Seven Days Leave

"Seven Days' Leave" is based on James M Barrie's play 'The Old Lady Shows Her Medals'. The title change is interesting, as it moves the play's emphasis from the old-lady character (Sarah Ann Dowey) to the soldier (Private Dowey) who visits her on his furlough from the trenches. The soldier is played (very well) by Gary Cooper, and the original advertising campaign for this film made it clear that 'Coop' was the star of this movie, with the old lady firmly a supporting role. But in fact Sarah Dowey is still the central character in this maudlin drama, even though the screenplay builds up Private Dowey's character.

I viewed this film in 1992 through the kind assistance of film scholar William K Everson, who had a restored print in his collection. Mr Everson and I both had some trepidation in watching this film, as the central character of Mrs Dowey is played by Beryl Mercer, whom William Everson and I agreed is the single most annoying performer in the entire history of motion pictures. Mercer specialised in maudlin tear-stained performances, all trembling and whines and heaving bosoms. The fact that "Seven Days' Leave" has a maudlin plot line in its own right seemed to threaten that Mercer's performance would be even more bathetic than usual. James M Barrie's plot lines veered towards the diabetic, and this one is no exception. But I was curious to see Gary Cooper's performance. As Mr Everson himself had not viewed this film in more than 20 years, our mutual curiosity won out. "Seven Days' Leave" turns out to be better than I'd thought. Cooper gives an impressive performance, and Mercer's maudlin moaning is less obtrusive than I had feared, due to the fact that this story has some legitimate tear-jerking to do.

SYNOPSIS CONTAINS SPOILERS. Sarah Ann Dowey (Mercer) is an elderly charwoman in London during the Great War. She cries herself 'Mrs' Dowey, but in fact she never married and is childless. (Apparently an elderly widow commanded more respect in 1914 than an elderly spinster.) The other three scrubwomen who char with Mrs Dowey - Mesdames Mickelham, Haggerty and Twymley - all have sons in uniform, and Mrs Dowey feels left out ... until she spots a newspaper despatch mentioning Private Kenneth Dowey of the Canadian Black Watch. (In the original play, the soldier was Scottish: here he's been made Canadian so that Gary Cooper won't have to attempt a Scottish accent.) Mrs Dowey tells her neighbours and co-workers that this soldier is her son. She then proceeds to send him letters and cakes, which she claims are from 'Lady Dolly Kanister', apparently a genuine person. (I guarantee that no peeress was ever named Dolly, much less Kanister.) She reads to the other charwomen extracts from 'letters' she receives from her 'son'; these are really blank paper.

The well-meaning Reverend Willings, believing that Pvt Dowey is genuinely Mrs Dowey's son, arranges for them to meet. Private Dowey (Cooper) is astonished to learn that this scrubwoman is his 'Lady Dolly' benefactress. There is a genuinely touching scene in which Dowey tells her that he is an orphan, while Mrs Dowey excitedly recalls her 'memories' of young Kenneth's boyhood. These 'memories' are all her own invention, yet she has genuinely persuaded herself that this handsome soldier is her son whom she has raised from birth, and that these memories are real. Like Martha in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', Mrs Dowey has given herself a pathetic fantasy of motherhood, and now she inhabits it so fully that she believes it is real.

This screenplay opens up the original play considerably, as Private Dowey now takes his 'mother' to the theatre and to a restaurant, where they sup champagne. (He must be getting a general's wages.) By the time his leave is up, these two people have touchingly accepted each other as mother and son. Private Dowey returns to the front, where he soon volunteers for a mission to eliminate a German machine-gun nest. He dies a hero ... and his posthumous medal is given to his mother, Sarah Ann Dowey.

"Seven Days' Leave" could have become dangerously bathetic, yet it works much better than I had expected, and this is largely down to Gary Cooper's splendid performance. The screenplay dilutes much of James M Barrie's twee-ness, and I expect that cynical John Farrow deserves the credit for this. Beryl Mercer gives (by her standards) a surprisingly restrained performance; the very underrated director Richard Wallace deserves praise for this. Daisy Belmore is quite good as one of Mercer's sister charwomen. I was expecting "Seven Days' Leave" to be a wallow in treacle, but it's far less cloying than I'd expected. I'll rate this movie 7 points out of 10, mostly for Cooper's performance, Wallace's directing, and the screenplay.

