Ginger Rogers is a tough kid just out of high school who wears pigtails and mannish clothes and comes from the ironically named Primrose neighborhood -- all shacks and ditches and dusty roads. She runs into Joel McRead, an ordinary guy who works and lives at the gas station in town, and they spend a day digging clams at the beach. She tells him nothing of her background, and they gradually fall for each other.
And what a family she has! Mother is savvy enough in her own rough-hewn way. The little sister is cynical and ill mannered. Father -- the reliable Miles Mander -- is an educated drunk who is always about to write the definitive history of Ancient Greece on a diminutive table using a handful of books from the library. Grandma caps them all. She hates anything soft, anything that is redolent of romance or of any emotion but dislike. She teaches little sister poems with titles like, "Don't smack your Maw." Rogers runs away from home and surrenders to McRae on the pier behind the Blue Belle Saloon. She signals her sacrifice by fainting dramatically in McRae's arms. (The good man hold her slack body and he looks around, wonderingly, as if puzzling over what to do next.) Anyway, they're married and Rogers happily works behind the lunch counter at the gas station -- staying as far away as possible from the Primrose Path -- but McRae pushes it and Rogers finally takes him to meet her family, which turns out to be a disaster.
It's basically a depression story, though released in 1940. Everybody is poor -- except maybe Ma's frequent interludes with variously named "Uncles." The Depression Play must have been a popular genre at the time. "Dead End" was a big success on the stage, although it seems schematic now on the screen. Double negatives and "aint"s abound in the dialog and the expression "You'd better had" appears regularly.
It's also a romantic drama and not entirely convincing. McRae is a sensible character but he believes the lies that Grandma tells him rather than the well-intended and even charming fantasies that come from his new wife. It's unworthy of him.
I kept wondering too what kind of town this is. It's obviously not a city. It's more like Cannery Row or Pismo Beach than anything else, and yet the working-class McRae and the down-and-outers of Primrose Path have remained strangers to one another all their lives.
Fortunately, it ends happily, although a gun shot wound is involved and Pa remains a dipsomaniac. Well, it will all work out, now that Rogers and McRae have come to terms with the limits of her background.
And what a family she has! Mother is savvy enough in her own rough-hewn way. The little sister is cynical and ill mannered. Father -- the reliable Miles Mander -- is an educated drunk who is always about to write the definitive history of Ancient Greece on a diminutive table using a handful of books from the library. Grandma caps them all. She hates anything soft, anything that is redolent of romance or of any emotion but dislike. She teaches little sister poems with titles like, "Don't smack your Maw." Rogers runs away from home and surrenders to McRae on the pier behind the Blue Belle Saloon. She signals her sacrifice by fainting dramatically in McRae's arms. (The good man hold her slack body and he looks around, wonderingly, as if puzzling over what to do next.) Anyway, they're married and Rogers happily works behind the lunch counter at the gas station -- staying as far away as possible from the Primrose Path -- but McRae pushes it and Rogers finally takes him to meet her family, which turns out to be a disaster.
It's basically a depression story, though released in 1940. Everybody is poor -- except maybe Ma's frequent interludes with variously named "Uncles." The Depression Play must have been a popular genre at the time. "Dead End" was a big success on the stage, although it seems schematic now on the screen. Double negatives and "aint"s abound in the dialog and the expression "You'd better had" appears regularly.
It's also a romantic drama and not entirely convincing. McRae is a sensible character but he believes the lies that Grandma tells him rather than the well-intended and even charming fantasies that come from his new wife. It's unworthy of him.
I kept wondering too what kind of town this is. It's obviously not a city. It's more like Cannery Row or Pismo Beach than anything else, and yet the working-class McRae and the down-and-outers of Primrose Path have remained strangers to one another all their lives.
Fortunately, it ends happily, although a gun shot wound is involved and Pa remains a dipsomaniac. Well, it will all work out, now that Rogers and McRae have come to terms with the limits of her background.