Ad/Odds Leaping the Rails: Two-Faced Woman (1941) and Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
TWO-FACES HAD GARBO, BUT WERE THEY ENOUGH? --- Was Two-Faced Woman so dire as to lose money and wreck Greta Garbo’s career? Some history says yes,
Two-Faced with but one face since 1941 and that was failure, artistic plus
economical (reshooting more the culprit). Two-Faced Woman also stirred Legion
of Decency uproar a wider public became aware of, being hep to such plus star
lives, not as fed by fan press but understood from reading between lines vetted
by studio authority, viewers resentful of effort to limit what they
could watch. MGM added scenes to mollify monitors, ergo added costs. Story
set-up of Garbo masquerading as her own twin sister to captivate mate Melvyn
Douglas was called immoral, shots and a scene tacked in to make Douglas wise to
the gambit and incidentally rob the film of humor or even logic. Farce might do
without the latter, but this insulted a public spoon-fed like children,
bad word of mouth the result. Surely there were smoother ways out of the mess,
but Metro had not time or inclination to fashion a fix. Two-Faced
Woman was textbook instance of too many cooks spoiling broth. Garbo took brunt
for being most visible offender, her more laughed at than with. She was
said to have big feet, at least to Tex Avery and Hollywood Steps Out reckoning,
Warners’ animated demolishment of star vanities offered a same year as
Two-Faced Woman. I over time saw enough Two-Faced fragments to assume overall
badness, ads as here incentive to face music that was ninety-minute whole. Like
much we dread, Two-Faced Woman came off not half so wretched, joy enough in
sections to forgive the rest. GG rhumbas, much publicized then, enjoyable now
and not just for her but crowded and dancing ensemble in night club setting. Remember
a same season’s Deanna Durbin and Charles Laughton cutting rug for It Started with
Eve? This evokes that, and pleases. Slapstick on skis does as well, even if
Garbo and co-star Melvyn Douglas went nowhere near snowy location. This was fun enough
to make memorable chunk of Robert Youngson’s Big Parade of Comedy in 1964.
8 Comments:
Two-Faced Woman might play better in its uncensored version, which still exists and was shown at a George Cukor film festival in London in 2004. The GarboForever website has a detailed, scene-by-scene analysis of the differences. The infamous telephone scene with Melvyn Douglas, tacked on by MGM to appease the censors is nowhere to be found in the original version . Unfortunately, the WarnerArchive has shown very little interest in Garbo's films, so I won't hold my breath for this or the uncensored version of Mata Hari being released. I don't even see Garbo's films on TCM that much anymore.
Phil Smoot considers Garbo and Melvyn Douglas:
While I really like the excellent (almost predictive) movie "Grand Hotel"
(and "Dinner at Eight" which I somehow put in the same category — although no Garbo in 8),
I've never been into Garbo.
The only reason I have the blu-ray of "Ninotchka" is for those 3 minutes of Bela Lugosi. I still don't find the movie funny.
And, while it makes me happy to know that Bela was in a movie nominated for Best Picture, it's a pretty small scene.
Did not know about the follow-up pairing with Garbo & Melvyn Douglas
(who I only knew & admired in the 60s "Hud"),
and
later appreciated when we finally had a blu-ray so I could see how excellent 1932's "The Old Dark House" was and still is - - with another discovery being 1933's "The Vampire Bat" as a pretty good film once we had copies that we could really see - - I liked his Melvyn Douglas' performance in both films.
Disney gave Garbo slightly outsized feet in "Mickey's Gala Premiere", "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood", and "The Autograph Hound", but it was more a detail than a full-fledged gag.
"Two Faced Woman" owes a little to "Quality Street", a chaste period piece by James Barrie. A dour spinster assumes a vivacious young alias when an old suitor returns to town, then resents that he's attracted to this creation. Lubitsch's "Merry Widow" flirts with the same idea: The titular widow, famously in mourning, declines to raise her veil for a romantic rogue. Later, in the guise of a playful courtesan, she meets him again and puts him on the defensive. Marion Davies did a talkie comedy where a beautiful secretary, tired of losing jobs due to amorous bosses, creates a dowdy bookworm persona. Now employed a man she's attracted to, she has to present her real self as a relative while maintaining her created identity at work.
"The Lady Eve" is perhaps the pinnacle. A con woman puts on a respectable fake identity to wreak vengeance on the man who broke her heart. He returns to the con woman, repentant and seemingly unaware of her other identity. In the end they seem to be speeding towards what is probably an unwed act.
