War Stories, Part 1 - Mrs. Miniver

“Mrs. Miniver” (1942) has an aura of greatness, or infamy, about it among classic film critics, perhaps rather in the same way its star, Greer Garson, remains a symbol of MGM royalty so long accepted that a second look seems irrelevant. It’s just an item in a curio cabinet of ephemera from a more glossy if naïve era.

This is due largely to the moniker of wartime propaganda pasted on this film, (covered in this earlier post), and partly due to the “glossy” aspect of this film. The movie, based on the series of stories, afterwards published in book form, by Jan Struther, tells of a British upper middle class family coping with the early days of World War II. We mentioned in the intro to this series that war stories that focus on the home front are in some ways more revealing of the greater struggles of mankind than battle films.

“Mrs. Miniver” is a perfect example of this. We are shown a western democracy/constitutional monarchy about to be threatened with invasion by the armed forces of a fascist dictatorship. We see the before, and the during, but we do not know the eventual outcome because that hasn’t happened yet, and that provides the greatest suspense to the film. It is current events.

The problem, as some critics see it, is the “glossy”. The movie was made in the studio and on the back lot. The film depicts an American romantic notion of British decency, honor, and pluck. It is current events, certainly, but it is not documentary. One wonders what the film would have looked like if it were a British production. Less glossy? More true? Closer to the book?

Possibly they would have never dreamed of filming it. Maybe they didn’t need to make a movie of it, but in a funny way from our safe distance across “the pond”, maybe we did.

If the movie seems ersatz in many respects, it was still lauded by Prime Minister Winston Churchill as the greatest motivator of U.S. aid to the British. More on that later, and on how this quite excellent film got hog-tied by its political usefulness.

Though this blog, and repeatedly in this series on “war stories”, you will be reminded that there is historical context to old movies that shouldn’t be discounted, this is a movie that, conversely, transcends needing to know every detail of those days, because the movie’s charm, as well as the formidable Greer Garson’s charm, lies in its winsome grace.

Directed by William Wyler, this is a film that is saved by Wyler’s easy touch. Another director might go for broke in the decent British people vs. Nazi monsters setting, and then the film would really have little left to it but forced propaganda strung along a weak storyline. Mr. Wyler creates images that are magical in their simplicity, and doesn’t lean too heavily on a linear storyline, probably because he did not have an ending to the story. We wouldn’t know the end for some years.

I’ll not go into this movie scene by scene (I’m afraid you’re going to get quite enough of that in our next post in this series about “The More the Merrier”). Instead, just a few highlights.

We see first the quiet orderliness of their lives in this English village on the back lot. Mrs. Miniver shops in town for a hat, and the local train station manager, played by Henry Travers, has named for her a rose he is growing in competition. A leisurely scene (fortunately, they are all leisurely scenes) when he takes her into his office and tells her about it, and I love the way we see his reflection in the mirror seeming to mimic Greer Garson’s enjoyment of the rose’s scent.

She heads home to a cozy Hollywood/British suburban house. Walter Pidgeon buys a new used car, and struggles with the decision. His small daughter Judy hammers on the piano during her lesson. His small son Toby lugs a cat around. Toby was played by Christopher Severn, who had a few uncredited roles after this, but “Mrs. Miniver” was the highlight of his brief career, where he left an indelible impression in a few key scenes.

Oldest boy Vin, played by Richard Ney, arrives home from university, and blathers on about new philosophies. As they drive home from the station in the new used car, I love the way Walter Pidgeon rolls his eyes and nods his head sarcastically in response to his son’s self-centered philosophical rants. Richard Ney is at an age when young men discover the world, but when such immense knowledge is still not quite useful without maturity. He’s a decent kid; he’s just got some growing up to do.

His impatient, “What IS it, Gladys?” to the maid trying to interrupt with a message shows he’s not quite so sensitive to the working class as he likes to believe. It’s a nice touch on Wyler’s part.

When Teresa Wright visits and debates with Mr. Ney about the realities of having a social conscience in the British class system, I love the looks that Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon exchange. We see they are a well-married couple who are able to telegraph to each other wordlessly their amusement, and fascination, watching their son on that awkward road to manhood.

He will grow up sooner than they realize, with the first flush of romance with the sweet, ultra-decent Teresa Wright. A superior young actress nominated for Academy Awards for each of the first few movies she ever made (she would be nominated this year both for Best Actress in “Pride of the Yankees” and Best Supporting for “Mrs. Miniver”. She won in this latter category), Miss Wright adds a gentle poignancy to the role of the sole heir of Lady Belham, an aristocratic dragon played with her usual indignant aplomb by the Dame May Whitty.

