John O'Hara (1905 - 1970) was the finest American Short Story writer of the 20th century and one of the finest novelists. Virtually all of his novels were best-sellers but of the four (Butterfield 8, A Rage To Live, From The Terrace, Ten North Frederick) adapted for the screen only the latter - which won the National Book Award - was anything like satisfactory, whilst Pal Joey - adapted initially by O'Hara himself into the Book of a Broadway Musical with words and music by Rodgers and Hart, from his collection of stories written for The New Yorker - which appeared in an emasculated version of the Broadway musical in 1957 was a major hit mainly due to Frank Sinatra as the eponymous Joey Evans. Like most writers who came to prominence in the thirties O'Hara had several spells in Hollywood and though he only received a sole screenplay credit twice - this film and The Best Things In Life Are Free - he drew on his time there for some of his finest short stories, one Novella, Hope Of Heaven, and one novel, The Big Laugh. Fox paid him $1,250 a week to adapt Willard Robertson's novel for the screen and he worked on it from May through July of 1941.
What emerged was a mixture of several elements; San Pablo an inlet in Southern California is Steinbeck country and its denizens are akin to those inhabiting Cannery Row but without the humour; top-billed French star Jean Gabin enjoyed one of his biggest successes in the Carne-Prevert Quai des Brumes, also set in a foggy port and involving violent death, and there's also something of Irwin Shaw's The Gentle People about it (After O'Hara Shaw was the second finest American short story writer of the 20th century but he wrote The Gentle People as a stage play).
Lawyer-turned-actor Robertson appeared in more than 100 movies but put pen to paper only three times and Moontide was his only novel. It's a simple premise; gentle giant Bobo (Gabin), a drifter, is prone to getting drunk and blacking out and relies on 'minder' Thomas Mitchell, to keep him out of trouble and find him work (shades of Lennie and George in Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men). In the past he had strangled a man (a nod to La Bete Humaine, another Gabin movie) and Mitchell was privy to this and uses it as a lever to live off Gabin's labour. In the first reel a minor character, Pop Kelly, is strangled whilst Bobo is drunk and Mitchell allows him to fear the worst. The fly in the ointment is Anna (Ida Lupino) who Bobo rescues when she tries to drown herself. They fall in love, marry, and Mitchell attempts to destroy them. Robertson wrote a realistically tragic ending but Fox weren't buying that for birdseed in 1941 so it's a case of all's well that ends well as two dysfunctional people find hope in the haven of a bait-shack on the California coast. All O'Hara fans will want to see it but probably not all of them will enjoy it.
What emerged was a mixture of several elements; San Pablo an inlet in Southern California is Steinbeck country and its denizens are akin to those inhabiting Cannery Row but without the humour; top-billed French star Jean Gabin enjoyed one of his biggest successes in the Carne-Prevert Quai des Brumes, also set in a foggy port and involving violent death, and there's also something of Irwin Shaw's The Gentle People about it (After O'Hara Shaw was the second finest American short story writer of the 20th century but he wrote The Gentle People as a stage play).
Lawyer-turned-actor Robertson appeared in more than 100 movies but put pen to paper only three times and Moontide was his only novel. It's a simple premise; gentle giant Bobo (Gabin), a drifter, is prone to getting drunk and blacking out and relies on 'minder' Thomas Mitchell, to keep him out of trouble and find him work (shades of Lennie and George in Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men). In the past he had strangled a man (a nod to La Bete Humaine, another Gabin movie) and Mitchell was privy to this and uses it as a lever to live off Gabin's labour. In the first reel a minor character, Pop Kelly, is strangled whilst Bobo is drunk and Mitchell allows him to fear the worst. The fly in the ointment is Anna (Ida Lupino) who Bobo rescues when she tries to drown herself. They fall in love, marry, and Mitchell attempts to destroy them. Robertson wrote a realistically tragic ending but Fox weren't buying that for birdseed in 1941 so it's a case of all's well that ends well as two dysfunctional people find hope in the haven of a bait-shack on the California coast. All O'Hara fans will want to see it but probably not all of them will enjoy it.