Lee Patrick

In its heyday, Hollywood showcased dozens upon dozens of wonderful character actresses.  As with their male counterparts, most of them fell into “types,” roles for which they were well suited and extremely competent and reliable. Looking for a ditzy dame? Call upon Joyce Compton (The Awful Truth [1938], Christmas in Connecticut [1945]) or Barbara Nichols (Sweet Smell of Success [1957], Pal Joey [1957]). Need a high-toned, fussy society woman? Get in touch with Florence Bates (Heaven Can Wait [1943], The Devil and Miss Jones [1941]) or Edna May Oliver (Ann Vickers [1933], Pride and Prejudice [1940]). Want the ultimate kind, gentle, and understanding mother? Look no further then Fay Bainter (Young Tom Edison[1940], The Human Comedy [1943]) or, if the child in question is Jimmy Stewart, Beulah Bondi (Stewart’s onscreen mother in a record four films: Vivacious Lady[1938], Of Human Hearts [1938], Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939], and It’s a Wonderful Life [1946]). 

And that’s fine. It’s the way it should be. As an audience, we look to these women to fulfill a specific role with great competence and gentle dignity (yes, even the ditzy dames). 

What we don’t often see is the onscreen growth from one type of character into another. And another. But that’s exactly the sort of metamorphosis that character actress Lee Patrick achieved throughout the course of her long tenure as a bona fide character actress in Tinsel Town. 

Patrick was born in New York in 1901, the daughter of a trade paper editor. Thanks to him, her interest in the theatrical arts was sparked, and, by the age of 21, she had snagged a role as a part of the ensemble cast in the Broadway review The Bunch and Judy. The leads? Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele. Not a bad place to start. Over the next decade, she would become something of a fixture on the Broadway stage, appearing in 26 productions including a co-staring role (and off-stage romance) with future film great Humphrey Bogart in Baby Mine (1927) and the lead role in the smash hit Stage Door (1936). 

The prospect of starring in the 1937 RKO film adaptation of Stage Door ultimately lured Patrick to Hollywood, but her hopes were dashed when the studio demurred from taking a chance on a newcomer and ultimately rearranged the cast list and chose to spotlight the talents of Ginger Rodgers and Katherine Hepburn as the leads. To be fair, at the age of 38, Patrick’s ingénue days in Hollywood were well behind her. She wasn’t graced with leading lady looks at this point, although she did have a set of amazing cheekbones that would serve her well in front of the camera for years to come. However, even as an “older women” her dreams of mega-movie stardom were quelled when she lost out on the title role in Stella Dallas (1937) to slightly younger and more bankable leading lady, Barbara Stanwyck. 

There were more disappointments to come. Patrick’s husband, writer and journalist Thomas Wood, penned a frank and unflattering piece about Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons. According to conventional wisdom, the powerful Parsons fought back by using her considerable influence to keep Patrick stuck mostly in B pictures. 

Lee Patrick as Effie lights one up for her boss, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) in The Maltese Falcon.

Despite her feud with Parsons, Patrick had a long and successful career as a character actress, and over the course of three decades, appeared in scores of movies and television shows. In her performances, Patrick displayed a versatility that was rare even among the most gifted character actors. Three films in particular illustrate her range. In the first, The Maltese Falcon (1941), Patrick portrays Effie, the reliable and quick-witted Girl Friday of detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart). Her onscreen time is brief, but in it, she matches Bogart in snappy banter and adds just the right amount of brightness to a film cloaked in murder, deceit, and the fog of San Francisco. 

Patrick uses all her tricks to lure a fellow inmate into her web of vice in Caged.