Teresa Wright is also pretty much the only person in the movie who, when paired in a scene with Richard Ney, does not make him look goofy. Mr. Wyler is said to have auditioned a handful of men for the role of Vincent Miniver, and wanted a goofy looking kid. He chose young Mr. Ney as the goofiest of the lot.

So, while Ney stammers and declares his thoughts and feelings to the room, Miss Wright by virtue of her serenity seems to bring his character down to earth and makes you believe this young fellow is a really nice guy who could make something of himself.

The other maturing influence to come his way is the war.

We break into the war with a sudden announcement in church, and the congregation, as well as the audience, needs a moment to figure out what this all means.

A nice moment, and we all know Wyler’s films are full of them, of Richard Ney squishing little Christopher Severn against the pew in front of them as he strains to get a look at Teresa Wright over in her family pew. Poor Toby really gets pushed around in church, including by mother Geer Garson when she plants her hand on his head that has popped up over the head-bowed genuflecting of others. She pushes him down to a more referent posture. He bobs up again like a cork on the water. A couple of other “moments” follow in this church scene, when Christopher Severn as Toby asks loudly, “Are we going to be bombed?” Toby has the comical habit common to little kids of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place.

He is not afraid of the war, only curious. His curiosity also leads him to bang loudly the iron door knocker as his family leaves the church, disrupting conversations and startling everybody. In an interview done I believe in the 1980s (which might still be up on YouTube), Greer Garson mentions that Christopher had whapped this door knocker on the first take. He was not told to do this; he was just fidgety and playing. Director Wyler liked it, and repeated the scene several more takes (as was his habit), hoping the little boy would do it again. However (as also was his habit), he never told the boy to do it. He wanted it to be natural. After many takes of not doing it, finally, the little guy did it again, of his own accord, and that’s the take we see in the film.

Which makes me think that the scene when the Miniver’s maid, Gladys, serving in the dining room and wailing over her boyfriend about to leave for the Army, makes Christopher laugh with her boo-hooing is another of those spontaneous moments. His burst of chuckle is so natural that it does not seem forced or planned. Also, look at Greer Garson’s expression when he does it. For a moment it looks like she’s going to crack up, then quickly she puts on her disapproving mother expression.

Wyler eases us into this family’s war experiences so smoothly and under such “normal” circumstances that we find ourselves sharing their growing anxieties rather than simply observing them. Their grown son announces he will join the RAF, and Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon exchange another glance, like throwing a dart, that conveys their fear and their equal determination to say nothing. After Ney has left the room, their only commiseration is Greer’s, “Isn’t he very young?”

“Yes. He’s young.” Walter Pidgeon speaks with resignation, finality, and without a trace of comfort.

This sets us up for what is one of the most shocking switcheroos in the movies. We are reminded in different scenes that Richard Ney is young and that time is precious. He may die in the war. He and Teresa Wright marry because the war will soon drive them apart. Miss Wright is grimly prepared, as her grandma, Dame May Whitty was, to live the rest of her life as a widow if only she gets to live life to its fullest in the meantime. Richard Ney’s pilot officer’s uniform is his death sentence.

But Teresa Wright is one with the Nazi tracer bullets in her body. Greer Garson drags her home in the blackout, leaves her sprawled on the floor while she tries to get help, and her young daughter-in-law dies, as Greer holds her and chokes, “Oh, God…oh, God.” It’s a powerful scene because of Garson, and because of its unexpectedness.

So much else in the before this was cute, from the first air raid drill when Toby wanted to know if the war was over when the all-clear siren sounded, and heartily shouts, “Good!” when he is told it is just the first day. Cute with Mr. Foley, the blackout warden and local grocer pushing sardines on everybody. Cute that the village flower show must continue, and that our gentle Henry Travers wins the top prize. Cute that Dame May gets a standing ovation from her villagers for being a good egg and giving it to him despite her immense pride.

Teresa Wright’s death is telling us to grow up. Life isn’t all about flower shows and shopping for new hats, not anymore it isn’t.

