Category Archives: 1943

Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Heaven Can Wait
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Written by Samson Raphaelson from a play by Leslie Bush-Fekete
1943/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] His Excellency: If you meet our requirements, we’ll be only too glad to accomodate you. Uh, would you be good enough to mention, for instance, some outstanding crime you’ve committed?

Henry Van Cleve: Crime? Crime? I’m afraid I can’t think of any, but I can safely say my whole life was one continuous misdemeanor.[/box]

This story of a married man with a weakness for the ladies is notable for its lavish production values and the Lubitsch touch.

When he dies, Henry van Cleve (Don Ameche), who considers himself to have been a wicked roué, reports directly to Hell.  The Devil (Laird Cregar) is not entirely convinced he is in the right place and asks him to tell his story.  Segue into flashback.

Henry was a scamp of a boy, clearly taking after his waggish grandfather (Charles Coburn) and is a constant amazement to his doting mother (Spring Byington) and straight-laced father (Louis Calhern).  As a young man, Henry has his parents wrapped around his little finger, cadging $100 loans every day so he can live the high life and entertain chorus girls. Then he sees the lovely Martha (Gene Tierney) on a street, tries to woo her in a book store, and decides to locate and win her.  Finding her again works out to be easy as his stuffy cousin Albert (Allyn Joslyn) introduces her as his fiancee at his birthday parting that evening along with her feuding parents (Eugene Palette and Marjorie Main).  The naughty, romantic Henry sweeps her off her feet, though, and elopes with her that very evening.

The rest of the movie follows the ups and downs of their mostly happy married life as Martha learns to look at Henry’s various indiscretions with tolerance and humor.  Then she dies shortly after their 25th anniversary and Henry resumes his career as a stage-door Johnny in his later years.   Are Henry’s sins enough to earn him a place in Hell?

As usual, Charles Coburn is the highlight of this movie and some of the zest goes out of it when he (and Martha’s parents) leave it about two-thirds of the way through.  Ameche is appealing, though, and Tierney looks good enough to be a proper object of life-long adoration.  The gay nineties sets and costumes are amazing, especially considering this was made under wartime restrictions.  Fox must have been able to get good value out of its existing sets.  Lubitsch keeps everything light and fun.

Heaven Can Wait was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography, Color (Edward Cronjager).  I don’t see how it missed at least a nod for its Art Direction.

Clip – final eight minutes of movie

 

So Proudly We Hail (1943)

So Proudly We Hail
Directed by Mark Sandrich
Written by Allan Scott
1943/USA
Paramount Pictures

Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Kansas: I never get killed.[/box]

Uneven but ultimately powerful movie about the loves, work, and sacrifices of nurses near the front lines in the last days of Bataan and Corregidor.

As the movie begins, we see a group of nurses being unloaded from a plane in Australia. Looking tired and broken, they are one of the last groups of people to be evacuated by the military from Corregidor.  Among their number, Lt. Janet ‘Davy’ Davidson (Claudette Colbert) is carried out on a stretcher.  The group heads home by ship.  The rest of the nurses are soon fixed up with some food and rest but Davy remains essentially catatonic. The navy doctor asks the nurses to tell their story so he can get some insight into how to treat her.  Segue into flashback with voice over narration largely from Lt. Joan O’Doul (Paulette Godard).

The nurses were scheduled to go to Pearl Harbor by ship but the Japanese attacked midway en route so they got shipped to Bataan instead.  Davy was the senior officer of her group.  Nurse Olivia D’Arcy (Veronica Lake) is a sullen problem child whom no one likes. Davy finally gets her to open up and tell her story.  It turns out she witnessed her fiancé’s death at Pearl Harbor and now is going to the Philippines specifically to “kill Japs”.  She becomes much more friendly after her secret is out.

The nurses get down to long shifts of work at Bataan.  At first this is done at a hospital, but later they work right in the jungle or in makeshift quarters.  They struggle with short rations and dwindling medical supplies.  Then they are bombed and the U.S. is pushed off Bataan onto Corregidor.  The only reason the nurses manage to escape is due to the heroic act of one of them.

On Corregidor, the nurses are slightly safer due to the massive tunnels that the military previously constructed on the island base but the supply problem and overcrowding of the wards continues.  Finally they learn that no relief is coming and that MacArthur has left for Australia.  Our nurses are in the first, and almost the last, group to get evacuated amid horrific shelling.

