These Wilder Years

These Wilder Years (Roy Rowland, 1956) James Cagney plays Steve Bradford, an executive who, for once, takes time off for himself to take care of some unfinished business. He leaves his board of directors in charge and makes it known that if there's an emergency, he can't be reached and somebody else will have to handle it. He's got important business of his own. He doesn't know long it will take, but until it's taken care of, he can't be reached.

He goes back to his hometown and seeks out an orphanage run by Ann Dempster (Barbara Stanwyck), whom he he had contacted previously. She repeats that what he is asking for is quite impossible—she cannot give out the information he seeks. There are rules. That's not the kind of answer Bradford like to hear. He's a captain of industry, a Master of the Universe. He's used to getting what he wants, and if he can't get it one way, he'll find another way to do it—the ends justify the means.

What he's looking for is his son, given up for adoption twenty years previously when he was less successful and less capable of the responsibility. Now, he wants to make amends and be the father he never thought he could be in the past. 

The film was made in 1957 and the subject of unwed mothers was something that was rarely discussed, let alone put on movie screens. If it was, it was slapped with a "Not recommended for General Audiences" label (the kiddies would have to wait for the rating system 11 years in the future). But, this movie had the social conscience—and the business-savvy knowing that the story would never be shown on people's new television sets (where Lucy and Desi had to sleep in separate beds on "I Love Lucy").

So, it makes for an interesting subject to see in a movie from that era; they're not very clinical about it, and don't even use the terms "pregnant" or "unwed mother," and emphasize that these are young girls in a fix and someone has to deal with it and protect all the parties involved. The young men involved in the process are never mentioned—perhaps because you'd have to mention sex—and the only evidence that this might be a shared responsibility is in the character of Bradford who owns up to it twenty years too late.

The reason I was drawn to These Wilder Years was to see old pro's like James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck playing off each other—in the only time in their careers. The two are a couple of my favorite thesp's and they are not sentimental in their portrayals, playing subtle combatants over the information Cagney's Bradford wants. Bradford is so single-minded and so used to getting his own way that he takes legal action against the orphanage to get what he wants, using his company lawyer Rayburn (Walter Pidgeon, playing with a cynical practicality) to sue Dempster in order to release the information to him...and presumably every other prodigal father.

Stanwyck has the more sympathetic role here, and she plays it with a functionary's stern patience. And Cagney, as always, is a revelation. He has a scene where, quite to his surprise, he finds what he's looking for, and his reactions are a study in complexity, going from realization to surprise to fear to shame to regret without pause or revealing of technique. There's no acting, but considered reacting. It's another example—in a long-running career—of why Cagney is considered THE actor's actor and an artist of the highest caliber.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (Roy Rowland, 1953) Marvelously odd-ball, bizarre fantasy film for kids that's as much fun for adults, and has the added benefit of a crazed performance by Hans Conreid and a script, songs and design (after a fashion) the eccentric Theodore Geisel, whose nom de plume was Dr. Seuss. Seuss was a definite, defiant genius,* in that he maintained throughout his complicated adulthood, the simplistic child-view, with all its neurotic simplicity, the well-ordered conservative traditionalism, swirled with a wildly anarchistic streak.

Dr. T is a bit like The Wizard of Oz in that it's a vividly imagined fever-dream that reflects the real world pureed in eye-popping colors and shapes through a child's trauma filter. For Dorothy Gale, it's brought on by familial stress instigated by head-trauma. For Bartholomew Collins (Tommy Rettig), it's familial stress instigated by exhaustion created by piano drills imposed by the unholy alliance of his mother (Mary Healy) and his music teacher, the snooty Dr. Terwilliker (Conreid). The kid's got no allies, save for his dog, the audience—whom he regularly addresses—and the local plumber, Mr. Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes), whom he respects for his control over his life and his ability to fix stuff—fixing stuff is important when you're a kid seeing the world broken. Bart sums up his predicament for us, then falls into a horrific exhausted slumber, where he pictures himself the lone victim in the machinations of Dr. T, secluded in his impossibly architectured institute, the first specimen in a regimented experiment to lead a slave-team of 500 kids to realize his ultimate composition.  

Bart hides in plain sight in T's complex—making him look bug-like and squashable

For Bart, the job is simple: get out of the castle, rescue his mother (who is in thrall to the Professor as his assistant) and barring any escape, sabotage the Doctor's magnum opus. 

It may be the weirdest, most enjoyable leftist agenda movie that producer Stanley Kramer ever produced (even over It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), If.... without machine guns, creating a passive-aggressive (through a "very atomic" silence producer) explosion of revolt to decimate the forces of regimentation and create a nuclear family out of the resulting chaos. Even if Bart can't escape his lot, he can at least do some damage in it, and make it work to his advantage. Sounds like any skill-set a kid would, should, and could have use of.  

Bart climbs to the top of an impossible ladder, only to be found out by a searchlight.

Regimentation and the individual's right to be one's self—by any means necessary—is the story's theme, one that runs throughout Geisel's work through various guises and creatures. And even though Dr. T's denizens are fairly standard bi-ped's, the universe of Bart's Dr. T nightmares is one of wrong angles with no standard rules of design—a free-flowing construction, in danger of collapsing in on itself, even without a kid's help. The songs are fine, the language is wonderful, and the acting whimsical and uneven, but, who cares?  It's the LOOK of the thing that creates the magic of the film, and makes it recognizable, along with some peripheral like the freakish "happy-hands"-beanies the kids are forced to wear, as Geisel...or, rather, Seussian.

Geisel thought little of the film, either because he thought the product compromised, or because the response to it was lackluster to the extreme. And kid-star Tommy Rettig went on to become the first "Timmy" on the Lassie TV show, an unpromising career with drugs, but ended strong by becoming a pre-eminent software programmer, specializing in DBaseIII. All of which seems rather Seussian, as well.

Dr. Terwilliker's castle is full of oddities and Gehrey-esque angles

* For example, he labeled the film a "debaculous fiasco."