Throughout the 1940s, Patrick appeared on screen steadily, albeit mostly in second-tier films. There were a few supporting roles in A movies thrown into the mix, such as Now, Voyager (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945), and The Snake Pit (1948). Then, in 1950, she portrayed Elvira Powell, the “vice queen” sentenced to serve some time in lockdown in director 

John Cromwell’s Caged, celebrated as the first bona fide entry into the genre of women’s prison films. Patrick doesn’t appear until well into the movie’s second act, but her impact is immediate and unforgettable. Filmgoers who knew her as Sam Spade’s helpful assistant would be excused for not recognizing her here. Her portrayal of a steely and resourceful incarcerated madam, bent on recruiting soon-to-be-paroled prisoners to work for her on the outside, deftly skirts campiness as her character cooly plots the ultimate downfall of two fellow inmates; first, the leader of her cellblock whose position she ruthlessly usurps, and second, the once naive heroine who finally succumbs to Elvira’s seductive bribes. It is a nuanced performance in a sub-genre where that term is seldom, if ever, used. 

Patrick (left) as Doris Upson, uses all her charms to welcome Rosalind Russell to the bucolic suburban life in Auntie Mame.

In the 1950s, Patrick successfully found her way into television, and was celebrated for her portrayal as the scatterbrained wife of the title character in the series “Topper,” based upon the 1937 film and the character originally played by Billie Burke. It’s not a stretch to suggest she parlayed this new characterization into her film role as Doris Updike in the Warner Brother’s hit Auntie Mame (1958). Surely, no one could be expected to top the wonderful Rosalind Russell, but Lee Patrick easily holds her own in two delicious scenes with Russell as Doris Upson, an upper-middle-class matron completely bent upon seeing her bourgeois lifestyle perpetuated through the marriage of her vapid daughter to Mame’s unsuspecting nephew. With her “New Look” style dresses (already hopelessly outdated by the end of the decade) and her hair swept into a classic French roll, Patrick epitomized the vacuity of a particular sect of the post-war generation long before it was stylish to do so, all with an infectious charm and goofiness so unlike her characterizations in Caged and The Maltese Falcon.  

Lee continued her work in film and television up until 1975 and spent her remaining years battling health problems while still pursuing her various hobbies including her love for painting. She died one day before her 81st birthday in 1982 and was survived by her husband of 45 years. 

Lee Patrick may not have become the most recognizable of character actresses in film, but that’s a great part of what made her so special.  Find Patrick’s name in a movie’s opening credits, and you are assured of a solid and satisfying performance – as well as one that just might surprise you.

When writer/producer David Jacobs joined me recently on “The Islander,” he had a lot to say about some of the films he loves, including why he is fond of them and what makes them stand-out cinematic achievements.  In this bonus audio clip, David uses his same keen understanding and appreciation of movies to discern what went horribly wrong with three films that should have been great but weren’t: The Chase (1966), The Cotton Club (1984), and Angela’s Ashes (1999).

Gene Lockhart was such a character actor. Born in 1891 in Ontario, Canada, Lockhart benefited from parents who were musical and artistic, especially his father who sang tenor in the 48th Highlanders’ Regimental Band. Young Gene had the opportunity to study music and theatre in London, and, upon returning to North America, he sang in concert, often on the same bill with the reknown Beatrice Lillie. In 1917, at the age of 25, he first appeared on Broadway and went on to continue his stage work, both onstage and behind the scenes as a writer and lyricist. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music and taught classes there as well. In 1924, he married British actress Kathleen Arthur and, one year later, the couple celebrated the birth of their only child, June Lockhart.

Hollywood beckoned briefly in 1922, when Lockhart made his screen debut in Smiling Through, but it wasn’t until 1934 when his career in Tinsel Town really took off. By then, he had developed physically into the jowly and pleasingly plump personage that would serve him well for the next three decades. Lockhart alternated between two “types”: insidious villains in films such as Algiers (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor) and somewhat shy, bumbling characters, typified by his portrayal as Bob Cratchit in the 1938 MGM version of A Christmas Carol, in which he appeared with his wife as Mrs. Cratchit and his daughter June, making her screen debut as one of the Cratchit children.

