Watchingwell   

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The 1940s
The Comedies

     Back to the film literacy department, here is my list of iconic comedies of the 1940s. A slight change of format here -- instead of the usual list of the most important 20, I am taking the liberty of selecting my favorite five of the list to discuss in more detail. Again, I remind you that these 20, including my favorite five, are not necessarily the funniest, but rather, the ones you should know about if you want to know Hollywood comedy in the 40s.

      If I had to choose one film, to take to the desert island (thank goodness, I don't), maybe I would choose His Girl Friday, a film from 1940 directed by Howard Hawks.  An earlier version of the Charles MacArthur-Ben Hecht 1928 play was made into a film in 1931 with Adolph Menjou and Pat O'Brien. (There were later film versions made as well, but this one from 1940 is the best.)  Howard Hawks changed the Pat O'Brien role of Hildy Johnson into a woman, played by Rosalind Russell, adding a new dimension to the plot. Cary Grant plays Walter Burns, the newspaper editor who would go to any length to beat the competition to a story. 

     The dialogue is fast and overlapping, a specialty of Hawks direction.  In one scene that illustrates this and one that you'd have to see more than once to notice all the nuances of the performances, Rosalind Russell is typing the breaking story, while Walter (Cary Grant) is helping her with background and at the same time, speaking on the phone with his editor. Ralph Bellamy as Bruce, who is engaged to Hildy, is hovering over her trying to get her away and on the train to Albany.  So we have Bruce talking to Hildy, Hildy answering him and asking Walter questions and typing while reading out loud what she is typing. Walter is talking to Hildy, to his editor on the phone and also to Bruce, accusing him of distracting Hildy, and Bruce is also answering him. While all this is going on, someone mentions Bruce's money that Hildy was holding for him which Walter knows has been exchanged for counterfeit, and he inspects the money to check whether it is real or not. The scene runs seamlessly and is a master class in filmmaking.

     There is another scene where Abner Biberman, who plays Walter's devoted and slightly crooked fixer, has returned to the courthouse to report that his car was in a crash with a police car and implies that Hildy's future mother-in-law might have been killed. While he is recounting the events to Walter, Hildy is on the phone to the hospitals, asking if an old woman has been brought in. I have seen this film a dozen times and this scene never fails to make me laugh.

     Cary Grant does not always play himself, as some may think.  His Walter Burns is a newspaper man and con artist, a businessman who knows what sells, with very little in the way of scruples.  His speech patterns reflect that -- hard edged, slightly insincere, and so do his clothes, well-dressed but a little flashy, with a flower in his lapel. Rosalind Russell is an able match as Hildy, the ultimate career woman, an attractive woman, yet clearly respected and admired by the newspapermen on the beat. You don't find too many career woman stories from those days that didn't end with a subtle message to girls that a professional life was not for them. This one was unique because since Hildy was originally written as a man, the role still required that she was a great reporter in order for the plot to work. In the end, when she goes off with Walter, resigned to his faults as a partner, it is obvious she is not leaving her career. They go off together to cover a strike in Albany, with Hildy carrying her own suitcases and Walter musing aloud that perhaps Bruce, the jilted fiance, will put them up.

*****

     Preston Sturges has the deserved reputation for original, sophisticated comedy writing and direction. Of the three Sturges films included in my top 20, The Palm Beach Story from 1942 is my favorite.

     As I have previously written, I have watched old films since childhood, so it was with pleasant surprise that I found this film for the first time not so many years ago. The plot is ridiculous -- I mean, really ridiculous. Claudette Colbert is in love with her husband, Joel McCrea, but since they are without enough capital to bankroll his canopy airport idea, she decides to divorce him so he can work without worrying about her, and she can find some man to supply the cash in return for her favors.  Did you notice three or four ridiculous items here? Wait, there's more.

