The Pittsburgh Press (August 24, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
Devotion
By Florence Fisher Parry
HOLLYWOOD – “Devotion” the title of a story out of Hollywood? Oh yes, there’s much of it here. The devotion that Michelangelo gave to his murals, or Edison to the incandescent lamp. Which is to say, entire.
They work hard here – the artists. Yes, and the hacks too. Where else, tell me, in any American city, do they start at 8:30 and stop at 6, with Saturday a full day? In the East in summer, do you find this?
I have watched dozens of motion pictures making since I came here two or three weeks ago; and my amazement increases with each picture, that such devotion can be manifested, such tight team-work be maintained.
All this for one scene!
I wrote you about “Life With Father” on the Warner Studios, and it seemed to me at the time that surely nowhere else would I see such devotion to detail, such fidelity to the times depicted, such mighty co-ordination of widely diversified talents.
Yet not long afterwards I found myself on a set which was quite as masterly, ambitious and faithful. It was on the set of “The Late George Appley,” the scene of a Boston terminal, a great railway station teeming with the noisy bustle, congestion, confusion and masses of people on urgent separate errands.
To enter the stage we walked across railroad tracks as complicated as any terminal’s yard. Engines were sputtering impatient steam; yardmen were seemingly busily engaged. We walked through the great iron gates just in time to escape the focus of the camera, even then set up to picture the turbulent panorama of a train’s departure.
Hundreds of travelers were crowding the gates, redcaps were bustling the luggage through, hasty farewells were being taken. As one train began to move out of the shed, another was puffing into view. The great boom atop of whose crane sat the cameramen, the high microphones, swung over the crowd and narrowed their attention to two lovers taking leave of each other.
All that track, those engines, trains, those gates, that vast station waiting-room, those countless minor players, those costumes, that deliberate confusion of sounds – all correlate to produce for motion picture audiences ONE INSTANT – a lover’s goodby!
How long would we be seeing this “take” in the finished film? How important to the story’s continuity? No matter. The scene called for a railway station in Boston at the end of the Golden Age – the 1920s. So be it. Twentieth Century-Fox produced this detail though it cost a king’s ransom.
Besides this scene was one of the many scrupulously detailed acts of devotion which is given a motion picture of the importance of “The Late George Appley.” This is the motion picture, of course, which will be the contender, with Warner Brothers’ “Life With Father,” for the Oscar of 1947.
Of the two plays, as I saw them enacted on the stage, “The Late George Appley” was, to me, the better. We shall see how the screen deals with them. But already they are my two picks of the year. I can think of no brighter screen prospect.
As I watched this amazing railway scene, a distinguished Gentleman of the Old School, proud, erect, meticulously dressed in Beacon Street’s accredited style of the period, walked through the crowds, which seemed to part as though in subconscious recognition of the gentility that set him apart… It was Ronald Colman, George Appley himself, bringing to the role that indescribable quality of breeding which is one attribute no actor, however gifted, can assume. It must be inborn, and who more than Ronald Colman possesses it?
Gallant lady
Before I left the amazing set of Twentieth Century-Fox’s most ambitious picture, I paused to talk with a little lady who deserves the greatest admiration for the sporting way in which she has accepted the transfer of the role of Amber from herself to Linda Darnell. And talking to her I could understand why Twentieth Century-Fox stopped shooting “Forever Amber” after 30 days of production.
Peggy Cummins could be Scarlett O’Hara, Becky Sharp, all the spunky heroines in literature or drama; and in England, perhaps, an acceptable Amber. But not here in America where sex has become standardized to meet the measurements of a Perfect 36.
The girl has a fine, sensitive, intelligent face, the fluid grave of a trained actress, but she is not what the American fan has been trained to expect a seductress to be. But watch for this little lady’s finished performance as the daughter of The Late George Appley!
From the Boston Terminal of the Appley set I went to the sets where I could find, as I did at MGM, the Bobby-Soxer idols, now as plentiful – since the War returned our boys to us – as were the Girl “discoveries” last year.
Indeed, I despair of ever sitting down for your delectation all that these so charming young stars had to say! At every studio, on every set, there is sure to be a Dana Andrews or Peter Lawford or Dick Haymes or John Hodiac!
Quite personally, I’d rather give you Cary Grant and Gary Cooper and Charles Boyer and Humphrey Bogart. Well, I will do that, too, for I’ve talked with them all.