Jessie Ralph – Movie Musings

Charismatic stars and a well-oiled Hollywood plot lead into an highly effective disaster movie

Director: W.S. Van Dyke

Cast: Clark Gable (“Blackie” Norton) Jeanette MacDonald (Mary Blake), Spencer Tracy (Father Tim Mullin), Jack Holt (Jack Burley), Jessie Ralph (Mrs Burley), Ted Healy (Mat), Shirley Ross (Trixie), Margaret Irving (Della Bailey), Harold Huber (Babe)

With San Francisco, Hollywood stumbled on a formula that was a sure-fire success: a romantic triangle comes to head in the face of a natural disaster with buildings tumbling. Love and disasters – who doesn’t love that? San Francisco is set in the build up to the 1906 earthquake that left over two thirds of the city in ruins and over 3,000 people dead. How’s that for focusing minds onto what really matters: who you really love and, of course, faith in a higher power.

“Blackie” Norton (Clark Gable) is a lovable rogue, a saloon owner on San Francisco’s rough-and-ready Barbary Coast. His love for a good time doesn’t stop him being best friends with Father Tim Mullin (Spencer Tracy), a man’s man whose heart is with the Church. Blackie hires knock-out soprano singer Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) for his saloon, but can’t wrap his head around the fact that she’s meant for classier things (like San Francisco’s opera house) than a life singing for his rowdy crowds. Of course they fall in love. Blackie is holding Mary back (without fully realising it) and she finds a new patron (and suitor) in stuffed-shirt rich-man Jack Burley (Jack Holt). All these romantic problems are suddenly dwarfed by that earthquake.

Like all disaster films, San Francisco starts with a high-blown melodrama before becoming a special effects laden epic. Much of the first 90 minutes revolves around an engagingly played familiar pair of formulas. We have a story of two old rough-and-tumble childhood friends – inevitably one who chose a life of the cloth, the other of rowdy pleasure – whose friendship struggles under the weight of conflicting principles. And we also get a love triangle where a woman is torn between two suitors – one a rogueish chancer who doesn’t understand her dreams, the other a selfish dull rich guy who offers her those dreams at a price. This is classic Hollywood stuff.

To deliver it, three popular stars go through their paces to audience pleasing effect. Clark Gable brings his customary suave charm and naughty grin to make Blackie (who in other hands could come across as a myopic, selfish sleazeball) into someone fairly endearing. Of course, it’s helped that the plot makes clear Blackie may appear to be a boozy saloon owner, but actually he has a heart of pure gold: he buys an organ for the local church, gives money to orphans and is running for office to improve the city’s fire safety. He’s easily the most polite, decent and upstanding bad boy you’ll see – and he’s even completely faithful to the woman he loves. He may say God is for ‘suckers’, but it’s not going to be a long journey to reform him into someone worthy of a good woman.

And he’s also honest in his love for Jeanette MacDonald’s Mary, trying to give her what he thinks she wants. Blinded by his three ‘Chicken Ball’ trophies for ‘artistic achievement’, he genuinely can’t see the difference between Mary performing Faust and dressing her up in the shortest skirt imaginable (as he tells her, good legs sell) to sing for hundreds of drunken punters. Poor Mary feels obliged to give up her dream to return for this nonsense, until good old Father Tim points out Blackie is accidentally behaving like a cad. Enter Jack Burley as alternative: just to make sure we know it’s the wrong choice, he’s played as un-charismatically as possible by Jack Holt and uses his money to get everyone to follow his orders, exactly the sort of ‘Nob Hill’ crook Blackie rails against.

With Jeanette MacDonald – who is perhaps a little too coy and bashful for today’s taste – we also get an awful lot of singing, from opera to hymns to several renditions of ‘San Francisco’. This went down like a storm at the time, but is probably a bit too much to take now. MacDonald actually has the duller, less engaging role, constantly changing her mind between her various career and romantic options, although she does a nice line in awkward uncomfortableness when accommodating herself to Blackie’s wishes rather than her own (not least in her body language when dressed up in that slutty showgirl costume that Blackie thinks is a compliment).

