Meet John Doe (1941)

Meet John Doe (1941) is one of the most emotional exercises in flag waving ever produced by Hollywood, and yet still manages to contain a wry skepticism about Americans in a manner that is both supremely democratic and unapologetically nationalistic.

Director Frank Capra, often accused of producing work that was called “Capra-corn” because of its jingoistic nature, nevertheless displayed a genuine love of his adopted country which he later backed up by joining the armed forces in World War  I and World War II. John Wayne, despite his later Congressional Gold Medal and his Medal of Freedom, awarded posthumously, chose the deferment he was entitled to as a husband and father. Capra wore his heart on his sleeve, but he also put his money where his mouth was.

Meet John Doe involves some of the most time-honored American practices, including the common man prevailing over evil forces. That the evil forces in this case happens to come from political corruption within his own sainted Republic makes the film much more testy than most of the patriotic films made in the war years to come.

The film’s opening sequence with the old stone nameplate of the newspaper being pounded off by a jackhammer and replaced with a new metal plaque of a new “streamlined paper for a streamlined era” reminds me of that sequence in the Warner Bros. cartoon One Froggy Evening when the construction guy blasts away a 1890s cornerstone and finds the frog in the strong box. Something sad and nostalgic we are destroying with our own hands for the sake of progress and a better world. Always a gamble.

No singing frog in this movie, though. Barbara Stanwyck, at top form, plays a newspaper columnist, one of many being laid-off under new management. Even today we can identify with the blunt way she and several of her co-workers are given the ax, especially the older men and women who we know will have a tougher time finding another job. A nice bit of comic relief is Stanwyck’s interfering with the sign painter who attempts to put new lettering on the office door window of the new editor. After messing up his work by barging in and out of the office, she later chucks an object through the glass in anger.

But there are no security guards to escort the banished workers out of the building as so many corporations do today. No need to fear they will steal computer files, because there are no computers, only Stanwyck’s clunky manual typewriter, on which she bangs out her last column, a hoax letter full of fire. These days a vengeful ex-employ might shoot up the office, but Stanwyck is more humane and ten times more crafty than that. Her revenge has substance. She passes off her copy to the old linotype operator, carrying galley sheets. We can imagine old Joe is really going to have a tough time finding a new job. Another frog in a strongbox, a man from another era.

Her tirade creates a fictional John Doe character who complains about the state of the country and threatens to jump off the roof of the city hall at midnight on Christmas Eve in protest. When the letter is printed, fireworks occurs. The community calls for action from its officials, and the new editor, hard-boiled but with a soft heart played by the wonderful James Gleason, wants to quash the embarrassment of the phony letter as quickly as possible. Miss Stanwyck convinces him that he could get a lot of mileage out of the hoax by hiring someone to actually be John Doe. She has a great monologue delivered all at once, ending with “On Christmas Eve, hot or cold, he goes!”

She plays what she plays so well, and that is a person with less than honorable motives who eventually undergoes a change of heart. The sole support of her widowed mother, played by Spring Byington, and two kid sisters, Stanwyck is the epitome of someone who was forced into the position of responsibility at a young age. She is the head of her family, and as such hasn’t the luxury to be softhearted. That falls to Mother Byington, whose sweetness of temper is possibly the result of never having to worry about paying the bills because her husband did it for years, and then her daughter took over. Miss Stanwyck’s character is hard-edged because she has been forced to be so to survive and to care for the weaker and younger members of her family. Her remorseless, cagey, determined focus on the prize reminds me a bit of the Faye Dunaway character in Network.

When she meets the man behind the new political machine operating the newspaper, played terrifically by Edward Arnold, he asks of her what she wants. When she replies “Money,” he responds, “I’m glad to hear someone admit it.”

The newspaper puts out a “search” for John Doe, and several scruffy types answer the call. Capra makes good use of close-ups in this film, on the hoboes, later on townspeople, to great effect. I love the lingering shot of “no-account Gruber” that allows us to explore his worth as a man by exploring his face.

Gary Cooper shows up, and Stanwyck and Gleason see, and we see at once, how perfect he is for the job. His rugged yet oddly angelic face is a combination of Young Mr. Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Christ. In tow with him is his pal played by Walter Brennan, whose sarcasm for the whole deal and for people in general and the American democracy at large keeps the film from getting too sappy.

But his dismal outlook is no more skewed than Barbara Stanwyck’s blatant exploitation of American public opinion, sometimes in cold ways, sometimes in quite comic ways. When they clean Cooper up and he is about to have his first pictures taken, she stops a photographer from taking an undignified shot.

“No, this man’s going to jump off a roof. Wait, let me comb your hair.”

