During the days of my high school and college educations, I had the opportunity—well, to be more accurate, it was imposed upon me—to read a good many novels for the English classes I took. Two of them had a profound influence on my outlook on life and shaped my politics, so to speak—Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

I unwrapped a DVD copy of The Grapes of Wrath (1940) last night to start an evening of movie watching—20th Century Fox released it not too long ago as part of their “Studio Classics” line. I have to admit that Fox does an excellent job on these, with interesting extras included and exquisite restoration done on the films themselves. The Grapes of Wrath DVD includes a A&E Biography program, Darryl F. Zanuck: 20th Century Filmmaker; several Movietone News reports on the crippling drought of 1934, and commentary on the film by scholars Joseph McBride and Susan Shillinglaw.

But the main course is the movie: a genuine American classic, and legend has it that Henry Fonda so desperately wanted the role of Tom Joad that he agreed to sign a seven-year contract with Fox just to play the part (trapping him in nonsense like The Magnificent Dope and Rings on Her Fingers in the process). But I think you’ll agree that Fonda’s Faustian bargain paid off, his performance in Wrath is clearly the best of his long movie career, and in a sane world he would have walked away with the Oscar that year instead of having to wait until 1981 for the fiercely overrated On Golden Pond. Jane Darwell did manage to snag the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, though; and her portrayal of Ma Joad is absolute perfection.

The movie does have a flaw or two; it concentrates more on people than politics (Steinbeck’s novel has been extremely watered down here) and it tacks on the requisite “optimistic ending,” with Ma’s speech of “We’re the people” (hey, it was directed by John Ford—were you honestly expecting a pro-union flick?). But I’m consistently surprised at how much populism remains in the film, and I love Tom’s credo “I’m just tryin’ to get along without shovin’ anybody, that’s all”—it’s become kind of a personal mantra for me. The cinematography by Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane) is breathtaking; how an existence (the life of the Okies) that is so ugly can be made to look so beautiful is something that I’m still scratching my head over. Add to this a fine cast in John Carradine (in what I think is his best film role as Casy, the “ex-preacher”), Russell Simpson, Charley Grapewin, Dorris Bowdon, O.Z. Whitehead, John Qualen and Eddie Quillan, among many others.

(One interesting note: in the DVD box Wrath came in, there’s a promotional card for Turner Classics Movies—you’d think that Fox would seize the day and put in a blurb for their own movie channel. But on the card TCM uses the phrase “Respect the letterbox.” I say Amen to that.)

After Grapes, I put on a movie that’s part of Fox Video’s Marilyn Monroe Collection—We’re Not Married (1952). Now, I realize Marilyn is in this film, but her part is certainly not as large as the promotion would have you believe; Married is a multi-vignette, ensemble piece scripted by Nunnally Johnson (who also wrote the screenplay for The Grapes of Wrath) and directed by Edmund Goulding. The plot (or plots) revolves around a mix-up that has occurred when a newly-commissioned Justice of the Peace (Victor Moore) marries six couples before his official commission date—creating a small legal snafu in which said couples are essentially not married. One couple has already filed for divorce (except since they’re not legally wed, that problem sorts itself out in a hurry) and the remaining five are made up of Monroe and David Wayne, Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers, Paul Douglas and Eve Arden, Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor—all of which are contacted by mail of the monumental boo-boo.

Monroe plays a professional beauty pageant contestant (“Mrs. Mississippi”), with the wonderful character actor James Gleason as her manager and Wayne as the husband who’s been acting as chief cook and bottle washer at home, taking care of their baby and doing the household chores. It’s a pretty brief segment, and not particularly amusing; the biggest laugh in the thing occurs when, after discovering she’s not legally wed, Monroe switches contests and now competes as “Miss Mississippi.” A bystander (Dabbs Greer) watching the pageant comments to Wayne that Monroe is quite attractive, and Wayne boasts that Marilyn is his fiancée—then tells the baby to “wave to Mummy.”

The Calhern-Gabor segment is much better, even when you know what’s coming (Zsa Zsa has set Louis up in a compromising position in order to obtain a divorce, which, under California law, allows her to grab half of what he has—Paul Stewart plays Gabor’s sleazy lawyer) but I was disappointed with the Douglas-Arden vignette, only because Eve doesn’t get much to do (she and Paul have a stifling, suffocating marriage in which they talk to each other very little; when Douglas discovers they’re not married he fantasizes about going out with a different girl each night—only to come back down to earth when he realizes the expense that will be involved).

Fortunately, the two best segments bookend the others; Bracken is a soldier who’s being shipped out overseas and he’s concerned that if he doesn’t come back, the newly-pregnant Gaynor will give birth to an illegitimate son. It’s both funny and poignant, something that Eddie does extremely well (case in point, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek) and if you watch the film you’ll even catch a young, uncredited Lee Marvin as Bracken’s buddy. But my favorite vignette is the first, as Fred Allen and Ginger Rogers play a radio breakfast show couple who literally hate each others’ guts. Much of the dialogue in the sequence in which the two are on the air was cribbed from a famous “Mr. and Mrs.” sketch (written by Nat Hiken) that Allen performed on his show with Tallulah Bankhead; although it would have been great if someone had thought to cast Taloo in Married (Fred Allen scribe Bob Weiskopf once remarked that she was “the female Allen”), I have to admit Ginger does an okay job—and this from someone who’s not a big fan. I’ve often stated that my favorite Fred Allen film is 1945’s It’s in the Bag—but sometimes I’m not so sure if this film isn’t Fred’s finest hour on screen.

People often say to me, “Phil…don’t you ever watch anything from this decade, or are you trapped in some sort of 1930s-1950s time warp?” After I correct them by explaining that my name is Ivan, I assure them that I do on occasion watch something of recent vintage—and I did that after watching We’re Not Married by putting on Warren Beatty brilliant comedy Bulworth (1998). To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how I managed to miss this one when it came out—it might have been the promotional trailer, which really can’t capture how thought-provoking the film is—but it’s definitely one of the best political satires I’ve seen, with Beatty as a burned-out California senator who arranges to be killed by a hit man, and then develops a burning desire to break all the rules and tell voters, supporters and campaign contributors like it really is. (Now I understand why so many people wanted Warren to run in 2000.)
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