Gary Cooper Crossing the Lines

 

War is Distinctly Not Hell in Only the Brave

Only the Brave was progression of, also departure from, long and noble line of Civil War melodrama going back to first shots fired in 1861. Never did theatrical stages get such hypo as shooting conflict between the states, being everyone’s urgency and a most American sub-genre to so far fire footlights. Narratives dealt mainly with impact on individuals, seldom if ever focused upon larger issues, let alone reasons for the strife itself. Civil War melodrama was essentially romance set against landscape of neighbor against neighbor, often brother opposed to brother, theme at center being all of us as essential one, postwar a healing process plays sought to salve. Consider recounts over the seventy years prior to Only the Brave in 1930, variations endless. How then to freshen approach? Keene Thompson was a writer on staff at Paramount, born 1885, so he undoubtedly grew up on Civil War drama, be it lavish or done threadbare by small traveling troupes. Those born of latter half of a nineteenth century would know the format backwards, its cliches, expected bumps, and inevitable outcomes. Thompson, adaptor Agnes Brand Leahy, and scenarist Edward E. Paramore, Jr. took an essentially tired formula and upended it, Only the Brave emerging as sly spoof of whole institution that was warring between the states on pretend terms. I’ve got a feeling Only the Brave raised a lot of laughs in 1930 houses, viewership having been weaned on content done earnest and more than ready for Hollywood to give tradition a kick in the rear. We can’t appreciate Only the Brave a same way but can have fun watching what witty writing and a game cast does with material they all knew was ripe for parody.

Here was convention among many to be burlesqued: Stalwart Union officer (Gary Cooper), heartbroke by a faithless fiancée (Virginia Bruce), accepts a suicide mission because, after all, life means so little now. He’ll don Confederate uniform and carry false dispatches into Southern stronghold that is honey dew plantation occupied by belle Mary Brian and guest suitor, a jealous one, enacted by Phillips Holmes. You see, Cooper wants to be captured, the enemy misled by “concealed” orders so they will ride off en masse to assured defeat. It wasn’t necessary for director Frank Tuttle to gag up proceedings beyond obvious opportunity the set-up supplied. Viewership would have known early that here was a yarn not to take seriously, least wise not by veteran viewers of drama done good, bad, or indifferent by everyone from David Belasco, William Gillette, to school mates in ill-fit blue-gray brandishing their wooden swords. Hollywood had by 1930 poked fun at old-style board- trodding, as witness Buster Keaton in uproarious takeoff that was Spite Marriage in 1929, him as stagestruck yokel who through guile becomes a soldier extra in small town rendition of North-South dispute. It was a modern sign of sophistication to look askance upon any Civil War situation done straight, for hadn’t most spent a lifetime giving such stuff the horse laugh? This may have been at least partial reason why much of Hollywood doubted Gone With the Wind as screen prospect, for how could anyone sit still for yet more “epic” treatment of a war lost and won within countless auditoriums over what seemed infinite years?

Movies had themselves ground the conflict to as much powder. There were enough single reel silents to float a boat, or an ironclad. D.W. Griffith warmed up to The Birth of a Nation with a plethora of pocket dramas that explored many aspects of Civil warring, while live theatre stayed with the subject to what surely was exhaustion for watchers. Ground rules, if unwritten, did apply, as in drama must strike a conciliatory tone. War being long over, but scars still healing, meant we must explore that past on surface emotion terms, as in will love overcome patriotism, can a girl of the Confederacy shield her lover who is spying for the Yanks? Only the Brave had fun with the well-worn theme, not to extent of tampering with a happy ending everyone still preferred, but exposing whiskers grown on a story too oft-told. Director Tuttle, who himself had written for the stage, was a Yale man who understood convention and how to spoof it, appreciated comedy as brought to bear by Keene Thompson and helper scribes. Tuttle lived into the sixties and by that time worked less, so took occasion to pen a memoir of life behind cameras, his daughters saving the manuscript and enabling publication via Bear Manor Books in 2005. They Started Talking is first-hand account of a studio career first at silent forge, then learning process of sound and how to master it. We could wonder after reading Tuttle’s colorful recall how many former directors left life stories in attics that might yet be extant, waiting for descendants to come across them. Tuttle talked about Only the Brave in terms of comedy intended from the start. We might “get” the humor sooner had we slogged through as many Civil War dramas as folks in 1930, and yes, it does take Only the Brave a little time to reveal its farcical face, that coming I’m sure as delightful surprise for viewers in 1930, as hopefully they would today.

Gary Cooper does sly variation on his slow-talk cowpoke. Is he up to subtlety of spying, one asks? --- except that hardly matters, as this loser-at-love spy seeks to fail, even be shot, an unlikely quest, for what woman would betray Gary Cooper on romantic terms? Opener reel where Virginia Bruce swaps Coop for a “pansy” is good as any tipoff that Only the Brave will thereafter unfold in fun. Tuttle reported female co-workers’ fascination by Cooper’s “detachment” and limited way with words on set. “Where the ladies are concerned, a retreating male back seems to create an almost irresistible challenge,” said Tuttle. Seems all of femmes wanted to know from the director what was behind the charming, but “temperamentally somewhat aloof” façade. Tuttle finally in frustration told them “truth” that the star was “probably looking for a set with a bed in it, so he can lie down and take a nap,” this confirming Cooper’s reputation for being able to sleep on a tack between takes. Mary Brian was the leading lady. She would survive to recount for many what it was like to toil at Paramount, one job merging unto others like water flowing toward common reservoir. There was Brian and increasingly less others to answer queries and bear witness to an era irretrievable otherwise. Indeed, she would outlive Only the Brave castmates Cooper and Philips Holmes by forty-one and sixty-one years, respectively. Only the Brave played syndicated airwaves after late fifties TV release. Present day streaming options are nil, no Blu-Ray in sight (“too old” a likely argument against release), Only the Brave extant only on bootleg discs a dealer might tender.