The House I Live In (1945)

The House I Live In begins with Frank Sinatra recording “If You Are but a Dream” with a full orchestra. He goes outside to smoke a cigarette and sees a gang of boys beating up a small boy because he’s Jewish. Frank asks them if they’re Nazis and then tries to convince them of the importance of religious tolerance. One of the kids’ father is a soldier who had a blood transfusion, and Sinatra points out that the blood could have come from someone Jewish because all blood is the same. He even points out that Presbyterians and Jews are side-by-side when they bomb Japanese battleships. (He does use a derogatory term for the Japanese, and that seems to undercut his argument a bit.) Sinatra, then at the height of his popularity, sings the title song to the gang and their victim, certainly a unique way to convince them that America is made up of difference races and religions and should allow for these differences to coexist beside each other.

Oscar Win: Special Award for Tolerance Short Subject

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray takes some rather considerable liberties with its acclaimed source material, the Victorian novel by Oscar Wilde. The title character, played with just one consistent facial expression by Hurd Hatfield, never ages in appearance, but his image in a life-size portrait not only grows older, it becomes hideous and gruesome, a sign of his moral decay. While the novel is a bit more ambiguous in the cause of this transference of the aging process, the film gives credit to Dorian’s wish to remain forever youthful being made in the presence of an ancient Egyptian cat-goddess statue, and that’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders at the height of his witty and urbane powers) advocates a hedonistic, pleasure-driven lifestyle to Dorian but then bemoans that only the young and beautiful are able to enjoy such an approach to life. It’s his advice to Dorian that sets into motion the transformation. The film doesn’t show all of the behaviors that cause Dorian to become an outcast in the upper-class society into which he was born, but the implication is that it is frequently sexual in nature. Angela Lansbury as musical hall performer Sibyl Vane and Donna Reed as the portrait painter’s niece Gladys play the two love interests whom Dorian pursues, and both of them, still early in their film careers, show the level of pain that his treatment of women causes. Their performances bookend the film’s portrayal of Dorian’s moral descent, and both actresses show signs here of why they would have long, illustrious careers. Despite these two failed attempts at heterosexual relationships, Dorian remains a bachelor throughout his life, and the film (given when it was made) is unable to make much of the homoerotics of the novel’s depiction of Dorian the aesthete. You have to wonder what Sanders could have done with the gay/queer implications of the novel had he been young enough to play the title role. The most the film is able to show us of his supposed decadence is the lushness of his surroundings, the excess and abundance of antiques and music and other signs of an “artistic sensibility.” (By the way, while on the subject of art, both versions of Dorian’s portrait, the original painted by his friend Basil Hallward and the ever-changing one that he hides in a locked room on the top floor of his mansion, are spectacular, and the film’s use of four strategically placed color inserts truly heightens their impact.) Additionally, what might have been an opportunity to reinforce the mental transformation that Dorian undergoes—anything to add some depth to the wooden performance Hurtfield gives—the voiceover narration, done by the great Cedric Hardwicke, instead comes across as intrusive and quite distracting. Overall, the film is not a successful adaptation, but then it couldn’t have been easy to translate the book given the restrictions of the Production Code in the 1940s.

Oscar Win: Best Black-and-White Cinematography

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Angela Lansbury) and Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Man, do I love this movie. Mildred Pierce was nominated for Best Picture of 1945, and it represents a stunning achievement in several film genres: film noir, melodrama, romance, crime film, and the so-called "women's picture." Every member of the cast is first rate, with Joan Crawford as the title character demonstrating why she fully deserved the Oscar for Best Actress she won that year. It's one of my favorite movies from the 1940s, and I was delighted to watch it again for this project.

The film starts with gunshots and the death of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), Mildred's husband. We don't see the shooter, but Monte's last words are a cry for Mildred. Someone leaves the scene of the crime in a car, and then we cut to Mildred in a fur coat and hat walking along a pier, contemplating suicide by jumping into the ocean. She's stopped by a police officer and starts to walk away when an old friend, Wally Fay (Jack Carson), asks her to have a drink in his bar. She convinces Wally, who's always been attracted to her, to go with her to the beach house. He doesn't realize he's being set up as Monte's murder, so he goes along with her.

When the police show up, they discover the body, and they begin rounding up suspects and witnesses. Mildred is the one the lead detective waits to interrogate last. He first tells her that the police know that her first husband, Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett), is guilty of the crime and that she doesn't have to answer any questions. Mildred, though, is desperate to share and so begins our first flashback to the events that have led to this night.