But we have a warning before the death of Teresa Wright’s character on all this intrigue with wartime, and how it becomes, as we might say today, “the new normal” when the Minivers and their two youngest children take to the backyard bomb shelter. (Called Anderson shelters.) We get a taste of the Hollywood-cum-British stiff upper lip when Walter Pidgeon admires the barrage in the distance and then asks if his laundry has come back. We get it when Greer Garson reads “Alice in Wonderland” to the kids by lantern light, and knits, and Mr. Pidgeon shows off the toxic gas detector on the roof of the shelter, like a man proud of his new stereo system. It’s a little surreal to us, and nothing’s even happened yet.

In a few moments, a series of bombs that shake the shelter and plunge it into darkness, a breathless scene with very little dialogue terrorizes the Minivers and terrorizes us. It’s capped, beautifully, by Toby’s, now earnestly scared, wail, “They nearly killed us this time, didn’t they?”

By the time the film ends, we are left with half their house bombed to rubble, Teresa Wright’s corpse laid out in an upstairs bedroom, the villagers gathered in the bombed-out church whose roof is exposed to the sky. We are told several villagers were killed in the raid, including our Henry Travers.

We see that Richard Ney, now a morose widower, has lost any chance of ever being young again.

Then the vicar gives us the Wilcoxon Speech. How could we not buy bonds and send aid to Britain after all this?

The Wilcoxon Speech, as mentioned in this previous post, was hammered out at the last minute by Wyler and Henry Wilcoxon, who played the vicar. The speech was praised by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ordered it printed in pamphlet form and scattered over Europe. This began the political usefulness of “Mrs. Miniver”, and perhaps locked it forever into a movie called “propaganda”, a message movie to show what William Wyler felt was the urgency of the war in Europe and what it might mean for Americans.

Wyler, as evidenced by this passionate movie, took the Nazis personally. When his movie swept the Academy Awards, he wasn’t there. He had already enlisted. When he returned from war, his next film was “The Best Years of our Lives” (1946). I’ve always felt that “Best Years” was, though certainly not a sequel, nevertheless the ending to the story began in “Mrs. Miniver”. The beginning of the war in 1939, and then the aftermath, and the link between two allied nations.

There are only two scenes which I think Wyler could have done better in this movie, and they overlap. One is the scene about Walter Pidgeon helping out at Dunkirk. At the Battle of Dunkirk, on the coast of France, the Germans had trapped Allied forces. The only hope of escape was by sea, and thousands of British, French, Belgian, Polish, and Dutch troops were rescued under heavy fire by the British Navy, and by civilians who were called upon to volunteer in small craft to scoop up as many men as they could and bring them back across the Channel to England. It took nine days. The evacuation was a remarkable event that could have been given more attention, but perhaps that would not be sticking to the home front parameters of the film.

Sticking to the home front parameters is what made the other weak scene in the film probably something that could have been left out entirely. This is when Greer Garson captures the wounded Nazi pilot. Invasion was a real threat, not an imagined one, but I don’t think this film really needed a Nazi to show us that threat, or to show Mrs. Miniver with her British pluck capturing him.

The only part of this scene I find interesting is that Helmut Dantine, who plays the German flyer, is about the same age as her boy Richard Ney, and when he discovers she has taken his gun, the sick look of hopelessness makes him seem less monstrous and more human. Perhaps Wyler wants us to look in the face of the enemy and see he’s not so tough. But the movie doesn’t really need this scene. It’s like Mrs. Miniver jumped the shark.

One British wartime experience not seen in the film (obviously, it wasn’t in the book, either, but then most of this film wasn’t in the book), was the evacuation of thousands of children from the London area to other parts of Great Britain, and to the U.S. Toby and his sister Judy being sent to America for the duration certainly would have made a dramatic episode.

What we today need to remember about this movie is that all these events, the air raids, Dunkirk, etc., were all familiar tales to the Americans, still safely guarded by two oceans at this time. We had listened to Edward R. Murrow’s impassioned broadcasts from London, where he described these events (with a command of language far greater than most television commentators you will hear today), and so this movie represented a reenactment of what we already knew. It was fascinating to see it dramatized above the radio transmissions and newspaper headlines.

We also need to remember, as far as the accusation of propaganda element goes, that the U.S. was extremely isolationist before our entry into World War II. We tend to remember only the gung-ho, self-sacrificing era after we got into the war. Until December 7th, as a nation we were anything but.

Director William Wyler had to fight MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer even to show a Nazi in this film, as Mayer was reluctant to show Germans as an enemy when we were not yet at war with them. Most studio owners (apart from the always daring Warner Bros.), preferred not to alienate a huge and profitable market in Germany. Studio owners of Jewish heritage were also loathe to appear to be war mongering, and possibly call down the wrath of middle America.

