Tag: Dorothy McGuire

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

Easy-going father-daughter sentimentality in Kazan’s debut, which softens up an already gentle novel

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Peggy Ann Garner (Francie Nolan), Dorothy McGuire (Katie Nolan), Joan Blondell (Aunt Sissy), James Dunn (Johnny Nolan), Lloyd Nolan (Officer McShane), Ted Donaldson (Neeley Nolan), Ruth Nelson (Miss McDonough), John Alexander (Steve Edwards)

In 1912 an Irish-American family, the Nolans, struggle to make ends meet in Brooklyn. Mother Katie (Dorothy McGuire) keeps a close eye on the purse strings to ensure she can keep a roof over the head of her children: 13-year-old Francie (Peggy Ann Garner) and young Neeley (Ted Donaldson). Problem is, Katie also has a third child: her husband Johnny (James Dunn), a happy-go-lucky dreamer and “singing waiter” who is also a hopeless drunk. Johnny, with his “live-your-dreams” outlook on life, natural charm and instinctive understanding of people, is Francie’s idol. With another child on the way, and the Nolan cash reserves at breaking point, can the family hold together?

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn drips with sentimental, old-fashioned, easy-watching charm. Adapted from a best-selling novel by Betty Smith, it strips out most of the plot (which covers nearly 17 years rather than the single one featured here) and considerably waters down the original’s content. (It also, hilariously, avoids any appearance at all of the eponymous tree at the centre of the Nolan tenement block, which is cursorily referenced only twice.) Smith’s book was a semi-auto-biographical chronicle of a life of struggle survived by a daughter who flourishes, but the film is more of an optimistic fable of the triumph of family love.

It feels strange that this is the first film of Elia Kazan, who would become better known for hard-hitting, location-shot, method-tinged dramas rather than the tear-jerking charm here. Kazan was later sceptical about the film – highly critical of what he considered his overly theatrical staging, particularly of the scenes set in the Nolan home – and even at the time stated he was so unsure about what he was doing that the film was effectively co-directed by cinematographer Leon Shamroy. But Kazan’s skill with actors shines through and he invests it with a great deal of pace and emotional truth.

His main benefit is the very strong performances from Garner and Dunn in the film’s most important relationship. Both actors won Oscars (Garner the juvenile Oscar, Dunn for Best Supporting Actor) and it’s the loving meeting of hearts and minds between father and daughter that lies at the film’s heart. Francie is a young girl dedicated to education – slavishly, but obsessively, reading through the local library in alphabetical order, regardless of suitability of the books – who dreams of going to a better school and bettering her life. It’s a dream that her mother struggles to grasp – largely unable to see beyond the immediate needs of putting food on the table – but which her father understands and is desperate to support.

This bond is partly what leads to Francie’s idolising her doting dad. And Johnny is doting. He’ll do things her mother won’t dream of doing – including weaving an elaborate fantasy to win her a place at that better school. He’ll joke and laugh, sing songs and entertain her while indulging her artistic leanings. Unfortunately, he’ll also make promises to reform he won’t keep, stumble home late at night or be found, drunk in the street, having boozed away every penny he’s earned.

Dunn poured a lot of himself into this self-destructive dreamer. A vaudeville comedian who had a successful run of films with Shirley Temple in the 1930s, he had blown most of his fortune in bad investments. By the 1940s was struggling to find work with his drink problem widely known. But he was also charming, decent and kind, but seen to lack the drive to build a successful career. In effect, Johnny was a version of his own life, and Dunn not only nails Johnny’s charm but also laces the performance with a rich vein of sadness, guilt and shame, but still loved by all.

While Johnny jokes and laughs with the neighbours, Katie cleans the hallway of their tenement block to earn extra bucks and moves the family to a smaller room to save what money she can. Played with a fine line in drudgery and put-upon stress by Dorothy McGuire (in a role as thankless as Katie’s life is), Katie remains unappreciated by her daughter (who sees her as a moaner who won’t cut her father a break) and by her husband as being too obsessed with the purse-strings.

The major flaw, for me, of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is that the film falls almost as uncritically in love with Johnny as Francie. Getting older it’s hard not to see Johnny as essentially irresponsible and selfish, a well-meaning but destructive force on the family, the cause of the poverty which has made Katie crushed, dowdy and increasingly stressed and bitter. She essentially suffers everything – skipping meals, slaving over multiple jobs, saying no to every desire Francie has – while Johnny flies in, cracks jokes, says yes to everything and disappears when its time to work out how to deliver.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, however, wants to tell a sentimental story of a father-daughter bond and hasn’t got too much time for Katie – or for making Francie really face the flaws in her father and the virtues of her mother (for all the film gives mother and daughter a late reconciliation). There is something fake about this (tellingly the book gives a sharper realisation for Francie and subtly changes Johnny’s fate to make it less idealised). But all edges are shaved off here and the family divisions are bridged as easily as poverty is eventually solved. (There is also considerable watering down of the liberated lifestyle of Katie’s sister, engagingly played by Joan Blondell).

