Underrated Gem: Humoresque

"All my life I wanted to do the right thing. But it never worked out. I'm outside always looking in, feeling all the time I'm far away from home, and where home is I don't know. I can't get back to the simple, happy kid I use to be."  

--John Garfield's opening scene from Humoresque    

A devastated John Garfield after Joan Crawford's death:
the opening scene of Humoresque, 1946

In the early 1990s, I became infatuated with Oscar Levant. I'm not sure why, but I assume his wisecracking movie roles, especially in 1946's Humoresque, had a lot to do with it. This Warner Brothers movie--a kind of rip-off of Clifford Odets' (who co-wrote this film) Golden Boy--won me over the first time I saw it many, many years ago. The soapy film starred Joan Crawford as an alcoholic, married, society dame (as co-star, John Garfield's character refers to her) who has a fondness for--as Garfield's cynical sidekick Oscar Levant so aptly puts it--"la vie boheme." Joan Crawford, who had been released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios in 1943 after nearly twenty years, was considered somewhat washed up in Hollywood by the mid-Forties but made a huge comeback in 1945 with Mildred Pierce, grossing millions for Warners and nabbing an Oscar for Best Actress of 1945. Humoresque was her follow up to that classic film.

John Garfield--second billed--was also hitting a career peak after the 1945 film, Pride of the Marines (another underrated gem), and the noir scorcher, The Postman Always Rings Twice, opposite Lana Turner. Here, Garfield plays Paul Boray, a Lower East Side kid with a talent for the fiddle. (The violin playing was dubbed by the great Isaac Stern, who also served as Garfield's hand double. The effect, still impressive some seventy years later, was achieved in the film by cutting the sleeves of Garfield's coat and shirt, allowing Stern's hands to substitute Garfield's.) Oscar Levant plays Garfield's piano-playing friend (i.e., second banana) who gets the film's best lines. It's Oscar Levant playing Oscar Levant, which means a little piano and a lot of observation about life and love. Cutting remarks from the sidelines include, "It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts." And,"I didn't make the world, I barely live in it." Levant's film career was just taking off at this point, despite his appearance in seven previous films. His most prominent role to date was the George Gershwin biopic, Rhapsody in Blue, released just a year before Humoresque, with Levant playing himself (he always played a variation on his own personality in his films, but in Rhapsody he was billed as Oscar Levant playing "Oscar Levant").  

The three performers with the most screen time in the film

The film begins with Paul Boray as a child of eight years or so played by Bobby Blake, aka, Robert Blake (yeah, that Robert Blake) In Humoresque, he is quite affecting as a boy his parents don't really understand, especially his Papa (J. Carroll Naish).  Momma (Ruth Nelson) gets him a bit more, but she is also a controlling type who who thinks no woman is good enough for her boy. Time goes by in one of those time-lapse montage Warners did to perfection in the Forties, and before you know it, little Paul Boray is a fully grown John Garfield, still practicing his violin while living at home. Fed up with a family that perceives him as a freeloader, Paul seeks out his piano-playing friend, Sid Jeffers (Oscar Levant), for advice on how to get ahead playing violin.

A young Robert Blake with Oscar Levant, Humoresque, 1946

Sid suggests going to the the home of Victor and Helen Wright. The Wrights are always hosting a party, and, as Sid tells Paul, he has been invited to a few for laughs: "I laugh at them or they laugh at me. I forget which." It's here--nearly 30 minutes into the film--that leading lady Joan Crawford appears. Crawford, playing Helen Wright, a married, neurotic, self-destructive society dame who drinks too much and likes to help struggling young artists, takes one look at Garfield's Paul playing his violin and is a goner ... though not before blowing cigarette smoke in his face as he is playing. Paul, however, is more than up for the challenge, playing Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" after telling Helen that "New York is full of all kinds of animals. Not all of them are human." From this fateful introduction, we know they will fall in love. Tragic love. Besides Paul's complex relationship with Helen, he has a pseudo romance with childhood friend and fellow musician, Gina, played by Joan Chandler. (It's Gina who Momma feels is the right woman for her Paul, not that lush, Helen Wright.)

In case I failed to mention it, Humoresque is the kind of movie where
the characters throw perfectly good cocktails against walls. 

As their relationship deepens, Helen helps the talented Paul get an agent, and, as his fame in the rarefied world of classical music increases, a penthouse suite overlooking the East River. Despite all this success the couple's relationship is stormy at best. While listening to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde on the radio, the fragile, distraught Helen kills herself by walking into the Atlantic Ocean--a highly dramatic finish. It's in moments like this that the film simultaneously embraces and transcends its melodramatic, over-the-top qualities. These are also the moments that the film's detractors hold against it. For me, though, the tragic, nearly operatic melodrama is why I love the film so much. The cinema just doesn't make films as unapologetically romantic as Humoresque any more, and that's a real shame.

Made for two million dollars, Humoresque is an impeccably crafted film. From its editing by studio favorite Rudi Fehr, the art direction of Hugh Reiticker, Joan Crawford's wardrobe by Adrian, the brilliant cinematography of Ernest Haller, the incredible work of Franz Waxman's music score, and Leo B. Forbstein's orchestration of the classic works of Wagner, Bizet, Divorak among others, the film stands as a time capsule of craftsmanship that has been lost in the shuffle of other, better known, films. Humoresque may contain Crawford's best performance--maybe even better than her Oscar-winning role in Mildred Pierce. Helen Wright is certainly a more complex role than Mildred, and Crawford hits all the right notes as a tragic woman for whom long-term happiness is an illusion. As for my buddy Oscar, I feel that this movie contains his best impersonation of himself, better than Rhapsody in Blue. Some may grow weary of his constant cynicism, but in this ultra-romantic setting, it's a relief--a bit of reality in this unrealistic-yet-touchingly-romantic fable of impossible love.

