Fiel a tu recuerdo

The first time I ever saw this wonderful film I was about twelve. It was late at night and everyone else had gone to bed and I was thinking maybe I should too, but then this came on and I was hooked. I've seen this film many times since then and yet each time I watch it again it never fails to get an emotional response out of me i.e I ball my eyes out!...and us Brits have a stiff upper lip you know! They just don't make them like they used too and that's a shame.It's a great storyline, great acting and the line 'poor uncle wiggly' isn't dead in our house! Dana Andrews is yummy in it too. I cannot recommend this film strongly enough..watch it and it will always stay with you.

"My Foolish Heart" is far better than the critics acknowledged in 1949, and offers something else that wouldn't have been apparent when first released.

Films made during and just after WW2 give us an insight into what people experienced at the time in a unique way. Although we have plenty of documentaries that show what happened, the movies are more personal, and work on a different emotional level - we identify with the stars and through them a window is opened on the past.

When an old friend, Mary Jane (Lois Wheeler), visits Eloise Winters, played by Susan Haywood, she reflects on the events that led to her present unhappiness. Years earlier, Eloise was engaged to Lewis Wengler (Kent Smith). Although he was in love with her, she sought something he couldn't provide. At a dance, she meets Walt Dreiser played by Dana Andrews with whom she has immediate chemistry. They fall in love, but the war intervenes and changes their lives.

Maybe the stars were a bit too old for their parts, but their performances easily made up for it. Susan Haywood's career was studded with great performances, but she tapped an inner truth in this film. Dana Andrews was not a particularly animated actor, but when the role suited his rather controlled persona, as this one does, he was perfect.

"My Foolish Heart" has a number of strands. Mary Jane is Eloise's friend, and saves her from committing a hurtful act, but their relationship is complex. Eloise's relationship with her parents also seems a little strained, especially with her mother, but it is strengthened by the arrival of Walt, although it doesn't appear that way at first. Kent Smith's character ends up with the woman he loves, but it's definitely a case of be careful what you wish for.

The film shows that death in war can occur quite randomly - simply by accident. However, the victims are killed by the war just as surely as if their plane had been shot down over Germany or their ship torpedoed in the South Pacific.

Eloise is also a casualty of the war.

Although critics at the time dismissed this as just another "weepie", and even the director, Mark Robson, disowned the film, it was a box office success. It goes to show that the public saw more in it than the critics, and artists aren't necessarily the best judges of their own work.

"My Foolish Heart" has an unusual love story and is an insightful look at how the loss of a loved one can affect the rest of a person's life; after WW2, I think plenty of people would have identified with Eloise.

Susan Hayward and Dana Andrews will take you to the heights of joy and deepest despair as two lovers who are forced to live a lifetime in a few weeks as America enters World War II. As the film begins, the war is over and Eloise Winters (Hayward) is married to college sweetheart Lou Wengler (Kent Smith). A visit from college roommate Mary Jane (Lois Wheeler) prompts Hayward to relive the wartime memory of her true love, Walt Dreiser (Andrews). You will be enchanted by Andrews and Hayward's first meeting when sparks fly and an extremely handsome, charming Andrews sweeps Hayward off her feet to the tune of Victor Young's heart stirring theme. I dare say no man looked better on the 1940s screen than the sophisticated, yet easy-going Dana Andrews in this film. Nominated for an Academy Award, Hayward is exceptional in her ability to wear her emotions as a woman deeply in love. Don't miss whimsical moments with outstanding characters actors Robert Keith and Jessie Royce Landis as Hayward's parents. Based on a story by J.D. Salinger, "My Foolish Heart" is a fine film to curl up with on a rainy Sunday afternoon to relive the first blush of your one true love.

My Foolish Heart (1949)

Boy this one is under the radar. Talk about high drama, and with the start of WWII at the center of it. I can only imagine how many people weeped at this one in 1949 because the main story is the flashback of a woman who had a romance go wrong, and surely half the audience had their romances go wrong at the start of the war.