Wally and Bert were partners in a real estate business until Wally ousted Bert. Mildred, too, gets rid of Bert when she realizes that he's been having an affair with another woman. Needing to support herself and her two daughters, Mildred gets a job working as a waitress. She also bakes cakes as a side venture, and before long, she has ambitions to open her own restaurant. She gets some help from Wally and makes Mildred's a huge success. Soon she has opened several other branches and is making lots of money for her family.

I've not talked much about Mildred's daughters yet, but only one of them is truly a focus of the narrative. The younger daughter, Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), is conveniently killed off by a bout of pneumonia. That leaves Veda (Ann Blyth), quite possibly the most ungrateful child in history. Mildred wants the best for Veda and is willing to go to any lengths to get the money to buy Veda whatever she wants, perhaps because she still fills remorse for Kay's death. Mildred will sacrifice her own dignity if it benefits Veda. For example, she won't let Veda see her waitress's uniform out of fear that she will think Mildred has degraded herself. Well, that's exactly what Veda feels, and she tells her mother so. How the daughter of a poor family and now a working single mother can be such a snob is a testament to just how much Mildred has spoiled her.

Mildred has other problems too. She's wooed by the man who owned the property that became the first Mildred's restaurant. That would be Monte, and they have fun for a while. However, she's not in love with him. She suspects that he has intentions regarding her daughter, and she warns him to stay away from Veda. He's also been taking money from her because she feels grateful to him for helping to get the restaurant business started, so when she pays him for what she claims is the last time, he says that he hates kitchens and cooks like herself. Mildred is back to being alone.

Then it's time to deal with Veda, who has become quite a monster with an appetite for expensive goods to match. Veda marries and then blackmails a wealthy young man by lying about being pregnant. Mildred disowns her, and Veda starts singing racy material in Wally's bar down at the pier. After realizing that Veda will only be happy with the trappings of wealth she's seen with Monte, Mildred asks him to marry. He agrees if he gets a share of the business, so Mildred once again swallows her pride and does something for Veda's benefit. However, it isn't long before Monte and Veda are having an affair--a rather kinky take on the notion of "incest" that you wouldn't expect in a film from this time period--and Monte and Wally are forcing Mildred out of business.

Periodically throughout these scenes, we get reminded that Mildred is in the police station answering questions. She even confesses to the crime, which only prompts the detective to start asking for more details. We get all of the necessary information about what happened the night of the murder, including the identity of the killer and the motive for the shooting. It's hardly a surprise that the culprit is Veda, who shot Monte in a fit after he said he would never marry her. When Mildred finally says, "I can't get you out of this, Veda" and calls the police, all you can do is add, "It's about time."

As I said earlier, the supporting cast is stellar. As much as you come to despise Veda, you have to admire the passion that Blyth brings to the part. She is excellent in a role that could have easily been over-the-top. Carson is just witty and relaxed her; he's the perfect opportunist, always looking for a way that an outcome could benefit him. Even Butterfly McQueen shows up as Lottie, Mildred's maid, and manages to get a couple of good lines in. And I love Eve Arden, who plays the small part of Mildred's restaurant manager and friend. No one could deliver a line like Arden could. One of my favorites is when she accuses Wally of undressing her with his eyes: "Leave something on me. I might catch cold." She's a delight whenever she's on the screen.

Still, it's Crawford's movie, and no one else could have played this part with the same go-for-broke gusto that Crawford brings to it. While she had been known before Mildred Pierce for her work in glamorous roles with expensive gowns and elaborate make-up, here she's allowed to look (almost) like a regular working class woman would look. There are still some shoulder pads in the business attire she wears at times--and I began to suspect that they get larger as the film's narrative progresses--but they are not the focus of Mildred's identity like they might have been in an earlier Crawford picture. Oddly enough, I think that Crawford is perhaps at her most beautiful in this film, despite not being costumed in expensive fabrics and jewels.

By the end of the film, we are, I think, completely on Mildred's side. Had it turned out that she was Monte's killer, I suspect most of us would have forgiven her. We would have understood what she has gone through in her life, and we would have allowed her a moment of anger and retribution for all of the pain that she has suffered. Not many actresses could make us feel that measure of sympathy, but Crawford was one of the best.

