September and October 1943 were deep in the war.
An end was not in sight, and who knew how long we'd fight? A movie to be
relevant had to address the conflict somehow. That wouldchange as audiences
got sick of war in every reel, but for now, all eyes and hearts were focused on
victory and how it might be achieved. Features not dwelling on the struggle were often
held back from release pending outcome of the war, a glut caused by popular product enjoying longer than ever runs. Heaven
Can Wait was an Ernst Lubitsch comedy in period dress, being topical to gas-lit
era and no time else. So what did this have to do with winning the war, asked
20th's institutional ad published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer? "A nation
that can laugh is a nation that will win," was Fox answer, "Buy More
Bonds!" a footnote, along with names of Fox personnel inuniform (John
Ford among them). And lest our fighting force be ignored, we're assured that
they too will enjoy Heaven Can Wait at far-flung battlefronts. Claudia stands
for a homefront defended, fresh-face Dorothy McGuire the sort of girl waiting for
warriors to return. Claudia was a stage-derived, bucolic-set domestic comedy
as far away from battle tension as it was possible to be. Maybe that had
something to do with the show's success, and immediate demand for a sequel. Note
upcoming Fox product touted in both ads, including the never made One World, to
be produced by Zanuck and based on Wendell Willkie's "great book."
Heaven Can Wait is a favorite that I'll dip into anytime it's on. For a while there was some confusion as the remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan was inexplicably renamed Heaven Can Wait. Not a bad film, but discovering it is not the Robert Montgomery classic is like biting into a creme puff and discovering butterscotch instead of vanilla cream. The wolf, man.
@Kenneth: If you think that's confusing, consider that there was a sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan titled Down to Earth. Two years after Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait, there was a remake of Down to Earth, but it wasn't a sequel to Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait. (That would be Xanadu.) And in 2001, there was a remake of Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait ... which was titled Down to Earth.
kenneth Von Gunden writes, "For a while there was some confusion as the remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan was inexplicably renamed Heaven Can Wait."
This did cause some confusion -- after all, there was already a great movie named HEAVEN CAN WAIT -- but the titling of the MR. JORDAN remake wasn't really inexplicable. The source material for HERE COMES MR. JORDAN is Harry Segall's 1938 play Heaven Can Wait. [How Segall came to win the 1941 Oscar for JORDAN's original story remains a mystery; the picture is clearly an adaptation of the author's existing play, although I'm not sure whether the show had been produced before Columbia bought it.] I believe Warren Beatty felt reverting to the work's original title would help differentiate his remake from JORDAN (He'd already acquired remake rights for the movie from Columbia -- getting rights to the play's title from Fox was probably a simple matter). To add yet another title of this thing to the mix, Segall's play had a brief Broadway run in 1946 as Wonderful Journey.
I think JORDAN is a very good movie -- well-constructed and imaginative story, swell Montgomery and Gleason, great Rains. But I also like the '78 Beatty remake very much; it's wittily adapted and extremely well cast and acted. Beatty did originally try to get Muhammad Ali to play the Joe Pendleton character (hey, he was a boxer!) before eventually deciding to make the character a pro quarterback and play the part himself.* The actor-producer badly wanted Cary Grant to come out of retirement to play Mr. Jordan (he apparently thought about it, but demurred; Grant had also been approached to play the Pendleton role in 1941) and was also unsuccessful in persuading Robert Young to take the role. James Mason, who ultimately took the Jordan role, had mixed feelings about his performance (he felt uncomfortable with the part, which reminded him of his angelic character in the uneven FOREVER, DARLING, and worried about comparisons to Rains' top 1941 turn), but he's very good in the remake.
I have seen various references to Zanuck's planned ONE WORLD in a number of books as well as movie ads like these. What remains unclear to me is any idea of what the never made film might have been like. The Wilkie book -- a very big best-seller back in the day -- is essentially the politician's account of some of his meetings and discussions with both eminent leaders and ordinary citizens around the world and his thinking that everyone's lives are now inter-linked and how we need to now contemplate a form of world government. Yep, feature films were crafted from a number of topical non-fiction works during the war. De Seversky's Victory through Air Power sort of lent itself to a visualized lecture by the famous flier (enlivened and augmented by extensive use of Disney animation). Davies' Mission to Moscow, his memoir of his years as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, was transmuted by Warners into a large scale (and positive) dramatization of contemporary Soviet life, viewed through the eyes and perspective Davies and his family. But I just don't know how Zanuck and his writers might have seen Wilkie's thoughtful, populist (and far-ranging) work as a movie. Wilkie's 1944 passing (as well as changing political attitudes) probably rendered Zanuck's plans for the film moot, but I remain curious as to what he might have had in mind here.
