James Craig – Movie Musings

Odd romantic fable, with a star-turn, that doesn’t seem to fully realise how judgemental and puritanical it is

Director: Sam Wood

Cast: Ginger Rogers (Kitty Foyle), Dennis Morgan (Wynnewood Strafford), James Craig (Dr Mark Eisen), Eduardo Ciannelli (Giono), Ernest Cossart (Pop), Gladys Cooper (Mrs Strafford), Odette Myrtil (Delphine Detaille), Mary Treen (Pat), KT Stevens (Molly)

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did…[but] backwards and in high heels”. So goes the famous quote about the famed dance pairing. But Ginger Rogers also did something Fred Astaire never did: she won an Oscar. That was Best Actress for Kitty Foyle, a reminder that Rogers was the girl-next-door who was a fine actor, accomplished dancer and natural comedienne. Rogers is great in Kitty Foyle, an otherwise fairly average, at times painfully dated ‘women’s picture’ where flashes of wit conceal character flaws the film is unaware of and a series of frequently depressing messages about love and women’s choices.

In the early 1930s, Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) is a young Philadelphia woman enjoying the opportunities the new world of emancipation gives her. Working as a secretary for a small magazine, she and its editor Wynnewood Strafford IV (Dennis Morgan) fall in love – but he lacks the courage to propose to a woman far below his family’s social standing. Moving to New York, Kitty works in a fashionable department store and meets with Dr Mark Eisen (James Craig). The two begin a tentative relationship – until Wyn returns and proposes, which Kitty eagerly accepts.

However, since the film plays out in flashback from 1939, we already know the Wyn-Kitty marriage is doomed to divorce since Wyn is re-married (with a kid!). Indeed, we’ll learn Kitty left her marriage because she felt the social differences between her and Wyn were insurmountable, in her (secretly) divorced state becoming engaged to Dr Mark. Kitty Foyle plays out a cliffhanger question: which of these two men will Kitty choose? Of course, there is zero tension in this decision – is there any chance at all that in a Production Code film, Kitty will choose a rich married family man over a hard-working doctor who we are introduced to tending to the poor of New York gratis?

Nevertheless, Kitty Foyle is structed through a series of snow globe-inspired flashbacks, narrated by Kitty’s reflection (who objects to herself being tempted by Wyn’s offer – hammering home the implicit moral judgement the film soaks in, even Kitty’s reflection thinks she’s a hussy). These snow-globe framed flashbacks are one of the most interesting things about Kitty Foyle today – largely because, if you think of 40’s snow globe flashback films your mind immediately turns to Citizen Kane (both from RKO!). It’s hard not to wonder if Orson Welles and/or Herman J. Mankiewicz remembered the device when they put their script together?

The other most interesting thing about Kitty Foyle is that neither Kitty nor the film can even pretend to raise much interest in its Code-approved romantic figure, Dr Mark. Fair enough, since Dr Mark is a crushing prig and self-important bore. Played with a humour-free smugness by James Craig, he’s the sort of guy who enjoys sitting on buses passing superior medical opinions about those around him. On his first date with Kitty, he unilaterally cancels a dinner to sit at home and play cards – which he later reveals was a moral test for all his first dates to see whether a potential partner is a gold-digger (it’s amazing he’s single). We get very little sense he is remotely interested in the real Kitty, instead preferring an idealised version of her as a potential assistant-in-all-but-name. In nearly every sense, he’s is the sort of stuffy, self-important, worthy man most comedies of the era saw the heroine’s apologetically jilt to enjoy true love with Cary-Grant.

Of course, Wyn is no Cary Grant. Played by Dennis Morgan with a wonderful sense of shallowness, he’s far too easily-led behind his charm for that. Wyn is a weak man, who struggles to take responsibility for (or make) his own choices. That doesn’t change the fact that Kitty has a passion for him she never once raises for Dr Mark. Kitty Foyle essentially agues his weakness and social status as the scion of a banking family (he is, we are not allowed to forget, the third man to bear the name Wynnewood Stafford), could never make him an appropriate match for the reassuringly middle-class Kitty.

