Hollywood Madonna (29 page)

Hollywood got religion when the times required it. The religion boom continued once writers discovered the Cold War, with Communists replacing Nazis and Japanese imperialists. God took to the airwaves in
The Next Voice You Hear
(1950); angels turned the Pittsburgh Pirates into a winning team in
Angels in the Outfield
(1951); and the communist son of staunch Catholic parents recanted too late in
My Son John
(1952). Since the nuclear age conjured up the specter of a nuclear war, the Deity alone could save the planet. A spate of doomsday films (
Five
[1951],
When Worlds Collide
[1951],
War of the Worlds
[1953]) stressed the need for belief. In their sermons, priests often emphasized the significance of the dates of America’s official entry into World War II (December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception) and V-J Day (August 14, the eve of the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary), implying that a country so ill prepared to enter a global war was granted a miracle. Perhaps another was needed to prevent World War III. Historians, naturally, would argue otherwise. Yet many Catholics, and perhaps others as well, did not discount the possibility of some form of divine assistance, the same way moviegoers hoped for a deus ex machina in the form of a last-minute reprieve for an innocent prisoner on death row, or the arrival of the cavalry when the fort under Indian attack seemed doomed.

The Bishop’s Wife
combines both the need for faith and for miracles. An angel, Dudley (Cary Grant), is dispatched to assist Bishop Brougham (David Niven) achieve his goal. As played by Grant, Dudley is the most sophisticated angel who ever came down to earth. His clothes are impeccably tailored, he plays the harp exquisitely, and he is an accomplished figure skater. But his emotions (one must assume angels have them, once they take on human form) surface when he meets Julia. Loretta’s best scenes are those with Grant, especially the scene in which they turn skating into a courtship ritual. Their growing rapport is even apparent in another scene that would ordinarily have no romantic connotations: the one in which Dudley helps Julia choose a hat, behaving more like a beau or a husband than an angel. A happy ending is inevitable, as one would expect of a film that ends on Christmas Eve with the conversion of an agnostic (Monty Woolley) and Dudley’s winning over the wealthy Mrs. Hamilton (Gladys Cooper), who had previously opposed the construction of the cathedral. When one thinks of
The Bishop’s Wife
, Loretta’s is the last name that comes to mind. It was Grant’s film. Loretta had nothing to equal Niven’s climactic Christmas Eve sermon, nor could she
compete with the outstanding supporting cast (Monty Woolley, James Gleason, Gladys Cooper, and especially Elsa Lanchester).

Loretta’s two 1947 films—
The Farmer’s Daughter
, released in March, and
The Bishop’s Wife
, released in December—were never intended for her. Ingrid Bergman was producer David Selznick’s preference for the former; Teresa Wright, Goldwyn’s choice for the latter. In the mid 1940s,
Selznick came upon an obscure play
,
Hulga for Parliament
, by a Finnish playwright writing under the pseudonym Juhni Tervataa. Hulga was a politically astute woman from a Swedish farming community who succeeded in getting elected to parliament. After buying the rights, Selznick assigned the adaptation to Laura Kerr and Allen Rivkin, with instructions to Americanize the plot. They entitled their first draft “Katie for Congress,” in which a young Swedish woman from Minnesota runs for Congress and wins, despite an unsuccessful attempt to defame her. “Katie for Congress” underwent a name change, becoming
The Farmer’s Daughter
, designed as a vehicle for the Swedish-born Ingrid Bergman—the title change presumably a way of attracting audiences familiar with risqué jokes about the farmer’s daughter that were a staple of every burlesque comic’s repertoire. Bergman, now an Oscar winner for her performance as the terrorized wife in
Gaslight
(1944), passed on it, claiming that she could do more than act with her accent, especially after it had become a plot point in
The Bells of St. Mary’s
(1945).

