The Affairs of Martha

I wonder if those guardians of our country at the House Un American Activities Committee took a careful look for a subversive message in The Affairs Of Martha before they blacklisted Jules Dassin. After all the story of household staffs meeting to confront their employers sure sounds subversive to me.

That's only part of the film and the film is a bright and innocuous comedy from MGM's B picture unit. Marsha Hunt stars as the tell all maid who has kept one secret, the fact she's married her boss's son Richard Carlson before he went off on a polar expedition.

A whole galaxy of familiar character players is what makes this film special. It gets a bit silly at times, but it's easy to take.

So you'd think she wrote a regular Peyton Place.

To appreciate this movie, I had to watch it twice. After one view I was left with the feeling there was something I had missed. I was left with an impression that the film was better than the impression with which I was left. On second view its intent, and its sweetness, came through. My problem, or mistake, was to anticipate a screwball comedy - which is not there essentially. That assumption came naturally, seeing in the cast such names as Melville Cooper, Spring Byington, Marjorie Main and Allyn Joslyn, in minor roles Ernest Truex, Margaret Hamilton and Robin Raymond. "The Affairs of Martha" is not in the mold of "His Girl Friday," "The Lady Eve." It is a romantic comedy, tenderer and more subdued. I found I had also been misled by a plot summary that suggested the story would revolve around a community's frantic reaction to a tell-all book written anonymously in its midst. That is the opening of the film. But it is not the story. I should have taken my cue from the title. It is the story of Martha and her loves. A lovely young woman (Marsha Hunt) relegated to the life of a menial, a domestic, chooses among three men, three destinies. Will she choose the handyman (Barry Nelson) who is (no pun intended) a small-town rake? Will she choose the New York sophisticate (Allyn Joslyn), or the awkward, intellectual son of her employers (Richard Carlson)? Isobel Lennart's plot is simple. But in the hands of these actors, especially the luminous Marsh Hunt, and director Jules Dassin - Marsha Hunt worked with Juley (as she called him in interviews, again in film and he directed her also on stage before they both fell in the blacklist - it becomes a sweet tale that sticks in the memory.

There is an element of social commentary, satirizing the pretentiousness and insularity of the bourgeoisie. Even the ocean waves must mute themselves so as not to ruffle the repose of this community somewhere on the Long Island shoreline. Every household comes equipped with maid and cook. The locals, milkmen and handymen, laugh at the snobs. The domestic servants plot like a revolutionary underground. It is satire. Bit it is genial satire. Martha aims to rise above her allotted fate. Given that she's the stunning Marsha Hunt, it's clear she'll do it. Still, until the end, it is not clear which destiny awaits her. Barry Nelson's rustic lothario would be a downgrade. But he has charm. Allyn Joslyn's city slicker at heart is honest and sincere; life with him might be rewarding. Richard Carlson's bespectacled anthropologist has a touch of Henry Fonda's stumbling herpetologist in "The Lady Eve"about him. Nobody is unlikable. Even the self-important townspeople (deftly incarnated by Spring Byington and Melville Cooper) are only gently ridiculous.We really do care about these people. The ending is happy. Any ending would be happy. It's a happy picture.

Marsha Hunt is magnificent. This may be the only time she saw her name at the top of the credits. That's a shame. Character actress as she was, she refuses to let her character be one-dimensional. She brings out a range of personality. There's a layer of conniving (she is the anonymous authoress), but also defiance (as when she rallies the maids to conspire against their employers), determination (she won't be put upon or deterred from improving her life). Martha has an edge of Katherine Hepburn toughness in her, and also some of the insouciance Jules Dassin later created for Melina Mercouri in "Never On Sunday." Yet there's the naivete of an ingenue. In some of the movie's best scenes Allyn Joslyn wines and dines her in the city's high society. "This is the life I was meant to have," she says. She carries the picture. Among the rest, Allyn Joslyn stands out in one of his more sympathetic roles, the kind he did as a leading man on Broadway, and Virginia Weidler, delightful as usual. It's meant for laughs, but not entirely. "The Affairs of Martha" grows as you watch it. You may have to see it twice. It's worth the time.

"The Affairs of Martha" (1942) is a good illustration of how even a dream cast and solid directing cannot transform a weak script into anything more than a very average production. Imagine having the luxury of Marsha Hunt as your leading lady and female love interest; surround her with some of the best comic character actors of the era (Virginia Weidler, Marjorie Main, Margaret Hamilton, Spring Byington, and Grady Sutton); finally throw in Richard Carlson's best ever performance. Any movie buff would expect quite a treat from this ensemble.

