Casanova Brown (1944)

Demonstrating how not to make a good impression on your in-laws.
(That's their house in the background.)

Casanova Brown is one of those films that tries to be too many things at once--screwball comedy, modern day retelling of the Casanova legend, social commentary--and succeeds at all of them, at least up to a point. While perhaps a bit more focus in the story's conception could have made a tighter, more elegant film, as it stands it is laugh out loud funny from start to finish, and that is more than enough to make it a winner in my book.

Gary Cooper heads a stellar cast in a comedy of remarriage so true to formula it seems the role surely must have been written for Cary Grant. Mild mannered English professor Casanova "Cass" Brown (Cooper) learns, on the eve of his marriage, that his first wife has just had a baby (his, naturally). That first marriage lasted less than twenty-four hours, from their chance meeting in the library to his burning down her parents' house the next morning, and the two of them have not spoken since their annulment. He only learns about the baby at all because his ex-wife Isabel (Teresa Wright) is putting the baby up for adoption, and the hospital needs his medical records. Cass falls for the baby just as quickly as he fell for her mother, and when he realizes that he has no legal rights to the child, he kidnaps her. Isabel and her father and his new fiance and her father all spend the next few weeks trying to track him down and keep him from doing anything rash, like eloping with the chambermaid. So much for the Casanova angle to the story.

Much of the humor in Casanova is of the "painfully embarrassing" variety, but stops just shy of the line where it starts to feel more like a horror movie than a comedy. It comes awfully close to the edge--throws spitballs over it in fact--but never quite crosses. The worst of it comes relatively early, when Cass goes to visit his new in-laws and finds they don't keep an ash tray in the library. This prompts a desperate search for a place to put out his cigarette, until he finally puts it out in his handkerchief and stuffs it in his pocket. For his next act he tries to convince them he doesn't smoke, even as his smoldering jacket says otherwise. Of course, lies like this spread like wildfire, and so does fire--particularly when you treat it like a stray cat, and throw books and newspapers at it to make it go away.

If the whole movie were like this, funny though it is, I'd be crying myself to sleep tonight. Thankfully, most of the rest of the film is less painful to watch, centering in the first half around Cass's relationship with his future father-in-law (Frank Morgan) and in the second around his bungling attempts at caring for an infant. Cooper and Morgan make a wonderful comic duo, Cooper's quiet sincerity making him the perfect straight man for Morgan's bumbling effervescence. In fact, the biggest criticism I have of Casanova is that these two don't get more screen time together. Both actors bring such warmth and good humor to most every part they play, and their relationship, with all its quarreling and insults, is both recognizable and endearing.

Frank Morgan very nearly steals the movie.

The second half of the film takes a more serious tone, although thankfully never at the expense of the comedy. Even more bewildering to Cass than the sudden knowledge that he is a father is the realization that he has no legal rights to his own daughter. That's not fair, he argues, and of course he is right. One could read much of this film as an argument in favor of paternal rights. In defiance to the notion that a woman is somehow better equipped to raise a child than a man (outside of the obvious biological advantage), Cass does an excellent job at caring for his hostage in spite of his inexperience. While the film makes light of his terrified precautions against germs and his obsession with charting her weight at hourly increments, he also makes no serious blunders and pretty much does everything as he should. When the baby is reunited with her mother, Cass must teach her how to hold the baby and how to burp her. As a new mother, she has no more natural instinct for these things than Cass did.

Although the film is ostensibly a romantic comedy and progresses through three different love interests for Cass, the heart of the story is his relationship with his daughter rather than any of the adult women. That relationship is powerfully and sympathetically portrayed, and the film never relies on mere cuteness for its impact as so many films about children and babies often do.

Careful. There be germs a-foot.

Teresa Wright gives a solid performance as well, and is as beautiful and likable as always, although even so Casanova, her fifth film, is by far the weakest item in her early resume. Her first three films (The Little Foxes, Mrs. Minivr, Pride of the Yankees) each earned her an Oscar nomination, and her fourth (Shadow of a Doubt) arguably should have. She just doesn't have the screen time to really develop a memorable character here, although even as it is she is instantly charismatic enough that it's no surprise when Cass picks her in the end (if you don't see that ending coming, you probably need to get out more).

