Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 18, 2020 7:49:30 GMT -8
Joel McCrea snd Veronica “Breck Girls Can Only Aspire to be Me” star in 1941’s Sullivan’s Travels.
McCrea plays director, John Sullivan, who tires of writing his screwball comedies and wants to write something deeper. He’s asked by one of his bosses, “What do you now about real pain?” Sullivan realizes he knows nothing and decides to go on the road, dressed as a tramp.
Along the way he runs into Veronica Lake who has two eyes, I’m pretty sure. But it’s the hair that’s the thing.
Actually, for a light romantic comedy (which this is for a while), she’s pretty good. In the early part of the film, McCrea wields a dashing tongue as he dispenses deadpan lines in the style of Bob Hope. This kind of humor is tough to do but they walk that razor’s edge and mostly do it well.
Known in the credits simply as “The Girl,” this is one of Veronica Lake’s first leading roles. She’s in Hollywood and ready to call it quits in her attempt to make it in pictures. She’s nearly penniless but happens upon Sullivan in a small diner where she sees that he hasn’t the means to pay for even a coffee and a donut. She chips in and they soon become a traveling pair (or three, if you count the hair).
Sullivan soon tires of the hard life and heads back to his real life with The Girl in tow who is clearly smitten with him for more reasons than just a casting opportunity. But Sullivan is already married and just generally plays hard-to-get.
This is all pretty good up to this point. Then the movie desires to go against its own ultimate theme (people would rather laugh than see something “deep”), and the movie goes “deep.” Sullivan, having witnessed the hard lives of the bums, tramps, vagrants, and hobos, goes on a walkabout handing out five-dollar bills to every drifter on the street.
In a scene that could not play out today, one of these noble “homeless” people sees the money he’s passing out and assaults Sullivan. He knocks him over the head and takes all his money. Sullivan’s true (and hard) travels then begin in a bit of a mess of a spliced-on “deep” movie.
The water has leaked out of this film by this point but, of course, they make it back kinda-sorta to the light comedy at the very end and achieve very little other than cinematic whiplash. This movie is worth watching if only to see Lake in her hobo attire. You would never know there’s a Super Breck Girl underneath all that.
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Well, maybe, if you look real close. But in the film, you never get a clear, clean shot such as this:
One of the problems (other than just changing the entire tone of the film) when Sullivan goes on his Harsh Travels is that he’s then split from Veronica Lake. Whatever chemistry they had (and it was rudimentary but fairly well done) is lost. You then wonder why they are bothering to do this. Maybe it was just to get to the scene (and it’s a good one) in the black church with a terrific speech given by the pastor.
Still, early in the film there is some good and “heavy” dialogue. His butler is decidedly against his foolish plan and states:
You see, sir, rich people and theorists - who are usually rich people - think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches - as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn't, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned.