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

The first half of Anchors Aweigh, a nominee for Best Picture of 1945, is one of those Hollywood films that lends itself very easily to a Queer Studies interpretation. Two sailors from the U.S.S. Knoxville get a four-day leave in Hollywood after receiving medals for their bravery. One of the sailors, a naive young man from New York City named Clarence Doolittle (Frank Sinatra), begins to follow the more experienced Joe Brady (Gene Kelly), hoping to pick up some pointers on how to pick up girls. What follows is a series of misadventures seemingly designed to keep the men together and away from any women.

Joe, for example, plans to meet up with a girl he knows in Los Angeles, the exotically named Lola. Unfortunately, the closest he ever gets to her is the telephone he uses to call her to beg her to let him show up at her home later than expected. By the way, it's always Clarence who keeps Joe from meeting up with Lola. He continually asks for Joe's help, and Kelly's sailor does his best at one point to act like a woman so that Clarence can practice his technique for meeting someone and introducing himself. He even tells Sinatra's Clarence to try to pick him up. A passerby "catches" them in the act, and the men quickly resume more stereotypically masculine behavior, but the film has already set up their relationship as paramount in importance. He then agrees to let Clarence watch him on a date with Lola so that Clarence can become a "wolf" like he is.

Of course, Lola is a difficult woman to please just over the telephone. She tends to reject Joe's offers of affection, thus giving Clarence and Joe more time to be together with each other. Interesting, during one of the phone calls to Lola, while Joe is trying his best to make romantic overtures, Clarence (who is sitting behind Joe) puts his head on Joe's shoulder. In fact, he does so a couple of times, as if Joe were wooing him instead of Lola. He seems to swoon at the romantic words Joe is speaking. Watch the look on his face and see if you don't agree with me.

When the sailors find lodgings for the night, in free beds reserved for servicemen, Joe brags about the women he and Clarence have met. He can't have the other sailors and soldiers realizing that he has spent the entire night with Clarence and has yet to meet up with Lola. These lies about their conquests suggest a form of "homosexual panic" on Joe's part. Clarence seems willing to admit that they haven't had any dates, but Joe bullies his way through the lies he tells. That the two men follow up the story with a dance together probably does little to convince a viewer of their heterosexuality. The next scene even has Sinatra's Clarence watching Kelly's Joe sleeping (wearing only his white t-shirt and boxer shorts, by the way), and when Joe realizes that he has overslept (because Clarence didn't wake him in time), he tries to attack Clarence. Once again, the more naive sailor has prevented the wiser man from completing a rendezvous with a woman, leaving Joe free to spend the day with Clarence again.

Thanks to a little boy who's running away from home to join the Navy (Dean Stockwell playing Donald Martin), Joe and Clarence meet Aunt Susie/Susan Abbott (Kathryn Grayson), a movie extra with aspirations to become a musical star, perhaps under the guidance of bandleader Jose Iturbi, who plays himself in the film. After initially rejecting Susan as not being right for Clarence, Joe cooks up a plan to introduce Susan to Iturbi, whom he and Clarence met on their ship during a medal ceremony. Grayson was a talented singer, no doubt, but her quasi-operatic style--most notably on the song "Jealousy," sung in a Mexican restaurant--is not a particular favorite of mine.

Iturbi shows up quite a lot in the film. The opening sequence has him leading the Navy Band in the title song. Under his direction, the band forms an anchor and even the word "Navy" on the aircraft carrier where the beginning of the film takes place. He also gets a full performance in the middle of the movie as he records a number for a film on which he is working. Here, however, he plays the piano rather than conducts. He also gets a piano number during a morning rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl--which still looks very much the same--with about a dozen young pianists. It must have been quite a challenge for the filmmakers to come up with new ways to insert Iturbi into a movie like Anchors Aweigh, so you have to give them points for ingenuity. Instead of what could have been merely a cameo, he becomes an integral part of the plot.

Kelly and Sinatra also get to sing and dance. No sense making a movie with one of the world's best dancers and one of the world's best singers without letting them use their talents. I've always liked Kelly's singing voice, and he gets a couple of good numbers here, most notably "We Hate to Leave" (a duet with Sinatra, one of several, actually). Sinatra gets his own numbers to shine, "I Fall in Love Too Easily" and "The Charms of You." Obviously, MGM was attempting to capitalize on Sinatra's success as a vocalist; he's even top-billed above Grayson and Kelly. It's during one of these numbers, also sung in the Mexican restaurant, that he meets a waitress who's also from Brooklyn, played by Pamela Britton. He begins to fall in love with the waitress instead of Susan because he feels so comfortable with her, having come from the same background. Meanwhile, Kelly has been trying to help Clarence and Susan become a couple, but he's fallen under her charms and now wants her for himself. Odd how Clarence really doesn't have all that much in common with Susan despite all of the efforts his pal Joe has made on his behalf.