The romances of Davy with a medical technician (George Reeves) and Joan with an enlisted marine (Sonny Tufts) are important running sub-plots.

 

Those that don’t like rather corny patriotic speeches should know going in that there are several of them, mostly coming in a religious context from the Chaplin.  The romances are rather routine stuff, though heightened by the dangerous situation.  The scenes showing the camaraderie and tireless work of the nurses and the combat scenes are really gripping, however. It’s like a window into another world and a beautiful tribute to some courageous women who face terrifying conditions, unarmed and with tremendous responsibility for the lives of other, largely helpless, people.  The acting is excellent across the board. Veronica Lake gives, by far, the standout performance of her career in this film.  Recommended.

So Proudly We Hail was nominated for Oscars in the following categories:  Best Supporting Actress (Goddard); Best Writing, Original Screenplay; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Charles Lang); and Best Effects, Special Effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XmzggLzLTA

Trailer

Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

Hangmen Also Die!
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Fritz Lang, Berthold Brecht, and John Wexley
1943/USA
Arnold Pressburger Films

Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant Video

 

[box] Czech Patriot: Your mothers were slimy rats! Their milk was sewer water![/box]

Lang and Brecht bring their special understanding of and hatred for Nazis and their genius to this exciting thriller about the Czech resistance.  Although the story kind of gets away from them in the last act, this is a compelling and beautifully shot movie.

The story is a fictional account of the real-life assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters.

Masha Novotny (Anna Lee) is quietly buying some turnips when she sees a man scurrying through the street.  Some Gestapo officers question her and she points them in the wrong direction.  So begins a nightmare for her entire family and the city of Prague.  The man, who calls himself Karel Vanek, (Brian Donlevy) has just assassinated Heydrich, better known to the Czech populace as The Hangman.  “Vanek”, who has nowhere else to hide, makes his way to Masha’s apartment with roses saying he met Masha at the symphony.  It is turning curfew and, being careful not to ask any questions, Masha’s father Stephen (Walter Brennan), a prominent history scholar, invites Vanek to stay the night.

The next day, the Gestapo rounds up 400 hostages, saying that it will execute ten per day until the assassin is caught.  Stephen is caught up in this net.  Masha puts some remarks Vanek made together and locates him in his real identity, Dr. Franticheck Svoboda, a surgeon at the hospital.  She castigates him for not giving himself up.  She is so outraged that she goes to the Gestapo to try to get her father out of jail by revealing Svoboda as the assassin.  The things she witnesses at Gestapo Headquarters, however, cause her to make a vain attempt to flee.  Now she is well and truly in the soup as crafty Gestapo investigator Gruber gradually begins suspecting her and her family’s connection with the case.

Patriotism wins out and Masha starts assisting Svoboda in his cat and mouse game with the authorities.  In the meantime, we get a subplot about the Czech resistance cell Svoboda works with and Gestapo informer Emil Czaka (Gene Lockart).  The third act deals with an elaborate resistance plot to eliminate Czaka and free the hostages in one masterful stroke.  With Dennis O’Keefe as Masha’s fiancé and a score of fantastic character actors, many of them foreign born.

Lang’s Nazis are anything but stupid, a refreshing change from other patriotic movies of the period.  They are piggish, thuggish, and merciless, though.  They don’t even have to talk. The way Lang shoots them tells the whole story.  The plot, which unfortunately gets more and more incredible toward the end, never stops being suspenseful.  The tension in the first part gets almost unbearable in places.   The performances are all top-notch.  Donlevy is wonderful and the supporting players are even better.  Walter Brennan plays his part without tics and lends a quiet dignity to the proceedings.  The look of film is enhanced by the beautiful lighting of James Wong Howe.  Highly recommended.

Some might say that this is “propaganda”.  Given the life-and-death struggle for survival that was going on at the time, I am prepared to cut the patriotic impulses of filmmakers a lot of slack.  The recently restored print looks fantastic.

Hangmen Also Die! was nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Sound, Recording and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Hanns Eisler)

Trailer

Old Acquaintance (1943)

Old Acquaintance
Directed by Vincent Sherman
Written by John Van Druten and Lenore J. Coffee from a play by Van Druten
1943/USA
Warner Bros
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Kit Marlowe: It’s late, and I’m very, very tired of youth and love and self-sacrifice.[/box]

Compared to Miriam Hopkins, Bette Davis looks like a method actress.