There is a great scene when she is alone with Mr. Arnold, the American-style fascist, a big oil man in charge of the purse strings who secretly harbors political ambitions. He speaks softly, without a trace of bluster. His very self control is sinister and all the more powerful than if he ranted. He promises her a truckload of money to take Cooper as John Doe on speaking tours and radio programs, and from now on she is to report directly to him. Stanwyck plays this scene not as a conspirator, which is what she has become, but as someone who is delighted to find her personal small-scale power play for more money achieve success. We see the first twist in her character development. She is not as smart as she thinks she is.

Stumped with coming up with a radio speech, Mother Byington gives Stanwyck the late sainted doctor father’s diary, in which he espouses ideals of brotherhood and democracy. We hear Stephen Foster’s beautiful and emblematic song “Hard Times” over this exchange with her mother. The film is peppered with American standards, including a liberal dose of other Stephen Foster songs like “Oh, Susanna” and “Some Folks.” Odd that it would end with Beethoven’s Ninth, but then we Americans freely adopt from other countries anyway.

Miss Stanwyck, throwing herself into the speech, confesses of the John Doe character she has created, “I’ve actually fallen in love with him.” Tough for Mr. Cooper, who likewise falls for her, to live up to this ideal. There is a melding of her admiration for her late father and Cooper. Father images seem to be very important to this film. Walter Brennan’s much older character could be seen as a father figure to Cooper. James Gleason gives a very affecting speech about his father, who was killed before his eyes in World War I when they served in the Army together. A father provides protection and guidance, and the loss of a father means one may be without protection or guidance. This could turn one into a hard-edge woman forced to prostitute her ideals for money to care for her mother and siblings. This could turn a young man, cheated out of his baseball career by an injury, into an aimless wanderer. This could turn a hard-bitten editor into secretly searching for the ideals he once had as a boy, almost as if to retrieve his lost boyhood.

An opposing newspaper tries to prove that John Doe is a hoax, and offers Cooper money to admit as such. He is warned that he might never get to play baseball again, because of the scandal, and how kids look up to ballplayers as role models. Looking at this film with modern eyes, this bit is probably the most hokey, and most sad, of the film. If they only knew how low baseball would sink.

The scene where Mr. Cooper gives his first radio speech is stunning. At first he is nearly sick with nerves. Eventually, Stanwyck’s homespun typewritten speech gets to him, and to the tough editor, and to the people. Edward Arnold, in his mansion, notices his servants in the kitchen glued to the radio, and we have another impressive close-up, this time of his expression as he turns away from the swinging kitchen door and we see the wheels turning in his mind. It is the beginning of his political campaign.

John Doe clubs are formed, and though Cooper, scared to death by this time, tries to run out on the whole mess, a committee from one such John Doe Club begs him not to jump off the city hall roof at Christmas and encourages him to remain with the movement. It’s an interesting scene, where a small-town soda jerk played by Regis Toomey gets quite a long speech describing how his community’s John Doe Club was formed. (Here is a previous post on Mr. Toomey.) He is soft spoken and slow-talking, but all attention is on him. We have shots of the stars of the film, Cooper and Stanwyck, and Arnold, all watching him, their attention diverted respectfully to him, this minor character actor, as he continues. It is broken up, and again, made less sappy, only by occasional shots of Walter Brennan’s silent expression of boredom and annoyance. In era of fast-talking speeches, when stars seldom acquiesced to sharing screen time with lesser mortals, the scene is remarkable.

The brief scene with old Mr. and Mrs. Delaney are referred to in these previous blog posts on Emma Tansey and Lafe McKee .

Then a montage of train rides across the country (where we have more cliché American songs - “California Here I Come” and the inevitable “Sidewalks of New York” among them) and Miss Stanwyck furiously typing more speeches. John Doe Clubs spring up as flags on the evil Mr. Arnold’s map, and the government gets suspicious, as one director of relief wails, “People are going off relief. I’ll be out of a job!” A nation as idealistic as ours is also filled alternately with a degree of healthy skepticism, and surely must have been for the government in general after a weary decade of Depression.

Then Mr. Arnold’s elegant self control becomes more down to earth as he huffs on his pince-nez glasses and tells Miss Stanwyck to write a speech in which John Doe will form a third party and name Arnold himself as candidate for President. She sits there in his presents to her of a fur coat and jewelry like a well-decked out Judas, sucker-punched right in the ideals.

