Alexander Joins the Army

Successful novelist Paula "Polly" Wharton (Irene Dunne) and newspaper editor Max Wharton (Alexander Knox) are a happily married couple. Max is highly regarded at the New York Bulletin, the newspaper at which he is the chief editor. Though he is well Over 21 (1945), (39, in fact) he feels it is his duty to enlist in Officer Training School and serve in the military during World War II, much to the disgust of the paper's owner, Robert Drexel Gow (Charles Coburn), After successfully completing Basic Training, Max is off to Florida to attend Officer Training School, where Polly will join him as an Army wife. Both must adapt to a life that is alien to anything they have ever encountered.

This is an entertaining film with light humor and an interesting point of view. While most films focus on the man's adjustment to the military, Over 21 is more concerned with Polly. She's led a relatively privileged life; the career successes of herself and her husband mean that she's never had to do the "housewife" tasks - until now. Ms. Dunne plays Polly as a determined woman. She's succeeded in everything she's ever tried - she can surely prevail in this as well. Her goal is to be with her husband and support him in his efforts in the Army. Ms. Dunne avoids having the audience pity Polly - we laugh with her as she manipulates the peculiarities of her new housing and new life style. We also watch as she protects her husband from the intrusions of his former boss. Ms. Dunne was not the first choice for the role - Rosalind Russell was originally considered for Polly, but dropped out to appear in Sister Kenny (AFI catalog)

It's a bit harder to get involved with Max. He is convinced that he can only write about the war if he experiences it in some direct way. It's clear from the start that, at age 39, he does not expect to see combat, but he does wish to learn about what the men who are going into battle will face.  We appreciate his motives, but we get very little information about him; we know he is an intelligent man, who is lost as he tries to learn a new job. Mr. Knox doesn't get a lot of help from the script, with all the really good lines going to Ms. Dunne. As a result, Mr. Knox is left looking frustrated and unhappy. Any empathy you feel is because of Polly's devotion to him than to the depth of the character.  

Alexander Knox was born in Canada. His acting career started in Boston, with a repertory theatre, but when it closed, he returned to Canada to work as a reporter. After two years, he went to England, and appeared in several films. By 1940, he was on Broadway, first as Friar Lawrence in a production of Romeo and Juliet (that starred Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh), then in Jupiter Laughs, starring opposite Jessica Tandy. He'd already appeared in several Hollywood films, including The Sea Wolf (1941) and This Above All (1941), when he was offered the lead in Wilson (1944), which earned him a nomination for Best Actor. His film career ended abruptly, when he was unofficially blacklisted for his involvement with the Committee for the First Amendment (Actors on Red Alert: Career Interviews with Five Actors and Actresses Affected by the Blacklist by Anthony Slide). He returned to England with his wife, Doris Nolan (they were married from 1943 until his death in 1995), and worked there (and eventually back in the U.S.). He died in England of bone cancer.

Charles Coburn as publisher Gow is, as always, very good and very funny. But Gow's attitudes towards Max's desire to serve in the military are unpleasant; Mr. Coburn plays him as a completely selfish man, who would rather sell his paper than do the work necessary to make it a success without Max. While you laugh at his antics, a lot of head shaking occurs as he tries to manipulate Polly and Max.

I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, but some of the best moments in the film occur at the end, when Polly decides it's time to intervene in saving the paper for her husband and for Gow. The look of sheer delight on Max's face when he discovers her work is something that really appealed to us. For that reason alone, this film is worth a viewing.

Over 21 is based on the Broadway play, which was written by and starred Ruth Gordon; it ran for 221 performances in 1944. The play's time-frame is 1943, and while the film does not give us a date we know that World War II is raging.

Over 21 opened at Radio City Music Hall to poor notices: here is Bosley Crowther's New York Times review. Several factors contributed to the reviews. The movie was released just after VJ-Day (TCM article), which greatly influenced its reception - it was seen as a relic, discussing issues that no longer needed consideration (Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood by Wes D. Gehring). 

Another problem was the original Broadway play. Some criticisms at the time considered that Ms. Dunne's performance was too close to Ms. Gordon stage rendition. Finally, other reviews focused on  Mr. Knox's performance, stating that it was too reminiscent of his work in Wilson. (Military Comedy Films: A Critical Survey and Filmography of Hollywood Releases Since 1918 by Hal Erickson). 