Kit Marlow (Davis) and Millie Drake (Hopkins) have been best friends since childhood, though one would be hard pressed to explain why.  As the movie opens, Kit, a young “literary” novelist, visits the newly married Millie.  We find out that Millie is also expecting a baby.  Millie swiftly shows off her personality by throwing tantrums whenever she doesn’t get her way.  Kit, who knows her well, can make the tears go away merely by saying she envies her something.  Millie’s hen-pecked husband Preston (John Loder) takes a liking to Kit right away.  Millie gives Kit her first manuscript, a romance novel, to read.  As the story proceeds, we will see that Kit will get the critical acclaim but Millie will be the one who gets rich from her writing.

The years pass.  Kit becomes a friend and companion to Millie’s daughter Deirdre, whose mother has no time for her.  Preston falls in love with Kit and she with him but she is too loyal a friend to even listen to Preston’s declarations.  Preston gets enough of catering to Millie’s self-centered lifestyle and leaves her.

More years pass.  Kit is having a romance with a younger man (Gig Young).  Diedre is interested in him too.  I think most readers will see where this is going.

It is worth seeing this movie just to witness the much-anthologized clip of Davis shaking Hopkins in its proper context.   It is really satisfying to see this after spending most of the story wanting to shake, or slap, Hopkins oneself.  Millie is supposed to be a self-dramatizing, skittish, bigger-than-life character and Hopkins milks every last bit of juice out of it, bordering on camp.  Davis on the other hand is in her self-sacrificing career-girl mode, and quite natural for her.  It is fascinating to see her change as her character ages throughout the movie.

The Warner Home Video DVD I watched had an excellent commentary by director Vincent Sherman and a Davis biographer.  It was fun to listen to Sherman’s war stories about shooting this film and his saga with the lovelorn Davis, which he takes almost, but not quite, to what happened after he took her home from dinner.

The revenge of Bette Davis

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

The Ox-Bow Incident
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Lamar Trotti from the novel by Walter Van Tilberg Clark
1943/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix Rental
Number 168 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Major Tetley: This is only slightly any of your business, my friend. Remember that.

Gil Carter: Hangin’ is any man’s business that’s around.[/box]

This tightly wound morality play is only nominally a Western.

Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and Art Croft (Harry Morgan) ride into town to find the place abuzz about some cattle rustlers who have been operating in the area over the past few months.  Then they learn that the rustlers have shot a rancher that is a close friend of the local tough guy.  The townsfolk are quick to assemble a lynching party to apprehend the culprit and administer justice at the end of a rope.  All the admonitions of local elder Mr. Davies (Harry Davenport) to leave the matter to the law fall on deaf ears.  Davies sends Gil to appeal to the sheriff but he is out at the ranch and his deputy is one of the more rabid advocates of vigilante justice.  Though Gil has little use for the mob leaders or sympathy for their cause, he and Art join them out of fear that they, as outsiders, may become suspects.

The hastily and illegally sworn-in “posse” goes up into the high mountains to search for the men.  No one is dressed for the intense cold.  The group stumbles upon three men sleeping around a camp fire – their leader, family man Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), a half-witted old man, and a Mexican desperado type (Anthony Quinn).   Although all protest that they have done nothing, they are found in the possession of the victim’s cattle and gun and the townspeople, under the leadership of a self-styled Confederate colonel, are not about to spend much time listening to explanations.  With Jane Darwell as a cackling old vigilante and Leigh Whipper (uncredited!!!?) as a preacher who comes along to pray over the culprits.

This film is an ensemble piece like Stagecoach that follows the character arcs of a number of different types as they face a dilemma together.  Henry Fonda is great, as usual, as the voice of conscience and stand-in for the audience.  This time, however, he starts from a place of seething resentment that makes it all the more resonant when he sees the light. We also get to know the “cowardly” son who can’t quite bring himself to do the wrong thing despite his tormenting macho father, the local clown who finds the situation quite funny, etc.  Dana Andrews is touching as he pleads for someone to look after his wife and small children in one of his better performances.  The black preacher and his reference to his own brother’s lynching bring the film’s moral into its modern American context.