What made Lockhart so special as a character actor was his ability to blend the two types for which he was famous, that of the overtly sinister villain and the bumbling nice guy, into a unique and compelling mix that never failed to delight. He did this again and again in numerous films such as His Girl Friday, Carousel, They Died with Their Boots On, Meet John Doe, Leave Her to Heaven, and, perhaps most memorably, the perennial Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street where, as Judge Henry X Harper, he almost single handedly saves Christmas.

OK, John Payne helped a little.

While Lockhart was known best for his work in film, he also had an impressive career on the stage, including his much-lauded performance as Willie Loman in the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman (taking over from Lee J. Cobb). Before that, he appeared with George M. Cohan and another great character actor, Elisha Cook, Jr., in the Broadway debut of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness. All told, he had sixteen Broadway plays to his credit. Add that to his numerous television appearances and his more than a hundred film appearances, and it is clear that Lockhart rightly earned his place in the pantheon of great character actors.

Earlier, I mentioned his work as a lyricist. Think you don’t know any of his stuff? Oh yes, you do. I’ll let Les Paul and Mary Ford prove it as they perform one of Lockhart’s most famous songs…Presented by Listerine!

The song was originally published in 1919. Musical luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Django Reinhardt covered it over the years. Les Paul and Mary Ford’s version was a million seller in 1949. The classics! They endure!

The reason was Mark Lisanti, founding editor of Defamer, and our guest on “The Islander.”

Long story short:  Mark came to Hollywood looking to work in The Industry.  He dabbled about a bit, but also published his own blog, Bunsen, which got him noticed by New York-based Gawker Media Empire overlord Nick Denton who decided to branch out to the West Coast.  Thus, Defamer was born.

From it’s very inception, Defamer was a little bit of Brilliance.  Lisanti worked anonymously at first, sort of as a joke, but it really didn’t matter.  What did matter was the amazing quality of his posts, often as many as two dozen a day, which left the denizens of Hollywood gasping for air, and the underlings…the overworked personal assistants, underpaid production assistants, and yahoos like me…craving for more.

And Mark always delivered, slavishly pounding away on his laptop inside his Los Feliz apartment.  He fielded press announcement, trade postings, and tips from those on the scene.  Like this tipster-supplied holiday message from Eva Longoria, which Mark ultimately turned into a very special Thanksgiving greeting.

I was thrilled when Mark took me up on my offer to be our Islander, and it was an absolute honor to speak with him.  Please enjoy the segment, and then read his other online offerings:

Defamer archive of Mark’s posts

Bunsen, Mark’s first blog

Lisanti Quarterly, Mark’s current blog

The Little Golden Men Oscar blog on Vanity Fair

Islander interview with Mark Lisanti, part 1

Islander interview with Mark Lisanti, part 2

As I was preparing my review for Holiday, I ran across an interesting item.  Apparently, the character of Linda Seton, portrayed by Katherine Hepburn in the film, was based on Gertrude Sanford Legendre (1902-2000), an unlikely debutante of the 1920′s who gave up her socialite ways to become a big-game hunter, a World War II spy, and an author.  In her teens, Gertrude shot her first elk in the Grand Tutons of Wyoming.  She went on to eschew New York society cocktail parties so as to hunt big game in such locales as Indochina, Africa, India, and Iran.  It was on a safari in Africa where she met her future husband.  They were wed in 1929, with the announcement proclaimed in August 20, 1929 Social News section of  the New York Times.

GERTRUDE SANFORD, EXPLORER, TO MARRY: Engaged to Sidney J. Legendre, Who Was Co-Leader in Abyssinia Expedition.  SISTER OF POLO PLAYER.  Fiance, Member of Old New Orleans Family, Is Well Known as Sportsman and Athlete.  Her Ventures in Exploration.

The brother?  The POLO PLAYER?  His name was Laddie.

During World War II, she worked for the O.S.S. in Washington and Paris.  She became the first American woman in France to be captured by the enemy.  After six months, she made a daring escape, ultimately boarding a train to Switzerland.  The train stopped short of the border, and even as she was ordered by a German guard to halt or be shot, she made a dash to the border–and safety.

