Ann Sheridan takes a bath in Come Next Spring (1956) in a very brief comic scene (that I suppose was daring for its day?).
I felt compelled to post this first message here, after discovering that COME NEXT SPRING (1956) with Ann Sheridan and Steve Cochran, a family drama about a rural Arkansas family in the '20s, has recently become available as a streaming video on Netflix. This movie doesn't appear to be around as a DVD commercially, is rarely found in VHS form, and may never have been broadcast in recent decades. I know I'd never seen it before.
The print that is streaming online at Netflix is unrestored with some faded color and scratches, but it is readily watchable. Directed by R.G. Springsteen (who guided many tv shows such as Rawhide, Trackdown, Wagon Train and Bonanza), the script chronicles Halloween, a prayer meeting, a twister, and life on the farm among animals and many familiar character types, though the freshness of the principals' acting keeps it fresh. It is fitfully narrated by an unseen, unnamed man looking back on his life. The script by Montgomery Pittman (Pittman was cast member Sherry Jackson's stepfather and wrote many scripts for The Twilight Zone, Maverick and other programs which he often directed as well) may be rooted in his experiences as a boy growing up in rural Louisiana and Oklahoma.
In a performance that seemed to echo her own first hand knowledge of life in Texas, Ann Sheridan filtered her character's development through the intelligence, humor and understanding that this under-appreciated actress and total pro brought to every movie (even the Mignon Eberhart "Nurse in Danger" stories that she played in during the '30s).
I watched this small, moving story filmed on location in Ione, CA last night and was deeply impressed by Ann Sheridan's grounded if distrustful farm wife who has struggled successfully to care for her children and her family farm after her alcoholic husband (Steve Cochran, who is excellent) had abandoned them. Sheridan's characteristic laughter and warmth are still there, but are muted. A bit thin, with some sadness showing through her plucky exterior, the actress shines throughout the small scale film, especially in her scenes with Sherry Jackson and Richard Eyer as her children and in the scenes when her red-haired beauty and vulnerability emerges as she slowly lets herself feel something for her husband again.
I haven't consciously seen Ann Sheridan in such an unglamorous role in color before, but found her beauty quite striking and her acting to be quite fine, even when the script fails to develop the underlying tensions in the situation shown in the movie, (I kept wishing that William Inge had been the scenarist). Too bad this movie is so little known. It is one more example of what this fine actress was capable of with the right material.
The cast is rounded out by a shockingly worn looking Sonny Tufts as a local blowhard courting Ann Sheridan, Edgar Buchanan as a local man skeptical of Cochran's motives, and a mellow Walter Brennan as an utterly believable man of the Ozarks. Richard Eyer appeared in this movie around the same time as Friendly Persuasion (1956), but his performance is more natural and endearing in this movie, when he plays a boy who never knew he had a father. Sherry Jackson, who a few years earlier almost stole Trouble Along the Way (1953) away from John Wayne, is very appealing as a shy mute whose life centers around her dog, "Runt" and the fields and woods surrounding her home.
Sherry Jackson and Richard Eyer are amazed and delighted to see their father chase some boars away (this was made before Old Yeller, too).
Cochran and Sheridan with "Runt" who gets some lovely close-ups! I loved him, especially since she is Sherry Jackson's constant companion.
Steve Cochran gives an uncharacteristic, wholly "un-slick" performance as a man who is trying to leave his demons in the past as he begins to know his own children for the first time. In this same period, he worked very well with Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni in the poetic film about a laborer adrift Il Grido (1957) in an attempt to break out of the tough guy category that the actor found himself pigeonholed in when working in Hollywood. (Il Grido is also available as a streaming video on Netflix.) Both of these films were produced through Cochran's own production company, Robert Alexander Productions, which won the actor praise but did not help him gain more interesting parts, unfortunately.
Ann Sheridan as Bess Ballot reminded me of this woman's unfussy, but real talent.