They had reason to fear. Almost immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, conservative Republican congressmen accused President Roosevelt of orchestrating the disaster so that the U.S. would enter the war. If these powerful men, so sick with hatred for FDR, could pull that hideous accusation out of a hat, what could they do to a group of Jewish businessmen, whose religion automatically made them scapegoats?

Even a centrist, or a progressive Republican like Senator Gerald Nye (R-North Dakota), who had supported FDR’s “New Deal” programs, could form the America First Committee. Strongly anti-war, though he did not outright accuse FDR of being responsible for Pearl Harbor, he did insist that our entering the war because of it was a maneuver by Roosevelt to placate British national interests, of being a pawn of Great Britain. Many average citizens of similar viewpoint would agree that “Mrs. Miniver” was a message Hollywood was ramming down our throats.

We finally did enter the war against Germany and Italy, of course, but only after they declared war on us first.

All this was in background, behind the scrim, above the Fresnels, beyond the soundstage while “Mrs. Miniver” was being filmed. No wonder it was labeled with a propaganda badge, since it was created in a tense political environment.

When shooting began in the autumn of 1941, the U.S. was still at peace. By the time the picture was released, peacetime was only a memory, and Greer Garson became not only a symbol of British pluck to Americans, but an example of how brave we could be ourselves, should we ever find Nazis in our kitchen. One wonders would the film have been half so successful were we still at peace?

Along with the propaganda tag, other aftermaths stuck like flypaper to this film. Greer Garson, who really wanted to do comedy, was stuck with being The Queen of MGM for several years in dramatic, patrician roles.

She and Water Pidgeon, in this their second film together, were locked in the public’s mind, and the studio’s filming schedule, as a team for several more movies.

Greer Garson, soon after this movie was filmed, married Richard Ney, who played her son in the movie, which is pretty much all a lot of people can think about today when they see them together in the film. The marriage was short-lived.

In 1992, when unable to attend the opening of the new Greer Garson Theatre in her now home state of Texas, the British Ambassador to the U.S. sent a bouquet of flowers to Miss Garson along with a message from Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty wanted Greer’s theater patrons to know, “She is remembered with particular affection for her role in the classic wartime film ‘Mrs. Miniver’” which along with her philanthropy over the years “have made her an outstanding ambassador for Anglo-American friendship.”

To be still called a symbol of US-British friendship at 88 years old, long after the war and that movie is an interesting legacy. Author Michael Troyan noted the above quote in his biography of Greer Garson, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver - The Life of Greer Garson (University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1999). He also notes that a year later in July 1993, Queen Elizabeth II made Greer an Honorary (because she had been a US citizen since the early 1950s) Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for “improving relations between England and the United States” as well as for her philanthropic and conservation activities.  Still and forever a symbol of the alliance between two nations.

“Mrs. Miniver” ended up following Greer Garson the rest of her life.

Mr. Troyan also quotes Teresa Wright on the movie “Mrs. Miniver”, and we’ll give her the last word:

“We all felt, and sought to convey, the profound determination that dramatized those days. It was a picture produced in the shadow of headlines, and those of us who appeared in it never forgot it.”

Come back next Monday for another home front; this time in the U.S. where Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, and Charles Coburn discover “The More the Merrier.”

Have a look below at a newsreel of the London bombing and some of the less “glossy” aspects of wartime Britain. (Remember to scroll down to the bottom of the page and mute the music so you can hear the video.)

"That Forsyte Woman" - 1949

In “That Forsyte Woman” (1949), Errol Flynn gives a riveting performance as a jerk. He is a man of substantial self-importance, without humor or any self-effacing quality which might be termed human. And yet, he turns this characterization on its axis, and we find ourselves fascinated, and ultimately sympathetic with his very human flaws.

He plays Soames Forsyte in this dramatization of the John Galsworthy classic stories. Greer Garson is a lady of no particular age, whose loveliness in this role is tempered by her wretchedness, and a sordid realization that she has compromised on many levels the integrity we are meant to believe in her, hurting herself and others.

She is a piano teacher, poor and alone in the world, with only her beauty and her finer qualities of character to recommend her, who marries the snobbish Errol Flynn mainly because she is exhausted from refusing him, which she had done a number of times.

But we are told time and again in this movie that what Errol wants, Errol gets, through shear willpower and determination.

It probably does not need to be said, but one is compelled to note again how mind-blowingly handsome this man was.