After the war, she and Sidney settled in their historic home at Medway Plantation in South Carolina.  She went on to write two memoirs and established both the Medway Environmental  Trust, ensuring that Medway would forever be managed as a nature preserve, and the Medway Plan, an organization dedicated to providing medical help to war-damaged countries.  She ultimately became quite the grand dame of Charleston society, well known for her philanthropy.  She was also hailed for her lavish New Year’s Eve costume parties.  At one of the last of these affairs, she turned to her guests and raised her glass in a toast.

“I look ahead.  I always have.  I don’t contemplate life, I live it.  And am having the time of my life.”

Here’s to you, Ms. Legendre.

For the most part.

They loved Chaplin in The Kid, as well as Buster Keaton in Cops, Singin’ in the Rain, which I screened to illustrate the transition from silents to talkies, went over BIG, especially with some of the girls, who fell fast and hard for Gene Kelly.  My Man Godfrey was appreciated, and the film led to some interesting discussions about history as well as the nature of comedy.  When we got to the 1940s, I hit cinematic pay dirt with, of all things, Mildred Pierce.  While Some Like it Hot probably proved to be the class favorite, overall, the Joan Crawford tour de force ran a very close second.  There was not one snarky comment about her eyebrows or shoulder pads.  Those kids were IN!

My footing got a little unsteady when we hit the 1950s however.  I take the blame.  Somehow, I thought that I absolutely had to show a Hitchcock film…like there was some sort of law…and I chose one of my favorites, North by Northwest.

It was a mistake.  A really BIG mistake.

The students hated it, and I came to understand and appreciate their views.  The whole Cold War thing meant absolutely nothing to them, so there went that.  Cary Grant, while still absolutely dishy to me, was a little too craggy to draw in my girls…even those who had swooned over Gene Kelly (and would go on to swoon even more for Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate).

Then, there’s the technical aspects of the film.  Those of us who love Hitch have learned to overlook and forgive his lack of technical prowess when it comes to filmmaking.  We accept all of the tired rear projection and allow it for the sake of the storytelling.

But kids today?  Eh, not so much.  Most of them complained that the famous crop-dusting scene just went on too long.  I guess when you walk home every afternoon knowing you could be caught in the crossfire of some warring gang banbers, being trapped in some mid-western corn field doesn’t seem to pose a lot of peril.

There was, however, one reaction that caught me completely off guard.  It came from a charming young man named Juan Cortez.  Juan was a great student.  He started out more skeptical than any of the others, but got swept up in the films I showed and became my most avid film watcher.  When someone gifted me with a small stuffed animal early in the semester, it was Juan who insisted that I name it “Godfrey.”

Juan’s complaint with North by Northwest?  Why, that tramp Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), dontcha know.

“Miss, she sleeps with him on the first night she meets him!  She’s kinda…well…you know…”

“A what, Juan?”

“Well, Miss…Ummm…kinda a slut!”

We tossed this idea around a bit.  I brought up the fact that her actions were all done to keep America safe from the likes of James Mason and his evil, Communistic ways, but Juan was having none of it.  Nope.  Good women don’t do that sort of thing, and, clearly, Eve Kendal was not a good woman.

Juan did seem to have a qualm or two about the fact that Mildred Pierce hooks up with Monty Beragon on their first date, but, ultimately, Mildred got a pass…something about the fact that she had already been married.

Personally, I live in my own happy little world, where a one-nighter with Cary Grant completely trumps the same sort of fling with Zachery Scott…especially when I am protecting the world from the Red Menace.  Or even if I’m not.  I mean…c’mon!

But, then again, I’m not wide-eyed and sixteen.  Nor would I wish to bel.  Still, I love to get their input.

Born in 1892 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Mitchell, the oldest son of immigrant Irish parents, got his start on stage after briefly pursuing a career in journalism.  For a while, he toured with a Shakespearean theater company headed by fellow character actor Charles Coburn.  He then turned his sights to Broadway and appeared in more than twenty plays between 1916 and 1960, some of which he also wrote and/or directed.

