In 1928, King Vidor made The Crowd, a movie about John and Mary Sims, and then made Our Daily Bread in 1934, which is a movie about the same married couple.  Different actors play the roles in the two movies, but even if they had been played by the same actors, the second movie really does not seem to be a sequel to the first, especially since the son they had in the first movie is inexplicably missing in the second.

The Crowd is basically about a man, John Sims, who thinks he will make it big in the big city.  In fact, his father expresses those big dreams for him when he is born on July 4, 1900, as propitious a birth date as one could want.  As a child, his life is compared, somewhat superficially, with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  At the age of twelve, he expresses his dream of being big himself.  That is the day his father dies, suggesting that our dreams have a way of being interrupted by the harsh realities of life.

An intertitle sarcastically announces that John has become an adult, and that he is one of the seven million people in New York who believe the city depends on them.  That is a stretch, because a lot of people have no such illusions, but John certainly does.  He ends up with a job in which he is just one of a thousand people.  All in all, it is not a bad job:  he works indoors, sitting down, no heavy lifting.  He even has the opportunity to steal a little time from his boss trying to win a contest coming up with a good advertising slogan.  And there is no overtime apparently, because at the moment the minute hand indicates it is 5 o’clock, everyone leaves his desk and heads for the exit.

Bert works in the same office with John, and he lines him up with a blind double date, where John meets Mary.  Though Bert is a fun-loving guy, yet he is a better worker than John and eventually gets promoted.  Furthermore, Bert is not contemptuous of other people the way John is, sneering at the crowd and remarking to Mary that most people are a pain in the neck.  John sees a man juggling balls with an advertisement on the clown suit he is wearing.  He points out that the poor sap’s father probably thought he would grow up to be president.  Much in the way that Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) is destined to become the geek in a sideshow in Nightmare Alley (1947), so too is John destined to become the juggler in the clown suit as punishment for his derisive remark.

After kissing Mary a couple of times and seeing an advertisement (“You furnish the girl, and we’ll furnish the home”), John asks Mary to marry him.  They get married, but there is no home to furnish, only a small apartment with a Murphy bed, where John dreams about the big house he thinks they will eventually own.  After a while, it all starts to get on their nerves, and they start quarreling, although John is the one who does most of the complaining and sniping.  They almost split up, but then Mary tells John she is pregnant, and so they make up.  They have a son and soon after that a daughter.  And soon after that, they start quarreling again, with Mary growing weary of John’s dreams about making it big while Bert actually got a promotion.

While at the beach, John starts juggling balls to amuse his children, recalling the geek motif of the juggler in the clown suit.  Nevertheless, John comes up with an advertising slogan based on juggling balls, and it wins him five hundred dollars (about seven thousand dollars, adjusted for inflation).  After John buys some presents, they call their children through the window to come and get the toys he bought them.  Heedlessly, the children run across the street, and their daughter is run over by a truck and killed.

After a few months, John is still so upset that he cannot do his job.  Even though Bert is now his supervisor and would probably be understanding, John quits before Bert can say anything, throwing a tantrum, flinging his ledger on the floor, and saying, “To hell with this job.”  Oddly enough, when he gets home, Mary is in a great mood as she prepares food for the company picnic.  We have to wonder, if Mary has recovered well enough to think about having fun, why can’t John at least go to work and do his job?  In any event, John tries to get work elsewhere, but fails at one job after another, once again putting stress on the marriage.  In some ways, this reminds us of Penny Serenade (1941) and The Marrying Kind (1952), two movies in which a marriage ends up on the rocks on account of the death of a child.  Like those two movies, the idea is that a good marriage can ultimately survive such a tragedy.

Mary tries to make ends meet by sewing dresses while John hangs around the house depressed.  Her brothers come by and offer John a job, but he turns it down because it is a “charity job.”  John leaves and almost commits suicide by leaping in front of a train, but ends up finding work juggling balls in a clown suit.  He goes home to find that Mary is leaving him to go live with her brothers.  He talks her into going to a show with him, having purchased the tickets with the money he made, and at the theater having a good time, they see his advertisement of the clown juggling balls in the program, suggesting that he might succeed again in the future.

Apparently John fails to make a go of it coming up with advertising slogans, however, because in Our Daily Bread, we find that he no longer even has the job juggling balls while wearing that clown suit. An uncle gives them an opportunity to work an abandoned farm, and they decide to take it. I guess John is no longer too proud to take charity from one of Mary’s relatives.  Unfortunately, they know nothing about farming. A genuine farmer, who lost his own place, breaks down on the road, and John invites him and his family to join them. John then gets the idea of inviting other people to join the farm, using their diversity of skills to turn it into a cooperative commune.

Naturally enough, there are scenes showing how well this works out, but there are also scenes of trouble. There is a discussion of the kind of government they will have for themselves, and we get just a taste of political discord. There is a scene involving a troublemaker, who is quickly forced to behave himself. John tells Mary about one of the members of the commune trying to steal some stuff and sell it for his own personal gain. We want to see more of this, because there are not many movies premised on the idea of desperate families forming such a commune, and we are curious as to whether these elements of discord could be overcome. Unfortunately, the movie diverges from these issues.

First, it slides into a man-against-nature situation, in which drought threatens to ruin their crops. There are lots of movies about farmers struggling against the elements, and it seems a shame to waste time on that theme here. The only good thing that can be said in its favor is that they all pull together and build a path from the river to the crops for the purpose of irrigation, solving the problem through their own effort and ability. Another movie might have had someone pray for rain, followed by a downpour, so at least we were spared that deus ex machina.

Second, there is a diversion with no redeeming features at all. It concerns the arrival of a blonde femme fatale, who almost succeeds in getting John to desert his wife and the farm by running off to the city with her. Movies about a wicked woman making a good man go wrong can be lots of fun, but that plot element does not belong here. Besides, it is a little irritating the way Mary blithely takes John back after abandoning her, even if only temporarily.

The movie should have spent less time on the drought and none at all on the femme fatale, thereby leaving more time to dramatize all the difficulties in getting people to cooperate in such an enterprise, especially since many of us have doubts as to how well something like that would work out anyway.

Rain Man is based on a premise so absurd that it undermines all the sentimental good feeling we are supposed to experience while watching it.  Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), who is on the verge of bankruptcy, finds out that his father, from whom he has been estranged for many years, has died.  He goes back home in the expectation of inheriting his father’s estate, inasmuch as he is the only living relative, at least so he thinks.  But he finds out that aside from an old car and some roses, the entire estate, worth $3,000,000, has been put in trust for someone else.  That someone else turns out to be an autistic older brother he never knew he had (he never finds out why no one told him about this older brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), and neither do we).

Charlie decides he is entitled to half the estate.  So far, so good.  Up to this point, the movie is more or less within the realm of what might actually happen in the real world.  In said real world, Charlie would have hired a lawyer to contest the will, and then he could have gone about his business while waiting for results.  I once had a cousin who left all her money to her lover.  I figured that was the end of it, cut and dried.  But a lawyer thought otherwise.  I signed an agreement with him, and two years later he sent me a check for $22,000.  Now, if a mere cousin can break a will, I figure one of the sons of the deceased has a really good chance of doing so.

