Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Thursday, October 23, 2014

TCM Unearths Another Gem


The Stranger's Return (1933) Is Back On Television

Warners has quietly cleared another out-of-circulation title and put it back on view. The Stranger's Return played last week on TCM without fanfare, no mention in Robert Osborne's intro that this was a first time showing in the over twenty years since TNT, according to online posters, had a run. History of The Stranger's Return in terms of spotty sightings is fascinating in itself. There certainly were 16mm prints made up for television when MGM's "Pre-48 Greats" became available for broadcast in August 1956. Sixty stations would within a first three years purchase the entire package of 716 features, including The Stranger's Return, so it did not go unseen during that period. Metro pulled the title in 1963, however, indicating The Stranger's Return as "withdrawn" in syndication listings. The flag was result of underlying literary rights (source novel by Phil Stong) that had not been renewed. Other titles taken out of TV circulation at the same time included Red-Headed Woman (1932) and Mr. and Mrs. North (1942), among others, some of which still remain to be cleared for broadcast. There would later be rental access to The Stranger's Return on 16mm, through Films, Inc., whose 1977 Rediscovering The American Cinema catalogue listed the 1933 feature, suggesting that MGM still had non-theatrical, if not TV, rights.


William K. Everson ran a 16mm print to his NYU class on 10/14/77. He probably rented The Stranger's Return from Films, Inc., but on the other hand, it may have been his own print, which hopefully is still around and might supply a scene missing from the final reel. What TCM played looked to be from 35mm with low contrast, reminiscent of grayish 16mm local stations used to lease from syndicators. There seems not to be multiple prints of The Stranger's Return around, the camera negative having burned years back. So question as applies to any oldie brought out of hibernation: Is it worth the wait? Being a King Vidor project automatically confers interest. The theme was one he liked and would return to, being rural-based and close to soil. Location is generous, and thanks-be, these farms aren't built on Metro stages (Stranger's was shot "about an hour or so" from Los Angeles, according to Vidor in a later interview with Nancy Dowd). Characters live off the land, so there's no Depression reference other than Miriam Hopkins mentioning fact she couldn't find a job in the city she's recently left.


I don't gravitate to sticks-set stuff as a rule, finding them usually clichéd or oppressive, as in beat-down of Lillian Gish in The Wind or harsh Mountain Justice as meted in that Warners ordeal directed by Mike Curtiz. Worse is when they go all-out poetic with stunner imagery but caterpillar pace, like City Girl. Every farm patriarch is a hard case, it seems, Lionel Barrymore no exception in The Stranger's Return, but good writing lends wit enough to dialogue to make his character engaging, a third act twist on expectation being for me what's best and most memorable about the show. LB talks of long ago when he "went to the Civil War," and there's a real sense of battles having once been fought on ground he now tills. North Carolina had Confederate vet parades well into the 20th century; my mother recalled ones taking place each year in Kings Mountain, where she grew up, so The Stranger's Return and Barrymore's role must have rung especially true for many who saw the film first-run in 1933.


There's also importance of food to these people. They eat, and talk a lot of eating. Lionel is served cereal, "cardboard" according to him, at breakfast (for Grandpa's health) and rebels by going outdoors to collect eggs and do ritual of frying these plus bacon in extended action where we can almost taste result. He later balks at lemonade and cookies served by neighbor Franchot Tone and wife because they'll "spoil our lunch," while his threshing crew after a morning's work rushes to table like starved animals. Their attack on loaded plates seem like comedy to sedentary moderns who've lost sight of what it is to be really hungry after honest-to-goodness work outdoors. Stranger's extended feast with Miriam Hopkins unable to keep pace with demand for seconds, salt, and what-not, is a highlight that's staged beautifully by director Vidor.


Hopkins has a part so well conceived as to make her for once appealing as an actress. She's a modern woman having been around, married, and then split from that, but not jaundiced by experience. Her developing romance with Franchot Tone is believable, suffused with good dialogue, and played splendidly by both. He has a wife, who thankfully isn't a shrew or doormat we wish would clear out for sake of new-found love. There's real sense that Tone would give up much by letting her go, no matter novelty's attraction in Hopkins. The situation is adult, sensitively handled, and reflective of benefit Vidor had for getting his cast/crew well away from Culver to shoot. The Stranger's Return was pre-Code, but not aggressively so, having not the sort of theme we'd associate with the category, and yet ... Vidor did refer to a haystack love scene between Hopkins and Tone missing from a print he saw in the late 70's (his first screening since the film was new). There was no such footage in TCM's broadcast last week. Had it been Code-cut at some point? Many features of the period were, with trims never put back. What we have of The Stranger's Return may be incomplete beyond short business lopped from the end.