Sit around and watch enough TCM, especially the stuff that gets aired at five in the morning, and you might begin to wonder if Mitchell wasn’t legally mandated to appear in every third Hollywood film made between the mid-1930′s and mid-1940′s.  He wasn’t, of course, but he made nearly fifty films during that period.  By the time of his passing in 1962, his combined film and TV credits totaled 103, the first one being a breezy 1922 silent called Six Cylinder Love (one of his co-stars, also making his film debut, was Donald Meek, with whom Mitchell went on to make a cramped journey in John Ford’s Stagecoach).

If 1939 was a high point in American cinema, if was no less of a pinnacle for Mitchell’s film career.  He not only appeared in five of that year’s greatest films, but he displayed his awesome versatility as an actor in each one: as Gerald O’Hara, the proud but doomed patriarch in Gone With the Wind; in his Oscar-winning turn as the drunken but ultimately heroic Doc Boone in Stagecoach; as the sympathetic pilot whose shoulder Jean Arthur cries on in Only Angels Have Wings; as Diz Moore, the sympathetic, drunken reporter whose shoulder Jean Arthur also cries on in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; and in his rousing turn as Clopin, the King of Beggars, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

(In case you don’t recognize him, the idealistic young poet in that scene is none other than Edmond O’Brien, perhaps best known as the more severely doomed victim, Frank Bigelow, in the 1950 noir classic D.O.A.)

Seven years later, Mitchell played what might be considered his most memorable role, that of Uncle Billy, the well-meaning but scatterbrained uncle and “ol’ building  & loan pal” to Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

With the rise of television in the early 1950′s, Mitchell took to the airwaves as effortlessly as he did to the silver screen.   He was a fixture in numerous anthologies and series.  He maintained a presence on Broadway as well, taking over the lead from Lee J. Cobb in the original production of Death of a Salesman and winning the Tony Award in 1953 for Best Actor in a musical for Hazel Flagg (a musical version of the 1937 screwball comedy, Nothing Sacred)…without ever singing a note.

(That’s Mitchell in the center of the picture, kneeling, looking after the supposedly infirmed Hazel).  1953 was also the year Mitchell won the Emmy for Best Actor (apparently, at that time, given for a body of work rather than one specific production).  The Emmy, the Tony, and his Oscar for Stagecoach made him the first actor to win the Triple Crown of the major acting awards.

Oh, and this…from the Little-Known Facts Department:  Mitchell’s last work was a stage play entitled Prrescription: Murder in which he played the secondary role of Lt. Columbo.  Yes, that Lt. Columbo.  The play’s leads were Agnes Moorehead and Joseph Cotten (with Mitchell, right), but Mitchell’s performance as the bumbling detective was key, thanks to his performance, and while the play was on the road, the role was expanded, ultimately becoming the character Peter Falk made famous in his T.V. role.

Mitchell did what all great supporting actors do…he supported.  While he may have sometimes moved menacingly close to the scenery, the flats ultimately never reveal any bite marks.  Between his elfish charm, his sparkling eyes, and the way he could toss out one-liners with ease…he never overwhelmed the frame, but you always knew he was there.  And that, in turn, made the scene, or even the film, better (except, perhaps, 1944′s Wilson.  No one could have saved that clunker).  While some of his films may have lapsed into obscurity, Mitchell never will.

For example, if you fired up the ol’ RCA Victor Color TV in your living room and saw Seymour, AKA Larry Vincent, you could bet you were watching “Fright Night” on KHJ-TV, channel 9.  Ah, Seymour! All us kids in SoCal loved him. Side Note: I went to school with his lovely daughters, Diane and Valerie. One year, their father actually attended our Hallowe’en carnival at Lincoln Jr. High in Santa Monica. No paparazzi, just lots of pre-teen adoration to be found.

Meeting Seymour was cool, but for me, there was no greater local TV celeb than Tom Hatten. I didn’t hit Southern California until I was nine-going-on-ten, so I missed most of his “Popeye Show” days. But that’s just me. I know plenty of folk who grew up with Tom and his infamous “squiggles” from the time they were certified ankle-biters, and they all revere him as an important part of their childhood.