     There is a rich businessman from the Midwest who gives her enough to pay the unpaid bills, a hunting club who buys her a ticket on the train car they have booked for their trip to Florida, and a Rockefeller-type, played by Rudy Vallee, who takes her the rest of the way on his yacht after the hunters' car is uncoupled from the train, but not before he buys her a complete designer wardrobe, with jewels.

     When they get to Florida, they are met by Vallee's sister, played by Mary Astor, and also, Joel McCrea, who has followed his wife to Palm Beach, but whom she introduces as her brother.  But as we are refusing to suspend our disbelief with this insanity, we are also laughing at the script anyway, and this is the essence of Preston Sturges comedy -- a ridiculous premise that plays out with such convincing wit that we accept the ridiculous as normal.  My favorite line comes when Vallee shows his sister a Hope-diamond-size ring he has bought for Colbert. He asks her what she thinks and Astor replies, "I think she'll know what you mean."

*****

     Another film that I discovered quite recently was the William Powell and Myrna Loy gem, Love Crazy from 1941. These two have made many films together that are always on my fave lists in other categories.  This one, however, made me laugh out loud at several scenes, both because of the script and the physical comedy which is smartly directed by Jack Conway.  There is a scene on the grounds of the mental hospital to which the Powell character finds himself committed that produces an involuntary laugh in spite of the fact that the action is almost completely anticipated.  There is another scene involving a scalding hot shower that is a masterpiece of timing. Both scenes really illustrate the comic range of William Powell, who can handle the most sophisticated dialogue and the silliest, physical antics, all done with his trademark, plastic facial expressions.

     The plot is the typical misunderstanding and lack of trust in a marriage and the machinations of one of the partners, in this case, William Powell, to fix it. Myrna Loy is, as usual, a steady contrast to Powell as his almost ex-wife. Jack Carson adds to the comedy as Loy's unwanted defender, with Gail Patrick as an old flame, and Florence Bates as the obnoxious mother-in-law.

   

     Yet another comedy that knowledgeable classic film fans knew long before me was the 1943 film, The More the Merrier, directed by George Stevens and starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. It was nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Actress, and won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Charles Coburn.

     Well, actually I knew about it, but I really didn't take the time to watch it and get to appreciate what a lovely comedy Hollywood had turned out. The setting is Washington D.C. in war time.  There is a major shortage of living quarters so career woman, Jean Arthur, patriotically decides to do her part for the war effort by renting out half of her apartment. She is conned  into renting to Charles Coburn when she really had a woman in mind. While she is at work, Coburn rents half of his space to Joel McCrea, who has come to D.C. on a hush-hush project. Arthur finds this out accidentally after a morning ballet of precision timing in which they are almost never in the same room at the same time.  Further comic complications come from her fiancé, a proper sort who works in some government department and is kept in the dark about the living arrangements.  

     As you might imagine, McCrea and Arthur are attracted to each other and Coburn promotes their romance like a guardian angel.  McCrea and Arthur have real chemistry as demonstrated by the following clip that I put in a previous post, where they realize the situation.

     This was remade in 1964 as Walk Don't Run, a film with the distinction of being Cary Grant's last. But the the kind of situations that were romantic and charming in 1943 were less so in 1964 and just seemed mildly annoying.

*****

       Three major film stars are at their most comfortably likeable in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House from 1948.  Directed by H.C. Potter, it features Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas.  Most people who know this film have an affection for it because it is so easy to relate to the trauma of buying a house: the expense that always exceeds the expectations, the disruption, the delays, the inconvenience, the unexpected problems, and the way that it crowds out everything else in your life.

     This is illustrated so charmingly by the cast of players that the simplest things like a door that sticks and then comes unstuck by itself, having no clue of what the carpenter is talking about but being unwilling to acknowledge it, a husband and wife trying to use the only bathroom at the same time are so humanly funny that we relate to it all.  My particular favorite, as someone who has dealt with a patronizing contractor or two in my time, is when Myrna Loy goes into extreme detail to describe her color scheme only to have it reduced to "red, green, blue, yellow, white" when the little woman is gone.