The rally is to be held, fittingly for Cooper and for America, in a ballpark, and John B. Hughes, an actual radio announcer of the day for the Mutual network, is one of those broadcasting the event. This film, especially this scene with its radio broadcasts and shouting newsboys, illustrates just how powerful were the tools of radio and newspapers at that time, and how pervasive in society. One wonders if a similar film were made today, how they would use the Internet for manipulation and gossip instead? Radio and newspapers haven’t yet gone the way of the linotype, but newspapers especially have a decreased importance for a younger generation that does not read them.

While Stanwyck is struggling with her principles and the Frankenstein monster she has created, Editor Gleason sets Mr. Cooper straight on what has been happening in a funny and emotional drunk scene. He uses the same expression to describe the Founding Fathers as “lighthouses in a foggy world” that Capra will use again in his narration for the “Why We Fight” series, in the first short called Prelude to War.

“I’m a sucker for this country,” Gleason tells us, “I like what we got here.” When Stanwyck recants, and Gleason protests, they are kept hostage by Mr. Arnold’s people until Mr. Cooper makes the fateful speech which will turn the course of this nation into a fascist country.

But wait, Gary Cooper changes his mind, tries to warn the public, an impressive and enormous crowd scene in the rain. Unlike these days of CGI, where a small group can be duplicated on film to appear as thousands, this huge crowd was comprised of a lot of individuals who got a few dollars that day. That, too, is impressive. There is another great close-up of raindrops glistening on the uncovered head of the minister as he leads the crowd in silent prayer.

But evil Mr. Arnold interrupts Cooper’s attempt to set things right and accuses him of being a fake. Which, of course, he is. In case we miss the implication that this is a crucifixion scene when the crowd gets ugly and turns on Mr. Cooper, Miss Stanwyck, listening to the action over the radio in horror cries, “They’re crucifying him!” and Mr. Gleason, held captive by her side, glumly announces, “Chalk up another one for the Pontius Pilates.”

With another montage of headlines and jeers, the tormented Cooper heads for the city hall roof at midnight on Christmas Eve to make a gesture which he feels will make amends for the public relations disaster.

Interestingly, Mr. Arnold and his henchmen, as well as the John Doe Club led by the soda jerk, and the newspaper editor, Walter Brennan, and a Barbara Stanwyck sick with fever show up, too. Everyone wants to stop his suicide, except for Mr. Arnold, who only wants to cover it up.

Stanwyck gets another impassioned speech begging Mr. Cooper, who with tears in his eyes tells Arnold, “Take a good look, Mr. Norton.” And proceeds to throw himself off the roof. But Miss Stanwyck prevails, “If it’s worth dying for, it’s worth living for.” She describes Christ as the first John Doe, right before she faints.

Mr. Cooper carries Miss Stanwyck off the roof in his arms to the triumphant strains of Beethoven’s Ninth. The alternate ending, in which Cooper did dive off the roof, was nixed by the preview audience.

But the final word goes to Editor Gleason, now sober, who gloats in the evil Mr. Arnold’s face and says, “There y’are Norton, the people. Try and lick that!”

We like to think that. It is as American as baseball. It is what made us Americans in the first place, defying a superior political and military power. The people. We the people. But it was another man of a couple generations later, President Abraham Lincoln, who suggested that a foreign power could never take us over, that if we were to fail in our democracy, it would be at our own hands.

This is the message of Meet John Doe. The most remarkable thing about it, I think, is that this message was delivered at a time when there were plenty of foreign bad guys towards which to direct our suspicion, and soon would at the of this year of 1941. It is truly the sign of a great nation that can criticize itself, to be on guard against its own failings in the face of outside threats in such a troubled and chaotic world.

*********

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.

Florence Bates

Florence Bates played small, though sometimes memorable roles, as a character actress in films and on television until her death in the mid-1950s. She was the bullying, vainglorious and vulgar Mrs. Van Hopper in “Rebecca” (1940). A career portraying unpleasant society women with sharp tongues was probably not what she intended when she became the first female lawyer in the state of Texas in 1914 at the age of 26.

Miss Bates practiced law at least until the middle 1930s, when something induced her to become involved with the Pasadena Playhouse. Her first film role came in 1937, a brief, non-credited part. However, she zoomed to fame as Mrs. Van Hopper in her second film, and from then on perhaps law looked a little dull.

Not all her roles were as pivotal to the story of the film; she played a lot of walk-on parts as shoppers in various movies that took place in stores, like “Kitty Foyle” (1940) and “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941). She reprises her nastiness as the sour landlady Mrs. Jekes in “Portrait of Jennie” (1949), and plays a kinder, gentler society dame in “I Remember Mama” (1948) as the famous writer Irene Dunne approaches on behalf of her daughter to ask advice on writing. Miss Dunne, judging by Miss Bates’ girth, surmises that this famous writer is also a famous eater, and bribes her with a Norwegian delicacy.