Instead of just hiring a lawyer, however, Charlie kidnaps Raymond from the institution where he has spent most of his life.  Then, he calls the head of the institution and demands $1,500,000 in ransom to get Raymond back.  That would be all right if we were supposed to think Charlie is a criminal, but we are not.  We are supposed to ignore the fact that in the real world, Charlie would end up in prison.  Instead, we are supposed to believe that he is going to show up in court with Raymond by his side, saying, “I have him now, so give me the money!” as if that is going to strengthen his case.

In true Hollywood fashion, we get the best of both possible worlds.  Charlie comes to care for Raymond, forgoes his claim on the estate, sends Raymond back to the institution where he belongs, and promises to visit him regularly.  But, thanks to some card counting on the part of Raymond earlier in the movie, he and Charlie won $85,000 playing blackjack, just enough money to keep Charlie from being forced into bankruptcy.  But it is a little hard to enjoy this happy ending after spending half the movie suffering through that ridiculous kidnapping plot.

One day my coworkers and I were sitting around bored, and we got to discussing movies. At one point I asked if any of them had seen The Naked Jungle.

“What’s it about?” David asked.

“It’s based on a short story,” I said, “Leiningen versus the Ants, about a man in South America who finds out that army ants are on the march and headed toward his plantation. Everyone else in the area is fleeing, but he is determined to stand his ground and fight them.”

David said that he had never heard of it, and the two other coworkers, Judy and Kevin, did not recall having seen it either.

“Well,” I continued, “this guy, Leiningen, tries all sorts of ways to block the path of the ants, but the ants figure out ways around those obstacles, until it looks as though he will be overwhelmed by them and eaten alive.”

“Were they giant ants?” Judy asked.

“No,” I said, “just ordinary-sized ants, but billions of them.”

They all were shaking their heads, indicating that none of them had ever heard of the movie. Suddenly Kevin spoke up. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Is this the movie about a guy who has a mail-order bride, but then he finds out she has been married before, so then he doesn’t want her because she’s been used?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, “that’s the movie.”

“Oh!” Judy said, “That’s the one with Charlton Heston and William Conrad.”

“I’ve seen that movie,” David said.

I was bewildered. “I didn’t mention that part of the movie,” I said, “because I didn’t think it was important.”

David laughed. “Yeah, John, you thought this was a movie about ants, and it was really about damaged goods in the mail.”

Well, the short story had nothing about a mail-order bride in it, so I guess that was the reason I had dismissed that part of the movie as just melodramatic filler.  But I saw the movie again recently, and now I realize that it is not until the movie is half over that the Commissioner (William Conrad) utters the ominous word marabunta.  The first part is devoted to the conflict between Christopher Leiningen (Charlton Heston) and his wife Joanna (Eleanor Parker) over the fact that he is getting another man’s leftovers.

Charlton Heston had the right screen persona for this role, fearless of physical danger, his only weakness being his pride, especially when it comes to women.  This is summed up nicely in another movie he was in, Three Violent People (1956).   There he stars as Captain Colt Saunders, a Confederate Civil War veteran, who falls in love with Lorna (Anne Baxter), not realizing she is a prostitute.  Another woman, one Ruby LaSalle, who owns the saloon and hotel where Lorna is staying, and who knows her from back when, warns her of the danger of marrying Colt while pretending to be a lady, saying of him, “Because men who aren’t afraid of guns, Indians, or rattlesnakes are afraid of a little laughter behind their back.  And there’ll always be some man with a weak mind and a long memory who’ll remember a girl who worked at Selma’s in Baton Rouge or Tess’ in Frisco.”

Meanwhile, back in the jungle.  When the Commissioner warns Leiningen of the ants, Leiningen says the reason he does not want to temporarily leave his plantation until the ants are gone is that he is afraid his workers will return to the jungle and never come back.  But that seems to be a stretch.  If the workers preferred the jungle, they would have left a long time ago; if they prefer working on the farm, they will return.  We suspect that Leiningen is just stubborn

He is also stubborn in the short story, but for a different reason than the one given in the movie.  When the District Commissioner is unable to convince Leiningen that nothing can stand in the path of the ants, he tells Leiningen his obstinacy endangers himself and his four hundred workers.  And this obstinacy arises out of Leiningen’s “lifelong motto: The human brain needs only to become fully aware of its powers to conquer even the elements.”  Of course, it was primarily his brain that he had in mind, for he was contemptuous of much of his fellow man, whom he refers to as “dullards,” “cranks,” and “sluggards,” who invariably folded when confronted with any kind of danger.  “But such disasters, Leiningen contended, merely strengthened his argument that intelligence, directed aright, invariably makes man the master of his fate.”

The Leiningen of the short story had prepared in advance for all sorts of problems that might threaten his plantation, and eventually did, including flood, drought, and plague, and he had defeated them all, while his fellow settlers merely caved.  And he had prepared for the ants.  A moat surrounded three sides of the plantation, while the river protected it on the fourth side.  The Indian workers had such confidence in Leiningen that they received his calm announcement of the coming struggle with complete confidence:  “The ants were indeed mighty, but not so mighty as the boss. Let them come!”

And just to show how easy it would have been for everyone to step aside until the ants passed, this Leiningen of the short story moves the women and children, as well as the livestock, to the other side of the river where they will be perfectly safe.  Not that they were in any danger, as far as he was concerned, but they might be a nuisance:  “‘Critical situations first become crises,’ he explained to his men, ‘when oxen or women get excited.’”

For whatever reason, then, both in the original story and in the movie, Leiningen is stubborn.  And this too fits with that same persona Heston had in Three Violent People, as Ruby makes clear to Lorna:  “He once chased a rustler all the way into Mexico for 20 scrawny cows, when he owned thousands.”  Speaking of the whole Saunders clan in general, she continues, saying, “They’re always willing to get killed or kill, if they think they’re right.  And they always think they’re right.”

In the beginning of this movie, we see a brawl taking place in the street between a bunch of carpetbaggers and veteran Confederate soldiers, still in their uniforms, on crutches, missing an arm here or a leg there.  It is noted that these fights break out several times a day, with the crippled Confederates being the ones that get arrested and put in jail.  Clearly, we are supposed to sympathize with the Confederate veterans and regard the carpetbaggers as a scourge.  And just as it’s the ants that are coming for Leiningen’s plantation in The Naked Jungle, so too are the carpetbaggers, under the authority of the provisional government, coming for Colt’s ranch in Three Violent People.

Colt’s brother Cinch (Tom Tryon) wants to cut and run.  He says they still have horses in the hills that have been hidden from the provisional government, which already seized the Saunders’ cattle.  He argues that they could sell the horses elsewhere for a fortune, and then move on and buy a new ranch somewhere else.  But just as Leiningen refuses, against all reason, to run from the ants, so too does Colt refuse to run from the carpetbaggers.

When Leiningen finds out that Joanna has been married before, he arranges for her to return to the United States.  As for Lorna, that man with a weak mind and a long memory does indeed show up.  He tells Colt about Lorna’s past.  Colt tells Lorna he will arrange for her to go back to the town where he met her.  As he explains his reason for doing so to his gran vaquero (Gilbert Roland), he says, “A man must do what he must do.”  That’s right.  He really said that.

At this point, the plot of Three Violent People becomes more involved than that in The Naked Jungle, the details of which need not detain us.