     This film is also further evidence of how easy Cary Grant made it look. When you consider him as Walter Burns in His Girl Friday and watch him as Jim Blandings, the advertising exec and harried family man, you get a better appreciation of his art, and how he is always Cary Grant, but not the same Cary Grant.

*****

     And the other fifteen?  From 1940, The Bank Dick, is a short and hilarious romp starring W.C. Fields.

The Road to Singapore, also from 1940, is the first Bing Crosby and Bob Hope road picture. With Dorothy Lamour.

One more from 1940, My Favorite Wife, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.  She comes back after 7 years, he's just remarried to Gail Patrick.  Remade a bunch of times.

Five comedies from 1941.  First, Sullivan's

Travels.  Preston Sturges writes and directs Joel McCrea as a movie director who tries to live among the poor as 'research'. With Veronica Lake. Second, the other Preston Sturges film is The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck trying to outsmart Henry Fonda. With Sturges

regular, William Demarest. 

              Another film with Barbara Stanwyck as a gangster's moll and Gary Cooper as an innocent professor in Ball of Fire, directed by Howard Hawks. 

Here Comes Mr. Jordan stars Robert Montgomery who dies too soon so 'officials' give him another body.  Directed by Alexander Hall.

 Another with Robert Montgomery, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, co-starring Carole Lombard, about a couple who find they are technically not really married. Alfred Hitchcock's only comedy and pretty funny.



Three from 1942.  To Be or Not to Be, starring

Carole Lombard again and Jack Benny as Polish actors outsmarting Nazis, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. (Remade in 1983 by Mel Brooks.)

The Man Who Came to Dinner, directed by William Keighly, starring Bette Davis and Monte Woolley as the most insufferable guest of all time, with Ann Sheridan.

Larceny, Inc. -- Edward G. Robinson as a crook who succeeds in business without really trying. Directed by Lloyd Bacon.





From 1944, Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant who discovers his aunts are bonkers. With Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre.

Miracle on 34th Street from 1947.  Little Natalie Wood doesn't believe in Santa Claus.  With Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, and Edmund Gwenn.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein from 1948. The title tells you everything.



Number 15, from 1949, is Adam's Rib, written by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as lawyers facing each other at a trial. Directed by George Cukor. Not exactly one of my favorites, but iconic.   

Go have some laughs.                         

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Love in Dystopia

It's that time of year -- hearts and flowers and starry-eyed declarations of love forever more. But what about those who have a different association with L.O.V.E. -- betrayal, love unrequited, love unrealized, wrong choices, rejection? In other words, love in the dystopian universe.

     One of the oldest versions of love that never works out is the  woman in love with the married man. There is the story with the man who has no intention of leaving his wife, or the man who can't leave his wife (she has a disease, a disability, will take the children, has got the money), and then there's the man who really believes that he's going to leave, really does love the other woman, but gets too comfortable after many years of having his cake, so to speak, that he never gets around to making the break.

     This latter category is the one in which I would place Charles Boyer in Back Street (1941), co-starring Margaret Sullavan.There was a version of the Fannie Hurst novel with Irene Dunne and John Boles in 1932, and a more recent version in 1961 starring Susan Hayward and John Gavin. The consensus is that the 1941 version is the best. It is an old story, but seems fresh and honest as presented by the fine cast, especially Margaret Sullavan at her most enchanting, an affecting score by Frank Skinner, and charming period details. We, the audience, buy in emotionally and may even shed a tear, especially at the end. This is not a spoiler. I told you this was about love gone wrong. Directed by Robert Stevenson.

      Also from 1941, another example of unhappy endings with Robert Young and Hedy Lamarr in H. M. Pulham, Esq. with Ruth Hussey, as the woman Young ultimately chooses over Hedy Lamarr, whom he really loves.  This was a kind of departure for Lamarr, not playing the femme fatale, tempting a weak man away from his wife.  Instead, in one of her strongest performances, she offers the Robert Young character a warm, intelligent woman and a relationship of real substance, completely unlike his life in a stuffy, upper class family.  But he is weak and hasn't the courage to break from his family and the wife they have chosen for him, played by Ruth Hussey.  Directed by King Vidor.

