Dorothy McGuire (Three Coins in the Fountain, The Spiral Staircase), Joan Blondell, James Dunn, Peggy Ann Garner (Jane Eyre, Daisy Kenyon), Ted Donaldson, Lloyd Nolan, James Gleason. Based on a very autobiographical novel by Betty Smith, and written by husband and wife Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis. First time director Kazan has great support from Leon Shamroy and Dorothy Spencer, as well as an awesome Brooklyn tenement set (Lyle Wheeler the art director); music by Lionel Newman. Kazan's assistant was Nicholas Ray.
Burton's 1628 'Anatomy of Melancholy' does indeed seem way over the head of the fledgling writer.
Kazan gets great performances from the cast, including the kids. Garner was worried about her Dad who was serving overseas, had tricky relationship with her mother, therefore looked genuinely stressed (died of cancer at 52), but Donaldson's great too. It's a pleasure to see Joan Blondell in a serious role. Dunn "rather to his amazement"* won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but it didn't help his career much (he was himself an alcoholic) and the kids were never in anything better.
We saw the remastered Masters of Cinema print in which Shamroy's imagery is pin sharp (it was not one of his eighteen Oscar nominations).
They do quite a heavy snow at Twentieth Century Fox. Over at RKO you'd figure they had less budget and so the snow would have been lighter (and perhaps more realistic). I'm not really carping about the snow.
"I never did a thing wrong in my life but that ain't enough." It was fabulous.
*Philip Kemp, freelance film historian.
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