In the end, Leiningen’s plantation is more destroyed by his fighting the ants than would have been the case had he simply left until it was all over with and then returned:  all his furniture is burned to create a fire barrier, and the dam is destroyed to create a flood.  So too in the short story is it a pyrrhic victory, where lives are lost by fighting the ants, while nothing is gained by defeating them.  But at least Leiningen can say he stood his ground.  Colt manages to defeat the carpetbaggers and keep the ranch he would have otherwise lost, so in his case, his refusal to retreat seems to have been worth it.

Finally, regarding what I have been informed is the most important part of The Naked Jungle, Leiningen manages to get past his disgust at having married a widow, and he and Joanna live happily ever after.  And in Three Violent People, Colt manages to get past his disgust at having married a whore, and they live happily ever after too.  But let’s be clear about the significance of these situations and their implications regarding the manliness of these two Charlton Heston protagonists.  A wimp could have remained married to either of these women without the slightest misgivings about her past, allowing himself to be cuckolded ex post facto.  But a real man is justifiably proud and cannot so easily set aside his dignity and self-respect.  Only after he has been victorious in battle, demonstrating his manhood before all the world, can he then find it within himself to be magnanimous and forgive a woman for being less than sexually pristine.

In the opening scene of The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, the title character (Ann Dvorak) is crying because she is pregnant. Her rich boyfriend promises to marry her, but he quickly deserts her by leaving town.  There is, however, a nice guy who would be happy to marry her.  This is Jimmy (Richard Cromwell), a clean-cut medical student who is working his way through school as a bellhop. Jimmy loves Molly, but she rejects him. She is attracted to a gangster, Nicky (Leslie Fenton) and runs off with him instead, getting involved in a few of his crimes, and handing her daughter over to an orphanage. When she runs into Jimmy a few years later, he still loves her and wants to marry her and be a father to her daughter. At first she agrees to marry him, but she actually desires Scotty (Lee Tracy), a hardboiled reporter who promises only that he will show her a good time for a while and then dump her. She likes the idea. In fact, this makes her realize why her own mother abandoned her when she was a child, because when a woman really wants a man, nothing else matters, not even her own child. Jimmy walks in while they are kissing, and she tells him she has decided to run off with Scotty instead.

In the last reel, Scotty has a change of heart, promises to help her fight the charges against her for her involvement with Nicky, and then marry her. That a movie should feature a fallen woman who would reject the love of a good man like Jimmy (twice) and knowingly choose men who are scoundrels instead is amazing enough. That she should end up living happily ever after by doing so is a story that could exist only in the pre-Code universe. Or in real life.

At the beginning of Penny Serenade, Julie (Irene Dunne) and Roger (Cary Grant) are separating because their marriage is on the rocks.  Roger leaves to do something, and while Julie is by herself, she plays a succession of records associated with different stages of her relationship with Roger. With the playing of each record, the tune becomes the background music of a flashback at important stages in their lives, beginning with when they first met. But the flashbacks show us what a great marriage they have, so we figure something really bad must have happened to cause these two to separate. After an accident, Julie is no longer able to have children, so they adopt a girl. At first I thought that somehow Roger was going to be responsible for her death, perhaps by accidentally running over her when she runs out into the street. She does die, but it is clearly not anyone’s fault, not even accidentally so. Furthermore, her death is not even seen, but only mentioned in a letter, followed by scenes of Roger and Julie being silent and sad. We never really believe that they are going to get divorced, and they don’t.

The plot of this movie is similar to The Marrying Kind, where another couple, Florie (Judy Holliday) and Chet (Aldo Ray) are about to get a divorce. Instead of records playing tunes from the past, the divorce judge, who can see that they have a good marriage, questions them, and their story is told in flashbacks, revealing what a good marriage they have, making us wonder when we are going to get to the part that made them so miserable. Once again, we find that a child died, this time by drowning; once again it is an accident for which neither of them can be thought to be responsible; and once again we can see that this is something that they will eventually get over.  Sure enough, in the end they do not get the divorce.

The moral of these stories is that people who are in an unhappy marriage should stay together and work things out. There is something irritating about the way both movies are dismissive of just how miserable a marriage can be, as if married couples who want a divorce simply don’t realize how much they really love each other.

Imitation of Life began life as a novel by Fannie Hurst, published in 1933.  By the next year, it had been made into a movie.  Although the 1934 version of this novel, directed by John Stahl, leaves out the first part of the book, beginning after the protagonist is already a widow with a daughter, it follows the book more closely than does the 1959 version, directed by Douglas Sirk.  Both movies won awards of various sorts, though neither quite managed to get the Oscar for Best Picture.

Both movies are something of a paradox.  On the one hand, the critics did not seem to care for them.  Writing for the New York Times in 1934, Andre Sennwald made the following comment:  “Despite the sincerity of John M. Stahl’s direction, he scarcely manages to conceal the shallowness of the play’s ideas, the commonplace nature of its emotions, nor the rubber-stamp quality of its writing.”  As for the 1959 version, Danny Peary, in his book Guide for the Film Fanatic, says the movie is “impeccably made Hollywood trash.”  It would be easy to furnish more disparaging remarks regarding these two movies, but these will have to suffice for reasons of space.

On the other hand, these movies provoke strong emotional reactions that vary depending on the person who watches them, and they likewise lend themselves to different interpretations as to the significance of the story and whether we should approve or disapprove of what happens.  In particular, there are those who say that the message of these movies is that we should all accept who we are and not pretend to be something we are not.  Others see these movies as telling us we should know our place and stay in it.  All of this is further complicated by the fact that Stahl presents his movie to be taken at face value, whereas some critics say that Sirk tends to be ironic and subversive in his direction.

So as to avoid anachronisms, I shall, when it seems appropriate, use the terms for African Americans that were in use when these movies were made.  It is one thing to speak generally of how African Americans were portrayed in old movies, but it is quite another thing to actually use the term “African American,” which bespeaks of an enlightened attitude regarding race, to discuss a movie replete with prejudice and demeaning racial stereotypes, resulting in an incongruous combination of connotation.

We begin with 1934 version, in which there are four main characters.  As they are listed in the credits at the beginning of the movie, they are Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert), Jessie Pullman (Rochelle Hudson, as the grown Jessie), Delilah (Louise Beavers), and Peola (Fredi Washington, as the grown Peola).

In the very title of his book, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks:  An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Films, Donald Bogle lists the five major categories for African Americans in the movies, especially those before the civil rights movement.  Delilah has the physical features of a mammy, a usually overweight black woman with motherly characteristics.  However, despite her sex, she is really a tom, a Negro that wants nothing more out of life than to serve his white master.  This depiction of the Negro servant, as demeaning as it is, nevertheless constituted progress in humanizing such characters, as can be seen when contrasted with movies featuring Stepin Fetchit, the ultimate coon. As for Delilah’s daughter, Peola, she is a tragic mulatto.

Fredi Washington, who plays Peola, had some problems of her own along those lines.  According to Thomas Doherty, in his book Pre-Code Hollywood:  Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934, she was legally a Negro, so she could not play the part of a white man’s girlfriend in the movies.  But at the same time, if she played the part of a black man’s girlfriend, it would look as though a Negro had himself a white woman.  So, when she played in The Emperor Jones (1933), she had to wear dark pancake makeup.