                                     

                                 

      Then there is a story of the other woman who almost

makes it to happy ever after except that the Hays Office production codes wouldn't allow such a relationship to work out.  Alexander Knox plays a respectable Boston judge and unappreciated husband who walks out of his unhappy life in The Judge Steps Out from 1947, co-starring Ann Sothern and directed by Boris Ingster. He travels west to California where he stops at the diner run by Sothern. He stays there while he assesses his life, realizing that all the things he was preoccupied with before were not so important.  He signs on as a short-order cook and he and Sothern form a relationship that brings them both the happiness that had eluded them both in the past. Finally, he decides he must return to Boston to rectify a mistake he has made, but promises to return. At the very end, however, they both abandon rational thinking and for some completely unconvincing reasons, go back to their separate, unhappy lives. 

                                  

     There is also the marriage that has failed long before

either partner realizes it.  In Dodsworth (1936), Ruth Chatterton plays a woman who chases after youth, away from her marriage, declaring that she is not ready to be old. When that doesn't work out, she returns to find that her husband, played by Walter Huston, has tired of waiting, particularly since he has glimpsed another, more satisfying life in Italy, with Mary Astor, who is wonderful as the other woman.  From the novel by Sinclair Lewis, the intelligent script describes 3-dimensional characters seeking what they believe to be their last chance at happiness.  Directed by William Wyler. 

                                    

      Speaking of Italy, David Lean in 1955, directed his ode

to love that never was in Summertime. In the most romantic of settings -- Venice, Katherine Hepburn is an unmarried woman of a certain age who tries to drink in the romance of the place without appearing to care that she is alone.  Of course, she meets a handsome Italian (That always happens, doesn't it?) who courts her even though he has a wife and children.  She is resistant, afraid of seeming like the gullible American, but the warmth and the music and the wine have their effects. Beautiful to watch -- both the scenery and the acting.  The ending was emotionally traumatizing to me the first time I saw it. I'm better now. 

                                    

      Also, from 1955, a film about people who don't know how to talk to each other, who bring out the worst instead of the best in each other, where the love underneath the surface antagonism remains unrecognized and

unexpressed.  This describes James Cagney and Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me, the fictional biography of 1920s chanteuse, Ruth Etting, directed by Charles Vidor. Cagney plays her gangster/manager and later, husband, Marty Snyder, in another tough-talking role.  

     Doris has never sounded better than when she sings the score's classic songs, and her acting is a revelation to anyone who only knows her from the comedies she did in the 60s. As Etting, she is ambitious and knows what she wants.  She is taken out of the chorus line of a small club in New York by Marty Snyder, who becomes obsessed with her.  She is aware of this and still allows him to direct her career, hoping to gain stardom before the debt to Snyder becomes due.  At some point she realizes that he will never let her go and she agrees to marry him, while never letting him forget that her gratitude has turned to contempt.  At one point, we feel our sympathies changing sides.  It is a scene in her dressing room when a frustrated Snyder explodes in anger and smashes a vase.  Doris merely holds out her arm in response for him to undo the clasp of her bracelet.  She is cold and bitter and we actually start to feel sorry for the guy who has realized she will never return his love.

     In one of his best performances, Cagney, as Snyder, doesn't know how to be anything but a tough guy, while he manages to convey that he wishes it were not so.  In a casual viewing, it might not seem that Cagney is doing anything different than he has in many previous roles, but it is hard to imagine anyone doing the last scene as deftly, expressing a tough guy trying to conceal the pain of his loss. 

                            Here is a picture of Venice for no particular reason.

