OVP: The Yearling (1946)

Film: The Yearling (1946)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman, Jr.

Director: Clarence Brown

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Gregory Peck, Actress-Jane Wyman, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Film Editing, Juvenile Oscar-Claude Jarman, Jr.)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our month devoted to Gregory Peck in 1946, about the time that Peck was finishing his first run of fame as a leading man.  Peck was a very quick study in Hollywood.  A back injury during a dance class prevented him from serving in World War II (the studio said it was a rowing accident, as it didn't want its handsome star to be skipping his military duty due to a lesson from Martha Graham), but unlike most stars we'll profile this year, he basically jumped straight into leading roles, and had quick success of it.  Though Days of Glory (his first movie) bombed, The Keys of of the Kingdom was a critical success, and won him his first Oscar nomination on only his second film (he'd lose to Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend).  He'd follow that film with two commercial smash hits-The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson, which was the highest-grossing film of 1945, and the well-regarded Spellbound with Ingrid Bergman, which was a huge hit for United Artists, and made the gorgeous Peck into something of a sex symbol.  This leads to The Yearling, which is our movie today, the film that won Peck his second Oscar nomination and was another big hit for the artist, who had just turned thirty & in the course of two years become one of the most bankable stars in North America.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and is the story of the Baxter family: father Penny (Peck), mother Ora (Wyman), and son Jody (Jarman).  Jody is the only living child they have after the others all died young, and Ora struggles to show affection for Jody for fear that he'll also be taken from her.  They live in a cabin in rural Florida, and try to make by with just each other, though Jody longs for a pet since he doesn't have any siblings.  Eventually, after his father kills a doe, he adopts a young fawn whom he names Flag (due to its tail), and loves it to the point where it's a household pet.  But Ora struggles with it, and eventually it becomes too much of a nuisance, eating up their cash corn crop that they were going to plant to buy a well.  Penny orders Jody to kill the deer, but instead he tells it to leave.  Because it's domesticated, it finds its way back to the farm, and Ora accidentally shoots it, injuring it, and Jody is forced to kill it to put it out of its misery (according to Hollywood legend, a young Maureen Reagan refused to speak to her mom for two weeks after watching the film she was so mad at her shooting the deer).  Jody runs away from the farm, but is eventually found and reunited with his family, including his mother who can now show him love, as she realizes that God won't take her final child away from her, as he has reached the stage of being a "yearling" (a term for a year-old deer who can fend for himself).

If that movie reads as Old Yeller, well, it kind of is.  Though Rawlings' book predates Fred Gipson's novel by nearly twenty years, the story of a boy & his dog has aged better in the public consciousness, and it's hard not to see the direct corollaries between the two.  The difference between the movies is that while the 1957 film became a family classic (and a massive hit) for Disney, it did not command seven Oscar nominations.  There's very little evidence in the annals of the Best Picture that "family" films have any welcome there, and this is one of the few movies of its kind to make the cut.  Given that distinction, it's a pity it's not better.  As a whole, the movie works-it's not a bad movie (evidenced by my 3-star rating above), but it's also not special.  The movie looks terrific because the glowing cinematography (conducted by three men, one of the only times the Cinematography Oscar went to three people for one film) kind of blinds you it's so ravishing, but there's very little there (the titular fawn doesn't even show up until an hour into the movie), and I suspect Oscar got soft for it because MGM sank a fortune into the picture (it cost nearly $4 million, which at the time was an exorbitant amount for a movie), and while it earned it back, I have to imagine the studio pushed for nominations for their large investment.

After Cinematography, though, the film's remaining nominations feel a bit at a loss.  I've never been a fan of Jane Wyman, and while she's better here than she usually is (I think she finds a restraint and the natural makeup look allows more expression in her face), it feels like she's always telegraphing to the audience (we get it, you can't show your children love...you don't have to underline it with every sentence).  Jarman, who won a Juvenile Oscar for this film, is from the "overly-expressive" school of child acting that was the norm in 1940's movies.  The Art Direction was good, but hardly inventive, and the editing...the movie is too long, and occasionally feels like it isn't well-organized (particularly the scenes with Jody's "sweetheart" that come out of nowhere).  As for Peck?  Well, Peck has probably never looked better, his sexy, expressive face & lanky frame a perfect fit for a too-short cabin and dewy camerawork, but he doesn't add much here other than being a stoic figure & a playmate of sorts for Jody.  This isn't his best work, or his best Oscar nomination.

