Tête folle

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.

As a fan of Susan Hayward's, this is one of her best films. I still cry every time I see it. The story is timeless and touching. A must see!

There isn't a great deal of J. D. Salinger's short story "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" left in Mark Robson's supposed film version "My Foolish Heart" but it's a superior example of the 'woman's picture' nevertheless, thanks almost entirely to a superb Susan Hayward as the unhappily married woman recalling her first love, (Dana Andrews, always a good bet). The director was Mark Robson and it's one of his better pictures while the Epstein's (Julius J. and Philip G.) did the screenplay, again a good sign. Hayward was Oscar-nominated, as was the famous title song which, in its many incarnations, has outlived the film. No classic, then, but an intelligent and likeable picture that deserves to be better known.

"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.

When I saw Susan Hayward in "My Foolish Heart," I immediately thought back to her other successes "With A Song in My Heart," and "I'll Cry Tomorrow." There are so many similarities in her acting, especially at the beginning of Foolish Heart. She even brushed her hair the same way as in "Tomorrow."

As always, Susan Hayward got the role of the troubled woman. She evokes such sympathy in this particular role as Eloise, a woman who recounts a tragic love affair at the start of World War 11.

Dana Andrews, a very fine actor, is perfect for the part of her ill-fated lover.

Special acting kudos should also go to Robert Keith for his portrayal of her understanding father. Keith was quite a good actor. He really was in top-notch films. Besides this gem, he was Barney Loomas in "Love Me or Leave Me" and the doomed father to Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone in "Written on the Wind."

Notice that the term pregnancy is not used in the film. I guess that in 1949 we didn't talk of women being pregnant while not being married.

Unfortunately, this movie would probably be regarded as corny today but 1949 was such a different world in movie history.