Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and Naughty Marietta (1935)

Toronto Film Society presented Blossoms in the Dust (1941) on Monday, July 22, 1985 in a double bill with Naughty Marietta (1935) as part of the Season 38 Summer Series, Programme 3.

BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST (1941)

Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Producer: Irving Asher.  Director: Mervyn LeRoy.  Screenplay: Anita Loos, based on a story by Ralph Wheelwright, based on the life of Edna Gladney.  Photography: Karl Freund, W. Howard Greene.  Filmed in Technicolor.  Technicolor Consultant: Natalie Kalmus.  Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons and Urie McCleary.  Interior Decorator: Edwin B. Willis.  Gowns: Adrian.  Men’s Costumes: Gile Steele.  Music: Herbert Stothart.  Sound: Douglas Shearer.  Editor: George Boemler.

Cast:  Greer Garson (Edna Gladney), Walter Pidgeon (Sam Gladney), Felix Bressart (Dr. Max Breslar), Marsha Hunt (Charlotte), Fay Holden (Mrs. Kahly), Kathleen Howard (Mrs. Keats), George Lessey (Mr. Keats), William Henry (Alan Keats), Henry O’Neill (Judge), John Eldredge (Damon), Clinton Rossemond (Zeke), Theresa Harris (Cleo), Charlie Arnt (G. Harrington Hedger), Cecil Cunningham (Mrs. Gilworth), Ann Morriss (Mrs. Loring), Richard Nichols (Sammy), Pat Barker (Tony), Mary Taylor (Helen), Marc Lawrence (La Verne).

NAUGHTY MARIETTA (1935)

Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Producer: Hunt Stromberg.  Director: W.S. Van Dyke.  Screenplay: John Lee Mahin, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, from the musical play, book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young.  Music by Victor Herbert.  Additional Lyrics by Gus Kahn.  Music Adapter: Herbert Strothart.  Photography: William Daniels.  Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons.  Assistant Director: Eddie Woehler.  Costumes: Adrian.  Sound: Douglas Shearer.  Editor: Blanche Sewell.

Cast:  Jeanette MacDonald (Marietta), Nelson Eddy (Warrington), Frank Morgan (Governor D’Annard), Elsa Lanchester (Mme. D’Annard), Douglas Dumbrille (Uncle), Joseph Cawthorn (Herr Schuman), Cecilia Parker (Julie), Walter Kingsford (Don Carlos), Greta Meyer (Frau Schuman), Akim Tamiroff (Rudolpho), Harold Huber (Abe), Edward Brophy (Zeke).

Though all four members of the two couples who are entertaining us again tonight made films with other partners, and for many filmgoers the name of MacDonald brings back immediately as its corresponding echo that of Chevalier, there are few pairings of film stars which have remained as closely identified as those of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon and Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.  Though neither Greer Garson nor Walter Pidgeon has maintained the cult following or is as well known today as some of their contemporaries, especially during the first half of the forties they were the preeminent film couple.  Greer Garson was the ninth ranking box office star in 1942, sixth in 1943 and 1944, and third in 1945, during years when Ingrid Bergman, a contemporary better known today, who was making some of her best remembered pictures with a variety of co-stars, did not rank in the top ten box office stars.

Of all the loving couples featured in this summer series, Garson and Pidgeon are the connubial couple of (dare we say it), under an appearance of Louis B. Mayer-decorum, uxorious passion!  Powell and Loy as the Thin Man couple may have been brighter, smarter and sassier and seemingly more modern, but all they had to do was to solve murders with style.  Garson and Pidgeon had to win the Battle of Britain, keeping both a stiff upper lip and their good humour in Mrs. Miniver (though Greer could not avoid her spanking), discover radium in Madame Curie (here Greer had only the memory of Pidgeon to sustain her for a good part of the picture), build and keep in line a family empire in Mrs. Parrington (though here the connubial bliss was a little more rambunctious, with Pidgeon as a headstrong dynamic tycoon who nevertheless knew where his heart really belonged).

In Julia Misbehaves and That Forstye Woman (so renamed it is said because the great American unwashed who never saw the Garson or Garbo pictures anyway could not be expected to know the meaning of “saga”) it was Garson who had a chance to kick up her heels and to remind us that under all that decorum and rectitude there was a woman of verve, passion and dynamism.  That red hair and those flashing eyes were not to be ignored!  If ever there was an actress who fitted the image of the heroine of the nineteenth-century novel with her flaming nostrils it was surely Garson.  The Miniver Story was a less successful attempt to win the Battle of post-war Britain (a much tougher nut to crack, and then Dame May Whitty was no longer there to lend a hand); so the team made its last appearance in the unjustly neglected Scandal at Scourie, which returned to a theme similar to that of their first appearance in Blossoms in the Dust.

