Sentimental Journey (1946)

Film: Sentimental Journey (1946)

Stars: John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, William Bendix, Cedric Hardwicke, Connie Marshall

Director: Walter Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 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 John Payne: click here to learn more about Mr. Payne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

John Payne's film career, if it's remembered at all by modern audiences, is remembered for his association with a holiday classic.  In 1947, Payne played Fred Gailey, the romantic led in Miracle on 34th Street, which would become a major hit for 20th Century Fox and a huge player at the Oscars that year, nominated for Best Picture and winning Best Supporting Actor for Edmund Gwenn.  I've seen Miracle many times through the years, so it obviously doesn't qualify for a series where I'm only watching movies for the first time.  However, Payne made a film the year before that also featured Maureen O'Hara (his Miracle costar) and a young child, here Connie Marshall, called Sentimental Journey, which like Miracle was a box office success.  As a result, I figured that the combination of Payne & O'Hara felt like a good way to mark Miracle with something new.  Unfortunately for me, the costars are where Sentimental Journey ends its overlap with the celebrated Christmas perennial.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Bill (Payne) and Julie Wetherly (O'Hara), a childless couple who spend their days making beautiful New York theater together while summering in what appears to be a posh Hamptons home.  One day, Julie, who is a bit of a dreamer, meets a kindred spirit-a young orphan girl named Hitty (Marshall) who spends most of her time fantasizing about Camelot and other long-ago fantasy worlds.  Julie wants to adopt the girl, and though he's tepid to the suggestion, Bill goes along with it.  But's it's clear Bill & Hitty don't get along, with him not understanding the dreamworld that Julie shares with her, and their marriage is facing a strain to the point where Julie is going to give Hitty back to the orphanage...when suddenly she dies of a heart attack.  This sets up a bizarre third act where Hitty & Bill mourn Julie's loss in different ways, but instead of Bill growing to realize he needs to change his life for his adopted daughter, instead Julie's ghost teaches Hitty how to take care of Bill first. This results in them becoming codependent on each other in the same way they were Julie when they were alive.

If you're reading that paragraph and thinking "that sounds unhealthy, and a little creepy"...you'd be right.  Sentimental Journey is obviously a product of its time, and in 1946 women, even young girls, were trained from an early age to be wives-and-mothers, but even under that guise Julie telling her adopted daughter from beyond-the-grave how to make her widower husband's favorite meals and plays his favorite music...it's off-putting, and I hated it.  I'm usually onboard with a sudsy melodrama of this era and I try not to judge a movie too harshly if it is mirroring the morals of its time, but this one was a step too far, and I wasn't having it once O'Hara died.

It doesn't help matters that Payne is a completely asshole.  He plays his Bill as a louse who has to rely upon his wife for mothering as much as he does the wifely needs, despite being a grown man.  When he tries to bond with Hitty, he doesn't remotely try to understand this young girl's world of make believe, and the movie tries to frame it as perfectly understandable even if it's really about a grown man abandoning a girl to an orphanage because she's "a little different."  I'll admit it-with one more film left from Payne coming up next week, I'm really drawing a blank on finding a lot to love in his film career save for Miracle, where he gives like the fourth best performance in the movie as it is.