Interestingly, it's a frequent theme with genders swapped. There's a Charley Chase two-reeler in which dull husband Charley pretends to be his rascally twin brother, intending to make his wife appreciate his boring self. Danny Kaye, Don Ameche, and others have played similar plots, usually reacting in horror when wives/girlfriends, onto the deception, play along.
Dan Mercer considers Garbo's mystique:
There is a character in "Dinner at Eight" who describes herself as a "Garbo widow." This was an amusing plug in an M-G-M film for the studio's great star, but it also suggests that her audience was largely composed of men devoted to her beauty. True enough, she was presented in her films as an object of fascination for men, but I have the impression that most of her audience was made up of women. They enjoyed seeing themselves in her, in being just as fascinating, being posed with the same moral and emotional dilemmas, and in suffering as she did in the resolution of those dilemmas.
Garbo's allure was invariably mysterious--one never really knew who she was, such were the depths behind the beauty so evident to the eye and the characters she played--but this also allowed her audience to invest themselves in her imaginatively, since there were no obvious contradictions between her inner life and their hopes and desires.
"Ninotchka" was a big change for Garbo, but the famous tagline, "Garbo Laughs!" might have been intended merely to indicate that this was a comedy, her first. She had, of course, laughed in other films--that is, a visual impression of laughter accompanied by a curiously dry, rasping sound--a peculiar simulation of laughter--and her laughter in "Ninotchka" was no different. The film proved to be a big hit, however, and invariably the tagline became associated with the revelation of a new Garbo, one who was more accessible and fun.
As you say, "Two-Faced Woman" was intended to go "Ninotchka" one better. Consequently, the rather magnificent introduction of the earlier picture to Garbo hilarity was dribbled away in silly descriptions of what else she could do. The effect was rather like that of the initial success of talkies made by silent film stars, when people were attracted by the idea of hearing as well as seeing them. There was usually a falloff for the follow up films, since too often the stars were less interesting in the talkies than in the preceding silent films.
Garbo had become more conventional and seemingly more accessible, but in making her so, M-G-M had given away the mystery that allowed her audience to become who she was for an hour or so. The new Garbo was little different from other stars and as limited in the degree to which her audience was allowed to identify with her. They came to see "Ninotchka," had their laugh, and then went away to find their enjoyment elsewhere in the future.
My feeling is that genuinely dark comedies about murdering one's wife aren't box office gold, so the commercial failure of "Unfaithfully Yours" isn't surprising, though it's one of Sturges' best films (his worst, "The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend" came next). Casting Eddie Bracken instead of Harrison would have broadened the film and lessened its black comedy, and while that might have made for better box office, Eddie would have been hard to accept as a highbrow composer. Part of the film's comic charge is in seeing the imperious, snotty main character become as clumsy and oafish as anyone else when putting his plans in action.
In subject and tone, the film is an outlier in Sturges' work, so I'm not surprised Criterion has re-released his more "typical" films first. On that note, why haven't "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and "Hail the Conquering Hero" been released on Blu-Ray yet?
The infamous telephone scene from TWO FACED WOMAN, never changed anything for me. The film is OK, no masterpiece and not so different to other comedies from the same time, even with the refilmed ending. In fact, this film is a remake and the same story had been produced before, and I would love to see comparisons with the other versions.
UNFAITHFULLY YOURS is also ok, but not a great film either. Somebody did think that it was good enough to be remade many years later with Dudley Moore and Natassia Kinsky.
Had the role been that of a successful big-band leader/front man, rather than of a "highbrow" classical music conductor, casting Bracken in the role may have worked; and in that case, the musical numbers would have helped the comedy along too, which "classical" music simply never does - except in parody , as in Warner Brothers' cartoons. That kind of music simply takes itself too seriously for "popular tastes".
Even more points could have been scored by this film in those hypothetical circumstances had the big band music used actually been any good - and that in turn could have made the film more memorable for its music, too.
I think the commercial problem with this movie was to attempt to use "yesterday's music" - classical music, that is - in a central role, while trying to make a hep, "cutting edge" 1940s comedy.
Garbo was wise to leave when she did. She would have wound up playing mothers, grandmothers and who knows what. She was also smart to never appear as a guest on TV. I like UNFAITHFULLY YOURS.
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