Walter Abel

“Boy!  Are we happy!” Walter Abel yells during yet another clutch moment in Holiday Inn (1942) as the conniving, frenetic talent agent in a performance that is delightful and exhausting.  In contrast, his scene in So Proudly We Hail! (1943) as the chaplain is controlled and deeply emotional for being so.  Both roles leave us with a Christmas theme appropriate to this time of year.

This is my entry into the What a Character! Blogathon hosted by those wonderful classic film bloggers Aurora, Kellee, and Paula.  See the link for details and please visit the other great blogs participating in this fun event.

Walter Abel was in his forties at the time he

performed in those two films, with a long career of varied roles behind him.  His first film was in 1918, but he spent the 1920s on stage and appeared in many prestigious Broadway hits by the time the Great Depression rolled around, and Hollywood provided a safe haven for many out-of-work stage actors.

One of his most important roles in that period is in The Three Musketeers (1935), in which he played the swashbuckling and romantic D’Artagnan.  Those of us so used to seeing him in a variety of comic or quietly authoritative roles—which seemed to suit him equally like the toggling of switch, might well be surprised to see him as a young, athletic heartthrob.  He was worthy of lead roles, but he was one of those actors who managed to turn even a small character part into the lead for even just a few moments.

Take his scene in So Proudly We Hail, which we previously discussed here:  A group of Army nurses are on a ship bound for the Philippines during World War II, and he is the company chaplain.  On Christmas Eve, 1942, only a few weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that has dropkicked civilian America, and its previously peacetime army, into a frightening new sphere, Walter Abel conducts a makeshift Christmas party on board ship.  Standing next to a goofy-looking rope Christmas tree in a lounge cabin cramped with service personnel, including rescued crew of a torpedoed ship, the chaplain starts off the party with a few words of encouragement, wrapped in a kind of prayer. 

“You must forgive me for being sentimental. We’re a sentimental people, and I think we’re proud of it. Despite the fact that our enemies deride us for it, it makes us stronger… All I want to say in the tragedy all about us is—have faith. Not a blind faith, but a faith in those things in which we believe.  We must have faith in these things, such faith in ourselves, such faith in mankind…that we will fight to the death to make those tender and sentimental beliefs like Christmas a reality forever.  Now, God Bless us, everyone.”

His delivery is measured, with a slightly wavering voice that is tender and emotional.  Later on in the movie, he will perform a marriage ceremony between Claudette Colbert and George Reeves in which his delivery and diction is so precise it sounds almost Shakespearian.

But the Christmas party speech, a kind of Cliff Notes of the “Wilcoxon Speech” from Mrs. Miniver (1942), is quickly followed, characteristically, by a rousing instrumental swing version of “Jingle Bells” just so we aren’t embarrassed.

In Holiday Inn, he must have dropped 20 pounds for all the running he does, and he illustrates his character’s excitement with his whole body, jerking, shrugging, throwing himself into double-takes.  One of my favorite lines is when he attempts to describe an arrangement of orchids he orders from a florist, “A dozen, loose, looking like they don’t care.”

And his covering for yet another lie, “But now I’m sincere!”

In the 1950s, Walter Abel, with that marvelous speaking voice, performed as a concert narrator for the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Eugene Ormandy in Aaron Copland’s Portrait of Lincoln.  I wish I could have seen that.  If anybody knows if that was recorded, let me know.

Please visit the other blogs participating in the What a Character! Blogathon hosted Aurora, Kellee, and Paula.  

Movie Christmas Trees

Above we have a scene from “A Summer Place” (1959) in which Constance Ford remarks with satisfaction upon decorating her little Christmas tree, “It’s solid plastic. It ought to last ten years.” I love her delivery, and it is the funniest line in an otherwise rather dour movie. Really puts you in the Christmas mood. Oh, yeah.

Here’s a few more movie Christmas trees: Another artificial specimen, the white tree in the dressing room of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in “Holiday Inn” (1942).


Another really artificial, and makeshift, specimen on board ship in “So Proudly We Hail” (1943).



Among live trees, tabletop size seems to be popular in the movies. Here we have Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Tom Tully, Spring Byington, and Shirley Temple exchanging gifts in “I’ll Be Seeing You” (1944).



Shirley MacLaine laments her circumstances, not the size of the tree, in “The Apartment” (1960).



Marjorie Reynolds acts on a movie set that looks just the inn, with a tree that looks just like the inn’s tree -- but wait, that’s a set, too. “Holiday Inn” (1942).


Here’s a shot of Bing knocking off a bell solo in “Holiday Inn”, hitting all the right notes.


Nothing represents the abundance of the Christmas season like a full-size tree. Here Mary Astor, Leon Ames and family decide they’re not going to New York in “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944).



Little Natalie Wood searches the presents under the big tree in “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) for the two-story suburban colonial home Edmund Gwenn promised her.



Peggy Ann Garner and Ted Donaldson from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945) drag their tree home after some street vendor, who can’t sell it because it’s already late Christmas Eve, throws it at them. It turns out, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is not actually about a Christmas tree, but never mind. It could be.



Finally, the tree is up, and the family is assembled putting home-made paper ornaments on the hard-won tree. For what it represents, it’s probably the most poignant Christmas tree in the movies.


Trees do represent the homes in which we see them. They illustrate frugality and opulence, poverty and wealth. Here is wealthy, powerful, and lonely Edward Arnold pondering how to further crush Gary Cooper, as he gazes upon an enormous tree the servants decorated in “Meet John Doe” (1941).




Finally, here’s Barbara Stanwyck decorating the homey tree in the homey home that isn’t really hers in “Christmas in Connecticut” (1945) while Dennis Morgan serenades her on the piano. And to all a good night.