It makes for a film that’s warm, comforting and essentially light and even a little forgettable. It’s all too easy to drop off in front of it on a Sunday afternoon. Try as you might, you can’t say that about other Kazan films. A little more grit to this would have increased its impact considerably.

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

Max von Sydow carries a heavy burden in Steven’s far-from The Greatest Story Ever Told

Director: George Stevens

Cast: Max von Sydow (Jesus), Dorothy McGuire (The Virgin Mary), Charlton Heston (John the Baptist), Claude Rains (Herod the Great), José Ferrer (Herod Antipas), Telly Savalas (Pontius Pilate), Martin Landau (Caiaphas), David McCallum (Judas Iscariot), Donald Pleasance (“The Dark Hermit”), Michael Anderson Jnr (James the Less), Roddy McDowell (Matthew), Gary Raymond (Peter), Joanna Dunham (Mary Magdalene), Ed Wynn (Old Aram), Angela Lansbury (Claudia), Sal Mineo (Uriah), Sidney Poitier (Simon of Cyrene), John Wayne (Centurion)

You could make a case to prosecute The Greatest Story Ever Told under the Trade Descriptions Act. In a world where we are blessed (cursed?) with a plethora of Biblical epics, few are as long, worthy, turgid or dull as George Stevens’ misguided epic. Just like Jesus in the film is plagued by a Dark Hermit representing Satan, did Stevens have a wicked angel whispering in his ear “More wide shots George, and even more Handel’s Messiah. And yes, The Duke is natural casting for a Roman Centurion…”. The Greatest Story Ever Told has some of the worst reviews Christianity has ever had – and it’s had some bad ones.

The plot covers the whole life of the Saviour so should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a Gideon’s Bible. It was a passion project for Stevens, who spent almost five years raising the cash to bring it to the screen. When he started, the fad for self-important Biblical epics was starting to teeter. When it hit the screen, it had flat-lined. It didn’t help that The Greatest Story Ever Told was first released as an over four-hour snooze fest, laboriously paced, that managed to drain any fire or passion from one of (no matter what you believe) the most tumultuous and significant lives anyone on the planet has ever led. The film was cut down to about two hours (making it incomprehensible) and today exists as a little over three-hour epic that genuinely still feels like it’s four hours long.

Stevens gets almost nothing right here whatsoever. Self-importance permeates the entire project. The film cost $20million, double the largest amount the studio had ever spent. Ordinary storyboards were not good enough: Stevens commissioned 350 oil paintings (that’s right, an entire art gallery’s worth) to plan the picture (which probably explains why the film feels at times like a slide show of second-rate devotional imagery). The Pope was consulted on the script (wisely he didn’t take a screen credit). Stevens decided the American West made a better Holy Land than the actual Holy Land, so shot it all in Arizona, Nevada and California. It took so long to film, Joseph Schildkraut and original cinematographer William C Mellor both died while making it, while Joanna Durham (playing Mary Magdalene!) became pregnant and gave birth. Stevens shot 1,136 miles of film, enough to wrap around the Moon.

There’s something a little sad about all that effort so completely wasted. But the film is a complete dud. It’s terminally slow, not helped by its stately shooting style where the influence of all those paintings can be seen. Everything is treated with crushing import – Jesus can’t draw breath without a heavenly choir kicking in to add spiritual import to whatever he is about to say. Stevens equates grandeur with long shots so a lot of stuff happens in the widest framing possible, most ridiculously the resurrection of Lazarus which takes place in a small part of a screen consumed with a vast cliff panorama. Bizarrely, most of the miracles take place off-screen, as if Stevens worried that seeing a man walk on water, feed the five thousand or turn water into wine would stretch credulity (which surely can’t be the case for a film as genuflecting as this one).

What we get instead is Ed Wynn, Sal Mineo and Van Heflin euphorically running up a hilltop and shouting out loud the various miracles the Lamb of God has bashfully performed off-screen. Everything takes a very long time to happen and a large portion of the film is given over to a lot of Christ walking, talking at people but not really doing anything. For all the vast length, no real idea is given at all about what people were drawn to or found magnetic about Him. It’s as if Stevens is so concerned to show He was better than this world, that the film forgets to show that He was actually part of this world. Instead, we have to kept being told what a charismatic guy He is and how profound His message is: we never get to see or hear these qualities from His own lips.

