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                                             Curated classic films

Who are you anyway?

     Occasionally, Hollywood accidentally stumbles onto something profound while telling what it thinks is an entertaining story.  Such is the case with the theme of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941, Columbia Pictures) later remade by Warren Beatty in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait.  The 2001 version with Chris Rock, Down to Earth, also derives from Harry Segall's play, "Heaven Can Wait", which is not to be confused with the 1943 film by the same name starring Gene Tierney and Don Ameche, which is a different story altogether.

     In the 1941 version, Robert Montgomery plays a prize fighter named Joe Pendleton who dies in a small plane crash -- by mistake.  He wasn't supposed to die at that time and the folks in charge of these things, not sure how this could have happened, explain to Joe that they will make it right by supplying another body for him to inhabit until his time is really up.  Joe's reaction is 'not so fast'.  He wants his own body back, mainly because he was on track to fight for the championship.  The guys from the world beyond, Edward Everett Horton and his boss, Mr. Jordan, played by Claude Rains, convince him that if he was fated to win the championship, he will, in whatever body he is in and the body they have available will do very nicely.

    The 'body' belongs to Bruce Farnsworth, a ruthless tycoon, who is being murdered by his wife and his secretary as Joe is brought into his house by Mr. Jordan.  After Joe sizes up Farnsworth's body, he concludes that a lot of work will be required to bring it into fighting condition. Mr. Jordan assures him that he can do it, but that he must remember that to the rest of the world, he will be Bruce Farnsworth, which takes Joe a little time to realize.  It finally sinks in when he meets Bette Logan, played by Evelyn Keyes, who has come to solicit Farnsworth's help in freeing her father, imprisoned for a swindle that Farnsworth engineered.  Bette knows Farnsworth is responsible for her father's troubles and she is not a fan.  This presents a terrible problem for Joe because he realizes that he has fallen in love with her.  But his manner and his promise to help is so unexpected that Bette is off-balance and agrees to see him again.

     After meeting Bette, Joe resolves to be Farnsworth long enough to help her father and uses the time to get into shape for the championship fight.  So he begins a fitness regimen that confuses his butler, and his wife and secretary, who do not understand why he is still alive as they are sure that they killed him.  As Bruce Farnsworth, he reaches out for his old manager, Max, to help him train.  Max, played by James Gleason, in a performance that was nominated for an Academy Award, still heartbroken about Joe's death, is skeptical about Farnsworth until he sees Joe's saxophone in the corner and believes what Joe tells him about being in Farnsworth's body.

     But Joe believes that it is a temporary identity and he is torn because he would lose Bette if he leaves Farnsworth's life.  Or would  he?  He attempts to make sense of this in a conversation with Bette that she finds very confusing.  He asks her if she met a guy someday that seemed familiar in some way, would she give him a break even if he was a total stranger.  Bette, also falling love with Joe, as Farnsworth, doesn't really understand what he is asking but under the spell of his pleading gaze, says she would.

     Joe thinks he is training to fight the champion, Ralph Murdoch, but before he gets to the arena, Farnsworth's personal secretary, who murdered him once, and with his wife, finds his survival more and more inconvenient, shoots him.  Mr. Jordan enters the scene to quickly remove Joe from Farnsworth's corpse and place him in the body of Ralph Murdoch, who has just been shot by his crooked manager for winning the fight instead of throwing it.  Joe acknowledges to Mr. Jordan that Murdoch is considered to be a right guy in the business, but he is unsure if this is the right choice.  Mr. Jordan assures him that this is his destiny and quietly leaves Joe for good.

      Before Joe became Murdoch, he told Max the murderers put Farnsworth's body in the freezer, which Max reveals to the police, and the guilty couple is taken away.  Max, who has been listening to the fight on the radio, hears that there is a saxophone in Murdoch's corner and heads down to the arena.  Murdoch, who has no memory of Joe, greets Max as a stranger, even though Max realizes, because of the saxophone, that somehow his friend was there but is gone.  Murdoch tells him that he has heard he was an honest guy and he has just fired his manager and would like Max to take his place.  Murdoch doesn't understand why the saxophone is there, so he gives it to Max for safekeeping.  He tells Max that they are going to do well together and Max mournfully agrees.

     As Joe/Murdoch leaves the dressing room, he bumps into Bette Logan who is rushing around the corner and is startled as the lights are turned off.  For the audience, who has been seeing Robert Montgomery in every identity, we wonder how Bette will understand that Joe is now Murdoch.  In a very tender scene, he reassures her that it's nothing but the building being shut down and she looks at him searchingly.  He introduces himself as Ralph Murdoch, the fighter, and she touches a bandage on his face.  In the darkened hallway, Murdoch asks if she would consider getting a cup of coffee with him.  Bette sees something in his eyes and recalls Joe's question about meeting a stranger and giving him a break.  Suddenly, she understands what he meant and she accepts the invitation and they leave together.

 

     In my opinion, this is the best version of the 1938 Segall play. Robert Montgomery is more convincing in his honest, but dull, fighter identity than the actors in the remakes. He plays Joe as an unimaginative lug who is not at all sensitive or inquisitive and so is even more bewildered by his premature demise and Mr. Jordan's attempts to repair the damage. It also makes the clumsy but tender encounters with Bette Logan more believable. Montgomery was adroit in comedy roles which he often underplayed with a languid confidence [Not to miss: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941, RKO Radio Pictures) with Carole Lombard].  This approach to the role of Joe Pendleton makes it possible for him to seemingly slip unnoticed from one persona to another and give the audience the impression that he now looks like the new character. Which leads to the larger question: what is the essential part of you? Is it how you look? Or is there something more identifying under the skin? It is an intriguing thought.


     For those of you who are not devotées of the Star Trek franchise, there were several really thoughtful scripts on "Deep Space Nine" and "Next Generation". One of the latter, entitled, The Host (1991), involves an ambassador of a body-less race that must inhabit Commander Ryker's body temporarily until the permanent body is assigned for an important galaxy conference. While enroute to the conference on the Enterprise, the ship's doctor, Beverly Crusher, falls in love with the person enclosed by Ryker's body. A lot of the episode involves the race between getting to the conference and the deteriorating condition of Ryker's body that is provoked by its hosting of the other life form. But for me, the thought-provoking element occurs at the very end when an emotionally spent Dr. Crusher, after keeping Ryker (and her lover) alive, finally can meet the ambassador in the new form assigned for his attachment to an ongoing post. The ambassador greets the doctor when she enters the room from the body of a woman. Crusher is stunned. The ambassador reminds her that this is the same person with the same thoughts, the same tastes, the same character that she fell in love with. But although Crusher understands this, she says that for her it is not the same.                  

  
So, two views -- one says it doesn't matter how you look, your inner persona is what identifies you, and the other says that you can't ignore the physical package in which your inner persona resides. What do you think?