There's Always Tomorrow

I went to today's showing of this movie at the Museum of Modern Art with mixed expectations. On the plus side, it starred some of my favorite performers of the early talkie era, including Frank Morgan (before he became typecast), Lois Wilson, the underused Binnie Barnes, Margaret Hamilton and, in minor roles, Alan Hale and Walter Brennan. It was directed by Edward Sloman, a visual stylist who would helm the next year's brilliant A DOG OF FLANDERS, and whose career would abruptly end. On the other hand, it was a soap opera, and I am not fond of those.

For the first twenty minutes, my optimistic hopes were realized. True, there were no visual fireworks, and the dialogue direction was a little shaky, but a perfect portrait was offered of Frank Morgan's Joseph White, a successful man in love with his life, heading home to surprise his wife with a night out on the town to celebrate their wedding anniversary, only to be brought up short as the forgotten man at home, pushed out of every room, except when he is sent to the nether regions of the basement to deal with the cranky coal furnace. Enter Binnie Barnes.

Well, we know what's going on, but this movie received Certificate 51 of the newly rewritten and enforced Production Code. As a result, we see nothing much after this. Instead, we are treated to several monologues, none of them well delivered -- Sloman's talkies always show signs of needing a good dialogue director. This movie, which started out so well, turns into what might have been a decent radio drama.

I much fear that this movie is a severe disappointment, not because of what other reviewers call its old-fashioned nature, but because of its actual shortcomings. Its theme - - that even the most upright and honorable man or woman needs to be respected and loved -- remains with us. The story, though, could not be told under the Production Code: certainly not by Mr. Sloman.

I was curious to see this early talkie by dint of recently watching Douglas Sirk's 1955 remake with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the two lead roles taken here by Frank Morgan and Binnie Barnes.

Morgan is the seemingly happily married, prosperous family man Joseph White, father to five mostly grown up children, the oldest of whom is Robert Taylor in his first major role. We're immediately made aware that he's the forgotten man in his own family with everyone from his wife on down taking him for granted. Hoping to take his wife out on their anniversary, he returns home to find his house given over to a party for the children, leaving him banished to his perennial duty it seems of symbolically stoking the furnace which heats the property to keep his family comfortable. With nowhere inside to go to read his paper he's reduced to sitting on the outside porch when along comes his old flame from before he was married, the stylish and attractive Barnes who's passing through town and couldn't resist looking him up.

He immediately responds to her and it's not long before he's secretly visiting her at her place on Thursday nights when he's meant to be at his club, until one night all his grown-up children, plus Taylor's long-standing girlfriend, accidentally catch him out.

This is a pleasant enough if hardly gripping film directed in the old fashioned manner with fairly static camera work, long takes, lots of interior set-ups and my biggest bug-bear, pointless incidental music playing in the background of almost every scene. The acting is a little mannered too with everyone talking very prim and proper and of course the drama is handled very chastely with no suggestion about what Morgan and Barnes might be getting up to at her place.

It all ends happily of course, if a little too easily, with Barnes making the grand sacrifice and Morgan's family, his wife included, finally coming round to appreciating him again. The big anticipated scene between the scandalised oldest son Taylor and his errant dad never happens and it's surprising to see Barnes pretty much confess her life story and past love for the children's father when she takes them into her house after their car breaks down outside while they're snooping on dad.

Morgan seems a little too bumptious as the invisible dad and you can't really imagine him and Barnes ever having the hots for one another although Barnes is better in the slightly meatier part but is given overly prosaic dialogue to spout, while Taylor doesn't get to do much other than to project his petted lip in indignation over the looming scandal. It was interesting to see Morgan's later Wizard Of Oz co-star Margaret Hamilton in a supporting role as a lippy maid.

Sirk's remake ups the ante considerably in playing up the sexual tension between MacMurray and Stanwyck and making you almost will him to go ahead and get a better life away from his undeserving family but here there's never much doubt about what the outcome will be which weakens the drama considerably.

If you can only watch one telling of this story, certainly go to the Sirk version, but this mildly diverting earlier version is still worth viewing even if only for comparative reasons.

There's Always Tomorrow is an old fashioned type story that is highly unlikely to be made today. This film stars Frank Morgan who had not yet gotten down the eternally befuddled character we all know from The Wizard Of Oz and other works from MGM.

Morgan is an eminently materially successful man with wife and five kids who seem to have included him out of all their plans. He's as one of his kids puts it just a checkbook, possibly a lift in a car to various places when one or any number of his kids need the car for their busy social lives.

Watching There's Always Tomorrow I try to remember that when theater audiences saw it was the middle of the Depression and Morgan and wife Lois Wilson and their kids are doing really as opposed to half any given theater audience. So when an old employee played by Binnie Barnes shows up and really treats him with dignity and respect, it's not hard to see why Morgan is susceptible.

Problem is the kids do find out and things get a little hairy around the Morgan/Wilson household. But everyone behaves so civilized as opposed to what would normally be happening in real life.

The most uncivilized of the group is Robert Taylor, playing Morgan's oldest son and a most callow youth. This was Taylor's second feature film and he's all self righteous about Dad's indiscretion.

The film also was Binnie Barnes's first American made film, she was imported over after the raves about her performance The Private Life of Henry VIII. She starts setting a standard for portraying witty sophisticates as she did on both sides of the pond.

There's Always Tomorrow was remade in 1956 and I'd be curious to see that one with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. This is such an old fashioned tale even for 1934.

If you're watching There's Always Tomorrow, it's probably because you liked A Lost Lady and want to see another romantic drama starring an against-type Frank Morgan. As time wore on, Frank didn't get as many opportunities to play a leading man, so you'll want to catch him when you can. This one is extremely sad, though, so be prepared.

Frank stars as an unhappily married man with four grown children. He and his wife, Lois Wilson, have grown apart through the years. His oldest son Robert Taylor is married, and his other three kids, Louise Latimer, Maurice Murphy, and Dick Winslow, are always out and about. In short, no one pays attention to dead ol' Dad anymore, and he feels bored, ignored, and unloved. Out of the blue, a former sweetheart from his youth, Binnie Barnes, bumps into him. They renew their friendship, and as Frank starts to enjoy another person's interest and attention, their feelings grow to more.

Once again, this movie is quite sad. I can appreciate the story and the acting, but I won't want to watch it again. This is a generational drama, with the kids taking a different point of view than the parents, so depending on your stage in life, you might like this movie better than I did. Watch at your own risk, and take along a box of Kleenex.