... but I was very pleasantly surprised! Directed by Harold S. Bucquet, who is probably best known for the Doctor Kildare series, and made early during WWII, I was expecting lots of flag waving, speechifying, and pat answers and situations. Instead this movie took on the war from a different tack and was quite human and realistic. It looked at the war from the vantage point of a very rigid society matron in Washington D. C. - a WASP upper class Republican to be exact, Fay Bainter as Mrs. Hadley. When her late husband owned a certain local paper its editorial board took a Republican point of view, but now the Winter family owns the paper and it has slanted Democratic. For this reason she refuses to speak to Mrs. Winter, current owner of the paper now that her own husband has died.
It is Dec. 7, 1941, and news of the attack on Pearl Harbor comes in on the radio on the very birthday of Mrs. Hadley. She doesn't want to hear about this war, and wants the radio turned off. However, there is no way she can turn off the war's impact on her way of life. Her son has always been a slacker and a drinker, and now he is being drafted. Her good friend Fulton (Edward Arnold) at the war department refuses to do anything about it. She cuts off their friendship. Her daughter Pat starts volunteering at a canteen, falls in love with a soldier with a Catholic working class background and ends up marrying him. She boycotts the wedding. Her butler becomes an air warden and enters her bedroom one night during a black out turning off all of the lights and ends up frightening her half to death. Worst of all, her best friends are going to Mrs. Winters' house to train in first aid. When she learns of this, she cuts them all out of her life too. Mrs. Hadley is getting so good at cutting things off and out that she should have taken up tree surgery.
So come her next birthday, Mrs. Hadley has only her personal physician and her servants around her. She's got her pride, but no friends or family beside her, unable to deal with the fact that war is the great equalizer. So how will this all turn out? Watch and find out.
I liked how the movie kept moving and didn't get over sentimental. Fay Bainter took a role that could have had you disliking her completely, and sprinkled it with enough humanity that you could still like or at least empathize with the woman even though you disliked her actions.
In short I'd recommend it. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and I'd say that it probably deserved that nod.
It is Dec. 7, 1941, and news of the attack on Pearl Harbor comes in on the radio on the very birthday of Mrs. Hadley. She doesn't want to hear about this war, and wants the radio turned off. However, there is no way she can turn off the war's impact on her way of life. Her son has always been a slacker and a drinker, and now he is being drafted. Her good friend Fulton (Edward Arnold) at the war department refuses to do anything about it. She cuts off their friendship. Her daughter Pat starts volunteering at a canteen, falls in love with a soldier with a Catholic working class background and ends up marrying him. She boycotts the wedding. Her butler becomes an air warden and enters her bedroom one night during a black out turning off all of the lights and ends up frightening her half to death. Worst of all, her best friends are going to Mrs. Winters' house to train in first aid. When she learns of this, she cuts them all out of her life too. Mrs. Hadley is getting so good at cutting things off and out that she should have taken up tree surgery.
So come her next birthday, Mrs. Hadley has only her personal physician and her servants around her. She's got her pride, but no friends or family beside her, unable to deal with the fact that war is the great equalizer. So how will this all turn out? Watch and find out.
I liked how the movie kept moving and didn't get over sentimental. Fay Bainter took a role that could have had you disliking her completely, and sprinkled it with enough humanity that you could still like or at least empathize with the woman even though you disliked her actions.
In short I'd recommend it. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and I'd say that it probably deserved that nod.