All of Me

Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins pair up together again after their dynamic chemistry in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the romance All of Me. Once again, the sparks fly between them, especially in their steamy scenes. Freddie plays a respectable college professor, and Miriam is his tempting, free spirit student. He wants to marry, but she refuses. She's convinced that once a couple marries, all the love drains out and they wind up hating each other.

While dining in a nightclub, they overhear the urgent conversation at a neighboring table. George Raft and his girlfriend, Helen Mack, are in trouble. They're poor, he's an ex-con, and Helen's pregnant. It's a chance encounter, but one that changes everything between the two couples. The first half of the movie seems like a harmless little romance, but after George and Helen show up, it turns into a very heavy drama. It's extremely dark, and it slipped just under the mandatory Production Code enforced later that year. Have a comedy lined up for after this movie, because it's tough to watch. But if you're a George Raft fan, you might want to check it out.

Frederick March loves Miriam Hopkins and she loves him. He wants to get married. She thinks marriage kills love. He wants to go work on Boulder Dam, but she wants her life in the East, so she tells him she's pregnant. He believes her, and is ready to change everything, until she confesses she is not... and he walks out in disgust that she would lie about this.

The story shifts to show another couple, George Raft and Helen Mack; they want to get married, but he has a record, and they don't want the baby to have to deal with a jailbird father. Then each of them wind up in jail....

Released in the last few months before the Code became enforced, this is as pre-code as a story can get, albeit one without naked women. Written by William Buchman and Thomas Mitchell, it's a meditation on the destruction that overwhelming love can yield. Although director James Flood handles this briskly and efficiently, he doesn't bring much to it; Raft and Miss Mack, however, are terrific in their desperation.

If you mention Thomas Mitchell to me, I think of his great performances in the late 1930s and 1940s. He was a wonderful character actor, who could bring a realistic comic touch to any role. I was surprised to realize he has six writing credits for movies, although five of them are for versions of his Nroadway play LITTLE ACCIDENTS.

Spoiled rich girl Miriam Hopkins and idealistic professor Fredric March come upon George Raft and Helen Mack, and get entwined in their troubled love affair. Can the turmoil of Raft and Mack bring meaning into the stale, selfish life of Hopkins, so that she can get the oomph to win back the estranged Mr. March?

George Raft is one of the classic era actors victimized by the availability of movies in the TCM library (RKO, WB and MGM) and the utter unavailability of most of the Paramount/Univeral library. Because, while Raft did plenty of work for WB and RKO, it was after he settled into a monotone style of acting that is OK in a number of noirs, but hardly one that challenges the reputation of Raft as a dull lead.

In this film, Raft shows a truly unexpected range, as he plays a guy just out of prison who can't get a job to support his pregnant wife, and can't get a break from a system that never gives any ex-con a break. This performance is so good, that one wishes this film were some kind of undiscovered classic just waiting for its TCM premiere.

Alas, no.

Much of the film is devoted to the schemes of Miriam Hopkins, who, for whatever reason, brings zero fire to her role as a spoiled heiress looking for something more from life. Fredric March has a crud role, and does not bother too hard with making his character tolerable. And the direction is genuinely bad -- this movie creaks, which makes the decision to forgo a musical score (odd, for a film that does take its title from a famous musical number) a fairly spectacular mistake.

So, if you like George Raft -- do see. Otherwise, well...that's your choice.

In the era from about 1930 to mid 1934, Hollywood films were amazingly risque and most folks today wouldn't realize this. Topics like adultery, abortion, homosexuality and fornication were relatively common...and the commonness of this adult content led to a backlash. Soon groups were calling for the government to make Hollywood clean up its act...and to prevent outside interference, the studios agreed to a long list of demands to make movies more nice. Suddenly, all the taboo topics which were in films were now buried and films became squeaky clean...and in some ways, a bit dull.

One of the more notorious Pre-code films was "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". And, apparently pairing Frederic March with Miriam Hopkins was assumed to be a key to the movie's success...as well as an ample dose of sex! So it isn't surprising that they'd bring the pair back for a few more films...including this late Pre-code film, "All of Me". While "All of Me" isn't nearly as salacious as "Dr. Jekyll", it did cover premarital sex and pregnancy!

When the film begins, Professor Ellis (March) is feeling dissatisfied at the university. But he's very happy with his girlfriend, Lydia (Hopkins) and wants her to marry him and go away with him to the West Coast for a new job. But she has other plans...she wants to live together without getting married in Paris. She also soon learns that she's pregnant...and this is about the same time Ellis leaves for his job on the coast. Now, due to her unwillingness to marry him and refusal to follow him to the West, Lydia is facing single motherhood and the ensuing ridicule.

Just before the Professor leaves, he and Lydia were out celebrating when they met a hood (George Raft) and his girlfriend. The four of them spend the evening together...and the hood ends up stealing Lydia's purse! Now this part makes little sense...a short time later, the hood's girlfriend contacts Lydia and asks for her help. They both are locked up and the lady is also pregnant...and Lydia carries messages between them. Why would she do this? And, why would she later help them both to escape?! I dunno...nor do I think the writer knew either! What happens next in this very strange and confusing film?

This film has lots of Pre-code content BUT that alone doesn't make it a good or bad film. Sadly, the writing isn't very good and the story simply makes little sense much of the time....as if story elements were being randomly tossed into the script! It clearly could have used a massive re-write, as there are a lot of plot elements but they never really seem to come together into a coherent story. I just cannot believe that the studio would green light such a film...especially with some of its top stars involved. But, somehow, this mess of a film was made....and not surprisingly it lost a lot of money...and deservedly so.

"All of Me" is not a highlight in the career of any of the principal players. It is slow to get to any point, and after the climax it slithers off weakly into nothing.

That said, none of the actors is bad here, and all have flashes of something quite special. James Flood's direction is so stilted it drags the sometimes interesting dialogue down with it. And none of the performances can quite rise above that. The plot is absurd while it tries to be important. The script plays coy with the obvious element of out-of-wedlock pregnancies not to mention premarital sex. The end scene, if you can call it that, is the limpest point of the film.

Fredric March is reteamed with Miriam Hopkins for the first time since they were so great in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The combination is not nearly as interesting here. They are lovers (he a professor and she a student, for added raciness) who have intellectual differences about love and marriage. Only when they cross paths with George Raft and Helen Mack do they begin to discover that love is more about heart and soul than about a thought process. Raft and Mack are lovers trying to overcome a criminal lifestyle that has left them at the mercy of the System.

March underplays his role with aplomb and disappears for a long stretch while Hopkins (for good reason) seems to struggle to find motivation in her confused character. Their situation gets tiring and is set aside all together as the Raft-Mack subplot takes over. This is fortunate as it is much more interesting. Unexpectedly, after slogging through the storyline, Raft is quite compelling in the climax. Mack is direct and on-point throughout.

March and Raft were both stars for Paramount, and the studio would have had trouble finding two more different men with such different styles. That could have been interesting, but alas, they have only one scene together.