Surprisingly Spencer Tracy then landed an Oscar nomination (the shortest ever leading performance nominated), but he nails the muscular Christianity of Tim, the boxing priest. Tracy’s main role is dispensing advice and guidance to Gable and MacDonald, full of shrewd wisdom mixed with firm stares of moral judgement. Tracy plays the role very lightly, never making Tim priggish even at his most righteous. A confrontation which sees a frustrated Gable smack him in the mouth, is a classic Tracy moment: a steely eyed glare dripping with disappointment, but still he refuses to react (the film throws in an early boxing scene between the two, where Tracy easily bests Gable, to confirm he certainly ain’t scared of his co-lead!)

The various smoothly handled formula leads perfectly into the earthquake. You can’t deny this is hugely impressive sequence. The scale, using super-imposition and enormous sets, is truly stunning: buildings topple in flames, fires rip through houses, crowds run in panic through debris-packed streets. A ballroom crumbles before our eyes: the roof cracking, the wall falling down (Gable is nearly crushed by a wall), a staircase balcony collapsing.

Clearly someone on the MGM lot spent a bit of time watching Battleship Potemkin. The first wave takes Soviet cinematic montage inspiration to the max. Tight reaction cuts to horrified faces are intermixed with tumbling walls and buildings. A statue is seen, seemingly starring down in horror, before a cut to it cracking and then a shot of the head roiling downwards on the floor. A carriage wheel spins in the streets in close-up as debris falls around it. This sequence feels visceral and intense, a real stand-out moment. A second wave picks up the baton with a street literally tearing itself in two, flames licking up from a burst gas main. Buildings are dynamited as fire breaks. And through the aftermath, Gable stumbles blooded and torn and genuinely looking lost and afraid, terrified that he has lost the woman he loves in the conflagration.

It brings a real energy and punch to an entertaining plot-boiler relying on the chemistry and charisma of its stars. San Francisco ends with a tribute to the endurance of the American Spirit (not to mention, of course, Gable completing his reformation into a man of God), as all races and creeds are bought together with the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ as they march towards a city reborn in superimposed imagery. With all that is it any wonder it was a box office smash?

Frank Lawton, WC Fields and Roland Young bring Dickens to life in David Copperfield

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Freddie Bartholomew (Young David Copperfield), Frank Lawston (Old David Copperfield), Edna May Oliver (Betsey Trotwood), Elizabeth Allan (Clara Copperfield), Jessie Ralph (Peggotty), Basil Rathbone (Mr Murdstone), Herbert Mundin (Barkis), Jack Buckler (Ham Peggotty), Una O’Connor (Mrs Gummidge), Lionel Barrymore (Daniel Peggotty), Violet Kmeple Cooper (Jane Murdstone), Elsa Lanchester (Clickett), Jean Cadell (Emma Micawber), WC Fields (Wilkins Micawber), Lennox Pawle (Mr Dick), Lewis Stone (Mr Wickfield), Roland Young (Uriah Heap), Madge Evans (Agnes Wickfield), Hugh Williams (James Steerforth), Maureen O’Sullivan (Dora Spenlow)

You could argue David Copperfield is one of the most influential films ever made. David O Selznick was desperate to bring Dickens’ favourite novel to the screen. But the MGM suits were convinced it couldn’t be done (800 pages in two hours?! Get out of town!) and anyway who would want to come to the cinema when they could read the book at home? They were wrong, wrong, wrong and Selznick proved that classic literature (even if it was a cut-down version of a great book) could be bought to the screen and capture at much of the spirit of the book, even if you couldn’t dramatise all the events. David Copperfield remains very entertaining, not least because it also showed you can’t go to far wrong when you assemble an all-star cast who fit their characters perfectly.

The story of the film pretty much follows the novel (with exceptions, deletions and abridgements). Young David Copperfield (Freddie Bartholomew, growing up into Frank Lawton at the half-way point) grows up loved by his mother (Elizabeth Allan) and nurse Peggotty (Jessie Ralph), but loathed by his step-father Mr Murdstone (Basil Rathbone) who barely waits five minutes after his mother passes away before dispatching David to a factory in London. There David forms a bond with the charming exuberant Mr Micawber (WC Fields) before deciding to walk to Canterbury to seek the protection of his aunt Betsey (Edna May Oliver). Growing into a young man, he faces romantic problems, the schemes of the vile Uriah Heap (Roland Young) and the betrayals of his schoolfriend Steerforth (Hugh Williams). Will all turn out well?