Apparently, Miss Bates did not mind portraying stereotyped heavy eaters anymore than she minded playing bossy women, as she has a very brief scene on the train in “Since You Went Away” (1944) complaining about not getting enough to eat on trains these days while gobbling corn on the cob.

You’ll know her when you see her, in this and many other films even though her role may be small. She had a big screen personality.

Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

“Manhattan Melodrama” (1934) gives us a squeaky clean District Attorney/Governor, a best pal on the other side of the law, and Myrna Loy, best gal to both of them. In these days of New York Governors a little low on integrity in a really public way, this film captures an era equally guilty of graft and self interest, yet presented through the story of one good guy who feels guilty despite his integrity, and one bad guy who seems not so bad. It also gives us some interesting history of that era.

We are taken back to the characters’ boyhoods, and a traumatic event on the steamer General Slocum. A fun thing about this film is instead of creating an entirely fictitious scenario, we have a fictional story played on a background among real events. The General Slocum burned in 1904, with over 1,000 deaths. The only New York tragedy to claim more lives was 9/11. Few today may even know about the tragedy, but at the time it was an horrific event. We are also shown newsreel shots of 1920s Times Square with a Squibb’s advertisement, trolley cards, and marquees for the Palace and Loew’s. The characters attend the Cotton Club in Harlem, and there is a brief scene showing an actual hockey game (played without helmets or protective gear) at Madison Square Garden.

But for all the realistic shots, all it takes is the inevitable few bars of “Sidewalks of New York” to set the scene of long-ago Old New York and two boys playing on the decks of the General Slocum. One boy is studious, reading even on this outing, and the other is a rogue, played by Mickey Rooney, who plays tricks and cons other kids out of their pennies.

But the boys are pals, and come to the aid of another pal, a boy named Morris, when Morris is picked on. We are shown the immigrant hyphenated Americans on their one day off from the factory, Irish, Italians, Russian Jews. A fire breaks out and there is panic. Many die, including the two pals’ parents, and their friend Morris. They are rescued by a priest whose thick Italian accent tells us he is also an immigrant. Morris’ father, mourning his son, tearfully asks the boys, “How would you like to come and live with me and be my sons?”

“But I’m not a Jew and neither is Jim.” Mickey Rooney replies.

“Catholic, Protestant, Jew. What does it matter now?”

It is a lovely lesson in brotherly love that is sometimes true even if it is not universal, and our inclination to smile or roll our eyes at such innocence is condescending. The boys become the sons of “Poppa” Rosen, but he is later killed in a riot when he challenges the anti-American speech of a Bolshevik soapbox speaker. We move from a lesson in religious tolerance to Bolshevism is bad no matter if the speaker has a right to say what he thinks.

Years pass, Mickey Rooney grows up to be Clark Gable, and William Powell plays his bookish friend, now a New York City District Attorney. Myrna Loy is Gable’s girl, a world-weary and streetwise sort of moll who yearns for a different life. Gable, called “Blackie” is a gangster. A charming, handsome gangster, but still a gangster.

When she meets Powell, she is impressed with his gentlemanliness absent in the roguish Gable. This is Powell’s and Loy’s first film pairing, and their chemistry led to “The Thin Man” series. At the Cotton Club a singer played by Shirley Ross (who, minus the darker skinned makeup was Bob Hope’s partner in the famous “Thanks for the Memories” song in “The Big Broadcast of 1938”) sings “The Bad in Every Man”, the anthem for this movie, a Rogers and Hart tune which we know more commonly as “Blue Moon.” Apparently the original lyrics weren’t catchy enough, so Lorenz Hart was asked to come up with some new words.

Miss Loy leaves Gable for Powell, becoming his wife. But there are no hard feelings, and Mr. Gable is astoundingly cheerful not only at loosing his girlfriend to his best pal, but pleased almost to the point of giddiness when Powell’s investigations into racketeering threaten Gable’s business deals. He is immensely proud of Powell’s career climb. He is happy for their marriage. Clark Gable is one of the few actors who could pull off the sincerity he is supposed to feel, and even say lines like, “Everything is hotsy-totsy.”

However, trouble looms when Powell is threatened by a bad egg in his administration, and Gable kills the bad egg to help Powell’s bid for Governor. Clark Gable has some interesting scenes with Myrna Loy after she is Powell’s wife. His attention to her is solicitous, and intimate, but not sexually predatory. He exudes genuine affection for her, much more than when she was his ever-waiting girlfriend, almost as if his esteem for her rose only after she left him. The warmth he displays for her when they sit together at the races is among the sexiest scenes he has ever played.