Note Clark Gable As Originally Having Been Cast

"My audience in North Dakota ate it up," said one showman. "The answer to the small town exhibitor's prayer," said another. This was typical of grassroots reaction to The Stranger's Return. Of multiple opinions I read, none were negative, and all reported good business. It was, in fact, "a picture that sends them away smiling," according to one manager who'd report pleased patrons he'd not have to duck the next day (bad pictures had a way of keeping managers off small-town streets until stench died down). Some playing The Stranger's Return used the "Personal Assurance" gag that was always chancy, unless you had something truly good to sell. In this case, they did. 100% customer satisfaction was reported in numerous situations. Agricultural centers were a natural, Variety reporting that Lincoln, Nebraska's same named venue "has the town to itself" while playing The Stranger's Return. Overall rentals were fine, with nice gains for Metro thanks to reasonable negative cost ($288,035). Domestic rentals were $439,000, foreign $191,000. Final profit was $117,964.

Many Thanks to Dr. Karl Thiede for info/data on The Stranger's Return.

6 Comments:

Blogger Michael said...

Great writeup, I'm really glad you got to this one which (as you know from NitrateVille) is a personal favorite.

The haystack scene notion is interesting, it's tough to see where it would go in the finished film. The climactic moment in their romance is the scene where she's on the hammock-- a nice choice of suggestive but still-deniable venue, that-- and it's hard to imagine how the plot's progression would have accommodated anything more explicitly suggestive that they'd done more than pine. My suspicion is that that's a memory failing, not a scene that was ever really shot.

I think I tried twice to book this from Films Inc. I think once I got a print of a spaghetti western called The Stranger Returns, or at least had to go to trouble to make sure that wasn't it. (Films Inc. was notorious for, if you ordered any title that had more than one film to it, you WOULD get Ingram's The Magician rather than Bergman's, or vice versa.) Anyway, by the time I got it ordered correctly for my series in Wichita, the report from their lab came back that it was no longer in showable shape, and I had to substitute Street Scene as roughly the closest similar thing.

10:31 AM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Thanks a lot, Michael, for this background on Films, Inc. and rental efforts re "The Stranger's Return." Funny you should mention "The Stranger Returns" circa 1968, starring Tony Anthony. I saw that when it came out, but haven't seen it turn up anywhere since. Another lost classic!

10:55 AM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

This wasn't a bad movie at all. After being used to Barrymore in a wheelchair, my wife was shocked to see him walking. Looked a little like Rasputin, didn't he?

I'm kind of confused about Gable being part of the original cast. We he supposed to have played the Stu Erwin role? Or Hopkins' estranged husband?

That abrupt end took me by surprise. It looked like there might have been a few more lines -- or a kiss?

You're right about Tone's wife being a decent person. Most movies, especially today, take the easy way out by making the spouse easy to hate. Here, you were kind of forced to choose between the two, as was Tone.

2:16 PM  
Blogger Michael said...

I can't imagine Gable playing anything but the Tone role, if that, so they must have both been in contention for it... or this is simply a mistake.

3:31 PM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

By the way, isn't that "adopted child" caption under Hopkins' photo Hollywood-code for "illegitimate offspring"?

4:17 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Craig Reardon passes along some thoughts on "The Stranger's Return" and changed landscapes where it was filmed:


The LONG blog about "The Stranger's Return" is interesting but I'm at a slight disadvantage, never even having heard of it. The reference to filming rural scenes "about an hour away" (from MGM) is absolutely credible for the year in which it was made, as most of greater LA county was only slightly developed in the sense of suburbs, let alone urban-style centers. In fact, where I live today, it was mostly farm land or open, unincorporated (no city) land. (That'd be the Conejo Valley; it's on view constantly in Milestone pictures, e.g., as he liked filming out here apparently, and shot "Of Mice and Men", "The Red Pony", "A Walk in the Sun" here, and many characteristic profiles of the surrounding hills and mountain ranges are often very recognizable. What's NOT recognizable is anything on the valley floor! That is transformed beyond comprehension today.) Miriam Hopkins is very good in that hard-luck movie that recently got some new play...I'm going blank on the title...where she's ill-used by Jack LaRue. It's a simmering pot-boiler, pre-code. To see her in that or in "Design For Living" reminds us that people were recognizably people back then, after all, until the religious Nazis stepped in and sprinkled everything with fairy dust. Certainly not to infer that people were all having affairs, or consorting with criminals, etc. That should be obvious. But it was most definitely fair grist for the mill of moviemaking, that is, until a relatively small faction of self-righteous kooks wagged the dog for the next 30 years. My contempt for bullies--which is what they were--and censorship, both, probably come through loud and clear here. My attitude is always, "Don't go see it", or, "Change the channel"...if you don't like something. But, I don't think it's necessary to raise a war party and fight to have things suppressed, at least as long as the thing in question has some basis in reality and real human behavior, which is reliably complex at any given time. Hopkins as an actress dealt with extreme stuff extremely well, for a woman who otherwise always gave off a whiff of the cliché "suthun belle". I thought she was fantastic and disturbing (and therefore, very brave!) in that unforgettably-nuts episode of "Outer Limits" in 1964, written by Joseph Stefano, about the box that vacuumed human beings into itself at a wedding party. I know you must remember that, even from re-runs, as unlike me you're unlikely to have seen it when it was new as I did (and went to bed that night considerably creeped out by it!)

2:56 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024