Right, then. Continuing…

Though he beams with the triumph of ownership when she becomes his bride, Errol soon realizes with bitterness that a woman is not a piece of furniture or an object of art, or any pretty bauble that one buys and owns, because he cannot own all of her. He does not have her heart.

Walter Pidgeon is on board as Errol’s cousin and Greer’s sympathetic friend, and eventual soul mate. This is only right and proper; he is, after all, Walter Pidgeon.

Robert Young is a cheeky young architect engaged to Janet Leigh, who is Walter’s daughter. However (insert ominous chords of music here), Robert and Greer are scandalously attracted to each other, and fall in love. All told, there are three suitors in this film after Greer Garson. Not a bad gig.

Set in London in the 1880s, the film is rich with Victorian set dressing, lush costuming, gaslight, and impenetrable fog. We find ourselves in elegant drawing rooms, art galleries, and cold, stark artists’ studios.

The Forsytes are only a couple generations removed from working class people, but now they are the newly wealthy, and as stuck up as possible, regarding every privilege as a birthright and every non-family member as an underling.

Harry Davenport plays Walter Pidgeon’s father, the patriarch of this stuffy clan. Walter, however, is banished from their company because he is the black sheep. For one, he is an artist, not a man of business. For another, he eloped with his baby daughter’s nursery governess after the death of his wife and ran off to Paris to paint. He left his daughter, Janet Leigh, in the care of his powerful family, who forbid him to see her.

There is so much to look at in this film, but one is always distracted by the elegant Errol Flynn, who wears his impatient pomposity like a monarch’s robe; something he has been born to, deserves, and never fails to parade. What finally induces Greer to marry him is possibly his enormous self confidence. For many women, this is as much a lure of security as a healthy bank book.

This quality may be what Mr. Flynn understands most about the character and why he plays it so well. He was himself a man of prodigious self confidence, a person for whom perhaps everything came easy. Boredom and restlessness result from this trait as much as does success. It can be a double-edged sword. It probably was in Flynn’s case.

What strikes the viewer is the playfulness, even more than the understanding, that he brings to this character. He seems to enjoy wearing a pince-nez. In one scene, he enters the dim hall of Greer’s boarding house, and his top hat smacks against the chandelier. He gives it a glance of longsuffering loathing, refusing to surrender his dignity. It is moment of comedy, and a glimpse into Flynn’s ability to be self-effacing even if Soames Forsyte is not.

His characterization is not parody, however. Mr. Flynn has another good scene over the dinner table with Greer on their wedding anniversary. He is chafing under her polite formality with him, knowing that despite her acquiescence to his every whim, including letting him choose her dresses for her, she cannot love him with the passion he seems to feel he has bought and paid for. We are meant to take it as a slight to his vanity throughout the film, for he never indicates his passion for her. It is only at the end of the movie we see his wounded heart and feel sorry for him.

Until then, he only displays irritability as a mask for his hurt feelings. At one point during the course of his brittle dinner conversation, a scene that shows marvelous restraint, he accuses her of forgetting their anniversary. When at last he discovers under a napkin the gift she has left on his plate, he is contrite and vulnerable. Flynn does excellent work in this tense scene.

Obviously, for purposes of the film, the Galsworthy stories are condensed and somewhat altered, but the movie is a good introduction to the troubled and tragic Forsyte family.

Greer becomes almost instantly attracted to Robert Young, who, open and fun-loving, a man who talks to children as an equal, is by nature the exact opposite of Mr. Flynn. He pursues her, and she refuses him because, more than the threat of scandal, she does not want to betray her beloved “niece”, Janet Leigh, who is like a companion to her. However, they are all tragedy bound.

Greer starts this film visiting a morgue, a haunted expression on her face, her eyes puffy. It is an unglamorous beginning. Though in some scenes she still produces gaiety with that trademark slip of laughter in her voice, she is for the most part an unhappy woman in this film. She is a victim of circumstances, of her own bad choices, and fate.

Walter Pidgeon is also tragic, but he appears as a more romantic figure for all his melancholy perhaps because, unlike Greer and Errol, he is true to his heart and honest about his feelings. He is a gentle, kindly man, humble about his artistic talent, who wants to reunite with his daughter. It is funny to think that in five years this dark-haired 40-ish dashing artist will become the gray-haired worn-out businessman in “Executive Suite” (1954) - see previous post here.

That is perhaps another fun thing about this movie, the great romantic intrigue, the jealously and passion are all played out by middle-aged characters. By contrast, the young Janet Leigh, groomed by MGM and kept busy in a number of films at this point in her career, seems callow and less interesting.