There is a real inverted snobbery around Kitty Foyle, where the upper-classes of Philadelphia (represented, among others, by Gladys Cooper as Wyn’s imperious mother) can only-just-about suppress their discomfort about Kitty’s lower standing. (Their suggestion, when presented with the fait accompli of Kitty-Wyn’s marriage is to suggest Kitty attends a finishing school). Saying that, the family don’t object to the marriage and (in their own way) their suggestions are based around helping Kitty. The two-way snobbery is neither they nor Kitty can imagine a middle-ground: she is just as adamant she will not change anything about herself, as they can’t imagine accommodating her middle-class interests. The film wants us to blame Wyn for his upper-class background and spreads a depressing message that the classes should never mix.

Brutal assumptions people make about each other are at the heart of Kitty Foyle – and the film has absolutely no idea about this. The film never once questions the character flaws of certainty that lead Kitty, Wyn and Mark to all reach (false) conclusions about others. Kitty brutally decides, no matter what Wyn says, that she will divorce him because she doesn’t believe he will give him his wealth. And maybe she’s right – but she never asks him and makes a series of selfish decisions about their life that he has every right to be at least involved in. Kitty Foyle sees absolutely no issue with this, which you can bet its bottom dollar it would if the shoe was on the other foot. The is probably the only romance from Hollywood’s golden age that condemns true love in favour of cold-headed pragmatism and sensible (not passionate) choices.

All of this doesn’t mean that Ginger Rogers isn’t very good, as she carries virtually single-handedly the whole film. Kitty is feisty, determined, smart, shrewd, funny and brave. It gives her opportunities for light comedy and serious emotions. She’s very funny in comedy sequences, such as Kitty’s accidental pressing of the burglar alarm rather than stock room button on her first day on the job in a New York department store (I blame the woeful design flaw in putting these poorly-labelled buttons right next to each other!). But she’s also quietly heart-breaking in the film’s final segment where she faces a series of painful events. Rogers invests these with a quietly melancholic sadness laced with real dignity. It’s a fine performance that lifts an otherwise mediocre film.

It’s also a mediocre film that opens with a jaw-droppingly anti-feminist sequence to explain why girls are working. A series of silent flashbacks play out in silent-film-style dumb-show openly mocking suffragettes and the misguided passions of women for freedom that took them away from a live of ease being looked after by doting husbands. The whole point seems to be how unwise they were to fight to be foisted into a world of hard work and not being given a seat automatically on public transportation. It left me wondering how far into this script Katherine Hepburn got before she turned it down?

The Devil sure knows how to tempt a man in this beautifully filmed morality tale

Director: William Dieterle

Cast: Walter Huston (Mr Scratch), Edward Arnold (Daniel Webster), James Craig (Jabez Stone), Anne Shirley (Mary Stone), Jane Darwell (Ma Stone), Simone Simon (Belle), Gene Lockhart (Squire Slossum), John Qualen (Miser Stevens), HB Warner (Judge Hawthorne)

Sometimes life can be a real struggle. With debts, failed crops and animals getting sick, what’s a guy to do? That’s the problem New Hampshire farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) has in 1840. What he wouldn’t give to find a bundle of buried gold that could solve all his problems. Fortunately, charming old rogue Mr Scratch (Walter Huston) knows exactly where to find one – all he wants in return is for Jabez to sign away his soul seven years from now (signed in blood of course). Jabez gets fortune, prestige, the son he always wanted – but when ‘Mr Scratch’ comes to collect, can Jabez’s friend, famed orator, lawyer and congressmen Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) save his soul?

All That Money Can Buy is a richly atmospheric piece of film-making from William Dieterle, adapted from Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story and full of gorgeously filmed light-and-shadow with a haunting score by Bernard Herrmann. (The story was originally titled The Devil and Daniel Webster, also the film’s original title before RKO changed it to avoid confusion with their more successful Jean Arthur comedy The Devil and Miss Jones.) It’s a neat morality tale, full of dark delight at the devilish ingenuity of Mr Scratch, with lots of dark enjoyment at seeing a weak-but-decent man corrupted into being exactly the type of greedy, cheating cad to whom he was deeply in debt to from the beginning.