For a film designed to celebrate the Greatest, the film strips out much of the awe and wonder in Him. It’s not helped by the chronic miscasting of Max von Sydow. Selected because he was a great actor who would be unfamiliar to the mid-West masses (presumably considered to be unlikely to be au fait with the work of Ingmar Bergman), von Sydow is just plain wrong for the role. His sonorous seriousness and restrained internal firmness help make the Son of God a crushing, distant bore. He’s not helped by his dialogue being entirely made-up of Bible quotes or the fact that Stevens directs him to be so stationary and granite, with much middle-distance staring, he could have been replaced with an Orthodox Icon with very little noticeable difference.

Around von Sydow, Stevens followed the norm by hiring as many star actors as possible, some of whom pop up for a few seconds. The most famous of these is of course John Wayne as the Centurion who crucifies Jesus. This cameo has entered the realms of Filmic Myth (the legendary “More Awe!”exchange). Actually, Stevens shoots Wayne with embarrassment, as if knowing getting this Western legend in is ridiculous – you can hardly spot Wayne (if you didn’t know it was him, you wouldn’t) and his line is clearly a voiceover. In a way just as egregious is Sidney Poitier’s wordless super-star appearance as Simon, distracting you from feeling the pain of Jesus’ sacrifice by saying “Oh look that’s Sidney Poitier” as he dips into frame to help carry the cross.

Of the actors who are in it long enough to make an impression, they fall into three camps: the OTT, the “staring with reverence” and the genuinely good. Of the OTT crowd, Rains and Ferrer set the bar early as various Herods but Heston steals the film as a rug-chested, manly John the Baptist, ducking heads under water in a Nevada lake, bellowing scripture to the heavens. Of the reverent, McDowell does some hard thinking as Matthew, although I have a certain fondness for Gary Raymond’s decent but chronically unreliable Peter (the scene where he bitches endlessly about a stolen cloak is possibly the only chuckle in the movie).

It’s a sad state of affairs that the Genuinely Good actors all play the Genuinely Bad characters – poor old Jesus, even in the story of his life the Devil gets all the best scenes. That’s literally true here as Donald Pleasence is head-and-shoulders best-in-show as a softly spoken, insinuating but deeply sinister “Dark Hermit” who tempts Jesus in the wilderness and then follows Him throughout the Holy Land, turning others against Him. Also good are David McCallum as a conflicted Judas, Telly Savalas as weary Pilate (he shaved his head for the role, loved the look and never went back) and Martin Landau, good value as a corrupt Caiaphas (“This will all be forgotten in a week” he signs the film off with saying).

That’s about all there is to enjoy about a film that probably did more to reduce attendance at Sunday School than the introduction of Sunday opening hours and football being played all day. A passion project from Stevens where he forgot to put any of that passion on the screen, it really is as long and boring as you heard, a film made with such reverent skill that no one seemed to have thought about stopping and saying “well, yes, but is it good?”. I doubt anyone is watching it up in Heaven.

Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

Gregory Peck takes on anti-Semitic prejudice in Gentleman’s Agreement

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Gregory Peck (Philip Schuyler Green), Dorothy McGuire (Kathy Lacey), John Garfield (Dave Goldman), Celeste Holm (Anne Dettrey), Anne Revere (Mrs Green), June Havoc (Elaine Wales), Albert Dekker (John Minify), Jane Wyatt (Jane), Dean Stockwell (Tommy Green), Sam Jaffe (Professor Fred Lieberman)

What was daring 60 years ago, often seems tame today. In 1947, Gentleman’s Agreement, an expose of anti-Semitism in America, was a potential career-ending risk for its stars. It won three Oscars, including the Big One (beating the similarly themed Crossfire, an anti-Semitic murder mystery – and better, more entertaining film). Today, Gentleman’s Agreement seems like a time capsule on celluloid: extremely earnest Hollywood movie-making at its most socially responsible – and only scratches the surface of prejudice and its dangers, capping everything with a neat happy ending.

Journalist Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck) is commissioned to write a series of expose pieces on anti-Semitism. His editor doesn’t want the “cold facts”, he wants the sort of unique “angle” that’s Green’s specialism. Phil decides to pass himself off as a Jew so he can find out what it’s really like. Only Phil’s fiancée Kathy (Dorothy McGuire) will know the truth. Phil finds out first-hand the knee-jerk prejudice and barriers Jews in New York face – something hammered home as he begins to relate to the experiences of his Jewish school-friend-turned-war-hero Dave Goldman (John Garfield). Phil starts to realise even Kathy may talk the talk of opposing prejudice, but doesn’t always walk the walk.

