True to Life

Radio writers Fletcher Marvin (Franchot Tone) and Link Ferris (Dick Powell) are out of ideas, and in order to keep up their lavish lifestyle, they must get some, and quick. Link takes a walk one night looking for inspiration and he stumbles upon a pretty waitress working in a diner. Bonnie Porter (Mary Martin) is kind to Link, assuming he is penniless and in need of a good meal, and he quickly realizes she could inspire a great story. Bonnie takes Link home and the real story begins.

Bonnie's family is the perfect specimen for a radio show. Her father (Victor Moore) is a hair-brained inventor whose inventions never work. Her mother (Mabel Paige) has a penchant for being particular about everything, and she dislikes Link instantly. Uncle Jake (William Demarest) is a loafer who refuses to speak to Pop. Twips (Beverly Hudson) is a lovesick teenage girl and Clem (Raymond Roe) is an aspiring doctor with a thirst for other people's blood. Link quickly realizes that by keeping the Porter family away from their radio, he can copy their lives verbatim into a program format, and the show becomes highly successful. Problems arise when Link begins to fall for Bonnie, and then Fletcher steps in.

A fun movie from start to finish with moments of real genius, the only thing disappointing about True to Life is that it is so hard to find. The fine cast brings each character to life in such a way that they are believable but never boring. Powell is seamless as the protagonist and Tone is equally impressive as the antagonist. Martin makes an extremely enjoyable leading lady and it is too bad she didn't have a longer film career.

There are three songs sung in this film, and all of them are rather well done. Martin sings the spirited "Mister Pollyanna" near the beginning of the movie and Powell adds "Old Music Master" and "There She Was" later on.

Another specimen of the mass-produced corn that moviemakers churned out in the war years. Plot has Dick Powell, as a blocked radio scriptwriter, boarding with a normal-but-cute family. (Daughter Mary Martin mistakes him for a down-and-out, and he plays along so as to use their domestic chitchat for his radio characters. Of course, no one in this lovable, guileless family notices that his clothes are those of someone who earns $1,000 a week--in 1943!) Franchot Tone, in one of his many useless-playboy roles, keeps hanging around for some reason.

Instead of comedy gold, however, the dialogue is routine, and the family a bland rewrite of You Can't Take It With You, down to a dizzy father who invents nutty things, a lot of which blow up, in the basement. Father is Victor Moore, the comedian whose supposed humor relies on his being doddery and dim--the kind of person you want to kick in real life, and in this movie too. Mother is a crabby scold, and William Demarest is William Demarest. There are also two teenage children who are...teenagers. My, how comical.

There are three songs by the heavenly team of Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael, but two of these are ordinary. The exception is "The Old Music Master," the duo's jumpin'-jive reprimand to cornballs. This delightful number, with witty and offbeat lyrics, is not just the only bright spot but an unwitting self-criticism, for, ironically, it is stuck in a phony movie about American wholesomeness.

A particularly grating example of the moviemakers' determination to make the family "ordinary"--ie, uneducated: Martin says that for years she has loved the opening lines of a certain poem, and has never come across anyone who knew the rest. And what are these obscure lines? "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" !!!!!! Okay, there was no internet in 1943, but we had librarians and teachers and dictionaries of quotations and... Poor Mary! Having to play a dope who only knows other dopes!

Dick Powell and Franchot Tone are the high-paid writers of a radio drama and sponsor Clarence Kolb is angry. The audience is vanishing because they've taken the lead character and involved her in so many improbable situations that the show has lost all connection to reality. He threatens to fire the writers unless they turn out better grounded material. Powell goes out and asks strangers questions in an effort to find out what people think, until he winds up in an outer borough. There, diner waitress Mary Martin thinks he's broke and takes him home to her family. Powell decides to redo the show based on the way the family behaves.

I had a lot of hope for this comedy. With Paul Jones producing, George Marshall directing, and a cast that includes Victor Moore, William Demarest, and Ernest Truex in the credited cast, and three songs by Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael, there's too much going on. The movie falls prey to the same issues that the fictitious radio show suffers, the songs are, surprisingly, not that good, and both Powell and Tone seem to be giving rote performances. The result is a surprisingly unengaging and unamusing show.

After Betty Hutton stole Happy Go Lucky right out from under leads Dick Powell and Mary Martin, Paramount decided to try the Martin and Powell combination again for one more time. They were cast in a very funny comedy picture, True to Life, but the demand for them as a team was underwhelming.

Mary might even have at the time been contemplating an offer to go back to Broadway and do One Touch Of Venus and Powell was begging Paramount for the chance to do some really dramatic roles. But troopers that they were they did do this film which has a lot of laughs in it.

Dick Powell and Franchot Tone play a pair of radio writers whose radio show has fallen in the Hooper ratings and network president Clarence Kolb tells them to get some fresh material. A chance meeting by Powell with waitress Mary Martin who mistakes him for being indigent and feels sorry for him. She takes him home and persuades the family to take him in as a boarder.

What Powell's fallen into is a kind of poor version of the Vanderhof clan from You Can't Take It With You. The folks at Paramount leaned very heavily on the Kaufman&Hart classic for inspiration here. Powell's inspired as well realizing he's found a gold mine of fresh material here with parents Victor Moore and Mabel Paige and Mary's siblings Raymond Roe and Beverly Hudson. Also boarding with them is William Demarest, Paige's sickly brother. Some of the best lines in True To Life come from Paige who indulges Demarest not contributing anything to the household, but is on Powell's case constantly to get a job and earn a living.

Of course Powell mining this treasure trough of comedy material and Tone actually doing the writing isn't pleasing to Tone. He contrives a meeting with this family and also enters their lives and as a suitor for Martin.

Interestingly enough Franchot Tone who left his original home studio of MGM because he also was not getting the dramatic parts he wanted, was once again cast as a debonair man in a tuxedo because he looked so good in them.

Later on in their careers I do wonder how Powell and Tone looked back on their various films and did they appreciate what a comedy gem True To Life is. I certainly hope so.

A couple of guys who were just as good at presenting their own material as the stars they were whom they wrote for, Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, wrote some songs for True To Life. The best of them is The Old Music Master which Powell sings in an effort to distract the family from the radio where their daily lives are being broadcast. Dick Powell had stopped recording his musical material, he had not renewed his contract from Decca a couple of years earlier. But Carmichael himself did a classic version of The Old Music Master

The guy who rains on the parade is William Demarest. I really enjoyed his performance as the lazy good for nothing uncle who when all is revealed does something in the grand American tradition, he finds a lawyer and threatens suit, something about defamation of character and invasion of privacy. That particular part of this film is even more relevant today than in 1943.

True To Life was no doubt something that Mary Martin, Franchot Tone, and Dick Powell were all doing until the next stage of their careers commenced. Yet this film, directed by comedy master George Marshall is a real sleeper. It's terribly under-appreciated and very funny.

This one was a different combination of characters and events that I have seen in comedies that are more well known, but I was pleasantly surprised.

In my opinion, that's why it deserves a higher rating among others of its time and style than it is given here. All I knew previously of Mary Martin was that she played Peter Pan on live television when I was a kid, and that Larry Hagman of Dallas and I Dream of Genie was her son.

Franchot Tone was great in a Twillight Zone episode and I always enjoy him in the old movies. Dick Powell made it bigger on the small screen, as did William Demarest on My Three Sons. But the cherry on top for me was Victor Moore as Pop Porter.

Anyone who enjoys the black and white comedies of this era should love it.