It’s nominally about James Craig’s Jabez Stone, but Jabez is a shallow, easily manipulated passenger in his own life, pushed and pulled towards and away from sin depending on who he’s talking to. Stone’s fall is swift: moments after meeting Scratch, he’s digging hungrily into a meal while his wife and mother say grace, hugging his newfound bag of gold. As his wealth goes, he drifts from his pure wife (Anne Shirley, effective in a dull part) becoming easy prey for demonic (literally) temptress Belle (a wonderfully seductive Simone Simon). By the time the seven years are up, he’s skipping church for illicit card games and crushing the farms of his neighbours to fund his dreamhouse-on-a-hill.

Stone is really the Macguffin here. The real focus is the big-name rivals: The Devil and Daniel Webster. It’s implied these two have fought a long-running battle for years: our introduction to Webster sees him scribbling literally in the shadow of Mr Scratch, who whispers to him tempting offers of high office. Later Webster is unflustered when Scratch suddenly appears to place a coat on his shoulders, treating him as familiar rival. You could argue Scratch is only prowling the streets of New Hampshire because he’s looking for a way to nail the soul of his real target, Daniel Webster.

As Mr Scratch, the film has a delightful (Oscar-nominated) performance from Walter Huston. With his scruffy clothes and twirling his cane, Scratch pops up everywhere with Huston’s devilish smile. It’s a masterclass in insinuating, playful malevolence, with Huston playing this larger-than-life character in a surprisingly low-key way that nevertheless sees him overflowing with delight at his own wickedness. Huston has the trick of making Scratch sound like someone trying to sound sincere, while never leaving us in doubt that everything he says is a trap or lie, only showing his arrogance and cruelty when victory is in his grasp. It’s a fabulous performance, charismatic and wicked.

Edward Arnold makes Daniel Webster both a grand man of principle and a consummate politician, proud of his reputation and all the more open to temptation for it. He also has the absolute assurance of a man used to getting his own way, and the arrogance of seeing himself as an equal to the Devil rather than a target. These two form the ends of a push-me-pull-me rivalry.

The rivalry culminates in its famous ‘courtroom’ scene, as Webster – a little the worse for drink –argues for Jabez’s soul in front of a ghostly court of American sinners from the bowels of hell (lead among them Benedict Arnold). Its shot in atmospheric smoke, with the double exposure creating a ghostly effect for jury and judge. It’s another excellent touch in a film full of inventive use of effects and camerawork, Dieterle at the height of his German influences. The artificial New Hampshire scenery is shot with a sun-kissed beauty that bears Murnau’s mark. Striking lighting and smoke-play abounds in Joseph H August’s camerawork, not least Belle’s introduction backlit with an extraordinarily bright fire. Early scenes of Stone’s misfortune interrupted by a brief frames of a photo-negative Scratch laughing, quite the chillingly surrealist effect.

Politically, All That Money Can Buy backs away from any overt criticism of Webster’s support for the Missouri Compromise (this key piece of slavery protection legislation is so key to Webster’s view of American strength he’s even named a horse after it). But it’s quite brave for 1941 in allowing the Devil legitimate criticism of America’s ‘original sins’ saying he was there driving on the seizing of the land from the Native Americans and up on deck on the first slave ship from the Congo. (Especially as Webster can’t defend these actions). It’s also interesting that the film praises collectivism for the farmers over rugged individualism, a conclusion it’s hard to imagine being praised a few years later.

All That Money Can Buy is also filled with impressive practical effects, not least Scatch’s impossible catching of an axe thrown towards him, bursting it into frame. Both Scratch and Bell reduce papers to flaming ashes with a flick of the wrist. Horribly woozy soft-focus camera work accompanies Jabez’s nightmare visions of the damned. It’s tightly and skilfully edited, superbly paced, with montages used effectively for transitions (a field of corn growing is particularly striking) and wildly unnerving sequences, like Scratch’s fast-paced barn-dance with its whirligig of movement and repeated shots. It’s all brilliantly scored by Herrmann, from the pastoral beats of New Hampshire to the discordant sounds (some created from telephone wires) that accompany Scratch.

All That Money Can Buy concludes with a stand-out speech from Webster that perhaps settles matters a little too easily – and brushes away any of the film’s mild criticism of America’s past with a relentlessly upbeat patriotic message. But the journey there – and the performances from a superb Huston and excellent Arnold – is masterfully assembled by a crack production team working under a director at the height of his powers. A flop at the time, few films deserve rediscovery more.