Wartime Romance For A Wartime Boom
Selznick On A Budget: I'll Be Seeing You (1944)
Five Weeks and Counting in Chicago |
Selznick tabbed up-and-comer Dore Schary to line produce I'll Be Seeing You. Schary was lately out of MGM where he had done a string of successful B's with aroma of A's (Lassie Come Home was one, its Technicolor and public reception to belie humble origin). Schary came to Selznick with determination not to be a toady. There are memos between them to reflect the push-pull. Selznick's wife (daughter of L.B. Mayer) shamed DOS into giving Schary a free hand and to remarkable extent (for DOS), he let him have it. I'll Be Seeing You is wartime romance between a shell-shocked soldier on leave and a lady convict also on furlough from state quarters. All aboard is improbable but IBSY was keyed to a hit title tune and rang long-run bells in every key site that got it. This was the kind of show that captured mood of the moment, took oodles of money, then was promptly forgot. Trio of stars had voltage that would dim to degree after the war, but for 1944, Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, and especially Shirley Temple, were admission-getters good as any that DOS or competing majors could tender.
Starting-Out John Derek Gets An I'll Be Seeing You Look-In |
I'll Be Seeing You would probably have done even better if an outfit other than United Artists had distributed. Selznick never trusted them to apply a best effort, part of reason he'd ultimately form his own, and ruinous, distrib division. Sad 40's fate for Selznick was time mostly devoted to packaging of stars, script, near-fully developed ventures, then peddle of the lot to other companies to finish up what DOS started, and then share bounty with him. Bows for success would be taken by others, while an increasingly reckless Selznick too often gambled away his portion, a dreadful compulsion he and too many others of
4 Comments:
Budd Schulberg's book about his childhood in Hollywood has countless stories of how his studio-head father gambled away fortune after fortune. When you are making $11,000 a week vs. a regular salary of $50, it can come to seem like "funny money" and undeserved.
The Wolf, man.
Just rewatched I'LL BE SEEING YOU for the first time in ages and was pretty darn impressed. It is "improbable", no doubt. And if one chose to call it "soap opera" he wouldn't be far off.
But, as you wrote, it is a lovely, nostalgic look at Christmas Past, and a war-time Christmas at that.
And it's so well-played -- by everyone -- that the viewer can't but feel for these people and hope for a happy ending.
Tom Tully is some kind of great.
Watched "Since You Went Away" on Blu-ray last week. I knew nothing about the film nor the length with intermission.
Don't think it had ever crossed my radar in any way.
Really liked it.
Kino's "I'll Be Seeing You" should arrive in a few days. I know nothing about it as well.
Temple's comments on Ginger Rogers seem to mirror what I've read in so many other memoirs over the years.
There's a long out of print book from 1977 called "No Pickle, No Performance"....where producer/actor Harold J. Kennedy relays his tales of working with big name stars in theatre. The chapter on working with Ginger is a hoot!
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