for melodrama or even addressed much in this film. It is simply what brings closure to the film even as it brings Gehrig’s life to a close.

The final sequence showing the tribute at Yankee Stadium in 1939 builds the emotion to a climax, yet is handled in sensitive and imaginative ways, when I suppose it could have been merely exploitive. First, upon entering the ballpark, Miss Wright and Mr. Cooper run into young David Holt, who plays the now 17-year-old “Billy”, who took Gehrig’s two-homer promise to get well, and did. He says hello briefly and explains who he is, and we see tears glistening in his eyes because his gratitude and hero worship for this man are tempered by anguish that his hero is dying.

Nobody says he is dying, we just all know it. The teammates know it, and tactfully turn their heads when he stumbles. Nobody offers him help, partly so as not to embarrass him by noticing his failing body, but also as a signal to us to show that a man is really on his own when he is dying. Despite whatever comfort is extended to any of us in our last days, we are made alone by the uniqueness of our pending experience.

When Gehrig cannot physically play his last game, he takes himself out, and we see him exchange a brief moment with the rookie who will be taking his place. The announcer lets us know that a change is being made in the lineup, and Gehrig will not play in the game for the first time in 14 years. Even wise guy Dan Duryea feels the weight of the moment.

When Teresa Wright cannot cry or express her anguish to Cooper because she does not want to let him know she knows he’s dying, she falls apart on Walter Brennan’s shoulder. That wonderful character actor tears at our hearts with his blank frightened stare and his very inability to say anything of comfort to her.

When Cooper steps out for the ceremony on the infield, the historic newsreel moment is re-created here. Cooper delivers the most famous speech in sports (changed a bit for poetic license), and then walks off the field, down into the darkened tunnel. That’s the last we see of him; the tunnel is metaphoric.

Possibly the only more stunning speech ever made was by the announcer of the last game Gehrig ever played in May 1939: "Ladies and gentlemen, Lou Gehrig's consecutive streak of 2,130 games played has ended."

His record was not broken until 1995.

Lou Gehrig died in June 1941, about a year and a half before this movie was released, about two years after he was diagnosed. For more on Lou Gehrig’s life and career, have a look at this website.

There have been great strides made in the treatment of Lou Gehrig’s Disease, but there is still no cure. About half of its victims will live less than three years. For more on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS, have a look at this website.

Teresa Wright, who, like Gary Cooper was not much of a baseball fan at the time of the film, later became a devoted Yankees when she was 79 years old. On July 4, 1998, to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Yankee Stadium’s Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day and the “Luckiest Man” speech, Miss Wright was invited to throw out the first pitch. She watched the game, and the Yankees gave her a dozen roses and a World Series jacket. She followed baseball avidly after that.

Below, we have Gary Cooper delivering the “Luckiest Man” speech from “Pride of the Yankees.” (Don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of the page and mute the music.)



Here is actual footage of the event as shown in the Ken Burns baseball documentary:



And here is a recitation of the “Luckiest Man” speech in its entirety.

Casanova Brown (1944)

“Casanova Brown” (1944) gives us a re-teaming up of Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright after their successful “Pride of the Yankees” (1942), in which both had been nominated for the Academy Award as Best Actor and Best Actress. It’s a classic case of looking for another hit by going back to the well, except that “Casanova Brown” and their characters are worlds apart from “Pride of the Yankees.”

It’s an uneven comedy, but with moments of sublime laugh-out-loud ridiculousness that make up for the potholes in the plot. Gary Cooper is a university professor who travels to New York in hopes of publishing his manuscript on his rogue ancestor, the original Casanova. No luck on getting published, but he does meet college girl Teresa Wright and marries her. This is told in a flashback as he is about to prepare for his second marriage.

The first marriage to Miss Wright did not work out from the moment he inadvertently burns down her parent’s mansion. It is a great scene where the gag begins slowly and then builds to an incredulous degree. Miss Wright’s parents, played by the terrific Patricia Collinge (see this previous blog entry on Collinge) and Edmund Breon, are eccentric types. He is stuffy and proper, and she is obsessed by astrology. When Cooper is told mother does not like smokers, he puts his cigarette out in his hand, stuffs it in his handkerchief, and forgets about it. So do we, until a one object after another in their beautiful home catches fire.

It looks like it might have been a dangerous scene to film, with angry flames lapping at the walls and the furniture, and the principle actors running around it all. Finally we are shown the charred remnants of the mansion smoking in the distance, while they, and the servants, are sitting in the street. Mr. Breon explodes, saying he wants to kill Cooper, and if he had a gun he’d shoot him. The chauffer instantly pulls a gun from his pocket. This, and a few other scenes in the film have a kind of “Monty Python” flare to them.

The wedding is annulled, partly because of her parents’ disgust with a son-in-law who burns them out of their home, and partly because we are told Miss Wright is not of age.

Later, when Mr. Cooper is about to embark on a second marriage, he receives word that a child was born of his first marriage, and is about to be put up for adoption. He rushes to kidnap the baby. Cooper, as good as anyone in Hollywood at comedy, has a wonderful dramatic way of doing it. He is not a clown. He is an actor, and he draws sympathy from us by the transparency of his feelings. One scene which illustrates this way he has of being both poignant and funny at the same time is when, hiding in a hotel room with his baby daughter, he sees that she is gaining weight on the formula he is feeding her. Most parents would regard this as a good sign, but being a neophyte, he is afraid she might have a glandular condition.

Desperately he tells the sleeping child, “Daddy is always going to be with you, and Daddy’s always going to love you. No matter how big you get.” He is near tears, and we laugh at the “awwww” moment.

Likewise, we laugh his seriousness in describing to the hotel chambermaid, his new accomplice, played by Mary Treen, how the baby took her bottle and then “threw up.”

Sneaking the baby and the baby paraphernalia past the hotel manager is not easy, and when the manager misunderstands, thinking Cooper wants to bring a goat into the hotel as a pet, he anxiously exclaims, “Get yourself a goldfish. No trouble at all, and they die overnight.”

Such great lines are tossed lightly through a plot that is half screwball comedy and half social commentary. Cooper gets to make some interesting remarks on a father’s rights and ability to raise a child himself, which predates “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979) by decades. Cooper had creative control of this film, and particularly wanted Teresa Wright for his co-star, though the film gives her little to do. She brings her trademark warmth and ingénue innocence to the role, but she is there mainly to react to the oddball actions of others.

Anita Louise, who plays the prospective second bride starts out strongly in the film, and then is dropped altogether. The film really belongs to Frank Morgan, who plays her curmudgeonly father. He gets the most audacious and wickedly funny lines, and delivers them like d’Artagnan wielding a rapier. He is Cooper’s pal, and refers to his own daughter as a “revolting female.” When Cooper asks for his daughter’s hand in marriage, Mr. Morgan replies, “Are you out of your mind?”

The most sensible person in the film is Jill Esmond as the obstetrician who delivers his daughter, and who was supposed to oversee the adoption until we have our happy ending and the natural parents decide the keep the baby and each other. It is heartening to see a female physician played with intelligence and warmth, with no hint of her being a less feminine because she is a scientist or less a doctor because she is female.

It is a film where the laughs come at moments that are delightfully unexpected, where innuendo is witty, and Morgan’s rudeness is sometimes more entertaining than a tangled plot.