Regards, -- Griff ____________________ * When Francis Ford Coppola was toying with the idea of remaking JORDAN in the late '60s, he was contemplating casting Bill Cosby in the Pendleton role.
5 Comments:
Heaven Can Wait is a favorite that I'll dip into anytime it's on. For a while there was some confusion as the remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan was inexplicably renamed Heaven Can Wait. Not a bad film, but discovering it is not the Robert Montgomery classic is like biting into a creme puff and discovering butterscotch instead of vanilla cream.
The wolf, man.
@Kenneth: If you think that's confusing, consider that there was a sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan titled Down to Earth. Two years after Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait, there was a remake of Down to Earth, but it wasn't a sequel to Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait. (That would be Xanadu.) And in 2001, there was a remake of Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait ... which was titled Down to Earth.
Whew.... Hollywood.
The wolf, man.
Just in from Griff ---
Dear John:
kenneth Von Gunden writes, "For a while there was some confusion as the remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan was inexplicably renamed Heaven Can Wait."
This did cause some confusion -- after all, there was already a great movie named HEAVEN CAN WAIT -- but the titling of the MR. JORDAN remake wasn't really inexplicable. The source material for HERE COMES MR. JORDAN is Harry Segall's 1938 play Heaven Can Wait. [How Segall came to win the 1941 Oscar for JORDAN's original story remains a mystery; the picture is clearly an adaptation of the author's existing play, although I'm not sure whether the show had been produced before Columbia bought it.] I believe Warren Beatty felt reverting to the work's original title would help differentiate his remake from JORDAN (He'd already acquired remake rights for the movie from Columbia -- getting rights to the play's title from Fox was probably a simple matter). To add yet another title of this thing to the mix, Segall's play had a brief Broadway run in 1946 as Wonderful Journey.
I think JORDAN is a very good movie -- well-constructed and imaginative story, swell Montgomery and Gleason, great Rains. But I also like the '78 Beatty remake very much; it's wittily adapted and extremely well cast and acted. Beatty did originally try to get Muhammad Ali to play the Joe Pendleton character (hey, he was a boxer!) before eventually deciding to make the character a pro quarterback and play the part himself.* The actor-producer badly wanted Cary Grant to come out of retirement to play Mr. Jordan (he apparently thought about it, but demurred; Grant had also been approached to play the Pendleton role in 1941) and was also unsuccessful in persuading Robert Young to take the role. James Mason, who ultimately took the Jordan role, had mixed feelings about his performance (he felt uncomfortable with the part, which reminded him of his angelic character in the uneven FOREVER, DARLING, and worried about comparisons to Rains' top 1941 turn), but he's very good in the remake.
I have seen various references to Zanuck's planned ONE WORLD in a number of books as well as movie ads like these. What remains unclear to me is any idea of what the never made film might have been like. The Wilkie book -- a very big best-seller back in the day -- is essentially the politician's account of some of his meetings and discussions with both eminent leaders and ordinary citizens around the world and his thinking that everyone's lives are now inter-linked and how we need to now contemplate a form of world government. Yep, feature films were crafted from a number of topical non-fiction works during the war. De Seversky's Victory through Air Power sort of lent itself to a visualized lecture by the famous flier (enlivened and augmented by extensive use of Disney animation). Davies' Mission to Moscow, his memoir of his years as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, was transmuted by Warners into a large scale (and positive) dramatization of contemporary Soviet life, viewed through the eyes and perspective Davies and his family. But I just don't know how Zanuck and his writers might have seen Wilkie's thoughtful, populist (and far-ranging) work as a movie. Wilkie's 1944 passing (as well as changing political attitudes) probably rendered Zanuck's plans for the film moot, but I remain curious as to what he might have had in mind here.
Regards,
-- Griff
____________________
* When Francis Ford Coppola was toying with the idea of remaking JORDAN in the late '60s, he was contemplating casting Bill Cosby in the Pendleton role.
I love this site! You guys know your stuff.
The wolf, man.
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