Underrated Gem: Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow

Douglas Sirk is rightly regarded today as the leading exponent of the so-called women's pictures of the 1950s. He's best remembered for 1954's Magnificent Obsession; 1955's All That Heaven Allows; and 1956's Written on the Wind - all starring Rock Hudson - as well as his 1959 swan song, Imitation of Life, with Lana Turner. Along with Written on the Wind, in 1956, Sirk also directed what is my favorite of his films, There's Always Tomorrow. Like Obsession and Imitation, There's Always Tomorrow is a remake of a 1934 film, also called There's Always Tomorrow. Unlike Sirk's other films, which focused primarily on women, There's Always Tomorrow is about male angst.

Director Sirk and stars Stanwyck and MacMurray work out the details In There's Always Tomorrow.

Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray - both a long way from the killer couple of their best known pairing in 1944's Double Indemnity - the film tells the story of Clifford Groves (MacMurray), a toy manufacturer who is being neglected and taken advantage of by his family. That family is the typical nuclear one with a wife (Joan Bennett) and three children: the eldest, Vinnie, is in college with a nice sweetheart; teenaged Ellen; and Frankie, the youngest. Every one of his family takes advantage of Cliff and treats him horribly. Vinnie hushes his father because he is on the phone with his girlfriend, Ann. Frankie is off to her dance recital. Wife Marion is busy tending to last minute preparations for the recital. Cliff has tickets to the theater for the evening, but Marion has to take Frankie to her recital. He asks his other two children if they would like to go with him, but Vinnie has a date with Ann, and Ellen is headed over to her best friend's house to discuss their "emotional problems." Cliff pleads with Marion to go away with him for the weekend or go out to dinner (it's her birthday), but Marion is all about the kids, leaving Cliff with a dinner to heat and apron to wear. Entering this domestic scene is Stanwyck's Norma (nee Miller) Vale, a former employee and love interest of Cliff's who left for New York City years earlier, feeling Cliff was more in love with his work than he was with her, and has become a successful dress designer.

Lonely and grateful for the companionship, Cliff and Norma use Cliff's theater tickets, visit his toy shop, talk over old times, and catch up on new ones. As nothing illicit happens, Cliff shares with Marion his night out with Norma. Marion thinks nothing of it and is glad Cliff had a good time. Her complete trust is another example of Cliff being taken for granted as a reliable ol' stuffed shirt. Scheduled for a business trip to Palm Springs, Cliff implores Marion to join him, but daughter Frankie, the ballerina, twists her ankle, so mother Marion feels she can't possibly go with Cliff, much to his consternation. While there, Cliff runs into - you guessed it -  Norma who is also there on business. Cliff and Norma go horseback riding, swimming, dancing, and have an all-round great time. But while they are having a nice time together, son Vinnie, girlfriend Ann, and a couple of Vinnie's friends show up. Vinnie overhears the concierge making an off-hand remark about Cliff and Norma, sees them together, and, naturally, jumps to the conclusion that his goody-goody Dad and bad-girl Norma are enjoying some hanky panky.

Douglas Sirk's exquisite mise en scene

At this point in the film it's interesting to note that Cliff is being accused of something he is innocent of, yet is thinking about. Norma has stirred feelings in Cliff he thought had been long since crushed. He feels, if not exactly young again, alive and revitalized. And with that feeling comes emotions he had tried to give Marion and his family but had been shut down time and again. Once Vinnie gets back home, he shares his revelation with his sister Ellen, and together they try to put the kibosh on any potential romance between Cliff and Norma. Vinnie, in particular, behaves like a jerk, and Ann tells him so. Things pretty much come to a head when Norma is invited to dinner, and Vinnie and Ellen are openly hostile to her. Through all this, Marion is completely clueless, as the children feel they have to protect her from any knowledge of their philandering father. By the next day Cliff is ready to give into his emotions, say goodbye to his wife and kids, run off with Norma, and live happily ever after. However, fate and Cliff's two oldest intervene by going to see Norma to tell her what a nasty slut she would be to take their father away from them (never mind that they are entirely ungrateful). Norma, despite being sensitive enough to the situation, tells Vinnie and Ellen how awful they have treated their father. Later, however, Norma tells Cliff that their relationship wouldn't work, that he would always regret leaving his family, and that it's best that she go back to New York alone. The film ends with Norma, teary eyed on her flight east, and Cliff staring longingly out the window as Norma's plane flies overhead. (His family, I suppose it must be said, finally realize what a good father they have.)