Intruder in the Dust (1949)

Film: Intruder in the Dust (1949)
Stars: David Brian, Claude Jarman Jr., Juano Hernandez, Porter Hall, Elizabeth Patterson
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: Despite being hailed as a landmark motion picture in its era and scoring a pair of Golden Globe nominations, the movie didn't win a single Oscar nomination.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

As a general rule, no films age more poorly than a social issue film.  Yes, visual effects films tend to look dated, and yes, comedies are reflexive of what is popular at that time, but social issue films are essentially ticking clocks.  Either the film is too timid with its subject or isn't ballsy enough to show the truth (this is why I took The Imitation Game to task) or the issue itself becomes so obsolete that the film feels like a relic.  Even truly great motion pictures like To Kill a Mockingbird and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, anchored by issues that are sadly still problems today, look older simply because they seem too naive-we know now that the world doesn't operate in a way with a Washington that works or a justice system that is fair, so we know not to expect the world that Senator Smith and Atticus Finch want in their struggles.  In fact, arguably the best issue films are the movies that rely more heavily upon human nature, that rare constant, than anything else.  The Grapes of Wrath still holds up well not because we're still suffering from a Dust Bowl (though considering conservative apathy toward climate change, give it a couple of years), but because the film is about man's struggle against the powers that be.  Tom Joad has existed in every era of civilization-the have not that is forced out for reasons no one knows.  The greatest issue film of them all, Citizen Kane, doesn't even ring like an "issue" film, principally because the destruction of wealth and power upon all those that attain it takes a second act to the struggles of a single man.  There's a reason that we call Citizen Kane one of the great films of all time-it's because it's a film that is universal, over seventy years later, to every person.

(Spoilers Ahead) Why, precisely, am I name-checking all of these films in regard to a film that you've likely never heard of?  Because Intruder in the Dust is one of those films that was a classic in its day, but unlike To Kill a Mockingbird and Grapes of Wrath, it hasn't survived in cinematic memory.  Perhaps because it inexplicably missed the Best Picture lineup (it made the New York Times best of the year list, at least), it's a film that hasn't survived in the face of more lauded classics, though it's still somewhat remembered today (the AFI listed it on their original ballot for its 100 Greatest Films, which is how I first became familiar with it).  The film is about an African-American man named Lucas Beauchamp (Hernandez) who is wrongfully accused of murdering a white man in 1940's Mississippi.  Beauchamp has a ticking clock around his neck not just because of the trial in an extremely racist society, but also because it's likely he won't survive to the trial, as the relatives of the man who died are planning on having vigilante justice.

Lucas enlists the help of Chick, a young boy in the community who has a complicated relationship with Lucas (played by The Yearling's Claude Jarman, Jr.) and his uncle John (Brian).  Along the way, they gain the help of an old woman (Elizabeth Patterson, whom you'll most likely recognize for her years on I Love Lucy as Mrs. Trumbull), who is certain of Lucas's innocence (and is proven correct).

The film is relatively predictable in its outcome, at least in terms of the guilty verdict.  Though Lucas is a mysterious man (not acquiescing to stereotypes of the day and a bit more defiant against injustice than you would normally have seen in a movie of the era), there's never any doubt that he's innocent, and as the film progresses it's pretty obvious who the actual killer is.  However, the film is quite fascinating in the way that it unfolds in regard to human nature.  Being that it's the 1940's, you know that love and harmony isn't going to break out, but it's actually quite telling in the way the script handles certain characters.  For example, Uncle John, who ultimately saves Lucas does not become the hero that Atticus Finch does.  Instead, he's only passably tolerant by the end of the movie, a pontificating man whom most modern audiences would regard as still "prejudiced" by any standard.  The fact that he was likely "accepting enough" for audiences of the era make his character more of an historic marker than a solely dated figure.

Instead it's Chick, a young man who has clearly been taught to be prejudiced but slowly can't realize why, who is the one who grows in the film, and Elizabeth Patterson's Miss Eunice who shows the most courage (standing up to an ugly mob without hesitation, she easily gets the film's best scene, and probably was the most likely to crack a nomination with the Oscars).  Juano Hernandez relies pretty heavily upon facial acting, frequently playing most scenes with quiet introversion, but I can see why he, at the age of 53 and several decades into his career, still managed a nomination for "Newcomer of the Year" at the Golden Globes.

So I'll give the film, which is always interesting and occasionally intensely so, a 4-star marker even if the plot is wholly predictable.  For those of you who have seen the film-what do you think?  Why do you think it hasn't survived in the way that To Kill a Mockingbird, which came out far after it, has?  And what other classics of their era have long since been forgotten?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Conquest (1937)

Film: Conquest (1937)
Stars: Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen, Henry Stephenson, May Whitty, Maria Ouspenskaya
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Actor-Charles Boyer, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the most popular posts in the run of the Oscar Viewing Project thus far has been that of the Garbo/Brown collaboration in Romance, so when I saw that Conquest was buried in my TiVo, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to unearth another Garbo/Brown collaboration and make it my Saturday Morning Movie, and the next OVP film.