Unsurprisingly, the "right" people get together at movie's end. It is an MGM musical, after all. Clarence and the waitress become a couple, as do Susan and Joe. Interestingly, though, each man is very reluctant to tell the other about his changed desires. It's almost as if they are ashamed to admit that they have found someone else to love rather than just stay together themselves. Yes, I know that's not what MGM had in mind at all, but the looks they give each other at the end of the film, just after kissing their respective girls, suggest that they still maintain quite an interest in each other's reactions. Despite the attempt at a happy heterosexual ending, the homoerotic possibility remains.

By the way, I don't believe there is such a thing as "overanalyzing." Even Grayson's Susan says to Joe, "You're always with him [Clarence] or talking about him. Why, Joe?" I'm just not sure she really wants the answer to that question, does she?

Overall, Anchors Aweigh still works on one level as a typical musical comedy from the studio system of this time period. Sinatra gets to use his fabled voice to full advantage, and he even manages to survive that dance with Kelly. Kelly gets to dance a few numbers on his own, including a remarkably athletic Spanish/Mexican-influenced number where Grayson is primarily obliged to watch him and wear the largest white lace mantilla that MGM could find in the wardrobe department. Kelly is, as usual, the primary focus whenever a dance number is needed. He did like to wear very snug clothing to show off his physique, didn't he? I suppose that just helps you to see the moves more clearly.

This movie is also another example of just much rapport Kelly had with child actors. He's a natural with Stockwell here, and in the scene where he shows up at Donald's school and tells how he got his medals--it involves him convincing Jerry the Mouse (yes, of Tom and Jerry fame) that he can sing and dance--the kids make for a rapt audience. Near the end of the film, Kelly dances with a young girl on Olivera Street, and they make for a charming couple. He would later use this same skill with kids to great effect in An American in Paris where "I Got Rhythm" becomes a group performance.

I should point out that Anchors Aweigh pays a lot of tribute to the Mexican heritage of Los Angeles. Several scenes take place in Olivera Street, and the Mexican restaurant where Susan is an occasional performer becomes an important part of the plot itself. And Kelly's big number with Grayson as his observer occurs on a movie set made to look like a Mexican villa. I must admit that it was a nice surprise to see how thoroughly MGM managed to incorporate the historical roots of Los Angeles into the film.

Oscar Win: Musical Score

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Kelly), Cinematography (Color), and Original Song ("I Fall in Love Too Easily")

The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

The first sequel to be nominated for Best Picture, The Bells of St. Mary's was released in 1945, just one year after Bing Crosby originated the role of Father O'Malley in Going My Way (the winner for Best Picture that year). I haven't yet watched Going My Way, but The Bells of St. Mary's doesn't seem to add up to a cohesive film to me. It's mostly just a series of sometimes unrelated, sometimes interrelated incidents that occur over the course of a year. It's a fun movie in many ways, but it's a rather inconsequential film to have been nominated for Best Picture during the last year of World War II.

As the film opens, Crosby's priest has just been transferred to St. Mary's, a parochial school that has been deteriorating rapidly. The school is in very bad shape, particularly the classrooms, and the Catholic Church has been considering closing the school and selling the property. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Father O'Malley clashes with the head of the school, Sister Mary Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman, who wants to maintain order and discipline. He is a pretty lax disciplinarian, while she and the other nuns are more traditional (i.e., strict). But don't watch this film expecting to learn about any serious rifts within the Catholic Church over differing approaches to education. Their "fights" are all rather harmless in nature; nothing too serious is going to be debated or resolved here. For example, Father O'Malley is so filled with excitement at his new job that he lets the children have the first day off. Sister Benedict wonders what will happen to the children since their parents are at work. That's pretty much the depth of conflict for most of the film.

Well, that's not completely accurate. The primary dramatic tension revolves around whether or not the adjacent building being constructed by Henry Travers' millionaire businessman, Horace P. Bogardus, will be donated to the school, something Sister Benedict and the other nuns have been praying for. There are several scenes sprinkled throughout the film where Father O'Malley and Sister Benedict separately bring up the subject of the building to Bogardus. He wants to buy St. Mary's in order to tear it down and build a parking lot. He also has, perhaps unsurprisingly, a series of health problems brought about by the stress of dealing with architects and contractors and workers. You know that in a film like this he's going to relent and give his building to the nuns. However, so much of the film is devoted to other stories that even this plotline seems no more important or significant than the rest.

