They Cried ... But They Loved It!

 

1948 Did Not Deserve Letter From An Unknown Woman

Still on the topic of women’s pictures, and how that term became a kind of prison from which few escaped to a wider audience. To designate a WP was to warn men off, children as averse to perceived bowls of mush. Why disdain emotional content of films? For many it represents an invasion of privacy. To make us cry in a theatre is to expose weakness, a recipe for public embarrassment. There are defenses to counter manipulation films will try. Audiences learned them all and became cynical. They’d laugh or resort to ridicule so as not to be thought soft. Men might permit themselves a tear when Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig gives his farewell speech, but to weep was otherwise verboten, a province for women predisposed to cry at the drop of hats. Universal-International noted audience rules and abided by them, as evidenced by a double-truck trade ad for Letter From An Unknown Woman announcing “They Cried … But They Loved It!” Yes, women were in closer touch with their emotions, did not shrink from displaying them, and long may they prosper for it. Universal, an entire industry, understood decision of what adults bought tickets for rested with wives, sweethearts, mothers. When did that policy evaporate, or did it? Never were critics so oblivious as when they addressed women’s pictures, applying broad brush dipped in lazy phraseology (and not just male critics ... I've seen woman-wrote reviews from the Classic Era that employ same damning tropes).

How many reviews used “soapy” or “sudsy” to describe a latest romance or melodrama, as if the writer feared expulsion from the bowling team should he like a latest Lana Turner (her post-Stompanatos especially). And spare me please, “tear-jerker.” Soapy/sudsy referred to soap operas, a fixture on radio, then television, sponsors for which were invariably bath and cleansing products. Someone should have given critics a good scrub to make their putdowns at least more creative. Come a day when I use soapy/sudsy will be time to set aside the quill and start weaving baskets at adult day care. Letter From An Unknown Woman was a delicate instrument trying to be heard over din of harsh, violent melodrama the choice of postwar audiences. Romance, let alone fragile, ill-fated romance, had become stuff of derision, a hark back, not steps forward. Fortnight’s critic spoke for most: “Letter From An Unknown Woman is one of those old-fashioned, sentimental, lavender cased pieces which have no particular resemblance to life, but which once had a great vogue in the theatre. It belongs to the East Lynne era, when women were gentle creatures, ruled by sentiment, easily seduced and betrayed, but, through it all, bravely loyal.” How better to tar an offering than to call it hopelessly old-fashioned, evoking East Lynne the ultimate razz, but what a hackneyed comparison this had become. Seems every time I pick up a 30-40’s critic compilation, some four or five of them resort to it.

There was a scripter named Nunnally Johnson, a fixture at Fox, willing supplicant to Zanuck (not a bad thing, actually). Johnson wrote letters as smarty-pant as films bearing his signature. I should think effort at being clever all the time would have exhausted him. A volume of Johnson's correspondence was published in 1981(The Letters of Nunnally Johnson), and if you want to see erudition do a smack-down of Letter From An Unknown Woman, there it is on pages 34-35. Got to admit Johnson’s take is funny, him calling out Letter for base absurdity, but how would his Algonquin-infected pals react if Nunnally said instead how much Letter From An Unknown Woman moved him, in fact left him dabbing a tear? (I'm supposing wise-acre screenwriters had bowling teams too) Such was contagion, fed I suspect by peer pressure, to deep-six drama viewers should instead meet halfway. Easier to brand them “art” or worse, a show world’s kiss of death. For attitudes so changed since 1948, one could say we progressed beyond trogs in charge at the time, but how was such a lovely Letter composed if trogs really were in charge? Many argue critics of the day were no barometer of quality, let alone permanence, but they did have the advantage of immediacy, an on-the-spot sense of how movies were received by their public. More attentive were those charged with putting Letter From An Unknown Woman over to whatever public might accept it, trying this, then that, whatever might soften resistance to product they knew would need special handling. Front line salesmen were hawkers, barkers … sure … but ablest where handed challenging merchandise, abetted by trade shows to help form strategy. Others might fly blind, book titles they knew little or nothing of, understandable if four or five features came through your doors each week, permitting no time to properly exploit them. Problem the industry had in those days was too much to handle, too little time to finesse it, let alone one that needed graceful promoting like Letter From An Unknown Woman.

