OVP: The Blue Veil (1951)

Film: The Blue Veil (1951)

Stars: Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell, Richard Karlson, Agnes Moorehead, Audrey Totter, Natalie Wood, Vivian Vance, Dan O'Herlihy

Director: Curtis Bernhardt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Jane Wyman, Supporting Actress-Joan Blondell)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

The Oscar Viewing Project, which drives maybe 70-80% of the reviews we do each week, is a project doomed-to-fail.  I've talked about this many times, but there are a number of lost films that were nominated for Oscars, and a few more that are next-to-impossible to see anywhere even if they aren't technically "lost."  But then there are other films that are just next-to-impossible to catch despite clearly having cache, and while I'm still brimming with films that I need to see that are readily available on streaming platforms (or even on my counter from DVD Netflix) to watch, I'm aware of these movies & make a point of seeing them as soon as they are made available to me.  By chance, a connection on Twitter turned me on to The Blue Veil recently, one of the most elusive films nominated for a major Academy Award out there.  Never released on commercial home video & never put on TCM for some reason, The Blue Veil has remained an enigma to me.  It was nominated for two major acting Oscars, and the cast list-just look at it!  Jane Wyman, Charles Laughton, Natalie Wood-these are big name stars, the kinds that usually (and especially in conjunction with Oscar) demand at least a DVD release of the movie, if not regular screening on TCM.  Thankfully, I caught the movie now, and while it wasn't good (we'll get into it), it's finally off of my "how am I ever going to see this?!?" list.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on LouLou (Wyman), a young war widow whose baby dies in infancy while she's still in the hospital after birth, and as a result she must take a job as a nursemaid to a widowed industrialist (played by Laughton).  She grows to love the job, but not Laughton's Frederick, so after he proposes to another woman (played by Vance-and how weird is it seeing Vivian Vance without Lucille Ball?) she's heartbroken to give up the child, but moves on to another job.  The film continues to explore these relationships that she has, at one point nearly getting married, but ultimately never finding love again or having her own children.  Toward the end of the film, she falls particularly hard for a young boy named Tony, whose parents abandon him & she raises him as her own for a number of years.  When they return, she attempts to kidnap the boy (seeing him as hers now), but ultimately must give back the child to the couple.  The final scenes hearken to a Mr. Holland's Opus type of situation, where LouLou, now broke & unable to have children to look after anymore, sees all of her former wards grown up, starts a relationship again with an adult Tony, and is asked to be the nanny to the children of one of her former kids, thus finally feeling like she has a real family.

The movie is saccharine to the point of being insufferable.  It's not clear at any point why LouLou, at the beginning young & attractive, doesn't seem capable of finding a man, or really a declarative sentence.  Wyman is not an actress I've ever truly enjoyed in a film (seriously-I don't think Oscar has ever crushed so hard on a performer with so little charisma), and here she's particularly bad as LouLou, never understanding what is driving this mousy, boring, saintlike woman's dreams or desires.  Wyman is downright bad in some scenes, and while you might cry in her big speech trying to win back Tony (surely where she won her nomination), it's just because it's being manipulative, not because it's any good.  Thankfully Wyman lost the Oscar, but she won the Golden Globe so it's not inconceivable she might have taken the Best Actress trophy.  And she won that Golden Globe for this one-dimensional piece-of-work over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire, potentially the greatest performance in film history.  Let that sink for a second.

The film won two nominations, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Blondell here.  Blondell is cited over a slew of brief parts (Moorehead & Laughton have similarly-sized roles) as a working single mother (she's an actress) who doesn't have time to raise her daughter (played by Wood).  Blondell is not actively bad like Wyman is-she has spark in her performance, and it's easy to see in a sea of vanilla why she stood out.  That said, there's nothing to this role other than sheer charisma...we don't see a lot of what's driving Blondell's character, or if she actually wants to be an important part of her daughter's life.  There's room for interesting commentary here-her Annie's views of what a mother should be are different than LouLou's, and in a different era this would've been worth asking whether our sympathies & support should reside with her rather than Saint Wyman.  Alas, The Blue Veil is not a complicated enough movie to consider such questions.  Considering its historical nature in the careers of some of its high-profile stars, though, it should definitely be more available for home screening than it currently is.