When Twenty Years Was Long Ago

Chicago First-Run for Margie

Margie (1946) Is Teen Life In The 20's

Quaint era of eighteen-years-before are celebrated in this 1946 reflection on small town 20's roaring. What remarkable change the culture saw in that short window. A market crash, the Great Depression, then a World War. No wonder 1928 seemed ancient history to moviegoers in 1946. But imagine us giving a same treatment to 2001. I guess the biggest difference would be spread of the Internet and all else technical that has, dare I say, made our lives better? What gets me in Margie is disdain attic-searching Ann Todd shows when she comes across mom Jeanne Crain's relics of a girlhood past. Here is attitude, widespread at the time, that consigned movies to ash heaps as soon as they passed the "brand new" gate. This kid would never have sat through a silent feature. We're primed at Margie beginning to regard the 20's as a simple, if not simple-minded, period better past. Still, there was nostalgia, and enough paying customers wanted the trip back to make Margie a substantial hit ($5.2 million worldwide) and establish Jeanne Crain as a star who could support marquees by herself.

Henry King directed, already an old-timer in the 20's, and not likely to have worn raccoon coats to Army-Navy games. He approaches the material as a parent would, teens and their fads being silly then as now. What Margie maybe needed was more celebration of what switched youth on in days that from most accounts really were carefree before bottom fell out of a US economy. Parts of Margie light up, much of it pleasingly offbeat, but then we're back to Jeanne Crain's bloomers falling down, an overused device, plus tendency of the kids to be types rather than people. There's pleasing snow on the ground that 20th Fox was said to have put there at considerable expense, though negative cost was well-contained at $1.6 million. Comparison with Meet Me In St. Louis is inevitable (in fact, Margie borrows several plot devices from the MGM musical), it being another smash of a glimpse back, but Crain was no Judy Garland and never could be, something Fox learned to eventual woe as they forward-cast JC in parts frankly beyond her.

Then there's ticklish business of high school teacher Glenn Langan taking romantic interest in student Jeanne, an all but hanging offence today, but no problem in 1928, or for that matter, 1946. The guy would do three-to-five for such conduct now. In fact, I'll bet a 2019 theatre-full would gasp at Margie's closing scene and reveal of who she married. Langan was affable, lacked the luck of, say, Cornel Wilde when it came to Fox star creation (in fact, Wilde turned down Langan's part in Margie), and would be remembered best as The Amazing Colossal Man for AIP. Margie was shot in Reno, Nevada, an interesting choice, and one that Fox would make again when time came to film Apartment For Peggy in 1948. Henry King was always good with locations leaning toward bucolic, Reno effectively doubling as Small Town, USA for purposes of Margie background.

Selling of Margie played down the 20's setting. Would 1946 youth have been turned off by specter of even a comparatively recent past? Ad art put Jeanne Crain in 40's fashion as to distance her from cartoony sheiks and flappers in poster margins. "Her Big Starring Moment" was Margie's message with regards minted star Crain, she having clicked as support in Leave Her To Heaven, an enormous success, and as brightest light of ensemble that was State Fair. Margie wasn't a musical, but songs and dance were emphasized in terms of what mom-and-dad took to bosoms before swing and jive taught us better. Showmen parked Tin Lizzies at theatre fronts and arranged for flagpole sits. Margie seemed the more innocent for post-1928 struggles no one could have seen coming, that being eve before long-lasting storm. To set a cheerful movie then was perfect timing on Fox's part. "In Those Days, Wolves Were Sheiks," said publicity, but that was misleading, courtship ritual having much coarsened since the 20's as older patronage surely noted, the war much to do with rush jobs romance had come to.