The sense of doom is unrelieved during the 75-minute running time.  There is little action but it is unnecessary.  Donald’s letter to his wife serves as the coda of the piece.  While the text seems totally unlike anything one would expect, it does underscore the film’s powerful message about the reasons we have law to temper the blind fury of the mob mind.

The Ox-Bow Incident was the last film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and in no other category.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wmbtWIc-Ng

Trailer

 

 

Le Corbeau (1943)

Le Corbeau (The Raven)
Directed by Georges-Henri Clouzot
Written by Louis Chavance and Georges-Henri Clouzot
1943/France
Continental Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Dr. Vorzet: You think that people are all good or all bad. You think that good means light and bad means night? But where does night end and light begin? Where is the borderline? Do you even know which side you belong on? [/box]

This brilliant thriller managed to make all sides mad in Occupied France.

Dr. Remy Germain (Pierre Fresnay) came not so long ago to practice in a small French town and specializes in difficult deliveries.  He has performed a few where he saved the mother at the cost of the baby, not always the orthodox outcome.  He is also very friendly with the elderly local psychiatrist’s young wife, a friendship which her sister roundly disapproves.

People start recieving ugly poison pen letters signed by “The Raven”.  They start out as a campaign against Germain, calling him an abortionist and adulterer.  The letters build to the point where all the dirty secrets of the townspeople are revealed, escalating to a climax when a patient at the hospital is told by The Raven he has terminal cancer and commits suicide.  The town is driven to a kind of mass hysteria.  The investigation, led by the psychiatrist who is also a handwriting expert, turns up many suspects.  Is it the psychiatrist’s sister-in-law, a cold Puritanical nurse?  Is it the young postal clerk who regularly dips into the till?  How about the crippled woman Germain has a one-night stand with?  Clouzot keeps you guessing until the final five minutes of the story.

Clouzot is a genius at portraying the dark underbelly of life.  It’s just a marvel to watch how he can take a simple prop and make it look completely sinister.  Although I thought the film dragged a bit in parts, it remained suspenseful.  I love Fresnay and all the other performances are appropriately menacing.

According to Wikipedia, Le Corbeau generated controversy from the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church considered the film “painful and hard, constantly morbid in its complexity”.  The Vichy press dubbed it the antithesis of the Révolution nationale and demanded it be banned due to its immoral values. The anti-Nazi resistance press considered it Nazi propaganda because of its negative portrayal of the French populace. Two days before the release of Le Corbeau, the German-owned Continental films fired Clouzot.

Personally, I consider this film less an allegory than entirely consistent with the tenor of misanthropy present in all of Clouzot’s work. Somehow that misanthropy only adds to the delicious thrills delivered by the European Master of Suspense.  Recommended.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Sahara (1943)

Sahara
Directed by Zoltan Korda
Written by John Howard Lawson, Zoltan Korda, and James O’Hanlon based on an incident in the Soviet Photoplay, “The Thirteen”
1943/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Giuseppe: But are my eyes blind that I must fall to my knees to worship a maniac who has made of my country a concentration camp, who has made of my people slaves? Must I kiss the hand that beats me, lick the boot that kicks me, no! I rather spend my whole life living in this dirty hole than escape to fight again for things I do not believe against people I do not hate. As for your Hitler, it’s because of a man like him that God – my God – created hell![/box]

Made almost contemporaneous with the events surrounding it, this solid if unbelievable combat movie features some good performances only slightly marred by some heavy-handed speechmaking.

Career Army Sgt. Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart) and his men are one of the few American outfits training with the British army in desert combat early in the North Africa campaign  The three survivors and their tank have been left behind by the retreating British army and are short on water.  They meet up with the survivors of a British unit, likewise out of water.  Later they pick up a Sudanese British army soldier (Rex Ingram) who is escorting his Italian prisoner (J. Carol Naish) through the desert.  The tank manages to shoot down a German plane and when the pilot parachutes out they take him prisoner and the party is complete.

The group slowly warms to the Italian, who is a simple family man, but the German is an unrepentant Nazi who is looking for every opportunity to make trouble.  The water situation gets more dire until the Sudanese finally leads them to an old fort with a well.  Although there is only a trickle left, this is barely sufficient to keep the group going.  Then the well runs dry.