None of that is relevant today, as it is not possible to see stage play.  We can also relate to Max's desire to do all in his power to stop another war from happening.  We'll leave you with this short clip from the film, and a suggestion that you give it a viewing:

Marsha Testifies

The film opens on a statement that we are about to see the future. The War is over. The Nazis who victimized millions of people are being held responsible for their actions. A trial is being held, and among the accused is Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox). Present in the court are three of his victims who survived: Father Warecki (Henry Travers), the local Catholic priest; Karl Grimm (Erik Rolf), his brother; and Marja Paierkowski (Marsha Hunt), his one-time fiance. The film promises the fate of the criminals: None Shall Escape (1944)

I'd not heard of this film until it was aired at the TCM Film Festival last year. A friend went to see it, and suggested I might want to seek it out; unfortunately, it has not been available on any media format, nor has it been aired on any television station. Recently, the film was released to Blu-Ray, and I was able to get a copy. If you've not seen None Shall Escape, try and find a copy (perhaps from your local library). It's a fascinating look into the past.

The movies was released in February of 1944 - four months before the D-Day invasion. The Germans had just won two major victories in Italy (at Cisterna and Anzio Beach), and the final outcome of the war was still in doubt. There had been other anti-Nazi films: The Great Dictator (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), To Be or Not To Be (1942), All Through the Night (1942), but this was the first to attempt to show what was happening to Jews in Europe. It was also doing something else that was unique - looking to the end of the war and assuming the Allies would win - a bold statement in 1943 and early 1944!

The flashbacks which tell the story of Wilhelm Grimm's rise in the Nazi machine begin in 1919. The First World War has ended badly for him: his dreams of German glory have been destroyed, and he has lost a leg. He sees himself as less than a man, not only because of his disability, but also because he has been forced to return to Poland. Grimm despises the people he lived with before the war, including his fiance. He blames his hatred on the fact that the town will only see his injury. That the people of Lidzbark welcome him back, and that a woman like Marja could love him show the audience that, before the war, he seemed a good man. Clearly, he is no longer, and Alexander Knox plays him as one dead inside. The monster that was created by the war is only encouraged by the rise of National Socialism, and Mr. Knox is not afraid to display the evil that must have been buried below the surface. 

Marsha Hunt exudes an inner strength as Marja. The man she loved is, for all intents and purposes, dead. And with the beginning of the Second World War, she watches everything that she knows get plowed under by the reign of this horrible man.  She plays Marja with dignity; Marja never pities Grimm, but eventually she loathes him, and what he has become. His crimes are horrors, even before he becomes an officer with the Nazis, and Marja must acknowledge that the only way to save herself and her people is to abandon a man she once loved.

Also in the cast is Henry Travers as the local priest and Richard Hale as Rabbi David Levin. The two prelates are friends, and work for the good of their populations. It's a nice touch to present the religious leaders as a team, rather than as rivals for converts.

None Shall Escape was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Story (AFI Catalog) for writer Lester Cole (who was later blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten). Columbia chief Harry Cohn wanted Paul Lukas in the part of Grimm, but director Andre de Toth wanted Alexander Knox. It was released as a B movie, and reviews at the time were mixed - Bosley Crowther of the New York Times (of course) hate it, calling it "bombastically directed" and "dishing out thick, dark gobs of anguish;" while the Hollywood Reporter was glowing (TCM article).

Regardless, it is an important movie.  In her book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust,  Annette Insdorf  says the film is "revelatory in its inclusion of the genocide of the Jews [and] prescient in its depiction of the postwar trial of an SS leader."  As Stan Taffel, in this 2016 interview said "This film is relevant in the 21st Century and it will be relevant in the 22nd Century. As long as people care about who they are and what they are and how they are, this film is relevant."  I'll leave you with a trailer and this discussion of the film by Marsha Hunt:


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This post is part of the Great Villain Blogathon. Go there to read the posts of the #Villains2019 participants.