For me, it was only a couple of years after my family and I were enveloped into the Southern California fold that I caught the movie bug, and I clearly remember spending countless hours in front of the TV, practically inhaling the offerings of classic movies that were offered up over the air waves, mostly by local outlets.

Keep listening to Granny, kids, as she tells you how it was in them Olden Days. There were no VCRs or DVDs back in them times. Revival theaters were rare and certainly not within the grasp of the average teenage movie geek. If you had the inclination or desire to see a classic (or, as referred to then, old) movie, you scanned your parents’ TV Guide and marked up your choices for the week (with an actual pen or pencil…no highlighters back then, kids). And you could bet dollars to doughnuts that there would be something to see on KTLA’s “Family Film Festival” on channel 5.

It was there that thousands of other residents of the Southland and I came to know and love the host, Tom Hatten. Each weekend, at 3:00 PM (if I’m remembering correctly…and I believe I am), viewers would reunite with this most genial host, finding him comfortably ensconced in a chair next to a 16mm projector, holding a clipboard on his knee, and waiting to introduce his TV audience to another great film. Before the movie began, he offered an introduction; after commercial breaks, he gave out with more info about the film, the director, and the cast; and, at the end, if we were lucky, Tom introduced a special guest connected with the movie. As I say in my introduction to Tom on “The Islander,” he was, indeed, the first film history professor many of us had.

Many, many years ago, I had a personal encounter with Tom on, of all places, Sunset Boulevard. I was a struggling film student at the time and was hangin’ on Sunset to pick up some developed 8mm film I had shot for a class. Yes, 8mm. Imagine. You youngins can look that up. As I left the film-developing establishment, I spotted this dapper gentleman passing me, sporting a sharp satin jacket emblazoned on the back with the logo from the then new-ish musical Annie. Since I am also a musical theatre geek, I actually ran this fellow down so I could say something dopey, like, “Oh! Are you in the show?” The touring company had just hit L.A., and I had tickets to one of the first performances. The amiable fellow in the jacket turned around, and we chatted for a few moments. He told me that, yes, he was in the cast, playing FDR. Suddenly I realized that this most courtly gentleman wasn’t just FDR, he was…TOM HATTEN…my “Family Film Festival” hero.

No one can ever accuse me of being suave when thrust in the face of my idols, and I remember that I babbled like a big dofus. But Tom was extremely gracious and even invited me to visit him backstage. I did, and he was enormously kind to me, going so far as offering me a tour of the backstage area and introducing me to other cast members.

He was a terrific FDR, by the way.

I also think he’s a terrific castaway on “The Islander.”

Islander interview with Tom Hatten, part 1.

Islander interview with Tom Hatten, part 2.

I Promise to Pay

Shady, illegal loan sharks were a very real deal during the Great Depression, and I Promise to Pay pulls few punches in its depiction of this phenomenon, making it one of those rare Depression-based films that deal frankly with just how depressing…and bleak…the Depression really was.  This Columbia programmer presents a dire and realistic picture of the struggles of a lower-middle-class family of four, living in a two-room apartment and attempting to survive on $24 a week.  There are no screwball society matrons here, nor any splashy chorus girls or madcap heiresses.  Instead, it is a brutally frank depiction of ordinary people who are forced to deal with the hand life has dealt them, sustained only by the love they have for each other and the belief that honesty and goodness will win out, even though there is often little evidence to support the validity of that view.

Mary Lang (Helen Mack) comforts husband and loan shark victim Eddie (Chester Morris) as he recovers from a brutal mob beating.

As the leading man, Chester Morris turns in a strong, winning performance.  Best known for playing the title role in the fourteen “Boston Blackie” films of the 1940s, Morris is largely forgotten today, although he had a solid reputation as a leading man in the late twenties and thirties.  In I Promise to Pay, he strikes just the right note of optimistic sincerity and honest conviction.  While audiences may question his naiveté, his motives are clear as is his ultimate courage in the face of a truly menacing situation.