An advance team from a battalion of Germans comes scouting for water.  Instead of taking these guys prisoner and hitting the road,  Sgt. Gunn asks his men to stay put and try to bog down the Germans to play for time for the British.  Despite the 100 to 1 odds, Joe sends the German scouts back to tell their leader that there is plenty of water and the men are willing to trade it for food.  When the Germans get there, Joe tells them he will only trade water for their guns and a ferocious battle ensues.  With Dan Duryea as a GI, Bruce Bennett as the ranking Brit and Lloyd Bridges as a British soldier who bites the dust shortly after he pulls out his sweetheart’s photo.

Humphrey Bogart is really good in this as a crusty cavalry veteran who treats his tank like he used to treat his horse, calling it Lulubelle and babying it constantly.  J. Carol Naish gives the Italian a warm and human portrayal in a role that could have been just a vehicle for some anti-Nazi speeches.  The filmmakers made the Sudanese human and heroic as well.  I didn’t believe the story for a minute but must admit that it was fairly thrilling anyway.  I’m just getting started seeing combat films but I can believe that this is one of the better ones.

Sahara received Academy Award nominations in the categories of: Best Supporting Actor (Naish); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Rudolph Maté); and Best Sound, Recording.

Clip

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Shadow of a Doubt
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville
1943/US
Skirball Productions/Universal Pictures
Repeat viewing/DVD Collection
#173 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

This story of evil in small town America was reportedly Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite of his films.  While I prefer others to this one, it is nonetheless excellent.

The film opens with shots of Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten)  lying impassively on his hotel room bed surrounded by wads of money.  He is being pursued by police on suspicion of being a serial killer of widows he seduces for their money.  He decides to flee to the home of his sister Emmie (Patricia Collinge) across country in Santa Rosa, California.

The family greets news of his impending arrival with joy.  This is especially true of “Uncle Charie’s” namesake Charlotte, known as Young Charlie (Theresa Wright).  Charlie had been down in the dumps about her family’s boring existence and feels that her uncle’s arrival will liven things up.  This is more true than she could possibly foresee.

The family, especially his sister, is extremely proud of Uncle Charlie, thinking him to be some kind of business man.  He starts to integrate himself into their community.  He also starts to act very secretive and make dark pronouncements about the rottenness of the world and the people in it.  Soon detective Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey) and a policeman (Wallace Ford), posing as a journalist and photographer looking for the typical American family, start trying to insinuate themselves into the picture.

Naturally, it is love at first sight when Jack talks to Charlie.  She is resistant to believe that he could have done anything wrong.  Then she begins to put a number of disturbing clues together.  After that, she is not safe from her psychopathic, paranoid uncle.  With Henry Travers as Charlie’s father and Hume Cronyn as his murder-obsessed pal.

This is classic Hitchcock with plenty of suspense and great performances from all involved. I believe this to have been Wright’s career best.  I greatly prefer it to her Oscar-winning role in Mrs. Miniver.  Cotten transitions beautifully between a family man persona and evil personified.  I could have done without the romantic sub-plot but the era obviously could not.  Truly a must-see.

Shadow of a Doubt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZMHpmRcOv8

Trailer

Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Five Graves to Cairo
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett based on the Lajos Biró play Hotel Imperial
1943/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/TCM DVD

 

[box] Lt. Schwegler: Our complaints are brief. We make them against the nearest wall.[/box]

[box] On the first day that director Billy Wilder’s hero, Erich von Stroheim arrived on set, Wilder ran to the wardrobe department to welcome him. He said: “This is a very big moment in my life . . . that I should now be directing the great Stroheim. Your problem, I guess, was that you were ten years ahead of your time.” Von Stroheim replied: “Twenty.” — from the IMDb trivia[/box]

Billy Wilder’s second directorial effort has little of his characteristic humor or cynicism.  It is, however, a very well-made and entertaining spy story, light on the propaganda for its period.

Cpl. John Bramble (Franchot Tone) has fallen behind the retreating British Army in his tank. He is the sole survivor and manages to stagger to The Empress of Britain hotel in the Egyptian Desert.  The last occupants of this hotel are its Egyptian owner Farid (Akim Tamiroff) and French chambermaid Mouche (Anne Baxter).  Everyone else has either fled or been killed in a recent German bombing raid.  Farid takes pity on the soon unconscious Bramble over the strong objection of Mouche, who resents the British for  “leaving behind French soldiers when they evacuated Dunkirk.” Then the German army arrives escorting Field Marshall Rommel (Eric von Stroheim) whose men commandeer the hotel as a headquarters.  They are well-informed on the staff of the hotel.