Already we see the elements of discrimination against African Americans in 1934, for as you may have noticed, in the opening credits Delilah and Peola are not given last names.  So, even though this movie was supposedly portraying a Negro servant in a positive light, an unconscious prejudice is revealed right there in the beginning.

As for the plot, one morning while Bea is struggling to get her daughter Jessie ready for the day nursery so she can hit the streets trying to sell maple syrup, Delilah shows up answering an advertisement for a maid and cook, although she has the wrong address.  One of the qualifications in the advertisement is that she must be colored, presumably because she would work for less wages than a white housekeeper.  Eventually, she convinces to Bea to let her work for her just for room and board for her and her daughter Peola.  As Delilah explains to Bea, her daughter appears to be white because her father had light skin.

One morning, just as Bea is leaving to try to sell some more maple syrup, Delilah gives her a rabbit’s foot.  You have to laugh.  They are trying to portray Delilah in a positive light, but then they give in to the stereotype of the superstitious Negro.  Well, at least in the movies, good luck charms do bring good luck.  Bea decides that Delilah’s pancakes are so good, owing to a secret recipe, handed down to her by her mammy, who got it from her mammy, that she should open a restaurant featuring Aunt Delilah’s pancakes, with the maple syrup business on the side.  Things work out well.

As the daughters grow up, Peola, who is slightly older than Jessie, helps Jessie with her homework.  Bea comments that Peola seems to be pretty smart.  Delilah replies that they start out that way, and they only become dumb later.  At first, I thought what she meant was that it is too dangerous to be an uppity Negro, so they have to pretend to be ignorant and poorly educated as they get older.  However, there are one or two scenes where Delilah does slip into the coon category, that of the Negro that is funny on account of being simple-minded, so maybe we are supposed to take what she says seriously.  And besides, we have to wonder if Peola is allowed to be smart in this movie on account of her having white blood in her.

The tragic part of the tragic mulatto begins when Jessie says that Peola is black, causing Peola to cry, insisting that she is white.  Bea tells Jessie to apologize, but Delilah shows her wisdom in saying that there is no good in that, that it’s something Peola will have to accept.  She goes on to say that it’s not Jessie’s fault or that of anyone else.  However, she also says it’s not the Lord’s fault.  I’m not quite sure how she reached that conclusion.

This is followed by the worst day in Peola’s life.  Jessie has stayed home sick, supposedly, and is playing Old Maid with her mother.  It’s pouring down rain, and Delilah is worried that Peola, who forgot her umbrella and rubbers, will get sick too, so she picks up her rain gear and heads out to her school.  The wisdom shown by Delilah when Peola was crying about being called black seems to have left her, for it never occurs to her how her appearance in Peola’s classroom will affect her daughter.  When she enters the classroom, the teacher says she must be mistaken, since there are no colored girls in her room.  But then Delilah spots Peola trying to disappear behind a book.  She asks the teacher if Peola has been passing, and the teacher sadly answers yes.  Peola says, “I hate you,” several times to her mother and runs out into the rain, rendering the entire traumatic experience for naught.  And as several critics have noted, most children would be horrified if their mothers showed up with their rubbers even if race were not a problem.

When a fellow named Elmer Smith advises Bea to “Box it,” meaning to put Delilah’s pancake recipe in boxes and sell them in stores, she takes his advice and makes Elmer her business partner.  The brand name is “Delilah’s Pancake Flour,” with Delilah’s picture on the box as well.  But when they decide to incorporate after becoming successful, Delilah refuses to sign the papers, which would give her a twenty-percent share in the business, making her rich.  Instead, she goes full tom, saying she wants nothing more than to continue to work for Bea as her maid and cook.  Bea tells her she will put her share in the bank for her, and Delilah says she would like the money to be spent on a grand funeral for herself when she dies.  It will be her sendoff to glory.

This appears to be another black stereotype, the white man’s conception of the Negro’s childlike religious notions, the kind we see in The Green Pastures (1936).  It is a literal, physical understanding of religion.  Toward the end of the movie, when Delilah goes into elaborate detail about all the trappings of her funeral procession, this is no mere expression of vanity, as it might be if a white person in a movie wanted such a fuss being made over him.  Rather, Delilah thinks she needs to make a good impression on the Lord.  Speaking to Bea, she says, “I want to meet my Maker with plenty of bands playing.  I want to ride up to Heaven in a white velvet hearse.”  We would probably have a feeling of revulsion if it were Bea that said she wanted a lavish funeral when she died.  And we would think her silly to talk as though God would be impressed by the band that was playing or the hearse that would be transporting her to Heaven. But the movie asks us to smile at Delilah’s notions, the way we might tenderly listen to a child talk about his letter to Santa Claus.

African Americans are often portrayed as more religious in the movies than their white counterparts.  And if true, this should not surprise us, for as we learn from Nietzsche, Christianity began as a form of slave morality, one that promised Heaven for slaves, for the weak and the downtrodden, while Hell awaited their masters, those with money and power.  Therefore, Christianity perfectly suited African Americans when they were slaves and for the next century as they suffered from the aftermath of that period of bondage.  And in many ways, this suited white people too, because it helped to keep blacks in their place, along the lines of Marx’s observation that religion is the opiate of the masses.  It is no coincidence that right after Delilah says she does not want to become rich, she starts talking about her funeral, for Jesus taught that we should despise worldly goods and think of our reward in Heaven.

Ten years pass.  Bea is rich and lives in a mansion.  She throws a party for the swells, and everybody is rich, elegant, and white.  Downstairs, where Delilah and Peola live, Peola is miserable.  No one has told Peola she is not invited to the party.  No one has to.  It’s just understood.  In her frustration, she looks in the mirror and insists to her mother that she is white.  But her difference from her mother is more than just her skin color.  Her physiognomy also indicates a Caucasian influence.  And whereas Delilah speaks the dialect of the southern Negro, Peola’s English is impeccable.  Moreover, while Delilah weighs two-hundred-and-forty pounds, Peola has a slim figure, allowing for graceful movement.

Upstairs, Elmer’s friend, Stephen Archer (Warren William), an ichthyologist, meets Bea.  They eventually fall in love and decide to get married.  But she wants to hold off on telling Jessie for a while, who is coming home from college during a semester break, to give her time to get to know Stephen.

About the same time, Peola, who apparently agreed to go to one of those high-toned Negro colleges in the South, has apparently left, according to a letter that Delilah receives from an official at that college.  Bea and Delilah head south to look for her.  Though Peola could have all the money she wanted by remaining part of the Bea/Delilah household, yet she seems to have found happiness working behind a counter selling tobacco products.  But Delilah comes in and spoils everything.

When Delilah brought Peola her rubbers at school that day, she said she didn’t do it on purpose, and so we wrote it off as inadvertent, as a blind spot she had to her daughter’s suffering, though we didn’t know how could have been so oblivious.  But now there is no excuse.  Delilah comes in the store, acting all pitiful, insisting that she is Peola’s mammy.  Peola denies knowing her, telling those around her that she doesn’t know the woman.  But then Bea comes in and asks Peola how she could do this to her mother.  Peola runs out of the store.  Of course, while I’m seeing Peola’s side of it, the movie seems to insist that it is Peola who is in the wrong, that nothing is more important than a mother’s love, and that Peola has hurt her mother terribly.  And there are doubtless those who would agree with that way of looking at it.  This is one of those different ways of reacting to the movie that make this story so interesting.