Once Bergman bowed out, Selznick lost interest in the project and
sold the rights to RKO
, where Dory Schary had just become production head. Schary was eager to produce the film, but as compensation for losing Bergman, Selznick wanted to maintain a measure of control by loaning out two of his other stars: Joseph Cotten, who played Congressman Glen Morley, and Ethel Barrymore, who appeared as his influential mother, thereby maintaining a presence in a film that was no longer his. Selznick also tried to cajole Schary into hiring Sonja Henie for the lead, believing that the Norwegian Henie could pass for a Swede. Schary, refusing to be cowed by Selznick, insisted on Loretta: “
I honestly feel
with deep conviction that Loretta Young could approximate much more of what we want.”

Schary was familiar with
Along Came Jones
and
The Stranger
, which were released by RKO. Obviously he knew of Loretta’s other work as well, but it was the RKO connection that made her a perfect candidate for the role. In addition, Loretta was a good friend of the Scharys and a regular at their parties, despite political differences. Schary was an impassioned liberal (but not a radical); to Loretta, the only politics that
mattered were studio politics. Once Loretta signed on, she “plunged into the role,” mastering the Swedish accent and settling for clothes that Katie, not Loretta, would wear. Her efforts paid off, and the Oscar that Schary predicted came to pass.

Schary entrusted the direction to H.C. Potter, who was equally at home in the theatre, where he directed such notable Broadway plays as
A Bell for Adano
,
Anne of the Thousand Days
, and
Sabrina Fair.
Potter took a stage director’ s approach to film, using occasional long takes to minimize cutting, and composing shots so that—at least for a minute or so—they looked as they would on the stage, with the action framed within the proscenium. Then Potter would cut, but at least for those few moments, audiences experienced the wholeness of theatre. Potter also understood that, in film, a shot from above or below should match the character’s perspective. Thus when Clancy, the gruff but kind-hearted butler (Charles Bickford), observes activity in the parlor from the second story, the shot matches his angle of vision. The script required a skating scene between Cotten and Loretta. Both of them appeared to be passable skaters, but when it was time to waltz on the ice, Potter cut to a long shot, with doubles dressed like the principals but capable of doing what they could not. There is no way of knowing whether Potter or the writers were aware of a similar skating scene in
The Bishop’s Wife
, in which Henry Koster used a double when Cary Grant’s character did some fancy figure skating. But in each film, skating seemed more like a mating dance than a spin on the ice.

As Katie Holstram, Loretta sounded like an authentic Swede. Sent from her parents’ farm to work as a domestic for the Marleys, Katie revels in being part of a household that throws cocktail parties for politicians and journalists, eventually becoming brave enough to attend a political rally in support of Anders Finley (Art Baker), for whom she has no respect. During Q & A, Katie innocently asks Finley, “Why are you running for Congress?” Once the hecklers are silenced, she summarizes his shoddy record during the Great Depression: practicing nepotism, complaining that bread lines were too costly, and requiring apple sellers to have a license. Mocked at first, Katie garners so much popular support that she is on the verge of winning the nomination, when the opposition mounts a smear campaign that almost destroys her self-confidence.

Encouraged by her father, Katie reenters the fray; in a montage straight out of Capra’s
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, with newspaper headlines dissolving into each other, Katie wins both the election and Morley. What the film leaves unresolved is the question of how two members
of Congress with different agendas can have a successful marriage. But moviegoers who prefer the ending of their dream scenario to the film’s would not even have raised the question. To them, Katie is so strong-willed that whatever political disagreements arise, it is clear Morley will come around to her way of thinking.

The Farmer’s Daughter
was the first time Loretta worked with Joseph Cotten; the second was in a less worthy vehicle,
Half Angel
(1951). Cotten, the courtly Virginian and connoisseur of beauty and talent, was awed by Loretta: “
Her knowledge
of her own technique as well as the offstage mechanics of movie makeup, is enormous. She can never be unglamorous, and her beautiful eyes are as innocent today as ever.” That technique paid off in 1948 when Loretta received her first Oscar nomination, not for
The Bishop’s Wife
, but for
The Farmer’s Daughter
. Also nominated that year were Joan Crawford (
Possessed
), Susan Hayward (
Smash-Up
,
The Story of a Woman
), Dorothy McGuire (
Gentleman’s Agreement
), and Rosalind Russell (
Mourning Becomes Electra
). Although Loretta was thrilled with the nomination, she was convinced she did not stand a chance after the trades had all but awarded the Oscar to Russell.

