Christmas Holiday Reviews

Off-beat casting and a sharp Mankiewicz script take this a cut above many of the film noir pieces of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Harens is going home to San Francisco for Christmas but a rainstorm causes the young Army man to stay over in New Orleans. He meets Durbin, a cynical 22-year-old singer, in a tacky nightclub. They go to church at midnight and she pours her heart out to him. She is married to Kelly who is in jail for having murdered a bookie. Flashback, and we see her meet Kelly at a concert, where he is all charm. Kelly and his mother, Sondergaard, are the final members of a well-known and once-wealthy Louisiana clan. Durbin marries him, but soon discovers he is a rat with a temper like a caged mongoose. She senses Kelly and Sondergaard are attempting to conceal something, then learns of the murder. Kelly is quickly dispatched to jail and Sondergaard, who had warned Durbin about her son, tells her off for having married him in the first place! Durbin finishes her tale and returns to the club to find that Kelly has escaped from prison and is holding reporter Whorf hostage. Kelly sees the young Army man and is prepared to kill them both, but the New Orleans police arrive before he can do any damage, and Kelly is shot and mortally wounded. He dies in Durbin's arms and we can only hope that she wound up with Harens after the fadeout. What a strange movie this was. Durbin was Universal's golden girl and totally out of character for the part of a downtrodden singer, yet she managed to pull it off. Even more out of line was Kelly as the villain. He had done a ne'er-do-well in PAL JOEY but this was much more powerful and he was allowed to act without singing or dancing. Kelly wasn't a huge star at the time and thus was available for loan-out. After the success of COVER GIRL, that would never happen again. Durbin left the screen three years later but said she always felt this was the best acting she ever did. She didn't want to sing at all in the movie, but they prevailed on her to do "Always" by Irving Berlin and a tune especially written by 34-year-old Frank Loesser, who was writing songs for his twenty-ninth film. It was called "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year" and remains a standard. The film bears little resemblance to the Maugham novel, on which it is based, as the novel is replete with incest, homosexuality, and prostitution. Because of the Hollywood production code, the producers were forced to make many compromises, but somehow managed to turn out a fine film. The film earned an Oscar nomination for its score.