Loretta Young: January Star of the Month on TCM

[JackFavell]

Glad you liked Midight Mary, kingrat. Wellman is one of my favorite directors. After seeing Westward the Women and Safe in Hell I started watching every Wellman film I could find, and some of the more popular ones over again with an eye to his style. He's punchy and tough, never settles for cliche, and he can get loads of information across with very little, for instance: the synedoche. He's the quintessential depression era director for me.

[RedRiver]

SAFE IN HELL. I haven't seen the movie, but I love the title!

[CineMaven]

It's a must, Red!

[RedRiver]

If I had one of these computer things, might I watch it on You Tube?

[CineMaven]

Red I just searched for "Safe In Hell on YouTube, but they only have clips. Not the entire movie.

Here's a consolation prize. A lovely compilation of pre-code film clips.

[youtube][/youtube]

[CineMaven]

Brother Rat, I saw and enjoyed the film. Bunny. Yeah, okay. You know what I thought might've been just a tad more interesting, plot-wise? What if Henry ( Pre-Nazi ) Daniell were blackmailing Loretta, with racy letters that SHE wrote. Wouldn't that up the ante in her wanting to get the letters back? I still can't warm up to ol' turtle Tone. And their love seemed so antiseptic. ( Couldn't he once kiss Loretta on those lips...just once Frankie?! ) Ahhh well. I did like how the plot turned around on itself. And I enjoyed Roland Young in this as I did in the Sheridan-Brent comedy we just talked about. I'm warming up to Loretta Young even if she is kind of on the theatrical side.

[moira finnie]

Have you seen SUEZ? I've watched about the first half so far. Loretta wears a couple of dresses about the size of Rhode Island. Robert Osborne's intro said that they had to re-design the sets to accommodate Loretta's skirts. Loretta, Tyrone Power, and Annabella all look gorgeous, so it's an enjoyable show.

Those Royer-designed costumes were deliberately extravagant, reportedly as part of the actress' possible frustration and determination to get something out of appearing in a series of lame parts at 20th Century Fox. In Forever Young: An Authorized Biography of Loretta Young by Joan Anderson, the actress says that she went on suspension prior to making Suez but by the time the film was made, she had resigned herself to getting through with the contract she had with the studio and found herself in some poor movies. One of her goals when she went to 20th Century Fox was better roles, not just better and bigger (and sometimes goofy-looking) costumes. After being window dressing in Clive of India and acting in Born to Be Bad (which she and Cary Grant both loathed), she refused Lloyds of London (which she eventually made anyway). Her agent Myron Selznick may have helped to carry her financially through a series of suspensions at a time when she was still coping with the adoption of "twins" (her natural daughter by Gable and a fictional child who was mentioned in press releases but was eventually "returned to her biological mother," though she did not actually exist except as a smoke screen for the press). The only money she had coming in for some time, other than what appears to have been the generosity of Selznick, was from radio and advertisement endorsements (the only aspect of contract players lives that was left alone in most contracts).


Loretta Young in Suez: a rag, a bone, a hank of hair...and a bit of platinum, diamonds and fur to make up for the script.

While Young clearly loved clothes, (and the current exhibit at The Hollywood Museum in LA even includes a replica of her well-used sewing table), when she made Suez she appears to have been determined to make a visual impression, encouraging the designer's fantasies since she couldn't make much dramatic impact. She was probably prompted to do this because she knew that Annabella had the better part. Young's role as the Empress Eugenie was fictionalized beyond belief and completely superfluous to the main story. When Young did smaller scaled films at 20th Century Fox that allowed her to play more down-to-earth women or appear in romantic comedies with Tyrone Power I think her acting was better. Actually, I've always thought she was at her most beautiful when she was dressed relatively simply (as in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, Zoo in Budapest, Midnight Mary when very young). In the '40s, she looked much more beautiful to me in simpler frocks and hair in such films as China, Along Came Jones, Rachel and the Stranger, and The Bishop's Wife than she ever did in the extravagant flicks. Her beauty didn't need much artifice.

CineMaven-
I know what you mean about Young's "theatricality," which I can enjoy up to a point. I have always liked her, but her best features as a performer are often when a director keeps her naturalism in check and reins in the "la-dee-dah" aspects of her screen persona. I suspect that when she did not entirely have confidence in herself, the material, or the people she was working with, the high-strung emotions may have spilled over on screen.

Kingrat-
So glad that you had a chance to see Henry Daniell being slimey as a be-gloved blackmailer in The Unguarded Hour. I wish that TCM would show Under Cover of Night (1937) and Madame X (1937) again. Henry has a field day of fiendishness in both--and in the first movie a viewer even glimpses a small sign of regret in his vile character, who is understandably driven to do his deeds by the academic rivalry where everyone is out to (literally) "publish or perish." Madame X is played by Gladys George and she is the only actress I've ever seen make that old chestnut believable.

[charliechaplinfan]

Midnight Mary is great little film, my first look at Loretta in a precode, I'm glad you enjoyed it.