OVP: In Old Chicago (1937)

Film: In Old Chicago (1937)
Stars: Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Alice Brady, Andy Devine
Director: Henry King
Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actress-Alice Brady*, Score, Sound, Original Story, Assistant Director*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Alice Faye-click here to learn more about Ms. Faye (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Alice Faye's career trajectory is odd because rather than having a nice curve, it just sort of stops in 1944, when Faye walked off the FOX lot and never returned despite being a proper star still.  However, the beginning is much more traditional, and after making a splash in George White's 1935 Scandals (which is not available on any streaming platforms #iwilldieonthissoapbox), she cemented her stardom with In Old Chicago, which purportedly was being considered for Jean Harlow before her untimely death at the age of 26.  This film, which teamed her with Don Ameche and Tyrone Power (by far her two most frequent costars), was considered one of the most expensive films of the era, thanks to its gargantuan recreation of the Great Chicago Fire, and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two including Best Supporting Actress for Alice Brady.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in three parts.  There is the opening scene, an odd one where the O'Leary family is idiotically racing a train, and then suddenly Mr. O'Leary dies leaving Mrs. O'Leary (Brady) to raise her three sons as a washerwoman, the eldest of two are Dion (as an adult played by Power) and Jack (as an adult played by Ameche).  As adults, these two men have pursued completely different life courses, with Jack a respectable (if frequently unsuccessful lawyer) and Dion a sneaky saloon owner & gambler, who is in love with a singer named Belle (Faye), whom his mother forbids him from marrying.  Eventually, in hopes of eliminating his competition who once humiliated him, Dion tricks his brother into running for mayor, and thanks to some dirty blackmailing of the police commissioner on Dion's behalf, he wins.  The film then routinely pits Dion and Jack against each other, with Dion going to extraordinary lengths to hurt the bond with his brother, even at one point tricking Belle into marrying him so that she can't testify against him.  All of this comes to a head in the final twenty minutes of the movie, where Mrs. O'Leary's cow (a legend in real life, but not here apparently) kicks a lantern and burns the city to the ground.  In the fire, Jack dies and Dion finds redemption, with Mrs. O'Leary forgiving Belle for, well, being a singer & approves of their union.

There's a lot to unpack with In Old Chicago, and I'm going to start with two of the biggest issues I had with the film: Tyrone Power's character is an awful human being, and Alice Brady's Mrs. O'Leary is a horrible cliche.  Dion has multiple moments of duplicity, but when he starts turning it onto his brother Jack (who is a genuinely good guy and should be our hero) and his feisty love interest Belle, it ruins my idea of him ever getting redemption.  Let's be real here-Jack ends up dying trying to save his brother, who wouldn't have needed saving if Dion hadn't sent the mob to try and kill Jack in the first place (even though Jack was just following the law).  Jack also basically tries to rape Belle in the beginning of their romance, which in the 1930's was a more common cinematic trope than you'd think (just watch literally any Errol Flynn movie), and then spends the rest of the movie emotionally abusing her, using her love for his own gain, and also assaults her again halfway through the movie.  There's a recurring "gag" where Belle's maid Hattie (played by Madame Sul-Te-Wan) runs to the police to arrest Dion, to just have the two be kissing when she returns.  Basically the joke is that Tyrone Power is so ludicrously handsome that no woman would possibly turn down sex with him.  I'm all for adjusting to the time period when you consider a movie, but this felt gross even by the standards of 1937 (technically 1938, but we use the years they were nominated for Oscars on this blog).

(Side Note-do yourself a favor right now and google Madame Sul-Te-Wan, who I knew nothing about before seeing this film, but realized afterwards that I had seen her in more pictures than I had Faye.  She was the first black person ever put under a contract in Hollywood, was the daughter of slaves, and had a career that spread from The Birth of a Nation to Carmen Jones, costarring alongside stars as famous as Jane Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck, Lucille Ball, & Veronica Lake at different points in her career.  She'd make a fascinating biopic if anyone would like to think outside of the box.)

Brady, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily have a lot of problematic aspects to her performance, but she's soooo hammy it's kind of hilarious she won an Oscar for such a character.  Her Mrs. O'Leary is pious, constantly finding the problems with her child but treating her husband as a saint, even though in our brief time with him he seems kind of like an idiot.  She feels like the sort of one-dimensional work that was popular in the era, but that style of acting is completely out-of-style today.  That she won an Oscar for such work feels odd, and considering how inconsequential she is to the plot, her story arch is a bit of a stretch.  The film received a sextet of nominations, the others slightly more earned.  The score is serviceable, interesting during the firefighting sequences, while the sound is excellent thanks to the action set-pieces.  The story itself is a bit too hammy and requires too many suspensions-of-belief for my taste, particularly when you compare it to the fantastic A Star is Born that was competing against it.

But the Best Picture nomination lands right in the middle for me, and that's because while Power & Brady are both disappointments in the film, the movie has two great assets: that final fire sequence and Alice Faye.  The fire sequence is mesmerizing, and staggering considering they had no access to CGI at the time.  I'm honestly surprised that this didn't win Best Picture at the time as a result of these scenes, which required controlled sets, and were so dangerous that women (save the three female stars) weren't allowed on set.  These scenes are really interesting, and fascinating to watch staged, and part of the reason I had to give this a 3-star even though it had so many problems.

The other is Alice Faye-I loved her in this movie.  She has a natural comedienne's gift, finding the perfect chemistry with both Power & Ameche, and still grounding her character without making her a saint or a woman scorned.  She manages to realize her love for Dion doesn't make sense, but she still leans into it, and her singing is great.  In many ways she feels like a hybrid between Jeanette MacDonald & Barbara Stanwyck, and I instantly understand how this movie made her a star.  Considering I'd never seen one of her films before, I'm really hoping that this is an indication that we're in for a fun month.