Mary Treen

Mary Treen plays Monica the maid in “Casanova Brown” (1944), discussed in the previous blog post. She helps Gary Cooper hide the baby in the hotel room, and dons hospital gown, mask and gloves like he does, like a couple of stumblebum faux scientists, to come up with the best baby formula. She accepts his marriage proposal, her ego being easily flattered, not understanding it is a marriage of convenience so he can keep the baby. When the ceremony does not go through, she shrugs it off and would rather go the movies anyway.

Though in her late 30s at the time of the film, her goofiness makes her seem younger. It was one of a string of roles she played in her long career of maids and waitresses, nurses and secretaries. She was relegated to plain Jane roles that were invariably funny. Sometimes a film is only as good as its supporting players.

She’s one of the Bailey Building and Loan office team in “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), and Ginger Roger’s roommate in “Kitty Foyle” (1940). She gets a rare turn at drama as one of the front lines nurses in “So Proudly We Hail” (1943). Ever likeable, easily eccentric, willing to play up the wallflower image for a laugh, Miss Treen’s career extended into decades of television guest roles. She could steal a scene, too.

So Proudly We Hail (1943)

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., when we commemorate members of the American armed forces who have lost their lives in war. Among the many films which would aptly illustrate the experiences of the armed forces in various conflicts, one film seems particularly poignant in its ability to reach audiences today. Perhaps because parts of the film are so eerily prescient of our modern struggle with its ironic lack of national purpose and idealism. This is “So Proudly We Hail!” (1943), the story of the Army Nurse Corps experiences on Bataan and Corregidor during World War II.

There is much to recommend this film: some fine dramatic performances from Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake, an excellent supporting cast and very fine special effects in the battle scenes. The story moves swiftly along and we are caught up in many subplots that inevitably take a back seat to the war itself. What is especially interesting is the script. Written by Allan Scott, who had teamed with this film’s director Mark Sandrich, on so much lighter fare in the 1930s, such as several Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicles, Scott’s script is surprisingly lean and muscular. There are several bits of dialogue, soliloquies we should actually call them, which illustrate the feelings of the characters regarding their place in the war. These speeches are labeled today as the stuff of propaganda, but they are clear, clean, well-written, and deserve special notice today.

On the ship that takes the Army nurses to the Philippines in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the chaplain, played by Walter Abel, addresses the Christmas Eve party of officers and enlisted men: “This is the night before Christmas, and because it is, you must forgive me for being sentimental. We are a sentimental people. And I think we’re proud of it. Despite the fact that our enemies deride us for it, it makes us the stronger.”

The chaplain exhorts them to have, “Such faith in mankind that we are tough about the things we believe in, that we will make those tender and spiritual beliefs, like Christmas, a reality forever.” There are close-up shots of the young men with serious faces listening to him. Then from somewhere a swing version of “Jingle Bells” gets the party going. This, too, like sentimentality, is seen as typically American.

Another speech is given by Colbert after the nurses are stranded on Corregidor, and a nurse wearily complains, “Why are we here anyway?” Colbert responds, “Why? Why isn’t there any quinine? Why isn’t there any food? Why aren’t there any supplies? Why are we waiting here like rats in a cage waiting for the man to come and pour scalding water over us? Why is nothing done? Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s our fault…because we believed we were the world. That the United States of America was the whole world. Those outlandish places, Bataan, Corregidor, Mindanao, those aren’t American names. No. They’re just American graveyards.”

After the initial shock of admitting our own ignorance about the world has left us vulnerable, Miss Colbert’s speech becomes a warning to the stateside audience in the darkened movie theater. One of her nurses wonders why they can’t be removed from Corregidor, and Colbert replies, “They can’t get us off. We’ve become what they call a delaying action…I hope to God the people back home aren’t losing it for us. Do you remember what the chaplain once told us? It’s our present. We’re giving them time.”

These speeches address the past and the present aspects of American military consequences, but their chief nurse, Captain “Ma” McGregor, played by Mary Servoss, mourns her son and addresses the unimaginable future to which these young women, and their country, plod along,

“Like his father, he died for what he knew was right. He was right. My son and his father. And this time, if we don’t make it right, my son and his father and all our dead will rise up and destroy us.” This is reflected more hopefully in George Reeve’s letter to his new wife, Colbert at the end of the film, “This is our war now and this time it’ll be our peace.”

We are less clear today on purpose and ideals, and in a more cynical world, less equipped with the idealism that makes purpose seem clear. There is another image from “So Proudly We Hail!” that lingers, horrifically, in its prescience of 21st century warfare. Veronica Lake becomes a suicide bomber in a scene still shocking today. Her character has witnessed the death of her fiancé at Pearl Harbor, and her barely concealed hostility for the enemy, as well as her fellow nurses and the world in general, is finally broken under the camaraderie of her fellow nurses and the greater cause of fighting the war and keeping themselves, and their patients in the jungle hospital, alive.

When the nurses are trapped by the sudden advance of a Japanese patrol, Lake stuffs a grenade in her uniform blouse, bids a stoic goodbye to Colbert, and loosens her trademark long, wavy blonde hair from its neat military bun. She walks towards the enemy, a mixture of sex and sacrifice, her hair softly cascading over her face and shoulders and she pulls the pin to the grenade nestled hidden beneath her breast. The Japanese approach her to take her into custody, and we are meant to assume she will be raped. Then she explodes, and they are all killed. The nurses escape.

Such a scene has different connotations to us today, and is more distasteful than heroic. It may have an even stronger impact on us today than it did in 1943, for different reasons, just as the impassioned speeches have a lesser impact on us today. When we take this Memorial Day to reflect on the bravery of our fallen service personnel, we should also reflect on the idealism that made them so brave.