Stylistically, David Copperfield aims to be as true to the novel as impossible. It’s designed to look as much as possible like a series of Phiz sketches bought to life and the actors have clearly studied both novel and illustrations to craft themselves as much as possible into living, breathing representations of their characters. Well scripted by Hugh Walpole (who also cameos early on as a Vicar), the film manages to be faithful without being reverential and tells an engaging story with momentum – even if the pace accelerates a little too much towards the end.

Walpole’s adaptation splits the book into two acts: the childhood of our hero and his life as young man. Giving an idea of how the momentum accelerates towards the end, this basically means the first hour of the film covers the novel’s opening 200 pages, leaving the last hour to hurry through the remaining 600. This means several characters and events are deleted, simplified or removed. However, Walpole still manages to retain all the truly vital information and iconic material, and recognises most of the striking material is found in that first 200 pages.

This childhood story is very well told, partially because Freddie Bartholomew (while he has touches of school play about him) is an affecting and endearing actor, who makes the young David a kid we care about rather than either an insufferable goodie-two-shoes or a syrupy brat. He’s a smart, kind, slightly fragile boy who we end up caring about – and it gives a real emotional impact when his mother dies (a very tender Elizabeth Allan) or to see him misused by Mr Murdstone (a perfectly judged performance of austere coldness by Basil Rathbone). Little touches of joy in his life – like the time he spends at the Peggotty’s converted ship home (a perfect representation of its description in the book) are really heartwarming, because David himself is such an endearing fellow.

It does create an obstacle for Frank Lawton when he takes over, since the audience is asked to try and bond with this new actor having already committed their hearts for just over half the run time to another. Lawton also has to deal with scenes rushing towards the conclusion rather than getting character beats like Bartholomew. Cuts impact his key relations: his school friendship with Steerforth is relayed second hand, meaning Steerforth turns up only to almost instantly let everyone down; Dora Spenlow and Agnes Wickfield get only brief screen time to establish their characters. The schemes of Uriah Heap are barely explained (he’s just a hypocritical wrong ‘un, okay?). It says a lot that the last fifteen minutes rush through the deaths of three major characters, a shipwreck, a dramatic confrontation, David travelling the world and a resolution of romantic tensions. It’s the only point when the film feels like its ticking boxes.

But it doesn’t completely matter (even if a two-part film would have helped no end – particularly allowing Lawton more room to develop a character) since the performances are so good. Expertly marshalled by Cukor – who rarely introduces visual flair, but coaches pin-perfect turns from the entire cast – every role is cast to perfection. None more so than WC Fields, for whom Wilkins Micawber became a signature part. Replacing Charles Laughton mid-filming (he claimed he looked more like he was about to molest the boy), Fields keeps his own accent and some of his own persona, but still fits perfectly into the Dickensian larger-than-life optimism and good will of Micawber. His comic timing is spot-on – watch him climbing over a roof or bantering with David and his family – and he seems like he has just walked off the page. If there had been a Supporting Actor Oscar in 1935, he would almost certainly have won it.

He’s the stand-out of a host of excellent performances. Edna May Oliver is very funny and has a more than a touch of genuine emotion as Betsey Trotwood. Jessie Ralph is excellent as Peggotty. Lennox Pawle makes a very sweet Mr Dick. Roland Young is the very picture of unctuous hypocrisy as Uriah Heap. Only the young women get a little short-changed: despite her best efforts, Madge Evans can’t make Agnes Wickfield interesting and Maureen O’Sullivan is rather cloying as Dora.

But the film itself is pretty much spot-on for the tone of Dickens, even if events are rushed. The impact of the Peggotty/Steerforth story is lost since we are never given the time to get to know any of the parties involved, and certain plot complexities are only thinly sketched out. But Cukor marshals the actors perfectly and throws in at least one striking shot, of Murdstone appearing in the distance as the camera follows a cart bearing David away from his mother. It always looks just right and the characters that do get the time are perfectly played, so much so that a few performances (Fields, Oliver, Young) may even be definitive.

David Copperfield proved you could turn a doorstop novel into a film and, even if you sacrificed some of the complexities (and might need to rush to fit it all in) you could still produce something that felt recognisable and true to the original. So, for that – with the mountain of adaptations that followed – we have a lot to thank it for.