The Big Street (1942)

Film: The Big Street (1942)

Stars: Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Barton MacLane, Eugene Pallette, Agnes Moorehead

Director: Irving Reis

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Lucille Ball click here to learn more about Ms. Ball (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Initially when I planned this month's look at Lucille Ball, I had a film later in her career for our third week.  Ball spent most of the 1940's under contract not to RKO, where she made most of her most famous films, but instead to MGM.  But, both because it is a key plot point in the recent biopic Being the Ricardos (which looks increasingly likely to win Nicole Kidman a second Oscar), and because it was Ball's favorite film performance, we're going to continue our look at Ball with The Big Street today, a movie that could've taken an entirely different direction for Lucy if it had been a hit, but instead was one of the final movies she made for RKO.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Big Street is the story of Pinks (Fonda), a waiter who is madly in love with a spoiled singer named Gloria (Ball).  Gloria is a beautiful crime boss's girlfriend, and treats everyone (especially Pinks) like garbage.  When Gloria is pushed down the stairs by her mob boss boyfriend, she become paralyzed, and needs constant help (and money), which Pinks provides even though she still continues to treat him poorly.  After she eventually is scorned by a former lover of hers, she & Pinks stop speaking until it turns out she's clearly dying.  Gloria confesses to Pinks that she wants to just be her old self again, if only for a night, and through a series of blackmail, theft, & pulling every string he can, Pinks does just that, getting her a night of dancing & singing & fawning in a club before she dies in his arms.

I enjoyed this movie, though your mileage may vary as it's less a good movie and more a great melodrama...but I'm a sucker for a four-hankie, "doomed romance" style melodrama, and so I was onboard.  It helps that Lucille Ball is at the top of her game, totally owning every angle in the complicated role of "your highness," playing Gloria as totally unlikable, but charismatic to a degree that you get why people want to be on her good side.  I was less enthralled with Henry Fonda, who is playing Pinks as a mousy cartoon character, but Ball...there's a reason she thought this would open up new doors for her at the time.

But it didn't.  The Big Street was a big opportunity for Ball, and she only got the role because Carole Lombard wasn't available (and because write Damon Runyon overrode RKO's wishes to put Barbara Stanwyck or Jean Arthur into the part).  Ball got rave reviews for the film, but it wasn't a hit, and RKO, after having spent years trying to find the right formula that would work for Ball on the big-screen, let her contract go after which she signed with MGM.  We're going to, as a result of spending time with The Big Street largely gloss over the MGM portion of Ball's career, but it's probably okay as she made very few films for the studio worth mentioning, and indeed, it looked like Ball's career as a film headliner was almost over before a radio show called My Favorite Husband would change Ball's life (and the medium of television) forever.  We'll talk about that, and one of the films that resulted from it, next week.