“Do you ever lose?” she kids him when he has won the horse race.

“Yeah, every once in a while.” He charmingly replies, referring to having lost her. He says it without self pity or rancor, and that is adorable.

But the wheels are in motion, and Gable is caught for the murder he committed in a cold-blood by shooting another bad guy in the men’s room at Madison Square Garden. Powell must prosecute him, and while Gable enjoys the courtroom drama, proud of his pal’s integrity, “Class, it’s written all over him,” Powell suffers agonies. In his summation, Powell mentions the long-ago General Slocum tragedy, and he tearfully groans, “I made a boyish effort to save Blackie Gallagher’s life. Today I demand from you his death.”

Gable is given the death sentence, Mr. Powell wins the governorship, dons a wing collar and swallowtail coat, and Loy leaves Powell for what she sees as his fanatic obsession with the law and his lack of loyalty to Gable. He visits Gable in the death house, and the love the two men feel for each other, especially when joined by the Italian priest from their boyhood days, gives us a powerful scene. Powell weakens, and offers Gable a commutation of his death sentence, which Mr. Gable refuses.

“If I can’t live the way I want, at least let me die when I want.”

If such bravado is difficult to believe, then Powell’s remorse that drives him to resign the governorship is even more difficult to believe. He resigns because, as he makes a public confession to the Assembly, his feelings for Gable made him offer the commutation, against the wishes of the public who voted him in office for his very prosecution of his friend. Such scruples, more than a gangster and murder’s admiration for a man with integrity, more than Myrna Loy turning from gun moll to First Lady of New York, more than Clark Gable saying things like “hotsy totsy” stretches our belief. Scruples in public office? Integrity? A social conscience? Yeah, right. Maybe if the former Governor of New York and the present Governor had pencil-thin mustaches, then maybe we could trust them.

Another bit of trivia, well-known by now, is that the real-life gangster John Dillinger had just emerged from Chicago’s Biograph Theater, having seen this film, when he was shot and killed by the FBI.

Cats as Fashion Accessories

Eve Arden lounges in the parlor of the rooming house for aspiring actresses in “Stage Door” (1937) while a cat lounges on her, draped around her neck like a scarf. He is named Henry, long and lazy and makes an obliging fur piece. He barely flexes as Eve strolls about casting wisecracks like a flower girl casting petals. He doesn’t move a muscle. He may not have any. He clearly has no bones, as floppy as a child’s old stuffed animal.

“Bell, Book and Candle” (1958) stars Kim Novak and another feline which doubles as part friend, part security blanket, all fashion statement. Pyewacket the cat consents to being pulled from hiding places and draped across Kim Novak’s shoulders or sliding seductively down her body, the two of them like an ice dancing pair. He is her partner in crime, but also a fashion accessory.

Cat, the unimaginatively named feline in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) isn’t used as a scarf or a stole or a furry boa. He’s too tough for that. He might pounce on George Peppard from boredom, but he’s nobody’s fashion accessory. But unlike Pyewacket and Henry, he takes center stage in the pivotal climatic scene when the lovers reunite in the rain, with the rain-soaked cat nestled between them, trying to stay dry under their chins.

Perhaps it is their stillness, even more than their flexibility that makes them such good props.

Alice Faye in Wet Cement

On March 20, 1935, 73 years ago today, Alice Faye put her hands and high heels in fresh cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. “George White’s 1935 Scandals” would open in another week, only her fifth film.

It would be another few years before her staring roles of the 1940s in glorious Technicolor, before Betty Grable, at this time still doing bit parts, would become her replacement and the new darling of 20th Century-Fox, before Alice, tired of studio machinations, quit the business, chucked her dressing room key out of her car window at the studio gate and never looked back.

For now, it was a rising star and fresh cement.

Two Views of Ireland

Director John Ford came up with two representations of the Irish in film, and they show both ends of the spectrum between the violent circle of vengeance that has plagued that culture for hundreds of years, and the sentimental portrait of a witty caricature. “The Informer” (1935) and “The Quiet Man” (1952) give us not necessarily opposing views of Ireland, both show repressive aspects to their society, but between them give a fuller picture so much so that they should probably be shown together.

Both are excellent films, and despite being the products of Hollywood, because both are directed by a man whose family came from Ireland, who spoke Irish Gaelic himself, they carry an authenticity that most Hollywood films do not have when depicting a foreign land. “The Informer” is gritty, stark, and reflective of the German expressionist school of film. Victor McLaglen, who won the Academy Award for his performance, is a bumbling, flawed, irascible man, a man of little intelligence, whose betrayal to the police of a friend turns him into a haunted, and hunted, man. He turned in the fellow for the reward money, to finance immigration for himself and his prostitute girlfriend to America. He squanders the money instead, his guilt chasing him through the foggy night. In the end, confessing his crime to the betrayed man’s mother, played by Una O’Connor, the IRA catches up with McLaglen and shoots him like a dog. His arms held out in rapture for being forgiven by the Madonna-like sorrowing O’Connor, this lowly, lying, desperate ape of a man becomes Christ-like, and dies for his own sins.