Vinnie and Ellen confront Norma.

The film is a bitter indictment of the 1950's American family. The Groves have a seemingly enviable life, with a nice, big house, provider husband and father, model wife and mother, and three kids. But no one - except possibly Marion - is happy or even content. It was Douglas Sirk's specialty to expose that facade for what it was: an empty, zombie-like existence with little or no warmth, compassion, or meaning. In Sirk's world, money, family, and all the good things that are suppose to go with it don't matter at all. Clifford Groves' children are selfish, spoiled brats who take everything they are given for granted. Sirk was never easy on children in his films - a similar situation occurs in All That Heaven Allows when Jane Wyman wishes to brush off the dusty shackles of convention and go off with younger, hunky Rock Hudson instead of fuddy-duddy Conrad Nagel (who looks old enough to be her father), thus throwing her two grown children into confusion at their mother's non-traditional leanings. At the beginning of There's Always Tomorrow, a character making a delivery to Cliff's toy factory remarks how "dreamy" it would be to work in a place that has hobby horses and pinafores to which Cliff's secretary wearily replies, "Oh, I suppose it is." It seems there isn't a person in Douglas Sirk's universe who knows how good they have it.

Clifford Groves contemplates the emptiness of his life.

The cast of There's Always Tomorrow is first rate. Stanwyck and MacMurray had been electric together in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity some 12 years previous, and their work here is just as fine. Stanwyck, an all-time favorite of mine, is always good. The lady just couldn't give a bad performance, and she was incredibly versatile, appearing in comedies, dramas, noirs, and even westerns. By this time in her career she, like her contemporary Joan Crawford, had begun to acquire a hard look - a kind of hardening that came with maturity. The pair made a total of four films from 1940 to this Sirkian angst-fest. Joan Bennett was by this time making a career of playing the good wife and mother, and the role of Marion fits her to a T. Her looks also took on the mask of maturity. One could hardly guess that less than a decade earlier Bennett was still playing femme fatales in noir thrillers by European masters like Fritz Lang and Max Ophuls. As for MacMurray, I would go so far as to say his performance as Clifford Groves is the high-water mark of a long career, which began in the mid-thirties as a light, amiable leading man opposite the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, and Carole Lombard (with whom he made four films between 1935 and 1937). MacMurray, always a reliable performer, had a long and more varied career than people probably remember. His forte was comedy, but he could be equally compelling in dramatic fare. As recently as 1954, he had appeared in the all-star, well received The Caine Mutiny; Richard Quine's excursion to the dark side with Kim Novak in Pushover; in The Far Horizons as Meriwether Lewis opposite Charlton Heston's William Clark; and, of course, his reptilian Mr. Sheldrake in Billy Wilder's great 1960 Oscar winner, The Apartment. But it is for his work as Steve Douglas, the kindly father of My Three Sons, the weekly television show that ran on CBS from 1960 to 1972, and the Disney films, The Absent Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, and The Shaggy Dog, that MacMurray will always be most closely associated.

MacMurray and Stanwyck are dwarfed by Clifford Groves latest toy, Rex,
the walkie-talkie robot man and metaphor for Cliff's character.

Douglas Sirk's last Hollywood production was his biggest money-maker, Imitation of Life, in 1959. Shortly after, he turned his back on films in Hollywood and return to his native Germany. He lived a long while after that, passing on in 1987 at age 89, having lived long enough to see his films rightly  acknowledged for the classics they are. His influence is felt in the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and in Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, to name a few.

Title card from 1956's Written on the Wind