Casanova doesn't really offer anything you can't find in a dozen other films, but it is a solidly built story and a welcome addition to an imminently likable sub-genre. It will never be a replacement for The Awful Truth or His Girl Friday, but if you've already seen those and liked them, it's a good bet you'll enjoy Casanova as much as I did.

The Virginian (1929)

Laconic screen legend Gary Cooper is in fine form in this stand-out early work.

It occurs to me, watching this film, that the appeal of westerns is much like that of police dramas. Both take as their central themes the conflict between law and order and the forces that threaten it, primal human instincts of greed and self interest. But whereas police dramas have the framework of civilization to sanitize the violence of retribution that drives the actions of the detectives, westerns rely on a more ephemeral idea of right and wrong, as interpreted by a handful of individuals. Their judgments and actions may be arbitrary, but they are no less rigid. Ultimately, there is a line you just don't cross.

Man of the West (1958)

Link Jones: part thug, part boy scout, all Cooper.

If I were to use one word to describe Man of the West, it would probably have to be "awkward." It's not bad by any stretch, and even has elements of greatness in it, but somehow for all that it never quite hits the mark.

High Noon (1952)

Gary Cooper as Marshall Will Kane. The time is 11:50.

"Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! ... But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come."
-Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot


Fred Zinnemann's High Noon may be one of the most perfectly constructed films ever made. If ever there were a doubt that film was art, high art, in the sense of Da Vinci and Shakespeare, surely films like High Noon must put to rest any such dispersions. Like a tightly constructed sonnet, nothing is missing, and nothing is superfluous.

Men We Love: Gary Cooper

Ball of Fire (1941)

Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Ball of Fire, indeed.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when this script was pitched. "It's kind of a modern day fairy tale," the writer says.  "You know, a take off on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Only the dwarfs are lexicographers, holed up in their brownstone, I mean cottage, writing an encyclopedia. And Snow White is called 'Sugarpuss O'Shea,' a nightclub singer. And the evil stepmother is her fiance, mob leader Joe Lilac." Samuel Goldwyn shakes his head sadly, and asks where Prince Charming fits in. "Oh, there is no prince," the writer says. "Sugarpuss falls for one of the dwarfs." Of course, the writer was Billy Wilder, so presumably Goldwyn knew enough to trust his instincts even if the sense of the thing was not immediately apparent.

Now and Forever (1934)

Gary Cooper, Shirley Temple, and Carole Lombard make an uncomfortable family, at best.

In spite of my better judgment, I find myself braving insulin shock by watching a Shirley Temple movie for the second time this year. As a great lover of musicals, I had to take a look at one of the most successful song and dance teams in movie history, Shirley and Bojangles, which accounts for my watching The Little Colonel a few months ago. I ended that experience by confirming that Shirley, much like high fructose corn syrup, is probably better left on the shelf. Yet here I am again, in spite of my resolve. The problem is, that unlike the Olsen twins a few years ago, Shirley's movies were never peopled with low-calibre character actors who had nothing better to do. Since Shirley was the hottest ticket around, her films are chock full of some of the biggest names of the day. Robert Young, Alice Faye, Lionel Barrymore, George Murphy, Frank Morgan, Spencer Tracy, Buddy Ebsen, and Joel McCrea all served time aboard the Good Ship Lollipop, as did Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard, both of whom co-starred with Shirley in Now and Forever.

It's an odd sort of film, darker and shadier than I would have expected from Shirley or Cooper either one. I never expected to watch a Shirley Temple movie that must be stretched out of shape to fit into the Hays Code box, and Cooper's portrayal of con man Jerry Day is a far cry from his usual wholesome image. There are a few predictable plot elements on both sides--as usual, Shirley has several family members and friends fighting for custody of her, and the film's ending has Cooper stoically battling a gunshot wound without bothering to seek medical attention. The film does present a fairly simple moral dilemma and then test the characters' reactions to the challenge, and Shirley overwhelms everyone in her path with near toxic levels of cuteness, as she giggles and dances her victims into submission. But Shirley is not in every scene, which helps to keep the radiation levels in check, and the story itself is both interesting and original.