When Bea and Delilah return home, they find that Peola is already there, waiting for them.  She apologizes to her mother for what happened, but then tells her she is going away for good, and that should they pass on the street, she asks her mother not to speak to her or recognize her in any way.  After she leaves, there is a decline in Delilah’s health, to the extent of putting her on her death bed, and we are supposed to conclude that she is dying of a broken heart.  She does die, and then we see the grand funeral that Delilah always dreamed of.  Peola shows up in the crowd on the street, tearing up, until she can stand it no longer, calling out “Mother” and rushing to embrace the coffin just as it was put in the hearse.

In the midst of all this, another mother-daughter problem has been in the works.  While Bea and Delilah were out of town, Stephen was graciously keeping Jessie entertained.  For him, she was just the child of his fiancée, but Jessie had been falling in love with him.  Through a combination of coincidental scenes that could only happen in a movie, Bea found out about Jessie’s infatuation without either Stephen or Jessie knowing that she knows.  In real life, Bea and Stephen would go ahead and get married, knowing that Jessie would go back to college and fall in love with someone else in no time.  Stephen says as much when Bea tells him she knows.

But this is a domestic melodrama, the theme of which is a mother’s sacrifice for her daughter.  Bea tells Stephen that their marriage would make for an impossible situation, that she cannot marry him at this time.  She tells him to go to his islands and study fish, and that when the time is right, when Jessie has found someone else, she will come to him, if he stills wants her.  Stephen leaves.  Jessie comes out in the garden where Bea is, and Bea reminisces about the day she first met Delilah.  For what it is worth, in the novel, Bea’s love interest is Frank Flake, who is sort of a combination of Elmer and Stephen, but then again, not really.  Anyway, he is eight years younger than Bea, and she gives him up so he can marry Jessie.

Before quitting this essay, I suppose something must be said about those foot massages.  Twice in the movie, Delilah massages Bea’s feet.  My reaction was the one that occurs to most people, that despite the fact that Bea and Delilah are friends and business partners, a scene in which Bea massages Delilah’s feet would have blown the lid off.  But others, such as threemoviebuffs.com, have seen a lesbian subtext in this, especially since in both foot-massage scenes, they talk about men and love or the lack thereof.  And that reminds me of Pulp Fiction (1994), in which there is a discussion between Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta about how some guy got in trouble with Uma Thurman’s husband for giving her a foot massage.  Jackson dismisses the whole thing as ridiculous, saying there is nothing sexual about a foot massage.  Travolta says that since it is not sexual, would Jackson give him a foot massage, since, he says, he sure could use it.  Jackson gets angry at the suggestion that he would give a foot massage to a man, because he realizes he has been caught in a contradiction.  Another hint at a lesbian subtext is the scene in which Bea kisses Jessie on the lips.  And at cinematasmoviemadness.com, it is suggested that the reason Bea is so willing to break off the engagement is that, being a lesbian, she never really wanted to marry Stephen in the first place.  None of this would ever have occurred to me on my own.  I just figure that women do stuff with each other that men would not.

Speaking of sex, the movie makes no reference to Peola’s love life or the absence of such.  But we think about it, especially when she seems determined to pass for white.  Presumably, since she decides to go back to that Negro college at the end of the movie, we can assume she will marry a black man.  Her love life is made explicit in the 1959 version of Imitation of Life, however, to which we may now turn.

In this 1959 remake, there are several changes.  For one thing, the setting is contemporaneous, at least when we get to the end of the movie.  That is, it begins in 1947 and ends in 1958.  Furthermore, the names have been changed.  Bea has become Lora Meredith (Lana Turner); her daughter Jessie has become Susie (Sandra Dee, when grown); Delilah has become Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore); and her daughter Peola has become Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner, when grown).  Unlike the 1934 version, Annie’s last name is listed in the opening credits, so I guess we can count that as progress in race relations.

On IMDb, Annie is said to be a black widow, “black” in the sense of being African American, of course.  However, in the movie, Annie says that Sarah Jane’s father left before she was born.  Annie never refers to this man as “her husband,” but only as “Sarah Jane’s daddy.”  So, whereas this movie gives Lora the respectability of being a widow, it would seem to be playing into the racial stereotype of the morally irresponsible black man who would abandon a pregnant woman.

For that matter, whereas in the 1934 version, Bea refers to having had a husband that died, Delilah only refers to Peola’s “pappy,” there being no reference to her having had a husband or to her being a widow.  Perhaps this was a deliberately created ambiguity.  For the progressives in the audience, the movie offered them a humanized Negro servant, depicted in a positive light.  They were allowed to assume the best about Delilah and put her into the widow category.  As for those depraved souls that were inclined to think the worst of the black race, they were allowed to imagine that Peola was a bastard.

As for the plot of this version of Imitation of Life, Lora wants to be an actress.  One day at the beach, she meets Annie, a black woman that is taking care of a little girl who appears to be white, but who turns out to be colored.  Lora ends up hiring Annie as a maid, and they all live together from then on.  Whereas Delilah’s pancake recipe is a key to Bea’s success, making them equals in their business relationship, despite Delilah’s refusal to become a stockholder in their corporation, in this movie, it is Lora’s success as an actress alone that results in her becoming wealthy.  Though Lora and Annie may be friends, Annie’s economic relationship with Lora is never more than that of her maid and cook.

While at the beach, Lora also meets Steve Archer (John Gavin), a photographer, with whom she forms a romantic attachment.  The movie implies that Lora should have given up her aspirations to be an actress and married Steve, staying at home to be a good wife and mother. And it implies that Sarah Jane should have accepted the fact that she was colored, and not try to pass for white. Because they prefer imitation over authenticity, they both forgo happiness, until the end, when Sarah Jane openly declares that Annie was her mother at her funeral, and when Lora agrees to give up her career and marry Steve.  As for this latter, the love triangle between Steve, Lora, and Susie ends more realistically, if somewhat melodramatically, with Susie accepting the marriage between her mother and Steve, planning to go to college far away.

There is a foot-massage scene in this movie as well, and it’s no wonder Lora’s feet are sore, since she is always wearing high-heeled shoes, just as Bea did in the original.  Lora is even wearing heels when they are all at the beach at the beginning of the movie.  As David, her favorite playwright, says when Lora says she wants to act in the new Stewart play, “That?  What part?  Not the dull social worker with high dreams and low heels?  … No clothes, no sex, no fun.”  But it is perhaps worth noting that both movies avoid the outrageous scene in the book regarding feet:  rising from her death bed, Delilah manages to get down on the floor and start kissing Bea’s feet, after which she collapses and dies.

Strangely enough, our twenty-first century perspective is likely to make some people more supportive of Lora but less supportive of Sarah Jane. As for Lora, we now believe women are perfectly in their rights to want a career. Some women prefer to be homemakers, allowing themselves to be completely dependent on their husbands financially, and we wish them luck in their choice. But women who want a career of their own have every right to pursue one, and we regard any man who would object as patriarchal.

