Coming Soon to a Rerun Near You

We were looking for something to watch on TV this afternoon, just to pass a little time, and Turner Classic Movies was showing one of the best westerns ever filmed, a movie that defined a genre, and introduced stunts that are still used today. I'm referring, of course, to John Ford's Stagecoach. It also happened to be the film that turned a B-movie actor named John Wayne into a star.

As the movie ended, we wondered what TCM was showing next, and the host introduced the upcoming feature as another in their line-up of Oscar nominated flicks from 1939.

1939 is arguably the single greatest year for time-honored, cherished, and best loved releases in the history of film, fraught with drama, politics, pathos, history, adventure, magic, and wonder.

In addition to Stagecoach, other titles that splashed across the big screen that year were:

Gone with the Wind - Can you say 'epic blockbuster'? Set against the backdrop of the War Between the States, perhaps the greatest love story ever transferred to the big screen. Based on the popular novel by Margaret Mitchell, and directed by Victor Fleming. When Rhett Butler, played by Clarke Gable, says to Scarlett O'Hara, played by Vivien Leigh, "You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how," the audience knew that 'kissing' is not what he meant.

Wuthering Heights - This is the quintessential Gothic romance unfolding on the moonlit moors. As Heathcliff  (Laurence Olivier) exclaims: "If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day." Tragically, this would be Emily Bronte's only published novel. After it's 1937 publication, under a pseudonym, Bronte would die the following year.

Dark Victory - This powerful film explores the topic of incurable disease and courage in the face of impending death. Bette Davis plays a young, carefree socialite who discovers she has a brain tumor, and within a year will suffer blindness shortly before the end. In the final scene she bids her husband, housekeeper, and her dogs farewell, climbs the stairs and lies down on her bed. We see her face as the image blurs to grey.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - I've long maintained that no elected official could be seated before watching this movie. Jimmy Stewart plays small town citizen Jefferson Smith, the head of the Boy Rangers. The Governor appoints him as the junior senator of the state when a seated senator suddenly dies. He is placed under the mentorship of the senior senator, played by Claude Rains. Smith's innocense is shattered when he soon runs afoul of a political cabal that seeks to destroy him with every dirty trick in the book. Stewart's portrayal of a filibuster is one of the greatest scenes ever shot. Director Frank Capra and Stewart would team up for many more successful projects, most notably, It's a Wonderful Life.

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck derived the title for his 1937 short novel from a poem written by Robert Burns in 1785 titled To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with a Plow: "The best laid schemes o' mice and men / Gang aft a-gley [often go astray], / And lea'v us nought but grief and pain, / For promised joy." The phrase would turn up again in an 1856 poem by John Greenleaf Whittier called Maud Muller, that read: "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: "It might have been!" The phrase would be adapted one more time when Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Cat's Cradle (1963): "Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are 'It might have been'." The story follows two doomed men during the Great Depression at the height of the Dust Bowl. The migrant farmhands, George, (Burgess Meredith), an intelligent and quick-witted man, and his companion, Lennie Small (Lon Chaney, Jr.), an ironically named man of hulking stature and immense strength who has the mind of a young child, share a dream of settling down on their own piece of land. When my adult son happened to catch this film a few years ago on TCM, he cried uncontrollably, and to this day he will only watch the movie alone. This is powerful stuff.

Young Mr. Lincoln - A family traveling through New Salem, Illinois stops at a store owned by the Lincolns, but they have nothing to pay for the groceries with except some old books, one of which is Blackstone's Commentaries, a law book that a young Abe quickly devours. As the page turns, we see Lincoln (Henry Fonda), too poor to own even a horse, arrive in Springfield on a mule and soon establish a law practice. At a July 4th celebration, a man is murdered in a brawl and two brothers are accused. Lincoln prevents the lynching of the boys by telling the angry mob he really needs these clients for his first case. Fonda delivers a taciturn performance highlighted by dry backwoods humor. During the trial, Lincoln is cross-examining a witness who he suspects is the real murderer: 

Lincoln: J. Palmer Cass.
Cass: Yes, sir.

Lincoln: What's the "J" stand for?