 

      

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The 1940s

     Back to the iconic American films you must see to be film literate. For this decade, I am using a different sorting system. In the 1930s post, I listed 50 films in alphabetical order in tiers of 10. For the 1940s, there were more films and more genres that I considered necessary to any classic film library.  You could say American filmmaking had been perfected and this decade illustrated this.  So this time I have selected 100 (and this was hard) iconic films listed in 6 different genres.

     However, some of you may have lives, so I am presenting these films one genre at a time.  Here are 20 essential dramas -- and remember these are not necessarily the "best" critically, but the ones that truly illustrate American culture from this decade.

DRAMAS

1. (1940) Boom Town.  This romantic view of the wildcatters of the early oil industry has 4 big stars -- Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr.  Directed by Jack Conway.

                     2. (1940) The Grapes of Wrath. John Ford's moving, lyrical portrait of Dust Bowl migrants, starring Henry Fonda, is aided by beautiful, black and white photography by Gregg Toland.

3. (1940) Remember the Night.  Fred MacMurray takes pity on Barbara Stanwyck during the holidays. Written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen.

4. (1941) Citizen Kane.  Orson Welles directs and stars in his portrait of John Foster Kane in his magnum opus.

5. (1941) How Green Was My Valley.  John Ford's stark and moving vision of a Welsh mining family, starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Donald Crisp and Roddy McDowall.

6. (1941) Meet John Doe.  Frank Capra directs Gary Cooper as an ordinary man who is made into a national figure by reporter, Barbara Stanwyck and her boss, Edward Arnold.

7. (1942) Casablanca . Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains, directed by Michael Curtiz. Romance and intrigue in French-occupied North Africa.

8. (1942) Now Voyager.  Irving Rapper directs Bette Davis as a woman who breaks free from her mother's domination. With Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, and Gladys Cooper.

9. (1942) Woman of the Year.  Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy prove she can't have it all (but he can). Directed by George Stevens.

10. (1945)The Lost Weekend.  Ray Milland stars in a powerfully honest portrait of an alcoholic. Directed by Billy Wilder.

11. (1945) Mildred Pierce.  Joan Crawford stars as a woman whose business alienates her family.  With Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott and Eve Arden.

12. (1945)The Picture of Dorian Gray.  A man lives an evil life but never ages, whereas his portrait -- well, don't ask. Starring George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Angela Lansbury. Directed by Albert Lewin.

13. (1946)The Best Years of Our Lives.  William Wyler's powerful rendering of postwar adjustment for returning soldiers and their families.  Starring Frederic March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright.

14. (1946) Gilda.  See why Rita Hayworth was a pin-up girl. She sings and dances and Glenn Ford loves/hates her. Directed by Charles Vidor.

15. (1946) It's a Wonderful Life.  James Stewart learns what it means to be a successful human being. With Donna Reed, Thomas Mitchell, Lionel Barrymore. Directed by Frank Capra.

16. (1947) Body and Soul.  Robert Rossen directs John Garfield in one of the great fight films, elevated by a script by Abraham Polonsky and photography by James Wong Howe.

17. (1947) Gentleman's  Agreement.  Gregory Peck is a reporter, posing as a Jew, to study anti-Semitism in post-war America,   Directed by Elia Kazan and also starring John Garfield, Dorothy McGuire, and Celeste Holm.

18. (1948) Call Northside 777.  Henry Hathaway directs James Stewart and Richard Conte in a documentary-style investigation of a murder conviction.

19. (1948) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Humphrey Bogart and partners, Walter Huston and Tim Holt, prospect for gold in Mexico. Problems ensue. Directed by John Huston.

20. (1949)The Third Man.  Robert Krasker's shadowy photography of intrigue in postwar Vienna with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten and a distinctive zither score. Directed by Carol Reed. 

      Before you start thinking how could I have missed all the films that aren't listed, relax.  They were probably put in another category. Stay tuned for future discussions from the Fabulous Forties on the Westerns, the Musicals, the Crime/Suspense/Horror Films, the War-Themed Films, and the Comedies.