Somewhere I'll Find You

"Somwhere I'll Find You," released in 1942, was produced amid some chaos. Lana Turner was fired after marrying Arte Shaw against Mayer's wishes, and Esther Williams was given the role. However, Turner got the role back. Filming was halted for five weeks due to Carole Lombard's death. And then Gable wanted the title changed, because he said he wouldn't walk back on the set with the film being called "Somewhere I'll Find You." Supposedly the film's name was changed to "Red Light," probably just to get him through the rest of it.

Since seeing "Cass Timberlane," I've been giving some thought to MGM taking the easy way out with their scripts at times. I think this film is another example. The story is quite ordinary - two brothers (and two pretty unlikely brothers, Clark Gable and Robert Sterling with nearly a 17-year difference in their ages) both interested in the same woman (Turner). All three are reporters; the film takes place right before Pearl Harbor.

This would have been a much more interesting film with more focus on the situation in Hanoi, where the Turner character goes missing, and the efforts of the reporters to get the truth printed so that the average U.S. citizen would be aware of what was really happening. This is touched on, and actually, one of the scenes in the editor's office is very funny. Instead, we have Gable going after Turner because he thinks she's a tramp and bad for his brother, who wants to marry her. You can see the ending coming a mile away.

Keenan Wynn and Van Johnson have small parts in the film. By the end of the war, Johnson would be a very popular leading man at MGM, and Wynn would see bigger roles.

The very end of "Somewhere I'll Find You" is the pure propaganda found in films made during this period. It was an important part of film-making, and it's always interesting to see the U.S. atmosphere in these years. The world was going to change mightily, and so was Hollywood, with its major stars going off to war.

Gable's return would be the most difficult - he was older than some of the other classic stars, a grieving widower, and he would forever be in the shadow of Rhett Butler. When Turner cuts a deck of cards in the film, she gets the King. And that's what we get here, just before he goes into the service.

With the title this film has, I was expecting the Noel Coward classic song to be somewhere in the background. Might have helped this film quite a lot.

It's not a bad film, but it's quite a let down from Honky Tonk which was the first Clark Gable-Lana Turner combination which incidentally is my favorite Clark Gable role. It would be another six years before Gable and Turner would be paired again and in this one, Homecoming, it was Turner's picture all the way. It's my favorite Lana Turner picture.

In Somewhere I'll Find You, brothers Gable and Robert Sterling are reporters who both fall for female reporter Lana Turner. Gable keeps trying to convince Sterling that Turner's not the girl for him, but he's quite insincere in saying he doesn't have ulterior motives.

Midway through the film the action shifts from New York City to the Far East in the days just before Pearl Harbor and the last part of the film is a rousing bit of patriotic bravado, letting those people in the Orient know that the United States suffered a knockdown, but far from a knockout.

Gable's final scene, a radio broadcast from Bataan must have been especially poignant for him. This film was the only one he did between Carole Lombard's death and his discharge from military service. When he said 'more will come' he meant quite literally he was coming also. He had in fact already enlisted in the army and would be serving in the Air Corps as a tail-gunner.

Robert Sterling was being showcased in this film as well. He was MGM's junior version of Robert Taylor. Of course his greatest success was with his wife Anne Jeffreys on television in Topper.

Patricia Dane has a small, but telling role as a girl Gable picks up on the rebound from Turner. She should have had a much bigger career than she did. In the battle scene with the Japanese on the beach, small roles were given to future MGM stalwart players Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn.

Somewhere I'll Find You is not as good as Honky Tonk or Homecoming, but it's still a well crafted piece of entertainment.

What a pleasant way to spend two hours when one can't sleep. I loved Lana Turner's face, a little baby fat and that water and soap look. Another thing I really liked was the dialog, even the jokes held up well, despite their 70 year span since having been written. I was surprised to come to this site and see how many of the comments were negative. I like to think myself intelligent, beyond the attraction of the quasi harlequin romance of the story, so I'm going to sum up my over exaggerated enjoyment of this film with the fact that I have yet to see either Honky Tonk or Homecoming. If I liked this one, I am sure I'll love the other two. :-)

The criticism from the earlier commentators seems fairly valid, but most of it seemed less serious after seeing the film. It does end up as a completely different movie from what it began as, but so what? And yes, there was a large element of wartime propaganda involved in it, but again, so what? Many, if not most films of the era were similarly propagandistic. The performances of Clark Gable, and Lana Turner may not have been their best, but the charm, the charisma, that something that made them stars was on display in spite of the failings of the material. The whole plot about Turner's character's character (or lack thereof) was reasonably well-done. Imagine what it would take to do such a plot nowadays. Probably at least four sex scenes. Overall, an OK film, no great loss if you miss it.

Films like "Somewhere I'll Find You" are great little time capsules. We tend to forget that America has a well-grounded isolationist past even though George Bush represented a return to the philosophy before 9/11. Anyways, this films' primary function was to rev up the home-front and sell war bonds and profile Gable and Turner. It does both well. It accurately forecasts a longer war and an eventual victory. The love story was humorous. The gamesmanship within the threesome tended to get a bit irritating until I realized that it was simply a plot device to keep things moving along as if the War wasn't a sufficient motivator. The more powerful love story was the unstated one between Gable and Carole Lombard. Her death a few days into the filming must have had an unimaginable affect on Gable. I could detect nothing in his performance that measured that. This was not necessarily a good film but there is a small pleasure to be had in viewing it and paying some distant homage to 1942 America.