Mr. McLaglen returns in “The Quiet Man” as a boasting, selfish, brawler, the bossy brother of Maureen O’Hara, without whose permission she cannot marry John Wayne. McLaglen, despite similar attributes to his bedeviled character in “The Informer” is here a comic figure, and actually likable despite his irascibility. Maureen O’Hara is a spitfire, able to hold her own with her bullying brother, and John Wayne is the American who has returned to the land of his birth to settle down. This time it is Wayne who is the haunted character, an ex-boxer who caused the death of a competitor in the ring, and who runs from his guilt, and all violence, to this peaceful Irish countryside.

Though we have dependable Ward Bond along as the parish priest, the rest of the cast are Irish, members of the distinguished Abbey Players. They, more than the color picture postcard scenery, give this film its charm. The stereotype of the hard-drinking, brawling Irish is more than winked at. Particularly in the famous scene where Mr. Wayne drags Miss O’Hara across the hills and fields, as townspeople swarm to watch, and the sweet village lady graciously offers Mr. Wayne a stick, “to beat the lovely lady,” we know we are being gloriously kidded by a culture that delights especially in laughing at itself.

Soon Mr. Wayne trades Maureen O’Hara for Victor McLaglen in a cross-country boxing match that wildly entertains the locals and ironically squares things between him and his brother-in-law. Barry Fitzgerald as the village matchmaker and bookie is a gem in this film. His coy smile at Maureen O’Hara as she sings at the spinet and suddenly bursts into what must have been genuine laughter at him, is delightful. The kindly act of brotherly love when the Catholics of the neighborhood pretend to be Protestants so that the visiting Church of Ireland bishop won’t remove the local vicar, played by Fitzgerald’s real-life brother Arthur Shields, and cheer him as he drives by, is a reminder that enmity and vengeance are not part of everyday life for everyone on this island.

“The Informer” is bleak; “The Quiet Man” is romantic confection, and both films together illustrate a more complete picture of a culture of fierce nationalism, religious passion, humor, oppression and human flaws than they would taken separately. Ford and his vision of his ancestral homeland is the glue. It is through his skeptical, and romantic, eye that we see this culture which has come to personify this feast day of a Christian saint.

Not off Topic, Just off Blog

A fantastic discussion of the style of movie opening and end credits is going on over at The Siren's place. Do please have a look at this great blog, and this really interesting post and comments.

Shirley Temple - Grauman's Handprints

On March 14, 1935, some 73 years ago tomorrow, Shirley Temple put her small hands and bare feet in wet cement.

The box office champ for 1936, 1937 and 1938, three years in a row, and the savior of Fox studios, had not even hit her stride when she did the Grauman’s Chinese Theater sidewalk treatment.

Her film, “The Little Colonel” had just been released the previous month, with Lionel Barrymore, Hattie McDaniel, and that famous tap dancing up the stairs routine devised by the remarkable Bill Robinson.

Shirley Temple, not quite 7 years old at the time she got her hands in cement, would make three other pictures that year, one of the hardest working kids in Hollywood. The only thing more pleasing than reflecting on her early success is knowing that the rest of her life, beyond the soundstage, was varied, and full, and evidently a great pleasure to her. Hollywood film history is filled so many tragic stories of lives ruined. Miss Box Office Champ had a long way to fall even before she reached her 10th birthday. How nice that she didn’t, but just skipped along safely to other levels, like the little kid holding Mr. Robinson’s hand, bouncing up and down those stairs.

Brief Encounter (1945)

Brief Encounter (1945) is a fascinating movie for what it shows and what it does not show, what is says, and what it does not say. It is unselfconsciously intimate, yet in the most cordial manner.

While this blog is mainly concerned with Hollywood films, taking a look at this British film gives a look at the English culture without the gingerbread of a typical Hollywood view of English culture.

The story, originally from a Noel Coward play, is of a love affair between a man and a woman who meet in a railway station tearoom. Both are married to other people, and though their romance is chaste, they nevertheless feel immense guilt when they acknowledge their attraction for each other, and a painful sense of hopelessness over their love. Divorce is not an option for either because each remains loyal to his/her spouse and children. Continuing as they are in an emotional limbo as bleak as the train station is also unthinkable.