The movie, for those unfamiliar, is about Napoleon Bonaparte (played by Boyer) and his mistress, Countess Walewska (played by Garbo).  The film follows the first meeting between Bonaparte and Walewska, where she shows that she adores him as if like a God because she believes he will liberate her beloved Poland.  As the movie goes on, she grows disdain for him as he's clearly interested in her for "only one thing" and proves that he is just a man.  Then, quite suddenly (too suddenly, if you ask me), she decides she is back in love with him (but first she is abandoned by her husband for betraying him by trying to free Poland with her feminine whiles).  We see her by his side as he first becomes the great Emperor of Europe, and then when he is banished to Elba and defeated at Waterloo.  Throughout, she remains devoted even as he strays and marries another woman.  All-in-all, an exhaustingly epic story, and very ambitious for its time period (the film cost an exorbitant amount of money, and was actually a sizable flop at the Box Office when it first came out).

Because this is Clarence Brown, and because this film is made in 1937, Garbo's character is as saintly as can be, and her intentions always look noble, even if on the surface they are not.  My biggest problem in the film had to be the quick-turnaround for Walewska about her love for Napoleon.  While it's certainly believable that she fell in love with his power or developed some Stockholm Syndrome, since this is 1937, we don't get to see that and considering Brown's rather sexist treatment of women, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; the Countess's unwavering devotion to Napoleon, and so suddenly, makes it hard to swallow the role and the film's love story.  This is a woman he basically forced into being his mistress, and yet we get little indication that Garbo resents him for it, even though she almost certainly would have.

I rather enjoyed the supporting parts played by Whitty and Ouspenskaya, both strong character actresses of the 1930's and both with far more realistic reactions to this egotistical emperor.  Whitty, his mother, acknowledges his weaknesses even when Garbo doesn't, and Ouspenskaya, a Countess Dowager whose mental capacities are gone (she still thinks that her friend Louis XVI is ruling France when Napoleon enters the picture), are strong character bits that the film probably needed more of-by far the best acted scene in the film, in my opinion, is the wry scene with Ouspenskaya and Boyer while they are playing cards.  Ouspenskaya thinks Napoleon is mad because he is an emperor, even though she is obviously the mistaken one.  This sense of fun is missing severely from the rest of the film, and with an actor with such an eye twinkle as Charles Boyer, that seems like a wasted opportunity.

Boyer received one of the film's two Academy Award nominations, his first of four nominations for Best Actor (he would never win, though he would win an Honorary Oscar certificate in 1942).  There's definitely a lot one can say about Boyer-he has presence, for certain, and he has the onscreen chutzpah to pull off a character like Napoleon, but his tendency toward the overcooked, and his ability to constantly be switching from love to anger and nothing in-between is a pale comparison to, say, the haunted work that Fredric March does as a fading movie star/alcoholic in A Star is Born from the same year.  The film's other nomination, however, is far more up my alley-the millions of dollars that they spend on the budget to create the elaborate castles and houses that litter the continent of Europe were well spent, as every scene creates that decadent luxury that one associates with this period in European culture.  Bonus points go to the film's opening scene, when we see a gorgeous and stately manor torn asunder by horses braying around the foyer (it sounds weird, but totally works on-screen).

All-in-all, I gotta say I'm still not impressed with Brown, and am starting to lose a little bit of hope that I ever will be (though with five more of his Best Director nominations to go, I'll have ample opportunities to change my mind).  The film's complete lack of character development, and the overwrought performance by Boyer move this to 2-stars, though the handsome production design, strong (female) supporting work, and the luminescence of Garbo keep it from falling into the 1-star column.

And, as always, we end with some food for thought-what'd you think of Conquest?  Is there a Clarence Brown film that would win me over?  And which Garbo film shall we take a journey to next?  Don't be shy-comment away!

OVP: Emma (1932)

Film: Emma (1932)
Stars: Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Marie Dressler)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I swear I didn't plan this, but we're going to take time to combine the last two films reviewed here and take the director of Romance and one of the stars of The Hollywood Revue, and combine them into this short, sweet (or saccharine, depending on the scene) movie from 1932.

Emma tells the tale of a housekeeper who looks after four children for the bulk of their entire lives.  Being as this is Marie Dressler, the housekeeper is an "all bark, no bite" sort of character who may scold and scold the children but the second their backs are are turned, she's praising and forgiving them to high heavens.  The film unfolds in three parts, the first establishing the death of the children's mother, the second with Emma going on a vacation and (SPOILER ALERT) being proposed to and married to the children's father, played by Jean Hersholt.  The last third is about Emma, who has inherited the entire state of Hersholt's suddenly dead father, fighting for her life as she is accused of murdering him by the three older ungrateful children (including a woefully underused Myrna Loy).  Only Richard Cromwell's youngest child Ronnie believes her, and tragically dies in a plane crash trying to save her.  Dressler of course gives the inheritance then to the three remaining children (but not before being fully exonerated) and joins a new family with five young children.

