You Can't Escape Forever

Reporter Laurie Abbott (Brenda Marshall) goofs up a huge assignment, an execution! so they stick her in a back office, writing the Bewildered Hearts column. her boyfriend, "Mitchell" ( George Brent) had followed his hunch, guessed at the correct headline for the execution, and printed the paper. but he followed one hunch too many, and now HE is the author of the column. It's 1942, so now we're investigating the mob, and even a fortune teller. script kind of goes all over the place. Gene Lockhart is here as Robelink. Unfortunately, Marshall was only in the film biz for about ten years; she didn't hit it big in films, but was probably better known as MRS. William Holden. Directed by Jo Graham... not much out there on him. he only directed four films. seems to have spent most of his time in hollywood as dialogue director. this one is just okay. probably explains why Turner Classics hardly ever shows it.

This is an okay, rather lighthearted crime/newspaper picture, not at all the grim movie one would expect from the title. Its main detriment is Brenda Marshall, who has zero chemistry with George Brent (looking a bit seedy, but a bit like a second-string Clark Gable), an unattractive profile, and a very tight, cold, humourless manner. What William Holden saw in her, God alone knows. But Brent is as smooth as ever, and there are old friends like Roscoe Karns, Percy Halton, and the chillingly believable Eduardo Ciannelli, with his face rapidly collapsing from Joker-style phony bonhomie to ice-cold murder.

The plot doesn't take itself very seriously, and is sometimes indecipherable, but there are plenty of amusing scenes. But, though Brenda is unsympathetic, the treatment of her, expressing the 1940s idea of the "right" way to live, still has a nasty taste. Three times during the movie she faints dead away because of what she hears, sees, or fears she is about to see (ie, women are not tough enough to be reporters). Then, at the end of the movie, she says she won't give up her career after marriage to George Brent, that they won't have children for a long time. His gesture to the camera shows that he will make sure that's not the case. While a similar "adult" joke at the end of Bachelor Mother was very cute, this is quite unpleasant. It says that Brent will make his wife pregnant against her will or without her knowledge (a very unpleasant picture comes to mind). At the time this was considered cute too, but it sure isn't now.

The entire film uses that hectic non-stop dialogue style that was far more frequent in the black and white days. It makes it kind of difficult to feel involved, more like you are watching a comedy show than a film. And the means with which the main story is introduced, in the same blase fashion, doesn't lend it any gravity. In the end you feel you have watched a long episode of an old sit-com.

Warner Brothers more than most studios liked to remake their feature films, it sure saved costs. You Can' Escape Forever is the 3rd cycle of 4 that originally began with Hi Nellie.

Brenda Marshall girl reporter faints at an execution and fails to report on a last minute pardon by the governor. So this budding Lois Lane is assigned the sob sister column by her editor George Brent. Then Brent makes an even bigger faux pas and he's dumped by the publisher in he same column.

But Brent and Marshall team up in life and on the job and make lemnade out of their shared lemon to bring down a gang of black marketeers. Homage to World War 2 which was figuring into all remakes.

Roscoe Karns is their photographer and good comic foil. Villains are the impeccably cast Eduardo Ciannelli and Gene Lockhart. It's a serviceable remake of the Paul Muni classic.

Marshall's character SHOULD have been fired and yet she was angry--made her very easy to hate turns silly=propaganda While on the surface this film can look a lot like "His Girl Friday", soon it becomes very apparent it is not. It's a shame, because George Brent was capable of doing better pictures than this one. And, you could do a lot better with your time.

The film starts off okay. An annoying reporter (Brenda Marshall) is sent to cover an execution for the newspaper. But, she passes out and misses it--and doesn't realize that the man was given a last second pardon. Not willing to admit the truth, she phones in the story to her editor (and boyfriend), Brent, and reports that the killing went off as scheduled! As a result, he demotes her to do a society column. Now here is where the film started to annoy me. She SHOULD have felt lucky not to get fired--but she is nasty and balks with her demotion. I grew to dislike her because of this--and it was only about 5 minutes into the movie. Later, Brent himself is demoted to this same thankless job--and he spends the rest of the film trying to break a huge story to earn his way back.

While this COULD have worked, the film had three major problems. I already mentioned how unlikable Marshall's character was. In addition, the dialog tried to be smart and zippy like "His Girl Friday"--but it just wasn't that good and showed it. But most importantly, the end just made me cringe. Adding this propaganda angle hurt the film because it seemed VERY gratuitous and unnecessary. Overall, a pretty limp little film--one you will no doubt also think is a bit limp.