After all, Steve could have agreed to let Lora continue to pursue her career as an actress after they got married, but that was obviously out of the question as far as he was concerned. And it was out of the question for the 1950s audience as well.  There was an assumed emptiness in the life of a career woman, even if she got married; for she was bound to neglect her husband and miss out on the deep satisfaction of giving herself completely to her family.  Steve is resentful of the way she puts her own ambition before his love, because he thinks his love for her should have been the overwhelming consideration. An underlying assumption in the movies in those days was that if a man truly loved a woman, she was wrong not to accept his proposal of marriage, for it was thought that she would never again have a chance for happiness.  How the woman felt almost didn’t seem to matter.  It was the man’s love that was determinative.

The dialogue makes this perfectly clear.  Right after Steve proposes marriage, but before Lora gives him an answer, she gets the job offer she has been waiting for:

Steve:  I don’t want you to go.

Lora:  Do you realize what this could mean to me?

Steve:  I’m not asking you not to go down there.  I’m telling you.

Lora:  What makes you think you have that right?

Steve:  Because I love you.  Isn’t that enough?

Lora:  No, Steve, I’m sorry.

In the movies of the 1950s, a woman was supposed to give herself to a man unconditionally, and not be thinking about “What if?” But attitudes have changed.  We now believe a woman is better off if she is financially independent, in case the marriage goes bad, as marriages so often do. We are more likely today to think Steve was wrong-headed, and to be a little disappointed at the end when Lora says she is going to give up her career and marry him.

As for Sarah Jane, some people may be less supportive about her desire to pass for white, because today being an African American is not supposed to be something bad, something to be ashamed of. A lot of people would say she should have been proud of her African heritage. Well, that’s a nice attitude to have in the twenty-first century, but considering the prejudice against African Americans in the 1950s, not to mention the laws requiring segregation, trying to escape from such oppressive conditions seems perfectly reasonable. I would have tried to pass for white had I been in her situation.  Actually, Sarah Jane’s problem may not be so much that she tries to pass for white as that she insists that she is white.

Whereas Steve’s attitude toward Lora’s ambition makes us uneasy today, a lot of people feel equally uneasy about Annie. In the introductory scene at Coney Island, Annie refers to how Sarah Jane’s light skin bedeviled her where they used to live (probably the South), and so they moved.  She sees how Sarah Jane hates the black doll that Susie tries to give her. And when they are discussing what color Jesus is, Sarah Jane says, “Jesus is like me. He’s white.” In other words, Annie knows how Sarah Jane feels. And yet, just as in the 1934 version, she shows up at her school to give her an umbrella and her rubbers without the slightest thought that she might embarrass Sarah Jane. We might give Annie a pass on that, but later, when Sarah Jane tries to make her own way performing in a night club, Annie shows up and ruins that for her daughter too. The way Annie disapproves of the night club, you would think it was a den of iniquity and that Sarah Jane was doing a striptease, but she is reasonably attired and merely singing and dancing in a sexy but respectable way. On the other hand, maybe it looked worse to the audience of 1959.  And I must admit, the men in the night club are loud and crude.

Annie should have warned Sarah Jane of the dangers of trying pass for white (“What if you have a baby, and it comes out black?”), but then supported her daughter whatever her decision was.  The possibility that Peola would marry a white man was avoided in the 1934 version, but it is made explicit in the 1959 remake.  Sarah Jane gets herself a white boyfriend, played by Troy Donahue, who becomes angry when he finds out her mother is a “nigger” and brutally beats her.  While the fact that this movie showed Sarah Jane as actually having a white boyfriend may be thought of as a weakening of the Production Code, which forbade miscegenation, I can’t help but think that in order to do this, they picked an actress that was white, unlike Fredi Washington, who was of mixed race like Peola.

Actually, in Fannie Hurst’s novel, Peola nipped the baby problem in the bud by having herself sterilized.  She estranges herself from her mother, marries a blond engineer, and moves to Bolivia, passing for white permanently.  In previous reviews of the movies Stella Dallas (1937), Kitty Foyle (1940), and Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941), I remarked on this theme of running off to South America to get away from one’s family.  There must have been some kind of mystique about South America in the early part of the twentieth century as a place to get away from it all and get a new start.  I suspect this trope was spoiled when the Nazis fled there so they could get a new start themselves.

Anyway, Sarah Jane gets another job dancing, at a more respectable night club.  This time her mother finds her, not to spoil things again, but just to say goodbye.  She is finally reconciled to the fact that her daughter wants to pass for white.  Also, she knows she is dying.  Of course, just as in the 1934 version, Sarah Jane shows up at Annie’s funeral, tearfully crying out for her mother while embracing her coffin.

This movie seems to say that Steve knows what is best for Lora, and that Annie knows what would be best for Sarah Jane.  And there are those who would agree with them.  But I agree with those who say they should not have tried to impose their values on others, and instead allowed them to live their lives the way they wanted to.

In The Rain People, Natalie Ravenna (Shirley Knight) discovers that she no longer wants to be married, let alone have a baby now that she is pregnant. So she gets in her car and takes off. After driving for a while, she picks up a hitchhiker, Jimmy Kilgannon (James Caan), hoping to have some uncomplicated sex with him. The mistake is not that she thought she could have sex without getting involved. Her mistake, and it is a common one, is not realizing how complicated and involved things can become even if you don’t have sex at all.

It turns out that Jimmy cannot take care of himself on account of a brain injury sustained while playing football, and he has neither friends nor family to help him. She only thought she was trapped before. But it is a whole lot easier to desert a husband and abort a fetus than it is to abandon someone who is helpless, especially when he has a kind heart.

Fortunately, this is a movie, which resolves the problem by having him die in the end. Though she tried to leave him several times, she wishes he were still alive and could take care of him. But we in the audience know it was for the best. Trouble is, people get themselves in messy situations like this in real life, but there is no Hollywood ending to save them.

In the movie Four Daughters, there is a musical family consisting of a widowed father, Adam Lemp (Claude Rains), who plays the flute, his sister, Aunt Etta, and his four daughters:   Ann (Priscilla Lane) plays the violin; Kay is a singer; Emma plays the harp; and Thea plays the piano.

Neither Ann nor Kay has a boyfriend.

Emma has a suitor named Ernest, whom she jokes about marrying. However, she does not love him, and for her, that is very important. She talks about wanting a “storybook” romance, a “knight in shining armor on a white horse,” while Ernest is always hesitant and awkward in her presence. As a result, she figures she will end up an old maid.

Thea plans to marry Ben (Frank McHugh), whom she does not love, but that doesn’t matter to her. She says that love is overrated. What is important is that Ben has lots of money and can provide her with status. This would not be so bad if she were good at faking it, as some gold diggers are, but throughout the movie it is obvious that Thea finds Ben irritating and doesn’t like it when he tries to be affectionate.

Ann and Emma both make disparaging remarks about Ben’s looks.  Moreover, his personality is made out to be just as unattractive.  Thea invites him to dinner.  When he arrives that evening, he compliments her on the lovely house her family has, and then he compliments her on how beautiful she looks.  So far, so good.  But then we get the following:

Ben:  I hope my watch is right.  I’ve been driving around the block, afraid I’d be here too early.

Thea:  You’re right on time, as usual.

Ben:  Well, that’s my long suit: punctuality.  I believe in hitting appointments right on the nose!