Nurse Rosalind

We continue our investigation of the view of women in the medical professions with the biography of Sister Kenny (1946).  Elizabeth Kenny (Rosalind Russell) returns from nursing school to her parent's home in Brisbane, Australia, where she begins a career as a bush nurse.  It was a career urged on her by her mentor Dr. Aeneas McDonnell (Alexander Knox) and she finds satisfaction in work, though she intends to continue only until her fiance,  Kevin Connors (Dean Jagger) returns from the military.  Called to the bedside of a seriously ill child, she cables the symptoms to Dr. McDonnell, who responds with a horrible diagnosis - infantile paralysis (polio) and instructions to "treat the symptoms" as no other remedies exist.  Elizabeth does so, and the child fully recovers from the devastating illness - as do five other children likewise afflicted - much to the shock of Dr. McDonnell.  He determines that Elizabeth's treatment must be shared, but when Dr. Charles Brack (Philip Merivale), a leading orthopedist, ridicules and mocks her, Elizabeth determines to begin treating children with her method, regardless of the opinion of the "medical men" who despise her.

While the basic facts presented about Sister Kenny are accurate, by all accounts the story of her "great love," Kevin Connors, was fictitious.  Given all she had to go through to get her work taken seriously, it seems silly that Hollywood felt, that as a woman, she had to give up a man in order for her sacrifice to be truly important.  But, putting that aside, this is a sensitive and  well-acted enactment of work that possibly helped in the efforts to wipe out polio. 

Let's spend a moment talking about infantile paralysis.  When this film was released, it was only 17 months since the death of one of polio's most famous victims - Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Though many Americans were unaware that the disease had left the President in a wheelchair (in the 1930s and 1940s, reporters were willing to help conceal the President's condition), most realized he had been afflicted with the disease years earlier.  Polio, generally a disease of the summer months, affected everyone, regardless of race, creed, income and age,  (children were the primary targets; Roosevelt was 39 when he contracted it in 1921), and there was no way to prevent it.  It wasn't until the Salk and Sabin vaccines of the 1950s that polio could be prevented.  The result: a disease that is virtually unknown in the U.S. today. (I taught a class to junior high school students on doing medical/health research, and I would always ask them about polio. Most had never heard of it.)  For more information on polio, visit the PBS Whatever Happened to Polio? and this New York Times article on polio treatment.  An FYI - both Alan Alda and Martin Sheen, who contracted polio as children, credit the Kenny Method as the reason they can walk today.

Rosalind Russel is magnificent as Kenny, a role that was a labor of love for her.  She became friends with Sister Kenny because of her work with The League for Crippled Children.  Russell's youngster, Lance, was unable to walk, and on a visit to Russell's home, Kenny noted a spastic muscle.  Lance was admitted to the Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, and left able to walk (TCM article).  Sister Kenny was pleased at Rosalind Russell's involvement in the film, and Russell was eager to tell her story.  Though the film did not do well financially, it did earn Russell an Oscar nomination (she lost to Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own).   Russell would say of Kenny: " If she hadn't gone stamping through the world, stirring people up, we'd have been a whole lot longer getting the Salk vaccine" (Naomi Rogers. Polio Wars: Sister Kenny and the Golden Age of American Medicine, 2013).  One more thing to note: Elizabeth Kenny was not a member of a religious order. In the UK and in Australia, "Sister" is a title given to a nurse manager.  It's a term that may disappear, according to this article in The Telegraph.

An interesting bit of trivia: in a brief hospital scene in the film, Ellen Corby appears as a scrubwoman. The performance is uncredited (but listed in the IMDB).  Years later, when Ms. Corby appeared as Grandma Walton on The Waltons, the Kenny Method is used to treat Olivia Walton (Michael Learned) in the first season episode "An Easter Story".

If there is one downside to the film, it is the fact that there are really no grey areas - Elizabeth Kenny is "good" and right, the most of doctors, like Brack are "bad" and wrong.  But as this biography of Elizabeth Kenny points out, two years after she established her first clinic in Townsville, more Kenny clinics opened in Brisbane.  While the more conservative medical community did not support her, there were physicians who did, and much earlier than we are led to believe in the film.  That "deliberate manufacture of emotional blacks and whites" is the main criticism of this New York Times review.

But, to our minds, what the Times saw as a major failing, we see as a quibble.  As the story of a notable woman, who dedicated her life to a cause she saw as important, we found this an excellent and moving film.  It makes you want to learn more about Sister Kenny and about the cause she was espousing.  As time has progressed, her therapeutic methods became the norm; thankfully, in the U.S., her clinics are no longer needed for the treatment of polio victims.  Today, the Kenny Clinic still exists, as the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute, treating people with injuries and disabilities.

We'll leave you with a scene from the film, in which Sister Kenny faces down Dr. Brack.