In writer Isobel Lennart's defense, Weidler was miscast; what are hilarious lines coming from a precocious 11-year-old (for which the part was written and for which Weidler would have been perfect a few years earlier) just don't work coming from a 15-year-old actress who looks even older. Following this film with several similar disasters Weidler retired from the business.

Contrary to the plot summary, young housekeeper Martha Linddstrom's soon to be published book is not the real focus of the film. It is a romantic comedy much like "Bringing Up Baby", and could have benefited from a few of that film's screwball elements. Jeff Sommerfield (Carlson) returns home from a long absence with his new fiancée Sylvia in tow. Jeff does not reckon on the continued presence of Martha (Marsha Hunt) in his parent's household. Just prior to his departure he married his parent's housekeeper at the conclusion of a drunken bender. Because she is genuinely in love with him Martha did not follow through on her promise to have the marriage annulled but instead has worked to improve herself in night school and has just completed a book lauding his family.

Oddly, coming from a misunderstood woman writer and centered on a misunderstood woman writer, Lennart takes a lot of cheap shots at the third side of the screenplay's love triangle. Academic Sylvia Norwood (Francis Drake) is beautiful, intellectual, accomplished, and very well-adjusted. This is not the sterile Alice Swallow character in "Bringing Up Baby". Sylvia must serve as the film's villainess, which not only fails to generate any audience concern (Jeff would benefit greatly from being paired with either woman), it totally undermines the working woman political subtext of the production.

Along with Carlson's performance there are several very good things about "The Affairs of Martha". Marsha Hunt (as always) is excellent in both melodramatic and comedic moments; its just too bad her character as written is so bland. For my money Hunt is the Hollywood's all-time most underrated actress and I've enjoyed her each time I've seen her. Grady Sutton has the film's best moment early in the film in a nonverbal sequence at the breakfast table; unfortunately his character is not developed further Given the film's very short running length and its failure to develop many of the most amusing secondary characters it is likely that much was trimmed out during the editing process.

There is a clever dinner table scene near the end of the film in which Jeff is emotionally ranting against writers and publishers; a demonstration that further alienates Martha. Eventually you understand that it is a ploy to delay the announcement of his engagement to Sylvia but it works as a very nice bit of misdirection.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

A maid's tell-all book threatens to undo an upper-class neighborhood, even as one of the sons and the maid are secretly wed.

Looks like big-budget MGM was responding to wartime audiences with this little programmer. It's decent enough, but can't sustain its comedic air for the 70-minute runtime. That's perhaps because director Dassin's instincts are really not comedic. Instead, he developed into one of the top noir directors of the period, e.g. Brute Force (1947), Thieves Highway (1949). Here, the comedic mood bounces around too often to sustain the format. Then too, writer Lennart has some serious class issues to work into the proceedings.

Nonetheless, it's a dynamite supporting cast, with a number of skillful comedic actors, including Main, Nelson, Joslyn, Weidler et al. Now, I like Richard Carlson, particularly when he's battling space aliens or communists, but a comedy actor, he ain't. Here, he's too stiff to complement the mood, unlike Hunt, for example. Overall, I can't help thinking a longer screenplay giving more time to support players like Main and Hamilton would have helped. But then, a longer runtime would have moved the movie out of the wartime double-bill status.

All in all, the movie components don't combine well enough to make a memorable whole, despite some genuinely promising moments.

An affluent Long Island community is thrown into a panic: word is out that a maid is writing a "kitchen's-eye view" of her employers.

Marsha Hunt stars as Martha, the family maid who doesn't really mean to cause a big ruckus. Richard Carlson is the scientist son who unexpectedly returns home from studies abroad—and it's quickly obvious that he and Martha share a sensitive secret.

Carlson and Hunt are quite good—both give unassuming performances as characters who are just slightly offbeat.

Superb character actors in colorful roles fill out the rest of the cast: Marjorie Main is at her best as the boisterous cook who rounds up all the cooks and maids on the block for a strategy session. Virginia Weidler is fine as the young daughter who says, "Every now and then I get a feeling something's going on I don't know about." Spring Byington and Melville Cooper are the mildly eccentric mother and father. Allyn Joslyn is the sharp-witted publisher of the book-in-progress. And Barry Nelson is hilarious as the delivery boy who attempts to romance Martha (Main calls him a "pantry Casanova").

No single character dominates but the entire cast is colorful and clever; the witty script gives just about everyone something funny to say and contains just enough plot to offer a few twists: It's surprising, funny and sweet.

–Oh, and Margaret Hamilton, three years removed from Oz, has one hilarious line during the maids' and cooks' discussion of their employers: "You don't know how bad those witches can get once they get moving," she says.