Trade reviews had to focus on a film’s prospect for selling. They could, and did, recognize quality, but theirs was not a mission to reward aesthetics (a most perceptive Letter notice? I nominate Variety's). Those who kept up with trades were charged with getting maximum return from what would occupy their venues for a day, a week, possibly several weeks if things broke well. Trade reviews, then, were a voice for those who wanted Letter From An Unknown Woman, others like and unlike it, to succeed. Trades wished all and sundry well, even where pointing out weakness that may hobble a new release, like friends who observe you on a wrong path and try to put you right, trade scribes a salvage crew to repair wrecks, or potential ones, tenderest toward runts in a litter. What they did not recognize, could not be expected to recognize, were those films to be ennobled by the passage of time. Letter From An Unknown Woman was among ones we would ennoble, assuming “we” goes beyond latter-day critic consensus. I’d like to hear a 2021 audience respond to Letter From An Unknown Woman, good or ill, but will Fathom Events handle it? Not as this Earth turns.

Letter From An Unknown Woman was made for everybody, pleased almost nobody, so reviewers insisted. Were they polling at exit doors? Too many critics considered ticket-buyers a lot of rabble. Bosley Crowther again exerted baleful influence over readers of The New York Times: “Wistful and “schmaltzy” … It will choke you with rhetoric and tommy-rot,” this a background to Broadway’s Rivoli (above) trying to sell two thousand tickets per showing of Letter From An Unknown Woman. Could a Crowther derail an otherwise promising show? Yes, and often, said insiders (had I been Rivoli management, seen Crowther out eating, I might have dumped spaghetti in his lap). A first week of Letter From An Unknown Woman did “moderately well” with $31K, dipped to $20K for a second stanza, was over and out with $12K in the third. What made such numbers grind was known necessity that Letter From An Unknown Woman recover a major portion of its cost from Gotham engagements, being an urban sort of attraction, if it was an attraction at all. Should receipts freeze here, then everywhere would be a white wilderness.

Interesting Publicity Still of Louis Jourdan in Modern Dress Reading His Letter From the Unknown Woman

First rule of exhibition was to work with what you had and make the best of it. Being pro enough at selling meant you could take a thing no one else had made work and … make it work. Such showmen were realists, knowing well what they were up against. To make money off Red River or The Paleface in 1948 was a pipe, putting Letter From An Unknown Woman across made you a hero to the home office and a next gathering of region staff. Remember this about exhibitors: They were a positive force on behalf of films, didn’t knock them down as critics were wont to do. Columns beat drums that year for The Red Shoes, arty in a way to make anyone who praised it look arty too, but The Red Shoes had boxoffice, albeit for “sure-seaters” and special engagements, while off in a corner stood Letter From An Unknown Woman, a picture that needed support, but never really got it, at least from reviewing precincts.

Among those who tried to turn a tide was Dick Feldman of Syracuse’s Paramount Theatre. He made a project of Letter From An Unknown Woman, ran it with Universal’s Casbah, Syracuse a fairground to spread the good word. One Feldman gag was solid enough to earn trade reportage and a spot in Unknown Woman’s pressbook (above). Dick’s postcard (or letter) stunt had been used before, would be again by Selznick operative Paul Macnamara for Portrait of Jennie a same year. Mail that looked real was sent to random addresses, handwritten entreaty from possibly a friend, to go and see Letter From An Unknown Woman. Syracuse mail carriers and wives were invited gratis to the show, Feldman hammering a “Letter” theme so far as nails could penetrate public awareness.

 

I now inquire of all --- When was Letter From An Unknown Woman canonized? Olive has released it twice on Blu-Ray, the second time with abundant extras. Well-deserved, and about time, but at what point did this one join immortals of the screen? I venture a guess, a theory maybe cock-eyed, but here it is: Letter From An Unknown Woman was among a group of 30 features that lost money and were seized in the early 50's by loaning entity the Bank of America. BOA had no interest in exhibition, and so sold the lot to General Teleradio, after which latter made the 30 available to syndication. First off the mark was WOR in Gotham, the package ratings gold throughout 1954. Movies this good, all major and star-laden, had not been available to TV before. They were run over week-long periods, repeated each night. Millions saw them, then saw them again. Letter From An Unknown Woman was among the crop. Here is where it would finally find an audience. From such exposure are major rediscoveries made. I say WOR, then nationwide spread of the BOA-30, is what gave birth to Letter From An Unknown Woman as a classic. Film journals and revival showings would do the rest, plus Max Opuls installation as auteur for the ages. Early as 1973 came my own awareness of Letter From An Unknown Woman as something special, at which time I grabbed a packet of stills Moon Mullins had no further use of (they accompany this post). Waited another ten or so years to finally see the movie. What a boon is digital, for 16mm prints were come by but rarely. Of course, they didn't look nearly so good as Letter From An Unknown Woman on Blu-Ray.