Here, Mr. Pidgeon is ultimately still Greer’s hero. Perhaps we would be disappointed if he were not. Clem and Kay Miniver are ghosts in every movie in which Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon appeared together after “Mrs. Miniver.” This was, I think, the sixth of eight total movies. No matter how compelling the magnificent Errol was, even he couldn’t break up the team.

Errol and Greer at Luncheon

(Don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom of the page to pause the music so you can hear the video.)

Have a look at this footage from MGM’s silver anniversary luncheon, where “more stars than there are in the heavens” sat down to dine, newsreel cameras rolling. Some of you may remember this clip as part of “That’s Entertainment” (1974).

What especially caught my eye this time was dinner partners Errol Flynn and Greer Garson. I don’t know if the seating was arranged, but may well have been. It could have been about this time that Mr. Flynn and Miss Garson were shooting “That Forsyte Woman” (1949), though I don’t remember her costume from that movie. However, a little ways away at another table we see Walter Pidgeon, also starring in that same movie, and his outfit, and mustache, do resemble the character he played.

We’ll be discussing “That Forsyte Woman” this coming Thursday as the first of two films in which we’ll examine Errol’s success in a couple of non-Errol type roles. The second film will be next Monday, “Cry Wolf” (1947).

Have a look again at Errol and Greer. One notices immediately that they are completely aware they are on camera, but unlike many other stars at this occasion, pretend not to be aware. Notice the casual, but so on-the-mark posing each does, good side to the camera. This is a fascinating look into two people who are at ease, self confident, and knowledgeable about the tools of the trade, their stunning good looks.

For all their stardom and the posing, there is still something quite irresistibly genuine about the great lady and the swashbuckler as the camera passes by them. In “That Forsyte Woman”, they both play less magnificent people, and, just as in this luncheon clip, seem playfully aware of their own superb magnetism.

See you Thursday. And a Happy Thanksgiving today to our chums in Canada.

Executive Suite - 1954

We mark Labor Day in the U.S. today with a look at “Executive Suite” (1954). It’s not just a retro look, but an echo from America’s mighty industrial past that drifts with some uncomfortable resonance today.

Robert Wise is the director, and we start from the first moments of the film with bold credits flying toward the audience while an ominous sounding bell tolls…for whom? For everybody, it seems. Maybe even us.

The bell sits in the tower above the executive suite of the title, in a downtown stone monument of a building that serves as the corporate office of a furniture company. We are not yet in the days of suburban industrial parks. We are downtown where the action is.

The action starts right off with the unseen CEO leaving his New York branch building at the end of the workday on a Friday. His perspective is the camera’s perspective. We see who sees him, who makes eye contact and who does not, as he leaves the world over which he is king.

Then he hails a cab out on the sidewalk and crumples to the ground, dying instantly of a heart attack. We see, through the camera and his eyes, the swirling buildings, and the clear sky above

Looking down upon him from an upper floor is our old friend Louis Calhern, (whom we last saw as the rogue here in “The Man With the Cloak”) an executive in the firm, who, sensing an opportunity, sells a chunk of company stock he cannot cover. It doesn’t matter, because he knows that when the news gets out of the Big Boss’s death, the stock will plummet.

Once it does, he can buy it back for next to nothing. In the weeks to come, the stock will rise. He will make a tidy profit.

His cheap sell-out scheme lays out before us the message of the film. We get there, by and by.

It is fun to see Mr. Calhern’s meltdown when the Big Boss, whose wallet was stolen by a passer by when the ambulance arrives, is taken to the city morgue as a John Doe, and wrecks the timing on Calhern’s game.

Such is the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the board of officers on this company, and there will be much jockeying for position to see who gets voted to be the new Big Boss. It is survival not of the fittest, but of the least principled.

Among the likely candidates is Dean Jagger, one of the old boys who helped build the company, but who is now regarded as too old to take the helm. Likewise Walter Pidgeon, the longtime partner of the Big Boss, who resents not having been named as second in command a long time ago.

Paul Douglas is the hail-fellow-well-met head of sales, who settles deals on the golf course and a bribe of a bottle of scotch. It is the charming façade of a spineless company man. His mistress, and secretary, played by feisty Shelly Winters provides the ego boost he needs, along with other comforts. Until he lets her down, and she shows more pride and mettle than he has.