Cass: John.

Lincoln: Anyone ever call you Jack?

Cass: Yeah, but...

Lincoln: Why "J. Palmer Cass?" Why not "John P. Cass?"

Cass: Well, I...

Lincoln: Does "J. Palmer Cass" have something to hide?

Cass: No.

Lincoln: Then what do you part your name in the middle for?

Cass: I got a right to call myself anything I want as long as it's my own name!

Lincoln: Well then if it's all the same to you, I'll call you Jack Cass.

The apocryphal young Mr. Lincoln at his drollest.

Gunga Din - Gunga Din is a sprawling action-adventure film starring Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. The story is loosely based on a poem of the same name and several short stories by Rudyard Kipling. The film is about three British sergeants and Gunga Din, their native water bearer, who fight the Thuggee (from whence we get the word 'thug'), a murderous cult in colonial British India. Steven Spielberg would draw heavily from this movie when making the Indiana Jones sagas. The film ends with the immortal lines: "Though I've belted you and flayed you, / By the livin' Gawd that made you, / You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" calls out the hunchback Quasimodo (Charles Laughton) as he swings from the parapets of Notre Dame with the lovely gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara) in his arms, after she has been falsely accused of murder by the evil Chief Justice of Paris when she rejects his advances. Looking akin to the stone gargoyles that adorn the famed Paris cathedral, this is a classic ill-fated beauty and the beast love story written by Victor Hugo. This movie has everything you'd expect in medieval France, from boiling oil being poured on the besieging soldiers to the coronation of the hunchback as the King of Fools. When I was younger, I lumped the grotesque bellringer into the same category of monsters as Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Actually, I still do.

Each Dawn I Die - The quintessential prison movie. Crusading, big-city, newspaper reporter Frank Ross (James Cagney) is framed by a corrupt DA and sentenced to twenty years. He is beaten by brutal guards, spends five months in "the hole," a cell where prisoners in solitary confinement are handcuffed to the bars, standing up, and are fed bread and water, helps a friend (George Raft) plan and execute a prison break, and gets caught up in a jailhouse riot that is ruthlessly put down by guards and state troopers using machine guns, tear gas, and hand grenades. Meanwhile Ross' girlfriend works tirelessly to prove his innocence, Ross is eventually exonerated, and the corrupt DA, who has become Governor, is arrested for the murder Ross was convicted of. A gritty, fan-favorite, gangster flick.

The Man in the Iron Mask - This movie put the swash in swashbuckler. Written by Alexandre Dumas, Louis Hayward plays twins - Louis XIV, the selfish, cruel, and incompetent King of France, and Philippe, the kind-hearted brother, who is raised by d'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers - and does not even know that he has an identical twin. When the truth is discovered by the King's evil Chancellor, Philippe is imprisoned with an iron mask placed on his head, in the hope that Philippe's beard will grow inside the mask and eventually strangle him. Philippe is rescued by the Musketeers, who break into the sleeping chamber of King Louis and imprison him in the mask instead. The guards drag off Louis and lock him in the Bastille, mistaking him for the escaped Philippe. Swordplay, coach chases, political intrigue, and derring-do abound. This film always made me think about how horrible it would be to be imprisoned in an iron mask - forever unable to wash your hair (that would eventually fall out as your scalp was abraded by the rubbing metal), never being able to brush your teeth, scratch an itchy chin, blow your nose, or hold your head upright for more than short periods at a time. But I digress.

The Hound of the Baskervilles -  From the moment Basil Rathbone stepped onscreen in a Deerstalker cap, that indelible image has defined the role of Sherlock Holmes for decades to come. This mystery film, based on the famous novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, would be the first of 14 films starring Rathbone as the world's only consulting detective and his confidant and biographer, Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce).

Drums Along the Mohawk - This historical Technicolor adventure, directed by John Ford, portrays Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert as settlers in the Mohawk Valley during the American Revolution. The couple suffer British, Tory, and Indian depredations on their farm before the Revolution ends and peace is restored. Every time I watch this movie, I want to go back in time and enlist in the Continental Army.