If it sounds like your typical melodrama, it is, but you can't help but love Dressler even if her performance is a bit "paint-by-numbers."  Dressler, who is largely unknown to today's audiences, was an enormous star of the early Sound Era.  Even though she was in her late 50's and was overweight, she still won the exhibitor's poll three years in a row (the sign of the "most popular" actress in Hollywood) over the likes of Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Jean Harlow.  Dressler was known for her comic mannerisms, and they are on full display here.  It's hard not to be charmed by her, even when you're cringing occasionally at the "broad-as-a-barn" comic and sentimental tropes she relies upon (an actress of the stage for many, many years, it's evident that she's relying on some vaudeville tricks for the film's most famous flight simulator sequence).  It's a tough call between her and ultimate Oscar-winner Helen Hayes in the same year, though I think I'd give the tip of my hat toward Hayes just because her character has more emotional range.  I'm looking most forward to the remaining nominee, Lynn Fontanne, the great, great stage star (though probably not quite as great as Helen Hayes-you can debate that one), whom I've heard is the best of the three.

Like he did with Garbo in Romance, Brown fixates his camera on his leading lady (she's in all but two of the scenes in the movie), and has little time for the remaining players.  Even so, the rest of the cast is serviceable.  I believe this may be my first introduction to Jean Hersholt as an actor, though his charitable work is far more well-known today.  He is indeed the man that the annual Academy Award for do-gooders is named after, and here he is a sweet if bumbling inventor who struck it big and now wants to retire with the woman who has raised his children.  Myrna Loy is probably the most well-known member of the cast, but clearly wasn't at the time, as she is relegated to the role of snooty villainous instead of being able to exercise her considerable comic chops alongside Dressler.  Rounding out the cast is Richard Cromwell, who plays the typical youngest child with a strong sense of fun and aw-shucks appeal.  Not much is there to be said of his acting ability, though he was a ridiculously beautiful man, particularly in this film, and would go on to briefly be married to Angela Lansbury and (allegedly) become a favorite lover of Howard Hughes.

What about you?  Are you a fan of Marie Dressler and her hambone antics, or do you lean more toward the Crawford/Garbo end of the Sound Era?  Do you have a favorite in Clarence Brown's filmography? And do you also find yourself developing crushes on movie stars from the Thirties?

OVP: Romance (1930)

Film: Romance (1930)
Stars: Greta Garbo, Lewis Stone, Gavin Gordon
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Director, Best Actress-Greta Garbo)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There have been many great actors in the history of cinema, but far fewer are the ranks of movie stars.  It's a rare breed, and something difficult to qualify.  After all, what makes a movie star?  Is it simply someone who is a leading actor, someone with great longevity, someone who transcends any era?  Is it an extinct species of Hollywood's Golden Age (this, I definitely disagree with-the likes of Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and even younger movie stars like Ryan Gosling could rank alongside the best of the 1940's and 1950's)?  Perhaps the best way to describe a movie star is o take a quote from Justice Potter Stewart out of context: "it's hard to define, but I know it when I see it."  And when I see Greta Garbo, I know I'm looking at a movie star.

One of the weird side effects of movie stars, since they always appear ageless, is that they also occasionally appear older than they actually are in their initial films, and so it's difficult to comprehend that Garbo was barely 25 when this film came out.  At the time, she had just finished her first talkie and was the toast of MGM, alongside Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford.  Her place at the top of the cinematic heap is evident with the confidence she exudes in this role, laughing and smiling gaily as she plays a "lost" woman, a beautiful opera singer torn between an older (Stone) and younger (Gordon) man.

The film is not what you'd call "strong," even by the melodramatic metric of the time.  The moral code of Gordon's character especially is horribly dated, and the fact that (SPOILER ALERT) Garbo ends up leaving him and becomes a nun is evident that the film was clearly made in 1930 and not even 1960.  And yet, Brown, a largely forgotten director now despite having six Oscar nominations to his credit, knows how to use his greatest asset, Ms. Garbo.  Every scene he lights her up with a glowing aura, as if a goddess has descended onto the screen and he only has a few moments to capture her before she fades.  It's a truly remarkable thing, and even as Garbo tosses out lines so heavy-handed they'd make John Keats look cynical, you don't particularly care.  You just want to stay on her, absorbing the magic this screen star (there's no other word for it) is radiating.

I'd write more, but I'm actually going out in a few minutes and the film is terribly short (at only 76 minutes, it's one of the shorter films to ever compete for Best Actress), but I have to end with a few questions for thought.  What do you think defines a movie star?  Was there or is there another Garbo, or was she one for the ages?  And what's your favorite of her many (largely unseen by the general public) films?