Sources:  The Films of John Garfield by Howard Gelman
                The Films of Joan Crawford by Lawrence J. Quirk
                John Garfield, The Illustrated History of the Movies by George Morris
                Joan Crawford, The Illustrated History of the Movies by Stephen Harvey
                Wikipedia Page on Humoresque

Underrated Gem: Daughters Courageous

Director Michael Curtiz's filmography is so wide-ranging and accomplished, it is difficult not to perceive him as one of Hollywood's under-appreciated craftsman. Born Mihaly Kertesz in Budapest in 1888, Curtiz came to Hollywood in the summer of 1926 after signing a contract with Warner Brothers. He stayed at Warners for 28 years and made over 80 films for the company, including the classics Casablanca (for which he received a Best Director Oscar), Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels With Dirty Faces, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk. 1938, one of his best years, saw the release of Robin Hood and Angels With Dirty Faces as well as an adaptation of the Fannie Hurst book, Four Daughters. Starring the Lane sisters--Priscilla, Rosemary, and Lola--and Gale Page as the daughters, along Claude Rains and May Robson, the film was highly successful in its day and is chiefly remembered as the film that brought John Garfield to film audiences in the secondary-yet-pivotal role of Mickey Borden, the hard-luck, cynical city kid who finds himself in the midst of an all-American family. Garfield was nothing short of sensational and received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work. The film was such a smash that Warners wanted a sequel. But there was a problem: In the original film Garfield died. How do you bring back a film's most popular character if he's dead?

Lobby card for thee film featuring Claude Rains with the Lane sisters and Gale Page

What the film's writers, Philip and Julius Epstein, came up with was a story that had all the same actors playing essentially the same parts in a different setting and plot. That film, Daughters Courageous (1939), worked beautifully. In fact, I think Daughters Courageous is a far better film than Four Daughters, and it surprises me that more people don't know of it. Claude Rains appears again as the father, though this time he plays a rascal who left his wife (Fay Bainter) and four daughters (the three Lane sisters plus Gale Page) twenty years ago, returning just as his wife has him declared legally dead so she can marry a well-off banker (Donald Crisp). Also returning are May Robson--now Fay Bainter's housekeeper instead of the girls' grandmother--and Jeffrey Lynn as a stage scenarist. And then there is John Garfield. Billed first in the credits this time (he was sixth in Four Daughters), Garfield plays Gabriel Lopez, a lazy, comically cynical, no-good-nik who falls so hard for Buff (Priscilla Lane) that he willingly goes to work for his father and proposes marriage to her.

Priscilla Lane's Buff has never met anyone quite like John Garfield's Gabriel Lopez

Daughters Courageous is as solidly performed, wittily scripted, and ably directed as nearly any film circa 1939, the year widely regarded as the best in Hollywood history. A viable argument could be made that if the film had been released in any other year it would be better known to today's audiences. Part of what makes Daughters Courageous so much fun and entertaining is watching the scenes that pair Garfield and Claude Rains as the girls' absent father, Jim. Their characters are two sides of the same coin, with young Gabriel wanting to whisk Buff off to a life of wanderlust and adventure, and aging Jim, tired after years of wanderlust, wanting nothing more than to come back to the hearth and home of the family he left behind long ago. The scene when Garfield comes calling for Buff (only to find she's gone out with the reliable Jeffrey Lynn) and stumbles upon Rains is one of the best in all 1930's Hollywood cinema, with Garfield seeing through Rains' stories and Rains seeing his younger self in Garfield's dreamer.

One of the thing's love will make a man do, like serenading a girl with a accordion

The film's most touching scenes are between Bainter's Nan and Rains' Jim Masters. There is genuine pathos when Jim, having ingratiating himself with his daughters, tells Nan how much the time since his return has meant to him and pleads, "Don't send me away. Don't send me back. I want to stay. I love you, Nan. I want my family back." But it's too little too late. Nan, though obviously still in love with Jim, tells him he must leave because, eventually, he will get the urge to go, and that will be devastating to the family. Nan is also thinking of Buff. She fears her daughter's attraction to Gabriel is due in large part to Jim's presence, and she doesn't want to see her daughter heartbroken. In the final scene Jim and Gabriel leave town as Nan marries Donald Crisp's steady, solid-yet-dull businessman.

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All this family angst may seem a bit too much like a soap opera to all but the sob sisters, but if that's the case, I'll sob along. I love this movie and have for nearly forty years. Daughters Courageous is a film that is not afraid to wear its sentimentality on its cinematic sleeve, front and center. I think that its emotion is one of the film's finest qualities. From its first-rate script to its fine photography by the esteemed James Wong Howe, and the sincerity and believability the entire cast brings to the performances, this film rates among the best of its genre, the best of its time. With it, Michael Curtiz, who had a reputation as a taskmaster behind the camera, proved that he understood the human condition and also had a versatility few film directors truly excelled at. Daughters Courageous is not just an underrated gem; it is a forgotten one. I believe that anyone who watches cannot help but be affected by its story, its performances, and most of all, its heart.

Sources: The Films of John Garfield by Howard Gelman
               Wikipedia
               IMDB