For me, the most entertaining scenes involve Sister Benedict teaching a young boy how to defend himself. Father O'Malley has broken up a fight between two boys, Eddie and Tommy. The priest seems especially proud of how good a fighter Tommy is, but the nun fears that praising the boys for fighting might influence them to continue with this inappropriate behavior. After she correctly guesses that O'Malley is trying to suggest that women like herself wouldn't understand--it's the old fear of the female influence turning boys into sissies that movies of this era were obsessed with--she buys a book on boxing at a sporting goods story (cute scene, by the way) and begins tutoring Eddie every day in her office. The kid even knocks her out during one of their practices. When he inevitably bests Tommy in a schoolyard fight, Sister Benedict glows with pride.

The most intriguing sequence in the film is also the most enigmatic. A young girl named Patsy (well, Patricia) Gallagher is enrolled at St. Mary's by her mother (played by Martha Sleeper). The mother had married a musician, and you know how unreliable those types can be. Just watch Crosby's face when the mother explains about the itinerant life of a musician; it's a clever inside joke. Anyway, the father abandoned his wife for a job in Cincinnati, not knowing she was pregnant with Patsy (played very well by Joan Carroll), and so the mother had to "do things" to support her child. We are never told what those "things" are in the movie. We only know that Mrs. Gallagher thinks Patsy would be better off if she weren't around her mother. The priest takes a personal interest in seeing Patsy succeed, sometimes to the frustration of her teacher, Sister Benedict, but you know that both of them have the girl's interests at heart. The father eventually returns, thanks to the intervention of Father O'Malley, but it's a difficult, awkward transition for the Gallaghers to feel like a true family.

There's also an interesting series of scenes involving Sister Benedict's health. She has, it turns out, tuberculosis in its early stages. What I found odd is that the doctor tells Father O'Malley but not Sister Benedict about this diagnosis. He also conspires with the priest to have the nun sent away to some place with a more arid climate so that she can regain her health. The doctor doesn't want her to know about the serious nature of her health problems, and he wants her to be secreted off to Arizona or somewhere without letting her even know why? To me, it seems almost like malpractice not to share this information with the patient. It also smacks of misogyny to think that a man can handle the news of an illness like this, but not a woman--even if it's her own health that is at risk. That's still shocking to me.

You might also have a moment of surprise when the students in the school recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The phrase "one nation under God" doesn't appear in this pledge. That's because those words were added in the 1950s during the era when the government was trying to find Communists in every arena of American life. The added words became a sort of loyalty oath, if you will. Since this film was completed in 1945, today's audiences will quickly notice that absence when the pledge begins. Just don't get riled up about some leftist Hollywood plot; know your history first.

Lest you think it's all serious subject matter, the movie also has a couple of charming moments. One of the most delightful is the play put on by the first graders. It's a retelling of the birth of Jesus, and it's a riot. Those kids seem to have a rather vague sense of what happens in the Biblical story, but they don't let such pesky issues as accuracy interfere with their play. A close second would be the early scenes where a kitten stumbles into Father O'Malley's hat while he's trying to deliver a serious speech to the nuns in his new parish. The nuns, though, can't pay attention to him and start to giggle and laugh. Even he has to acknowledge the humor of the situation when he learns the cause of their outburst.

I know what you're still thinking: Bing Crosby as a priest and Ingrid Bergman as a nun? Indeed. Bergman has the most glowing make-up of any nun I've ever seen, and Crosby's Father O'Malley behaves in decidedly un-priestlike fashion. Crosby wasn't really an actor, as this film clearly shows. He was just a guy who could sing well (he gets several opportunities here to demonstrate his crooning ability) and who could act very naturally on camera. He acquits himself nicely. Bergman, however, was one of the best actors of her era. She does get to show that she too can play a comic part--and she is funny--but this is a far cry from her work in Casablanca or Anastasia. Neither of these performers seems to have been challenged by the material. In fact, the entire movie feels as if it were rushed into production to capitalize on the success of the earlier film. Regardless, it's relatively harmless entertainment, nothing that couldn't be seen by audience members of any age.

Oscar Win: Sound Recording

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Actor (Crosby), Actress (Bergman), Film Editing, Dramatic or Comedy Score, and Original Song ("Aren't You Glad You're You")