Based on the play The Old Lady Shows Her Medals by J. M. Barrie. Beryl Mercer stars as Sarah Ann Dowey, a old maid charwoman in London during World War One. She has no children serving in the war, which makes her an outcast among her peers, so she pretends to have a son who is on the front lines. When a local do-gooder sees Canadian soldier Kenneth Downey (Gary Cooper) on leave, he thinks that Kenneth must be Sarah Ann's son. At first angered by the old woman's charade, Kenneth soon feels pity for her and agrees to go along with the ruse. Over the course of his seven days' leave, the two form a lasting bond.

Mercer has starred in the original Broadway production of the play back in 1917, and she's very good here. Aside from a couple of awkward line readings, Cooper is believable and sympathetic. Seeing a surrogate mother-son relationship in a major Hollywood film is not very common, even during this period, so this was an expected fresh take on the War.

Gary Cooper is a member of the Black Watch wounded in action. While he convalesces, charwoman Beryl Mercer adopts him to compete in bulge with her friends, all of whose sons are in the army. When Cooper gets leave, he heads to London to set her straight, but finds himself playing her son.

It's based on James Barrie's THE OLD LADY SHOWS HER MEDALS, and is not, alas, a very successful effort. While well cast, this is still, so far as Paramount's West Coast division is concerned, still early days for talkies, and the dialogue proceeds at a glacial pace and Miss Mercer milks her lines for maximal sentiment.

I don't disagree in any substantial way with the other reviewers. I only wish they had separate ratings for the physical quality in which this one fares poorly. I don't know if it was a low budget production. The print I saw was a bad copy or if all the surviving prints are bad and this was the best of them.

Were it not for the sound and images that went from being too dark to washed out I'd have given it an 8.

Seven Day's Leave was actually Gary Cooper's first all talking film, but Adolph Zukor at Paramount decided to hold up the release of it until after The Virginian was on the big screen. I'm guessing that Zukor must have thought that if The Virginian were not a surefire hit for Gary Cooper with that western drawl of his, Seven Days Leave would tank at the box office. But The Virginian was a big hit and in early 1930 Paramount released Seven Day's Leave and Gary Cooper's career in sound was assured.

Seven Days Leave is a screen adaption of one of James M. Barrie's plays, The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. And it's one of the saddest stories I've ever seen on screen and stage. It's New York premier was in 1917 and Beryl Mercer who plays the title role recreates the part she did on Broadway.

Beryl Mercer plays a charwoman, someone who has passed through most of life without making any kind of mark. Though she calls herself is Mrs. Dowey in fact she's never been married, has no family at all and to keep up with her peers, the other charwomen, brags about a son she never had who is serving in the Scottish Black Watch. In fact she read about a soldier in the Black Watch with her last name and showing it to her fellow charwomen, she claims this as her son. She even sends him cakes she bakes and corresponds with him.

Of course when Gary Cooper gets leave and goes looking for the woman who's been writing him, he gets quite the shock. But he too is a person without home or family ties and the two of them kind of adopt each other until his leave is up and he has to return to France.

Casting Cooper in this role may have been assured when he scored a success in The Shopworn Angel playing an American doughboy. If you recall that film was later remade by MGM with James Stewart in the role that Cooper originated on the silent screen. Of course to explain Cooper's distinctly American speech pattern, he was made a Canadian, the first time maybe in sound films that plot device was used. It was used again for Cooper when he was Lives Of The Bengal Lancers.

Beryl Mercer is probably best known on screen for playing James Cagney's mother in Public Enemy which would come the following year for her. But in fact this one might be her signature role. Mercer is a person taken best in small doses, but her usual cloying personality is well suited for this kind of part. And Barrie as author did a good job in writing about someone who most of us wouldn't separate from the scenery and he gives her a heart and soul.

Seven Day's Leave and the play it's based on is a two person story, the other characters themselves don't really register. It's not a play likely to be revived today, it is a much dated story. Still it's sad and touching about two lonely people connecting in World War I Great Britain.

And you get to see Gary Cooper wear a kilt.