Fredric March is a standout in this film as the smarmy numbers cruncher, who worms his way into other’s private affairs to get information to use against them. It is a magnificent performance, a virtuoso of snideness, ingratiating artificiality, and backstabbing. We see his grim confidence behind his sneer. We see his resentful insecurity when his wiping his sweaty palms with his handkerchief.

There is William Holden, as the Bright Young Man, who works in product development and represents the idealism that the Big Boss and his partners once had, but have abandoned in the lure of making an even bigger profit.

Holden’s supportive wife is played by June Allyson, who maintains their junior executive suburban home with its Scandinavian design furniture (see this previous post on “Strangers When We Meet” for more examples of that), and raises their all-American boy, played by young Tim Considine.

I wonder if the furniture in his ultra modern house was made by his own company, and if it’s the good stuff or the cheap knock-off stuff, and if he got a discount?

Check out Walter Pidgeon’s home and we get an eyeful of traditional furniture, a nice contrast that tells us a lot about these two men, their perspectives and their eras. Furniture is not just set dressing in this movie. Look at the medieval design of the woodwork in the executive suite. The stained glass windows behind Holden during his big speech make him seem like an evangelist.

Finally, we have Barbara Stanwyck as the heiress whose father founded the company. Until recently it seems, she was also the mistress of the Big Boss. She is depressed and vulnerable in the aftermath of the death of the powerful man who rejected her, selfishly indifferent to what affect his death will have on the company.

Rounding out the cast we have Nina Foch, who as private secretary to the Big Boss, is the major domo of the Executive Suite, making sure meetings run smoothly, privy to all the secrets and keeping her mouth shut.

It’s an engrossing film, character-driven (which we get from the start when each main character is “introduced” to us when Nina Foch knocks on their office doors to remind them of a big meeting. Thus, we see their character names on their doors and identify their faces).

They all have their own agenda. Mr. Holden pouts because his latest product development test got messed up. The Big Boss, who once promised him free reign to improve their furniture, let the ball drop and fell under the spell of business ideology such as Fredric March’s character, Mr. Shaw, where profits are to be doled out to stockholders and not reinvested in the company.

Holden complains, “Improve the profits but never the product. That’s Shaw’s philosophy,” he says of Mr. March. “To him, the whole company’s just a curve on a chart.”

Dean Jagger, a hands-on man like William Holden, who helped start the company, resents Holden’s supposed “golden boy” (so to speak) position with the Big Boss. Mr. Jagger practically invented furniture, he seems to say, “And I didn’t need the boy wonders and the slide rule experts to show me how.” (See this previous post for our discussion on slide rules. My gosh, there’s a link for everything in the post.)

Mr. Jagger is so fed up, he is planning on retiring, and let the company crumble. I love Holden’s admiring smile across the boardroom table when Jagger says he is taking a weekend trip to sail on his boat and eat Maryland crab. It’s a small touch but says volumes about mutual appreciation and comradeship that can exist in companies as well as enmity.

Fredric March tails Paul Douglas to the airport (see this previous post on the Long Beach Airport), to humiliate him by catching him in a tryst with Shelley Winters.

Walter Pidgeon’s wife complains that he has been living in the Big Boss’s shadow, and urges him to make a play for the top job.

A great scene with Mr. Pidgeon, in an attempt to do just this by returning to the office to draft public announcements on the Big Boss’s death and funeral arrangements, discovers the presumptuous Fredric March already there and handling everything himself with a condescending air.

They argue details, but March has clearly assumed control. Walter Pidgeon, ever the gentleman from the old school, is aghast that Mr. March does not intend to close the factory out of respect for the deceased.

Time is money.

Suddenly the plot shifts from what will happen to these board members, to what will happen to the company.

To save it from the nefarious clutches of Fredric March and his ilk, Holden, the reluctant hero, must convince Walter Pidgeon to anoint him heir. Holden must dicker and pontificate in the boardroom in a tense scene to shake them up and win their confidence, rather like a politician. And he must shame Barbara Stanwyck, who holds a controlling vote, into dropping her self pity for two seconds to consider the lives of others and the legacy of this furniture company that bears her family name.

Mr. Holden is worried about the product, and about the workers. When he leaves the plant at the end of the day, after the whistle has blown, an army of laborers files out the gates with him. We see he is a man of the people. He knows many of them by name. Note the American flag in the background, over his head like a halo. This symbol as well as the workers crowding at his elbow already seems to anoint him.

The workers are worried the plant will shut down now that the Big Boss is gone and things are so unsettled. Some complain about the junk furniture they manufacture, a far cry from the good old days when they were proud of their product.