The trains that roar past them alternately assume the inevitability of their fate, or their conscience. They have to catch their separate trains. They dare not miss the train.

The film begins at the ending, as they are about to part forever. The rest of the film is told in flashback with a voice over narration by Celia Johnson, who plays the female lead. She speaks as if reciting the story to her kindly but dull husband, of whom she acknowledges to herself, “You’re the only one in the world with enough wisdom and gentleness to understand. If only it was somebody else’s story and not mine. As it is, you’re the only one in the world I can never tell…even if I waited until we were old, old people and told you then, you’d be bound to look back over the years and be hurt.”

Her soliloquy explains the conflict of the story, that although the character played by Celia Johnson and her lover, played by Trevor Howard, never get more physical in their illicit relationship than kissing, they battle, along with the great temptation to take their romance further, an enormous guilt simply for enjoying each other’s company. Infidelity, it seems, is a matter of the heart and mind for them.

It is a film where very small details are made large, as told through the psyche of Miss Johnson’s narration, they way we enlarge insignificant moments in our minds when we are very emotional. The annoying chatter of other people when we want to be alone with our thoughts. The light that plays from streetlamps, the rain, his hand briefly on her shoulder when he says goodbye. Director David Lean turns these into monumental moments.

The score, with its strains of Rachmaninoff’s “Second Piano Concerto” is at turns gossamer, and at other moments leaden with sadness.

As for the real English culture versus the Hollywood ersatz version of that era, we see no huge, airy rooms with roaring fires in enormous stone fireplaces, no quaint and not-too-bright servants, and no heroic stiff upper lips. The rooms are small, dark, with feeble heat and only the suggestion of a cook downstairs. There is a sense of clutter, not of heritage or noblesse oblige. However, Miss Johnson does wander in her stream-of-consciousness narration to give us a self-portrait of the English with the remark, “I believe we should all behave quite differently in a warm, sunny climate all the time. We shouldn’t be so withdrawn and shy and difficult.”

It’s an interesting remark. One shouldn’t take old movies, from whatever culture, as gospel to define that culture. Most Americans at one time or another have laughed, or blanched, at the thought of our films being used as an example of who we are. To do the same to the British with this lovely film would be unfair. Still, we see that while there are the same Hollywood-style comic cockney underclasses represented by the tearoom staff and the railroad official played wonderfully by Stanley Holloway, nevertheless there is no forelock pulling. They do not behave subserviently to the middle class, educated and well-spoken Johnson and Howard. If anything, they are inclined to bully when they are inconvenienced.

However, they show quite a contrasting dignity. Though Holloway’s jokester character does all he can to flirt with the standoffish tearoom lady, even enrages her by slapping her on the bum, he redeems himself in her eyes by coming to her rescue. Two cheeky soldiers speak to rudely to her, and Mr. Holloway, with immense sternness and dignity, sends them packing. At a table nearby, a defeated Johnson and Howard wallow in the misery of their own weaker moral compasses. Things are not black and white with them.

Interestingly, though this film was made in 1945, these two naughty soldiers are the only evidence we have of it’s being wartime. There are no other uniforms, no posters or signs, no discussion of current events. The severe wartime privation of the English, which lasted for some years after the war, is not seen here. It’s as if the very train station is an island away from the real world and leaves the lovers, and us, quite insolated.

Interesting, too, how the culture of the United States, its film culture that is, makes a brief appearance in the film, when the lovers go to the movies and laugh over a Donald Duck cartoon. When he is sent away, one of the soldiers hollers derisively at the tearoom lady, “…if them sandwiches were made this morning, you’re Shirley Temple!” Apparently, like it or not, to the rest of the world we really are the personification our films.

The most bleak moment of the film comes when, after an outing the in country, Howard must return the keys of the borrowed car to a friend. He goes to the friend’s flat, while Miss Johnson, in an agony of indecision, decides at last to join him there to have a little more time together before she heads home. The friend comes home early and she ducks out the back, humiliated at how it must look. The friend sees the scarf she left behind, and Mr. Howard, despite the innocence of the situation, is made to feel the full brunt of the appearance of sordidness in his friend’s arch assumptions.

Miss Johnson, in the meantime, runs in a panic through the rain and wanders through unfamiliar streets at night, as if her guilt and shame are chasing her. There are some great visuals of her rain-matted hair, of the condensation of their breath as they speak, and of the camera tilting at a frightening angle when, at the climax of her emotional crisis, she nearly rushes into an oncoming train to kill herself.