Blossoms in the Dust can be called heartwarming, but it is much solider than that.  The story of a beautiful woman of purpose sustained in her struggle by a strong man of dignity and character still has its resonance today, even in an age of anti-heroes and anti-heroines.  The style now may be more hard-boiled, the cruder language of the streets may have invaded the screen, we may be more aware of the experience of burn-out, and surely we know that the destructive forces we have to deal with in our societies are stronger, more vicious and more deeply entrenched than the films of the forties recognized, but our reliance on those willing to face the struggles necessary to maintain the fragile structures of civilization still remains.  The MGM or the Louis B. Mayer halo (if the latter always with its underlying taint of hypocrisy) may at times seem omnipresent, but the freshness and vibrancy of this new couple stood out from it and imprinted itself on the consciousness of the public.  If Mrs. Miniver is the Garson/Pidgeon film most deeply imprinted, the American setting of Blossoms in the Dust gives it a greater resonance today.  In several of her films Greer Garson played the Madame Sans Gene role over and over again; whether as the laundry girl in Mrs. Parkington or the servant girl in The Valley of Decision, the lady was always there ready to blossom and grow from the conflict with adversity.  Should one consider her too ladylike, it is certain she could never be called effete.

It was a credit to her standing at the box office that when Clark Gable came back to MGM from the wars, it was Garson who was immediately co-starred with him in Adventure.  GABLE’S BACK AND GARSON’S GOT HIM! screamed the billboards.  The Fans knew better.  The film was not a success.  The chemistry was not there.  Garson is always there in the memories of the filmgoers of the forties–but it’s always Walter Pidgeon who has her.

When Walter Pidgeon died last year, Greer Garson, now Mrs. Buddy Fogelson, the only survivor of tonight’s two loving couples, gave a warm tribute to his memory and the pleasure it had been to work with him.  Such a tribute could never have been expected reciprocally from Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.  When she made this first MGM film with Eddy she had already made a series of outstandingly successful musicals for Paramount, most of them teamed with Maurice Chevalier and directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  As much as they disliked working together, their success at the box office as a team kept Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald paired by MGM in a series of filmed operettas that have left the most pleasant of associations at least in the memories of their many fans.  Rare is the TFS season that does not feature at least one of their collaborations by popular demand of our members.

The making of Naughty Marietta was a calculated gamble on the part of Louis B. Mayer.  The original operetta was already twenty-five years old, and had been bought earlier by MGM as a possible vehicle for Marion Davies.  It had been put aside when tastes changed in favour of the new style of singing and dancing musicals of the early and mid-thirties.  But when Louis B. Mayer hired his favourite star, Jeanette MacDonald, he decided to dust it off, refresh it with new lyrics and put into it the glorious voice of his favourite.  He decided to co-star her with another solid voice, a young man who, almost unknown, had been under contract to MGM for two years and had appeared on screen in a number of films for a grand total of about seven minutes of scree time.  If the chemistry between the two co-stars didn’t work off screen, it certainly worked on, and with it the whole genre of filmed operettas was solidly reestablished until well into the fifties.

As a further insurance Mayer had decided to make the film a sumptuous production (its many and elaborate sets spread all over the MGM backlot in Culver City and to choose as director W.S. Van Dyke, who could be relied upon not to be wasteful, to do a solid workmanlike job, and to bring the picture in on budget and on time.  He achieved all this and rather more.  He created one of Hollywood’s most popular and longlasting loving couples, and as his reward went on to direct them in four more of their subsequent seven collaborations.

Naughty Marietta lets us know what our southern French cousins were up to while we were getting the fur trade under way.  Eddy and MacDonald did catch up with the Canada of several generations later in their next film, Rose Marie, and neither the Mounted Police (especially the Mounted Police) nor the Rockies have ever been the same since.  The last echoes of the “Indian Love Call” must still be reverberating in the last reaches of some isolated canyon of the Rockies.  This film has its own large collection of Victor Herbert melodies–some of our members I am sure would know the words by heart and be ready to sing along, were it not for their consideration for their fellow-members.  (Les–We’ll forgive you this time–Ed.)

Eddy and MacDonald made another seven films together, becoming in the process the most closely identified singing team in the history of the movies.  They were a romantic team (none of the barbed wit to be found in the MacDonald/Chevalier collaborations), and their love affairs never went smoothly.  They could take place in the most romantic of locales, as among the apple blossoms in full bloom of Maytime, but then there were the perceived obligations to John Barrymore and his dramatic seething jealousy.  Death was the enemy, as in Maytime and Bitter Sweet, but love always triumphed in full-throated and glorious tones among the opulent sets and exotic locales, and to the accompaniment of full symphony orchestras.  (During the filming of the scene in Naughty Marietta with the full chorus singing on the deck of the ship, a symphony orchestra installed amidship was busy accompanying them).

Preferences of members will be very individual, depending in part on one’s favourite songs and composers.  But tonight we show you the loving couple–both loving couples–in the freshness of their first appearances together.  Lovers of the world–we can but leave you to your memories.

Notes by Roland LeBlanc