Leo Carrillo in happier, friendlier times

As good as Morris is, it is character actor Leo Carrillo who steals the show.  He portrays the loan sharking crime boss Richard Farra as a gangster who is at once menacing, sleazy, and utterly ruthless. He’s the kind of gangster who spontaneously buys a car simply because it matches his girlfriend’s hair or holds a meeting with his henchmen while being vigorously massaged by a beefy gent who tickles him at the end of the session, much to his delight.  It’s far from a nuanced performance, but Carrillo’s courage as an actor pays off in a performance that is completely compelling…and more than a little disturbing.  He is ably supported by a sinister and intimidating group of henchmen, most notably Harry Woods as the sadistic Fats and Marc Lawrence as would-be child-kidnapper, Whitehat.

The film’s third act is fairly predictable in its Capra-esque conclusion, a fact that might be contributed partly to the presence of the always reliable Thomas Mitchell as the sincere and determined district attorney bent on freeing his city from illegal loan shark rackets.  Nevertheless, the film moves along at a brisk pace and packs a lot of story into a mere 68-minute running time.  In these days, where movies often run over two hours, it’s refreshing to see how much the filmmakers of the thirties could do with only half that time.

ALL TOLD: A fast-paced, surprisingly stark depiction of the Depression era bolstered by winning performances, especially that of Leo Carrillo’s creepy yet compelling depiction of a ruthless, egomaniacal crime boss.

I Promise to Pay

Columbia, 1937

Directed by D. Ross Lederman

Screenplay by Lionel Houser and Mary C. McCall, Jr.

Featuring Chester Morris, Helen Mack, Leo Carrillo, Thomas Mitchell

Through a happy mixture of luck, timing, and talent, Ann Rutherford made her screen debut at the age of fifteen when she appeared in the title role of Waterfront Lady (1935).  Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, she played the leading lady opposite such screen legends as John Wayne, Gene Autry, and James Stewart.  However, it is for her featured roles that she is arguably best known, be it Polly Benedict, Andy Hardy’s faithful girlfriend in the Hardy Family series (1927 – 1942); the flirtaious and slightly scandalous Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1940); or perhaps her best-known role, Scarlett O’ Hara’s youngest sister, Carreen, in Gone with the Wind (1939).

While her contemporaries may have fought and strived for splashy roles and top billing, Ann made the conscious choice early on to find her bliss in featured roles.  It was a lesson she learned from character actor Lewis Stone who portrayed the venerable Judge Hardy in the Hardy Family series.  Stone had been groomed as a leading man during the silent era and warned Ann about the perils of achieving full-blown stardom.  “He noticed what a good time I was having every day on the set,” Ann recalls, “and I was.  I was just so thrilled to go to the studio every day.”  Stone cautioned her against trying to become a major star.  “Stars peter out,” he said, “but featured players last forever.”  Ann followed his advice and, when she retired in 1976, she could look back on more than forty years of work in film, radio, and television with fondness and satisfaction and nary a regret.  “It was all so much fun,” she relates.  “I’ve just had a wonderful, wonderful life.”

As she begins to gracefully approach her 90th birthday, Ann Rutherford remains as enthusiastic about her life and career as she was as a teenager under contract with MGM.  She is still extremely active and much sought after as an honored guest at various film society events and festivals.  2009 has been an especially busy one for Ann as it is the seventieth anniversary of Gone with the Wind, and she has been busy traveling throughout much of the country attending celebrations for the film.  “Back then,” Ann remembers, “once a film was released, it was only around for a few months, never more than a year.  And here’s this wonderful movie that has been seen and loved by so many generations.  I was thrilled to have been a part of it then, and I certainly am now.  It [her role as Carreen O'Hara] was really a nothing part.  But, you know, that nothing part has turned my golden years into platinum!”

Ann shares stories of working on the  Hardy Family series and also talks about how she spent her time in between films.