watchingwell

Watchingwell

Curated classic films

March Musings – ---

Thinking about Women’s Roles -- Again

I never used to like Jean Arthur a lot. Since she was well-liked by critics and other fans of classic films, I never mentioned this. I appreciated her contribution to the success of the films in which she starred, but her whiney, often-confused characters made it difficult for me to admire her personality.

A lot of screwball comedy depended on characters doing things that normal people (like you and I) would never do. For example, today I watched The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947), directed by Irving Reis. In this story, an overly-amorous, teenager, played by Shirley Temple, makes life miserable for Cary Grant, for a time, while he is being judged by her sister, a judge, played by Myrna Loy. I have seen this film several times and always thought, Cary Grant, Myrna Loy – how can this not be entertaining? But today, my mood was foul and I saw that no one would

have allowed a character to act like Shirley Temple was allowed to act without a pretty powerful rebuke. The Myrna Loy character – a judge – shows very poor judgment in how she handles her sister, but her profession is only there to decorate the plot, not to demonstrate how a woman operates in an important career.

In another Myrna Loy film, Double Wedding (1937), directed by Richard Thorpe, Loy runs a business, but she is not just a successful business woman, she is a controlling business woman who runs her sister’s life and that of her sister’s fiancé. The male lead, who saves her from herself this time is William Powell, with whom we expect to see the great rapport they displayed in The Thin Man films. Unlike, The Thin Man, where if she is occasionally silly, she is mostly respected by her husband, in Double Wedding she has to be discredited and disgraced to turn into an acceptable mate and sibling.

In a lesser-known 1940 comedy, directed by Robert Z. Leonard, Third Finger, Left Hand, Myrna is the editor of a popular women’s magazine, who wears a wedding ring to protect her from unwanted advances from her publisher boss

and others. It seems other women have failed to hold onto their positions in the firm because of these compromising complications, and Myrna likes her job. Her plan falls apart when Melvyn Douglas discovers that she is not married. From that point, the plot is all about how the romance gets resolved, and Myrna Loy might just as well have been unemployed for all we see about her editing work.

Another female star of career-woman comedies, Rosalind Russell, also played a judge – twice. The first one, the 1941 Design For Scandal, directed by Norman Taurog, Roz plays an impeccable, well-respected jurist who has just imposed an expensive settlement in a divorce case. The husband, rich publisher, Edward Arnold, takes exception and wants a different judge in family court so he can get a favorable ruling on his appeal. He embarks on a plot with former employee, reporter, Walter Pidgeon, who is offered his job back if he can compromise the judge in some way. Spoiler alert: He falls for her, instead. (Like, you didn’t know that would happen.)

In Tell It to the Judge (1949), directed by Norman Foster, Ms. Russell plays a judge who exhibits such poor judgment that we wonder about her qualifications. She is divorcing her unfaithful (she thinks) husband, played by Robert Cummings, but finds that she needs him to be respectable enough to get an appointment to a federal court. But she never trusts him long enough to reconcile, and we, the audience, know that her husband is faithful, although unable to figure out that telling her where and why he is going out would have been a better strategy than leaving her in the dark to believe the worst. But there wouldn’t be much of a comedy if people acted sensibly.

One of Russell’s best, if not the best, role is Hildy Johnson, a hard-boiled newspaper reporter in His Girl Friday, the great 1941 comedy, directed by Howard Hawks. But here, as great as she is at her chosen profession, the whole film revolves around her attempt to leave it -- to get married – to Ralph Bellamy! Her nemesis in this endeavor is ex-husband, Cary Grant, so it is never really in doubt how this will turn out, but in the end, she is resigned to her fate, putting up with Cary and remaining in the news game, though not exactly happy about it.

In Take a Letter, Darling (1942), directed by Mitchell Leisen, Russell plays a partner in an advertising agency, who, in a clever script by Claude Binyon,

hires poor artist, Fred MacMurray, as her secretary, because she can’t hold on to females in the job for long, and because it’s handy to have a male escort on various business functions to keep the minds of men she meets on business. (Similar to Myrna Loy in Third Finger, Left Hand) The script, with the role reversals and issues that are raised, is certainly not outdated, but the chemistry between Roz and Fred MacMurray, who was under-appreciated in his career, in my opinion, really elevates this above the ordinary.

Another actress at home with career-women roles, Barbara Stanwyck, plays a columnist for a women’s magazine in Christmas In Connecticut (1945), directed by Peter Godfrey. She is more like a novelist, though, because her columns about her cooking, housekeeping, and marriage are all fiction. This secret unravels one weekend when she tries to entertain her boss without revealing the truth. She obviously enjoys her success as a writer, if, for no other reason, it brings her needed income. Yes, this is basically a romance, and the romance takes up as much time as protecting her job for most of the film, but in the end, instead of throwing it all away as she marches to the altar, she actually negotiates a higher salary from her publisher boss.

Barbara also plays a columnist in the Frank Capra drama, Meet John Doe (1941). In this story she is hungry and savvy and nearly loses her soul to ambition before pulling back from the brink, through the exploitation of Gary Cooper. We’re not sure what she will do with her life after she comes to her senses, but she’ll probably have to continue working , seeing as John (Gary Cooper) will be unemployable for the foreseeable future.

Stanwyck takes a break from journalism to play a doctor in You Belong to Me, also from 1941, directed by Wesley Ruggles. In the story she is married to Henry Fonda, who is an heir to a fortune and has never felt the need to work. This conflict of the wife having a profession and the husband not having one and resenting hers is the basis of the plot, until one day he can’t deal with it anymore and leaves. Fully expecting this 1941 comedy to end in the conventional way with Dr. Barbara giving up medicine to make her husband happy, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this didn’t happen. I guess it would have been a hard sell even in 1941 that after college, medical school, internship, and residency, you would just walk away.

But back to journalists – and Jean Arthur. She played two with distinction. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) which mirrors the plot of the other Frank Capra film, Meet John Doe, in that a female reporter exploits an innocent and decent bumpkin (again, played by Gary Cooper) for her own purposes and then regrets her part in his downfall. In the end, she, more or less, renounces her profession.

On the other hand, in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, yet another Frank Capra classic from 1939, Jean plays a cynical reporter who is assigned to James Stewart, as the bumpkin, who is appointed to fill a Senate seat of one who has inconveniently died. But in this case, the Washington reporter is savvy to all the devious and corrupt shenanigans that sometimes happen there, and along with her press buddy, played by Thomas Mitchell, figures out how to save the bumpkin before he is destroyed.

In this role, she displays no whiney voice or addled personality. On the contrary, she becomes what the role demands – a surprisingly-idealistic, democracy wonk, an expert on Senate rules (that bumpkin didn’t bother to learn before coming to D.C.) that she cleverly transmits to the newborn senator and causes a domino effect of Senate corruption housecleaning. Hey, it’s a comedy. Patriotic. Hokey.

So, I’ve had a re-think about Jean Arthur and have since appreciated anew and recommend her performances in The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936), directed by Stephen Roberts, with William Powell,

Too Many Husbands (1940), directed by Wesley Ruggles, with Melvyn Douglas and Fred MacMurray,