Bramble manages to hide himself.  Then, somewhat miraculously (given his strong American accent), he manages to convince the Germans that he is the Alsatian waiter Davos.  Davos just so happened to have been a German spy, now laying under a ton of rubble in the cellar, and is accepted by the High Command with open arms.

More Germans arrive with some British POWs, including high officers.  A la von Rauffenstein in Grand Illusion, Rommel dines with his prisoners and goads them with lots of information about his strategy.  Bramble has previously overheard talk about the five graves to Cairo.  He had planned to assassinate Rommel with a stolen gun but the British tell him that dead men have no secrets and he should try to ascertain the German battle plan instead.

So begins Bramble’s dangerous quest for the story of the five graves.  In the meantime, Mouche is trying to get her wounded younger brother out of a German POW camp. Rommel refuses her but his lying, idealogue aide-de-camp promises to try to help her in exchange for her favors.  While there is any chance that her wish be granted, Mouche is decidedly unhelpful to Bramble.

Despite the fact that the story relies heavily on the naiveté of the Germans and some incredible coincidences, it is exciting and enjoyable.  The stand-out performance is given by the fiery Baxter, who manages to maintain her French accent admirably unlike the other actors who either don’t try (Tone) or try and fail (von Stroheim).  I always like to watch Tamiroff.  I think by the time he was through he portrayed every nationality possible. The production is top-notch with beautiful low-key lighting.  The Germans, especially Rommel, are extremely reasonable for a movie of this era though we do get some patriotic, morale-boosting speeches out of Bramble by the end.

Five Graves to Cairo was nominated for Academy Awards in three categories:  Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (John F. Seitz); Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White; and Best Film Editing.

Trailer

The More the Merrier (1943)

The More the Merriermore the merrier poster
Directed by George Stevens
Written by Robert Russell, Frank Ross, Richard Flournoy, and Lewis R. Foster
1943/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Benjamin Dingle: [singing] In love or war, with people like us, we’ve got to work fast or we’ll miss the bus. If you straddle a fence and you sit and wait, you get too little and you get it too late./ What’ll you say if we see it through, you stick by me and I’ll stick by you. And our 18 children will be glad we said… / “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead./ And our 18 children will be glad we said, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Any film in which my heartthrob Joel McCrea either takes off his shirt or is in love is going to get my vote.  This one has that and much, much more.

The war has created a huge housing shortage in Washington, DC.  Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) feels it is her duty to rent out a room in her apartment.  At the same time, wealthy Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn) has arrived in the city to discuss his plans to build additional housing units.  He gets there two days before his hotel reservation and is without a place to stay – until he sees Connie’s ad in the paper.  Although there is a crowd of applicants waiting on the doorstep for Connie’s return from work and although Connie had firmly decided on a female roommate, the crafty Dingle manages to muscle his way into her apartment for a week.  He promptly decides she need a clean-cut top-drawer young man and is unimpressed with Connie’s description of her middle-aged bureaucrat fiancé.

more the merrier 3

So when Sgt. Joe Carter (McCrea) shows up with the for-rent ad in his hands, Dingle rents half of his room to him.  After meeting Connie’s stuffy fiance, and despite the fact that Joe has orders to leave for Africa in two days, Dingle uses his “damn the torpedos” attitude to get him together with Connie.  It doesn’t hurt that the two are clearly ga-ga for each other.

more the merrier 2

The kissing scene in this movie cemented my love affair with Joel McCrea.  It is remarkably sexual for something from the Code years.  The way Coburn manages to make a basically pushy and obnoxious character endearing is marvelous.  Added to that is a very witty screenplay and Steven’s characteristic skill in humanizing a story.  So what that people are falling in love at the drop of a hat.  I’m completely ready to suspend my disbelief for this one.  Highly recommended.

Charles Coburn won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his wonderful performance in this film.  The More the Merrier was nominated for five additional Oscars:  Best Picture; Best Director; Best Actress; Best Writing, Original Story; and Best Writing, Screenplay.

Clip – Connie’s system breaks down