She does not kill herself, and instead offers the amazed if blunt confession that is was not due to thoughts of her husband or children that made her stop. Her obsession has made her forget them, made her lie, has made her hide and deceive, and she is appalled at herself and at the ease with which she does these things. We see the power of her obsession, and how the shock of that acknowledged obsession parts the lovers as much as does their guilt.

When she does return home, her husband watches her carefully over his crossword puzzle, sees that her mind has been miles away, in some sort of private torment. Rather than ask questions, he merely kneels before her chair when she rouses herself and remarks, “Thank you for coming back to me.”

It’s a great closing line, and makes us wonder was it merely a rhetorical question? How much did he know? Just how understanding is he?

*********

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century.

Now Playing - 1944

This magazine ad from 1944 assures us that “Cover Girl” will be pretty spectacular without going into too many details. Rita Hayworth stars, that evidently says it all. What is not said is that her singing is dubbed by Martha Mears. Gene Kelly contributed a lot to the polish of this film. Dependably wry Eve Arden has the wonderful name of “Cornelia ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.” Gotta love that.

Much has been written about poster art from the old movies, but some of the print advertisements were quite artistic as well.

1st Anniversary - Thank You

This is just a brief thank you to all of you who have read, and sometimes commented on, this blog in the past year. I began Another Old Movie Blog one year ago today. Some 189 posts later it’s still a joy, if sometimes a challenge, to write about old films in the context of the times in which they were made.

It’s been a wonderful sentimental journey. Thank you for the pleasure of your company. See you tomorrow.

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)

The Strawberry Blonde (1941) is a parody of The Olden Days with James Cagney in the unusual role of a stiff-necked and somewhat moralistic loser who becomes the butt of his huckster pal’s schemes. That he finds happiness with Olivia de Havilland is only because he has finally woken up and stopped being a slow-witted fool. Not the usual Cagney outing. 

 

Jack Carson plays Cagney’s pal in his typical fast-talking smart aleck role. Mr. Carson is dependably funny, and has an interesting way of being able to play a creep or a poor soul even though his delivery remains the same no matter in what film he appears. The other characters around him seem to make him sympathetic or arrogant. Mr. Cagney is a hapless dental student, equally busy with keeping his drunken skirt-chasing rogue of a Da, played with his usual nothing-up-my-sleeve finesse by Alan Hale, as he is with pursing the girl of his dreams. 

The girl of his dreams is played by Rita Hayworth, the strawberry blonde of the piece, as elegant appearing as a wedding cake on the outside, but inside as common as a mug of beer. Olivia de Havilland is her friend, a nurse, seen as an unromantic profession of serious and single-minded ladies soon to be spinsters. To make matters worse in Cagney’s eyes, she is also a suffragette who smokes. Not very expertly. But she does. 

On their first date, a fix-up when Cagney thought he was going to get Hayworth but gets stuck with Miss de Havilland instead, there is much bickering and posturing about modern women, to which Mr. Cagney scoffs with one of his many platitudes, “An empty barrel makes the most noise.” 

We get an eyeful of straw boaters and leg-o’mutton sleeves, and lots of choruses of “The Band Played On.” When Carson steals Hayworth from him and marries her, Cagney dejectedly tries to make do with de Havilland, never really appreciating her until time passes and he sees what a brassy gal his ideal Miss Hayworth really is, how unhappy their marriage is, and what a swell gal the suffragette turns out to be. Carson gets rich as a shady contractor. 

When Cagney and de Havilland come to dinner, Carson and Hayworth show off their new electric lighting. “I just can’t get over that electric light,” an awed Miss de Havilland remarks, “Isn’t it dangerous?” “Not if you pay the bills,” is Carson’s line, delivered in a cute way of trying too hard to be funny. Even when he’s a braggart and a blowhard, it’s hard to dislike him. They have a new dish for dinner, something called “spaghetti” which none of them knows how to eat. 

Carson throws his down and out old buddy a bone by giving him a job in his company, but makes Cagney the fall guy when because of inferior materials being used, a building Carson’s firm is constructing collapses. Cagney’s father also happens to be fatally injured in the collapse. Cagney goes to jail for several years, and so the plot turns from one of smirking over high button shoes to a tragedy. 

But wait, no, it’s not a tragedy, because there are more comic scenes of Cagney keeping up with his dental studies in prison. When he gets out of jail, he removes Carson’s sore tooth without anesthetic, just for spite. Cagney, who would never even whistle at Hayworth out of respect for her, abandons his idealistic obsession and instead finds happiness with the down-to-earth de Havilland. The film ends, charmingly, with another round of “The Band Played On” in sing-along style with the words printed out on title cards as they might have been in the early days of silent films, with the final card in elegant script declaring, “Thank You, Come Again.”