Gentleman’s Agreement is an extraordinarily earnest piece of film-making, that doesn’t just wear its liberal heart on its sleeve, it stretches it across its entire shirt. The plot frequently halts for someone to deliver a set-piece speech on the evils of prejudice, and Phil’s son (well played by a young Dean Stockwell) serves as an audience surrogate for Peck to fill us in on how prejudice is the enemy-within. There is no doubting, watching the film, everyone passionately believes in its importance (Garfield, a Jew born in Brooklyn, took a huge pay cut to be involved). It’s just a shame that the film itself is to flat, overburdened by its own sense of importance.

It’s as least as interesting for what it doesn’t say. There is something damning about the fact Hollywood only felt comfortable making films about anti-Semitism after the Holocaust. A Jewish character objects to the Phil’s article with the standard line used by Hollywood Jewish studio owners – drawing attention to it only makes the problem worse (remember all references to Jewishness was removed from The Life of Emile Zola). Additionally, there are only passing references (if that) to sexism or any other form of racism or prejudice, and virtually every character we see is white, WASPY and middle-class. Hollywood could only handle one prejudice at a time, apparently.

Gentleman’s Agreement is strong on the everyday nature of prejudice – off-hand remarks about money and facial characteristics, a character protesting “that some of my best friends…” and so on. But, considering it was made in the shadow of one of the worst racially-motivated atrocities in history (the closest reference to the Holocaust is Peck refering to anti-Semitism being not just happening “far away in some dark place with low-class morons”), the film could (and should) have gone further on the dangers of prejudice. Saying that, this was still a big step for Hollywood. And while the film frequently appears preachy, po-faced and stodgy today, it was still a brave piece of film-making, even if it’s gingerly taking kid-steps towards confronting a problem.

Phil’s investigation of anti-Semitism is unfocused and vague. He speaks to only three Jews – a schoolfriend, an atheist Einstein figure (played by Sam Jaffe) he bumps into at a dinner party, and a secretary ashamed of her heritage who despises “the wrong sort” of Jew. Never once do we see him go to a Synagogue, visit a Jewish community or step outside the bounds of his world of country clubs, posh hotels and gated communities. The story may be about how prejudice exists in places we wouldn’t expect, but a film on anti-Jewish prejudice really should have a place in it for more than this, rather than Jewishness being a label Phil puts on and shrugs off later with a “ta da, gotcha!”

The film’s heart is in showing how “someone like us” could be prejudiced, sometimes without even realising it. Phil’s fiancée Kathy (a decent performance in a thankless part by Dorothy McGuire) turns out to have more than a few anti-Semitic bones in her body. Kathy is the classic liberal, believing every word of her own press about equal opportunities, while quietly urging people to fit in and be like her (gentile) friends. The film slowly exposes Kathy’s subconscious unease, her willingness to accept certain inequalities to avoid confronting the status quo. Watching today, it’s hard not to see Kathy as a pretty dreadful, hypocritical person. But while Gentleman’s Agreement wants to shake us, it still wants a happy ending – so she repents and learns her lesson.

It’s a shame, as this rather dull love plot is the film’s weakest thread. Far more interesting would have been seeing Phil actually out in the real world (Kazan’s immersive location shooting, which he used for Panic on the Streets and On the Waterfront, would have improved this film ten-fold). It’s also unfortunate Phil’s colleague Anne (played with Oscar-winning charisma by Celeste Holm) not only seems better suited to Phil, but a much nicer, braver person – it’s hard not to watch the whole film rooting for Phil to dump the tiresome Kathy for the engaging Anne.

Gentleman’s Agreement’s study of prejudice seems very tame, but its heart is in the right place. For even tackling the issue it deserves praise, even if it’s rather stunted dramatically. Kazan’s direction is as earnest (and at times lifeless) as the film, but he does fine work with actors. Peck is at his most morally certain, with a great sense of affronted liberalism, McGuire is very good, Garfield wonderfully humane, Holm marvellous, Anne Revere excellent as Phil’s drily witty mum. A braver film could (and should) have been made – and Crossfire makes all the same points, but quicker and with a lot more dramatic interest. Gentleman’s Agreement sometimes feels like a rather self-important bore at a dinner party, but at least you know it has conviction and means well.