George Stevens
January 31, 2003
If you find yourself with nothing to do Friday night, don’t want to brave the cold or test the waters of recent Hollywood offerings (Kangaroo Jack anyone?) than stay home and tune into Turner Classic Movies triple bill of George Stevens classics.
The three features; The Talk of the Town (’42), Gunga Din (’39), and Alice Adams (’35) are three of the director’s best black and white gems made prior to his meticulously detailed dramas of the ‘50’s. You wouldn’t realize it if you just know heavy Stevens fare like A Place in the Sun or Giant, but the great director started in comedy, and these three features all shine in that classic Hollywood comedic glow.
First up is The Talk of the Town from 1942 starring Cary Grant as Leopold Dilg (great Hollywood name), a wrongfully accused political prisoner on the lam, hiding out at old flame Jean Arthur’s boarding house. Into the mix comes handsome professor Ronald Coleman, also a guest at the house. In between the misunderstandings and social law debating of the two men Stevens fashions a unique kind of love triangle with pixie Arthur doing what she did best, playing the cute professional woman. Made for Columbia with a witty script by Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman, The Talk of the Town is as witty and charming as romantic comedies of the ‘40s ever were.
The middle film on the night is Gunga Din, the 1939 adventure classic, also starring Cary Grant. The story (based loosely on the Rudyard Kipling poem) involves three British soldiers (Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and a plucky water boy, Gunga Din, during the Thuggee uprising in British occupied India. This is epic swashbuckling fun with Grant and Fairbanks exchanging witty barbs (the script has no less than 10 writers, including Ben Hecht and William Faulkner) while character actor Sam Jaffe has the role of a lifetime as Din, the water boy turned hero. Made for RKO in the great Hollywood year of 1939, Gunga Din is one of the most memorable of all the fun swashbuckling adventures not to star Errol Flynn.
The final film on the Stevens triple bill is the oldest, and arguably the most charmingly funny, Alice Adams, made in 1935 with Katherine Hepburn as Booth Tarkington’s social climbing small town girl. This was the second film version of Tarkington’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel that recounts the exploits of Ma Adams and daughter Alice’s attempts to garner clout in high society. It’s a futile task until Alice meets and falls in love with a rich man, played by Fred MacMurray. Stevens’ first major hit which earned Hepburn her second of twelve Oscar nominations (the first was for 1933’s Morning Glory); this RKO comedy is a nice way to end the night of Stevens classics. Watch for the scene where Alice and family entertain MacMurray at dinner, it’s a classic.
George Stevens is arguably one of Hollywood’s best directors of the studio era. His name is often mentioned in the same breath as contemporaries and fellow World War II propagandists Frank Capra and William Wyler. Like his more famous friends, Stevens has a long list of prestigious films. If you enjoy these three classics, you’ll be inclined to check out any of these genre-defining masterpieces; 1935’s Swing Time (dance musical), 1948’s I Remember Mama (nostalgia), 1951’s A Place in the Sun (literary adaptation), and 1953’s Shane (western). Stevens’ career ended after two bloated and overproduced films, the epic The Greatest Story Ever Told and the romantic The Only Game in Town, but those films hardly tarnish the resume of one of our greatest directors.
The Stevens triple feature airs Friday night at 8 on TCM.
by Adam Suraf