“Why did he allow it?” one disgusted laborer asks Holden, and then the other pivotal question, “Where do we go from here?”

Holden has no answers. But we know where they went. We’ve already arrived.

Have a look at this link to a New York Times story from July about the Harley-Davidson motorcycle manufacturer enjoying soaring profits, more than triple from a year ago. Reaping the profits, specifically, are the shareholders. The workers reap pink slips. Around 1,500 people will be let go by the end of this year. As the article notes, many other manufacturing firms reaping profits this year did so by trimming the fat, which in business terms always seems to mean people, and do not intend to use their profits to rehire anytime soon.

It’s endemic, this cutting the fat. Check out those self-service checkout lines in grocery stores, the ATM in the bank lobby while two tellers work in a bank that has eight empty teller windows, even the new self-service checkout stands in libraries. Cuts down on the need for librarians to check out your books. All for your convenience isn’t it? Yours or theirs?

So much convenience and so few jobs.

“Convenient!” Mr. Pidgeon blasts Mr. March, “That’s always been your attitude…to make everything as convenient as possible for yourself!”

It is interesting, and somewhat astonishing, to note that what we might lament as the failure of industry in this country and corporate greed today had roots as far back as 1954, specifically the notion that the product will become inferior and the jobs will be lost if the only object is profit for the shareholders.

We were enjoying one of the most energetic and profitable business booms of all time in the early 1950s. But here in this film, we see the veneer crack a little. In industry and in the cheap line of furniture this company has been making, shaving off quality to bolster the bottom line.

The climax of the film is a boardroom showdown between factions, intentions, and ideals. Where Nina Foch, by the way, takes notes in shorthand. Is shorthand taught anymore? I suspect it has gone the way of the dial telephone and antimacassars.

William Holden gets thrust to the top of the heap when he decides to take the responsibility to point out how lousy things have been run in the company. He assumes a leadership role by doing this, thereby anointing himself.

While we listen to his words, our minds may wander a little bit from the plot to what is going on in our own lives.

Fredric March spells it out succinctly, “I believe that a company is answerable first and last to its stockholders.”

Mr. Pidgeon protests, “I get it. Manufacturing and selling don’t count anymore.”

Mr. Holden agrees with Pidgeon, “Sometimes you have to use your profits for the good of the company, not paying them all out in dividends to impress the stockholders with your management record.”

Mr. March contends, with a nod to the brooding Miss Stanwyck at his elbow, that the Big Boss ran things that way. Holden comes back with a remark that seems to speak directly to us.

“He was wrong, the way a lot of people are wrong these days, grabbing for the quick and easy, the sure thing. That’s just a lack of faith in the future.”

His soliloquy about let’s run a better company starts to sound like Mickey Rooney exhorting the gang to put on a show, and some of his remarks might sound just as naïve to us. Holden talks about putting out a line of product that “has beauty and function and value.” Yeah, right.

He talks about workers on the line who prefer to take a pay cut to post to other jobs in the company, just to avoid working on the really cheap crap they’ve been making because it damages their pride.

He tells Barbara Stanwyck that they must put out product that she will be proud to bear her family name.

Do we still have that kind of pride? Willing to take a pay cut to avoid demeaning ourselves? As for pride in family names on companies, in a world where most of our big corporations are acronyms or just a meaningless jumble of vowels and consonants arising from many names over the course of many takeovers, do we really know what company we’re dealing with when we buy that item?

Though the movie ends on a hopeful note (except for Fredric March, whose sickened expression after losing the presidency of the company is priceless), we may not be able to help brooding on the old lady laborer, who walks out of the factory with the swarm of other workers after punching out, to ask William Holden about their future. They know the company is in trouble.

“Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” She asks.

“Don’t you worry about it,” he tells her with a comforting smile.

“But you weren’t here in ’33, you don’t know how it was…”

I wonder, do we know now?

William Holden only guessed at catastrophe for the company and the nation in a booming 1954 when the net dividend for the stockholders was starting to become the benchmark for the health of the company, not the quality of its goods or services, not how many people it employed or if those employees were able to earn a sufficient living.

This is what makes this film fascinating. It can speak to us through a span of more than five decades and still be relevant, yet not relevant because of any timeless quality of human behavior…relevant because its subject is so ironically and unexpectedly topical.

Topical despite that they were in a boom, and we are…where we are, where we were headed back then with decades of deregulation in our future, and industrial flight to overseas plants to improve the net dividend for the stockholders.

By the way, happy Labor Day.