Dana Andrews is his cool, charming, warm, funny best, with that usual holding back all the time that makes him slow to like and easy to love. Susan Hayward shows the range she had, from cold, selfish conniver to warm and bubbly innocent. Quite a remarkable pair of performances, and a plot that circles around on itself nicely. The screen writing was by the famous Epstein brothers, who also wrote the core of "Casablanca" (another movie about the start of America's involvement in the war), and there are some zingers here. And some over the top weepy lines, too.

If this movie isn't archetypal or classic, it's only because a few small things don't fully click. One of them might be the all-too-ordinary scenes--there is nothing bigger than life here except the story itself, which of course is meant to be familiar and not bigger than life at all, yet it is because it's so dramatic. There are secondary actors who hold up in varying degrees. Robert Keith plays Hayward's father with total sympathy, but Jessie Royce Landis as her mother is a bit of her usual caricature, not quite fitting in here (except for some light comedy). Kent Smith is a perfect second man, the "good" man who is more honor than charm, but still likable, and Lois Wheeler is a great if somewhat predictable second woman, also all goodness.

But the story, as ordinary as the elements of it are on purpose, grows in its intensity scene by scene until a slightly sudden and convenient wrap.

This is a great one, really, especially if you like films of the period dealing with the war from the home front perspective. There are a few scenes sprinkled through the film that touch on archetypal America--a football game, and a radio announcement saying that a ship had been hit in Pearl Harbor, and good old Grand Central Station. Don't miss this one.

This film will inevitably get a favorable review from me because it has two things going for it, two things that the Motion Picture Academy recognized. The first was one of the best movie songs ever written and the second was the Oscar nominated performance of its star Susan Hayward who was just entering her prime years as a movie star.

We meet Susan as she's taken to drink and husband Kent Smith has had just about enough of her. Susan has taken to abusing her daughter Gigi Perreau and Smith wants a divorce. She's willing to give it, but not custody of Perreau. As she's talking with her friend Lois Wheeler who was going out with Smith before Hayward took him away in a whirlwind wartime romance the film flashes back to their story or more properly the story of Hayward's real true love from the war, Dana Andrews.

She meets Andrews at a party where a whole lot of serviceman are crashing, welcome though they be. It was the period just before Pearl Harbor when we had built up our armed forces in anticipation that we would be in World War II, just a question of when. She's going to school and her romance with Andrews gets her kicked out which upsets mother, Jessica Royce-Landis, but father Robert Keith remembers his days from World War I and kind of takes to Andrews.

I can't say much more lest I do spoilers, but given the basic facts of the characters I've just laid out, you can probably figure the rest of the plot out.

Dana Andrews during his career in the Forties and Fifties made a specialty of playing Mr. Average Man. My Foolish Heart shows him in that vein as a performer. He and Hayward are a perfect representation of young America in that period.

As for Hayward we see the reason, the genesis of her evolution as an alcoholic in an unhappy marriage. Susan took out a patent on tough, but also romantic and tragic heroines beginning with Smash-Up and continuing on to her career capstone and Oscar winning performance in I Want To Live. She got her second Best Actress nomination for My Foolish Heart, but lost in the Oscar sweepstakes to Olivia DeHavilland for The Heiress.

By the way as good as her scenes with Andrews are, some of Hayward's best work ever on cinema are with Robert Keith. She was obviously Daddy's Little Girl as a child and she and Keith play beautifully off each other.

As for the song as cute as Baby It's Cold Outside is which was the winner for Best Song in 1949, I cannot believe that Victor Young and Ned Washington did not win for the title song of this film. It's been recorded by a whole gang of singers, the recordings I have of it are from Andy Williams and Dick Haymes and a bootleg from one of Bing Crosby's radio broadcasts. I daresay it would get to the top of the charts today even albeit with a more modern arrangement.

My Foolish Heart is one of the great romantic films ever done and definitely in the top percentage of the work of Susan Hayward.