Cooper plays American con man Jerry Day, who spends his life ducking in and out of some of the best hotels in the world with his partner Toni (Carole Lombard). Although a few specific references identify her as his wife, this seems to be a mere technicality, and surely only for the benefit of the Hays office. The two seem at times barely to know each other, and never have any clear vision of their future together, or even if they will stay together at all from one caper to the next.

Partners in crime.

One of the early scenes in the film has Jerry posing as a hotel auditor to collect past due rent from other guests in order to pay his own bill, and I can't help but think that any other Cooper character would punch Jerry in the face if he got wind of such a stunt. As if that weren't enough, soon after he excitedly explains to Toni that his next project involves a visit to his former in-laws to "sell" them custody of his daughter for $75,000. Maybe this was the dark past Cooper shuddered to remember in Man of the West. At any rate, these early shenanigans are more than enough to make Jerry Day about the most nefarious Cooper character I've seen yet, and that's before he turns jewelry thief later in the film and then (horror of horrors!) lies to his daughter Penny (Temple) about the stolen necklace even after swearing "honor bright" to tell the truth.

The real saving grace in this film is that the characterizations of all three leads and their relationships with each other are sympathetic and believable. Jerry falls for Penny in spite of his best intentions (it seems no one is immune), and turns down the $75,000 in favor of taking Penny to Paris with him to rejoin his "wife" Toni. He hasn't really changed--"I don't like life any better than I ever did," he tells Toni, "and nothing can make me settle down,"--but the more attached he becomes to Penny the more he realizes that there is more to life than just having fun, and even manages to develop a little responsibility. Or, at least he tries.

Okay, so they do look cute together...

Toni is torn between her love for Jerry and her mistrust of his intentions towards her and towards Penny, and the frostiness this creates in her makes even Penny wary of letting her too close, and it takes a while for them to warm up to each other at all. The three of them move through life without any clear idea what they're doing, and it quickly emerges that Penny, at the ripe old age of five, is the wisest and most mature of the group. There's a lot of love here, though, and it's not all saccharine.

Although Penny is the catalyst that makes Jerry want to change and be a better man, he doesn't really do it for her. It is Toni that he really loves, but bringing Penny into their lives lets him see Toni's pain and vulnerability for the first time. It is for her, and not for Penny, that he agrees to stop "chasing trains" and go get a job. These are two broken, desperate people, lonely even when they're together and unable to commit to each other in any traditional way yet each physically incapable of living without the other. A handful of catch phrases and inside jokes make the characterization of these two beautifully three dimensional, and create, almost in the background, a genuinely touching love story.

... but then, so do they.

I'm not about to rush out and complete my "Little Darling" collection, but it was a pleasant surprise to find I could watch one of Temple's movies all the way through without wanting to throw up in my mouth. Shirley is far more sickeningly sweet than I'd like, but she was also a very capable actress even as a very young girl, which is itself certainly worthy of respect. As a whole, the film was sincere and unpredictable, a worthwhile showcase for the exceptional talent of all three leads. Shirley comes on a little strong for many people, including myself, but if you're willing to look past this, Now and Forever is a rewarding film nonetheless.

Design for Living (1933)

Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins

With the list of names on board for Design for Living, it had better be incredible, and thankfully it does not disappoint. Ernst Lubitsch directs a Noel Coward play, starring Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Frederic March, and Edward Evertt Horton, and every one of them has got their game face on, and how. The dialog sparkles with impossible wit. Nobody speaks like this, but we don't watch movies to see real life; we have real life for that. As is often the case with Lubitsch's films, Design is interested in how human beings, with their own agendas for their sex lives, fit into a society, which frequently imposes on them a radically different agenda. Design approaches this question in the context of the clash of the worlds of advertising and art, of the difference between the things that really matter to people, and the things that someone has a vested interest in making them think matter.