Jesse James - 1939 was a busy year for Henry Fonda. This western, starring Tyrone Power as Jesse James and Henry Fonda as his brother Frank, is "notorious for its historical inaccuracy." Be that as it may, this movie encapsulates the whitewashed legend of the infamous bank, stage, and train robbers. Portrayed as Missouri farm boys who come home from the War, only to find the injustice of Northern carpetbaggers and crooked bankers, they are forced to become outlaws that rob from the rich and give to the poor. Much of the filming for Jesse James took place around the town of Pineville, Missouri because at the time the town and surrounding area looked much the same as it would have in the 1880's and 1890's. Pineville still celebrates Jesse James Days annually in homage to the film. Upon its release, Jesse James was a smash hit and with its supporting cast of Randolph Scott, John Carradine, Brian Donlevy, Donald Meek, Jane Darwell, and Lon Chaney, Jr., went on to become the fourth largest-grossing film of 1939. The film gained a measure of notoriety, however, when during shooting, a horse fell to its death down a rocky slope. This scene was one of many cited by the American Humane Association against Hollywood's abuse of animals, and led to the association's monitoring of filmmaking.

Dodge City - 1939 was also a good year for blockbuster Westerns. This super-sturdy oater was directed by Michael Curtiz, who cut his teeth helming such movies as the Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, the Sea Hawk, the Sea Wolf, and Casablanca (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director). Filmed in early Technicolor, the story begins when Texas cattleman Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn) rides into town and witnesses a young boy inadvertently shot down in the lawless street. He takes the job of Sheriff and proceeds to clean up the town, along the way, winning the heart of beautiful settler Olivia de Havilland.

Stanley and Livingstone - This movie is based upon the true story of reporter Sir Henry M. Stanley's quest to find Dr. David Livingstone, a missionary presumed lost in Africa. The intrepid and fearless reporter, played by Spencer Tracy, is given the assignment to probe the uncharted interior of the dark continent. With a band of native bearers, he sets out into deepest Africa, but months pass with no sign of hope. Just as his resolve begins to waver, he runs across two hunters, who tell him of a white man they call "doctor" in a village beside Lake Tanganyika. When finally he arrives there, he sees a white man waiting to greet him and utters one of the most famous lines in movie history, "Dr. Livingstone I presume." The safari sequences were filmed on location in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Union Pacific - Yes, another Western, but before you write it off, this major motion picture was directed by the one and only Cecil B. DeMille, and tackled no less a subject than the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Chief troubleshooter for the Union Pacific, Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea), has his hands full fighting saboteurs, crooked gamblers, train wrecks, floods, fires, collapsing trestles, Indian attacks, and Mollie Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of a train engineer, who grew up with the smell of creosote in her nostrils. One interesting piece of trivia - the golden spike used in the film to commemorate the linking of east and west at Promontory Summit, Utah, was the same spike actually used in the May 10, 1869 event, on loan from Stanford University. One noted film critic of the time declared the movie to be, “something worthy of adult attention and serious criticism, and therefore a yardstick against which all westerns will be subsequently measured.”

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - A boy on a raft, barefoot and fancy free. A straw hat perched lazily on a mop of strawberry-blonde hair, a corncob pipe clenched between thin-set lips. The music of the mighty Mississippi for company. Mark Twain's masterpiece is widely considered to be the greatest work in American literature. In this faithful adaption, Huck, played by Mickey Rooney, floats from one escapade to another while helping his friend Jim escape to freedom.

The Wizard of Oz - Audiences thrilled when a Kansas farm girl named Dorothy Gale was whisked up into a twister, and gaped in awe when her opened door revealed a world of fantastical shapes and colors. Where was the ASPCA when the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) says to Dorothy (Judy Garland), "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" (Toto was played by a female brindle Cairn Terrier named Terry.)

One name that is conspicuously absent that year was that of Walt Disney. Although virtually every picture around the world was preceded by a Disney cartoon short, the Studio did not release an animated feature. In actuality, Disney was between his special Academy Award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, and his follow-up project Pinocchio in 1940.

Truly the Golden Age of Hollywood.