The reason for this dialogue is to make punctuality out to be a cringeworthy character flaw.  For that reason, Ben is made to go on about it, showing him to be obsessed with being on time.  Later in the movie, at Adam’s birthday party, Ben’s present to Adam is a watch.

At this point, I must confess to being punctual myself, and I have done something similar to what Ben did on many occasions.  But one night stands out from the rest.  I had a date with a girl when I was in college.  I was to pick her up at seven o’clock. Never having been to her house before, I left early, just in case I had trouble finding it. However, I located her house at ten minutes before seven. I pulled around the corner, drove down the street, and parked my car.  At seven, I drove back around the block, and pulled up in front of her house.  Her father answered the door when I knocked, saying that Sarah wasn’t ready yet, but for me to come inside.  I had a pleasant conversation with her father for about ten minutes, and then Sarah came down the stairs.  The fact that she was running a little late didn’t bother me one bit.  But as soon as we got in the car, she began lecturing me that a gentleman never shows up exactly on time for a date, because if the lady is running late, it makes her look bad.

I have read five books on etiquette:  one by Emily Post, one by Amy Vanderbilt, and three by Miss Manners. I have never read what Sarah was talking about in any of those books.  But one rule of etiquette stands out above the rest:  you should never make someone feel bad by telling him he broke a rule of etiquette. After all, she never had to go out with me again, if I was so crude and boorish as to show up on time for a date. She should have acted as though nothing was wrong, and then said she already had a previous engagement the next time I asked her out.  Needless to say, there never was a next time.

The moral of that tale is that people that run late resent people that are always on time, and they are at pains to put them in the wrong, making such people out to be uptight, while those who run late are held out to be free spirits.  In the movie Nora Prentiss (1947), those in the movie who are punctual are shown to be stuffy and dull, while those who are often late are happy and carefree.  A doctor who is always on time shows up late for work one morning.  He says it was because it was such a nice day that he drove through the park on the way in.  We rightly suspect he will soon be having an affair, cheating on his mirthless wife, who is always obsessed with her schedule.

In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), the title character, played by Maggie Smith, receives a note from her superior while she is teaching class.  It reads:  “Dear Miss Brodie, I hope it will be convenient for you to see me in my office this afternoon at 4:15.”

Miss Brodie is not amused.  She reads the note aloud to her class, saying, “4:15!  Not 4:00, not 4:30, but 4:15.  She thinks to intimidate me by the use of quarter hours.” When Miss Brodie shows up at exactly 4:15, the clock in the office just striking the quarter hour, she says, somewhat snidely, “I was afraid I might be late … or early.”

The idea is that punctual people not only have the bad taste to always show up on time, but they expect the same of others.  Of course, it is folly to try to change anyone. If a friend, a lover, or an employee continually shows up late, either accept it with a smile, or find someone else.

And then there was this one guy I knew who said that he always showed up late for appointments because he didn’t like to wait.

Following the punctuality scene with Ben, his interaction with the family that night is uncomfortable. While offering Ben some wine, Adam presumes to pat Ben on his chest.  When Ben makes a weak attempt at humor and nervously laughs, Thea’s sisters make fun of his laugh, mocking him.  At the dinner table, Ben sips some water, only to have the family embarrass him when they start saying grace without any warning.  A couple of times, later in the movie, Ben starts to tell a story, but others in the room pay no attention to him, talking right over him as if he weren’t there.

In general, Ben is always good natured and friendly, with never a mean word to say about anyone. And yet, everyone in the movie treats him badly.  Either they make fun of him, despise him, or ignore him.  Nor does the movie want us to take his side, but rather expects us to be in agreement with those who have contempt for him. Admittedly, he is not tall and handsome.  He is not witty or clever. If it weren’t for his money, no one would have anything to do with him.  He’s just a nice guy, but that doesn’t count for much, not in this movie and not in this world.

As is typical in a melodrama, once we are acquainted with a stable family or community, a bachelor comes along and stirs things up. In this case, the bachelor is Felix, a handsome composer.  As an example of just how charming he is supposed to be, he tells everyone where to sit at the table in their own home.  Furthermore, he thinks he is being oh-so cute when he flirts with the elderly Aunt Etta, acting as if she is young and pretty. She appears to be flattered by it, as old women always are in the movies when young men pull this routine.  I suppose in real life, there are old women who like this attention, but lot of them hate that kind of patronizing attitude, because it only underscores just how old and unattractive they have become, and makes them appear silly and foolish for being taken in by it. This might have been especially painful in Aunt Etta’s case, since she later refers to herself as a spinster.  Of course, the men who do that sort of thing always seem pleased with themselves, imagining that they are bringing a little happiness into the life of an old woman.

But just like Aunt Etta, everyone in the family is charmed by him, and we are supposed to find him charming as well.  As a result, all four sisters start falling in love with him. And they certainly don’t treat him the way they did Ben.  None of them make fun of the way Felix laughs.  When Adam offers him some wine, he does not pat him on the chest.  At dinner, the scene cuts off before the family says grace, so Felix is spared any embarrassment on that score.  Later in the movie, after Felix has won a contract with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, he excuses himself, saying he has to catch the train to Seattle.  Just to remind us one more time that punctuality is something to be despised, Aunt Etta says, “Can’t you miss your train? You know, they’ll never believe you’re a great musician in Seattle, if you get there on time.”

As if one bachelor were not disrupting enough, another one enters the community, a man named Mickey (John Garfield), who excels at playing the piano.  Felix needs Mickey to help him with his composing.  Felix explains to Adam that there is no telling when Mickey might show up:  “He’s an hour late now, but he may not be here for a week.  In fact, he may not get here at all….  He’s just a little, well, unpredictable.”

Since Mickey is not at all punctual, that means we are supposed to like him before we have even met him.  When he finally arrives, his hair is mussed, his tie is loose, and his shirt is not fully tucked in. Later on, when talking to Ann, he says that the Fates are against him, determined that he will always be a loser.  It has never occurred to him, apparently, that being undependable and looking like a slob might have more to do with being a loser than the Fates.

Normally, people speak of fate when they wish to express a kind of personal determinism, but Mickey puts it in the plural:  “The Fates, the Destinies, whoever they are that decide what we do or don’t get.”  This makes us of think of the Moirai of Greek mythology, but we don’t believe for a minute that Mickey embraces that pagan religion. This is the movie’s way of letting us know he is an atheist.  At another point in the movie, Mickey says to Ann, “Allah be with you.” Because he is obviously not a Muslim, we take this as another expression of his atheism.  We can’t imagine him saying, “God be with you.”  Of course, since he is an atheist, movie logic required that he come to a bad end.

Felix asks Ann to marry him, and she accepts. They announce their engagement at her father’s birthday party. Because Mickey has fallen in love with Ann, he is crestfallen.  And as Ann’s three sisters are also in love with Felix, they are all upset too. Kay, who had been procrastinating about going to Philadelphia to study on a singing scholarship, immediately announces that she intends to do just that. Thea, who had been stalling Ben about setting a marriage date, announces that she will marry him in June. Ernest, thinking that Emma will be similarly disposed, suggests getting married, but she rebuffs him, and goes into the kitchen to cry.