When RKO agreed to co-produce Dudley Nichols’s scrupulously faithful version of Eugene O’Neill’s
Mourning Becomes Electra
with the Theatre Guild, the studio knew it would only be a prestige film that needed some incentive (an Oscar nomination or preferably an Oscar) to build an audience. As it happened,
Mourning Becomes Electra
found favor with neither the public nor the critics. The subject matter, Aeschylus’s
Oresteia
as it might have unfolded in post-bellum New England, became a lexicon of neuroses: a brother and sister are in the advanced stages of the Oedipus and Electra complexes; an adulterous wife poisons her husband and commits suicide after her son avenges his father’s murder by killing his mother’s lover and later himself; the daughter makes a Freudian slip, calling her suitor by the name of her mother’s lover and then admitting that he had been her lover, too. If the wildly operatic plot seems like a retrospective of a daytime soap, O’Neill’s trilogy has the power to draw audiences into the mind’s dark places, holding them there for the duration (four hours for the play, three for the film) and leaving them exhausted but purged.

Mourning Becomes Electra
was not so much a movie as an event.
It opened at the Golden
, a legitimate playhouse on West 45th St. in New York, which during World War II was home to the long-running (1,293 performances)
Angel Street. Mourning
was a road show engagement, with two performances daily, and three on Sunday. By 1947 standards, the
tickets cost about the same as most stage plays: $2.40 (orchestra and mezzanine) and $1.80 (balcony) in the evenings; $1.80 (orchestra and mezzanine), $1.20 (balcony) at the matinees.
The Farmer’s Daughter
, on the other hand, opened in New York at the “showcase of the nation,” the egalitarian Radio City Music Hall, where the price of a ticket included a movie and an elaborate stage show featuring the world-famous Rock-ettes.
Mourning
was tough going for the uninitiated;
Daughter
was pure mass entertainment.

On 28 March 1948, the Academy Awards ceremony took place at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
When Fredric March opened the envelope
to announce the name of the best actress of 1947, he looked shocked. Meanwhile, a confident Russell, sitting in the rear, was about to rise, until she heard March say, “Loretta Young for
The Farmer’s Daughter
.” To avoid embarrassment, Russell made it seem that she had risen to lead an ovation for her friend. A euphoric Loretta, in a green silk taffeta dress, her neck encircled by a diamond necklace, swept down the aisle. She graciously acknowledged the other nominees but could not resist adding, as she kissed the statuette, “And as for you, at long last.”

It was not surprising that Loretta won.
The Farmer’s Daughter
was an American Dream movie: You, too, can run for Congress and win—despite your background. In fact, your background can work for you, freeing you from hangers-on and smarmy campaign managers and imbuing you with courage even in the face of defeat.
Mourning Becomes Electra
was marketed as cinema: highbrow entertainment for the elite, caviar for the masses. Since
The Farmer’s Daughter
was movie rather than cinema, more Academy members saw—and enjoyed—it, contrasting its ninety-seven-minute running time with the three-hour
Mourning Becomes Electra
. Imagine students given a choice between writing a paper on either “The Aeschylean Background of
Mourning Becomes Electra
” or
“The Farmer’s Daughter
as a Reflection of the American Dream.” Most would have chosen the latter; the Academy certainly did.

Three months later, another event occurred that received as much publicity as Loretta’s Oscar. Shortly after 6 June, Loretta received a brief note from her maternal grandmother informing her that her father, John Earle Young, died of a stroke. Loretta reacted unemotionally; to her, he was the man who abandoned them when she was four. “He may have been my father,” she told the
Los Angeles Times
(14 June 1948) about the man who died under the name of John V. Earle. She went on to explain that, on the advice of her parish priest, she sent her father monthly checks, even though he made no effort to see her. Polly Ann and Sally
Blane attended the funeral; Loretta did not—or would not, claiming that she was making a film. John Earle Young was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica. On the day of his burial, there was no headstone to mark his grave, although there were baskets of flowers without cards to identify the senders. To Loretta, 1948 meant her Oscar, not her father’s death.