On the day of Ann’s wedding, Mickey not only tells Ann that he loves her, but also reveals that Emma was heartbroken when she found out that Felix was going to marry Ann instead of her. At first Ann does not believe it, but later she sees that it is true when, standing outside, she looks through the kitchen window and sees Emma and Felix together.  Emma helps Felix with his cravat, and then starts crying when Felix leaves the room.  In what can only happen in a movie, Ann leaves Felix standing at the altar and elopes with Mickey.

When an event in a movie is of great significance, and yet is not dramatized, that is sometimes because had it been so dramatized, we wouldn’t have believed it.  Let us, therefore, imagine said dramatization.  Because people are in the house getting ready for the wedding, Ann cannot go inside and pack.  As soon as she walked in through the door, they would expect her to put on her wedding dress.  Therefore, she must elope with Mickey with only the clothes on her back.  She doesn’t even have her purse with her.  We’ll have to assume that the impecunious Mickey actually has some money on him, so he can buy tickets for the train, pay the first month’s rent for an apartment, and then buy some clothes and a purse for Ann.

But let’s not forget the dialogue we must imagine for ourselves when Ann proposes to Mickey:

Ann:  Mickey!  I just realized you are right.  Emma loves Felix.  So, I’ve decided to jilt him so he can marry her instead.

Mickey:  That’s noble of you.

Ann:  And now I want to marry you.

Mickey:  But you’re in love with Felix, not me.

Ann:  I know, but I have to fool Emma into thinking I love you so she’ll feel free to marry Felix.

Anyway, let’s return to the movie as it was actually filmed.  Contrary to Ann’s expectations, but not ours, Felix does not marry Emma on the rebound.  In fact, Emma ends up marrying Ernest after all.  Later in the movie, she tells Ann how much she admired the way Ernest took charge at the wedding, explaining to the guests what had happened.  And in doing so she contrasts Ernest with Ben, whom she regards as an incompetent blowhard.  Poor Ben.

Four months later, Ann and Mickey are struggling financially. When they go back home for a family reunion at Christmas, Mickey notices how Ann reacts when she sees Felix again, realizing she still loves him. As often happens in a melodrama, things get so messed up and complicated that someone has to die in order for things to get straightened out, and that is what happens here. Between not being able to provide for Ann, and her still loving Felix, Mickey decides to commit suicide by driving really fast in a snowstorm. Apparently, he had never read Ethan Frome. Well, things don’t turn out that bad, but he does wind up in the hospital, living just long enough to say a few words to Ann before he dies. In the next scene, we see it is spring. Felix returns, and it is clear that eventually he and Ann will get married.  This is a happy ending, but it is compensatory, softening the tragedy of Mickey’s death.

There are numerous changes in the remake, Young at Heart (1954), one of which is that all the names are different.  (Don’t ask me why.)  Kay’s character has been eliminated as superfluous.  Here are the rest:

Ann = Laurie (Doris Day)

Emma = Amy

Thea = Fran (Dorothy Malone)

Adam = Gregory

Aunt Etta = Aunt Jessie (Ethel Barrymore)

Ben = Bob (Alan Hale Jr.)

Ernest = Ernie

Felix = Alex (Gig Young)

Mickey = Barney (Frank Sinatra)

There is only a hint of Bob’s punctuality, and he does not make a big deal out of it the way Ben did.  In the original, Aunt Etta says to Felix, “You know, they’ll never believe you’re a great musician in Seattle, if you get there on time.”  In the remake, Gregory says to Alex, “No one will believe you’re a real composer if you show up at every rehearsal.”  These changes in the script were probably made by someone who regarded punctuality as a virtue and took exception to the way it was demeaned in the original.

Bob gets much better treatment in this remake than Ben did in the original.  When we first see Bob and Fran, they are kissing.  We never saw Ben and Thea kissing, for she had a physical aversion to him.  Gregory does not pat Bob on the chest, and Laurie and Amy do not make fun of his laugh or disparage his looks.  In the original, when Emma tells Ann how Ernest took charge of things at the wedding, she said, by way of contrast, “Ben, who blows the loudest trumpet, he couldn’t do a thing.”  In the corresponding scene in the remake, Amy tells Laurie how Ernie took charge of things at the wedding, but without making any negative remark about Bob.

Barney does not die in the end.  However, this happy ending is suspicious, because we never see him get out of the hospital, which is usually the case when someone’s recovery is to be understood realistically. See, for example, The Glass Key (1942), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and The Godfather (1972).  Another movie that fails to provide such a scene is Vertigo (1958).  Because there is no scene showing James Stewart getting out of the psychiatric hospital, I believe the second half of that movie is really James Stewart’s dream, while he remains in a catatonic state.  The closest we come to a getting-out-of-the-hospital scene in Young at Heart is when we see Barney being wheeled into a room for surgery.  But even so, there is no scene following surgery, where the doctor says the operation was a success.  We immediately go from Barney apparently dying in the hospital at Christmas to Barney singing at the piano in the Spring, surrounded by the entire family, including his wife Laurie.  The whole thing just seems fake.  For that reason, it is easier to accept this ending as the dream of a dying man.

Furthermore, for the first time in the movie, Barney seems to be happy, instead of being the disgruntled loser that he has been through the whole movie.  It is one thing for someone to make a miraculous recovery after almost dying.  That can happen.  But as far as personality goes, people don’t change that much.  For him to go from being terminally grumpy to inexplicably cheerful, without any attempt to show us dramatically how such a transformation was possible, that just isn’t believable.

I suppose the explanation for this change in personality is the fact that Laurie has had a baby.  She had just found out that she was pregnant at Christmas, when Barney tried to kill himself.  And now Laurie wishes the baby Happy Easter.  So, this must be over a year later.  I should have thought the novelty of a baby would have worn off on Barney by that time, especially now that he knows he has another mouth to feed.

Although Four Daughters is about a musical family, and there is music played or sung at times, it just doesn’t strike me as being a musical, although I would not argue the point if someone said otherwise. Young at Heart, however, is definitely a musical, and perhaps that accounts for the difference.  It’s not just that we expect musicals to end happily, though not all of them do, but it is easier for us to accept an artificial, tacked-on happy ending when the movie is a musical than when it is a melodrama.  Still, the ending is so abrupt and unrealistic that it is easier to imagine that it is Barney’s hallucinatory dream just before he dies.

This is similar to another musical, Young Man with a Horn (1950).  In that movie, Kirk Douglas is a grumpy trumpet player.  When he finds out that his wife, Lauren Bacall, is a bisexual who has decided to go full lesbian and run off to Europe with another woman, his life starts going downhill. He ends up living on the street, where he collapses.  A cab driver, who happened to be driving by, brings him to a place for alcoholics, but Douglas has pneumonia and must be transferred to a hospital.  His two friends, Doris Day and Hoagy Carmichael, are with him at what appears to be his deathbed scene.  When he hears the siren of the ambulance coming to get him, he says that’s the note he’s been looking for all his life, which is a bit delusional by itself.

And then, with only a brief explanation by Hoagy Carmichael, who has been narrating this movie, as to how Douglas turned his life around, becoming a good person and a great musician, we see Douglas and Doris Day performing together.  His trumpet playing is given a reverb effect to make it seem ethereal.  Once again, given the absence of a scene showing him getting out of the hospital, along with a complete character change that is only described, not dramatized, that final scene lends itself to a dream interpretation.